Category Archives: Climate change

Opinions on Climate Change

A New Treaty

Climate change, Indigenous Issues

 

I heard Pamela Palmater speak at the recent Climate First Tour. Like Anthony Hall, one of my favorite writers on Indigenous issues, Palmater has connected ecocide with genocide. In my view, they both have the same source—in European settlers’ original sin of disrespecting non-whites, non-men, and non-humans. As Palmater said, “We can no longer deny the ecocide of life on the planet than we can deny the genocide of Indigenous people. Ecocide and genocide go hand in hand.” They are both the poison fruit of the same contaminated source.

Palmater also pointed out, “Chemical valley is always on Indigenous Land.” This happens for the same reason that in the US toxic chemical plants are usually found near or on land belonging to African-Americans, Indians, or poor people. Poor people everywhere have little power, so frequently get shafted. The connection between injustice and pollution is perversely intimate. According to Palmater, “Indigenous people are the first to feel the dysfunctionality of the land.” Indigenous People are the canary in the mine. And to paraphrase that great but unheeded Canadian philosopher, Al Boily from Labroquerie Manitoba, my former boss when I had a summer job at Manitoba Hydro during my first two summers of University: “What’s bad for Indigenous People is bad for the rest of us too.”

Many of us now realize that Indigenous people the world over, are at the forefront of the fight against environmental contamination and destruction. You can see this at Standing Rock, you can see this in B.C. in the fight against the Trans-mountain pipeline, you can see this in the South American Rainforest, you can see it at the UN, and you can see it in many other places. We have to learn the truth of what Palmater said, “the planet cannot survive without Indigenous People.”

I thought Palmater said many very interesting things, but none more interesting than her statement “What we need is a new Treaty relationship. We need a treaty relationship for our mutual protection. We must revitalize it by including all living beings, not just humans.  We have to ban ecocide along with genocide. This would be a true modern treaty—a real coming together. This treaty should combine social justice with earth justice. This will require a revolution—that would change everything! It would require a massive transfer of wealth, power, and decision making.” It sounds radical, but frankly, we need radical. Our climate crisis has progressed too far for modest solutions. We have wasted too much time.

Palmater is a student and teacher of the treaty making between Canada and its First Nations people. She knows a lot about it. But she wants to go farther than that. As she said, “the original treaty vision was that we would work together. Such an attitude can protect the ecosystems on Turtle Island too, as long as the sun shines and the rivers flow.”

Palmater urged us to consider “The Indigenous People survived genocide: Take that strength and resilience and allow it to transform you. We can come together to rise up and change the world so that this generation can lead us back to balance. We can unite under a New Treaty.” These were powerful words and the group gave her a standing ovation. I stood up too.

Before Pamela Palmater talked I did not know her at all. Now I think I Now a little about her.

Hard Truths: Climate Change and Indigenous People

Climate change, Indigenous Issues, New Attitude to Nature

 

The second speaker at the Climate First Tour rally in Winnipeg was new to me. Apparently she is a frequent commentator on TV. I guess I either don’t watch enough or watch the wrong programs. She was Dr. Dr. Pamela D. Palmater a Mi’kmaw citizen and member of the Eel River Bar First Nation in northern New Brunswick.

Today I learned that she was a passionate speaker and ardent advocate for those urging us to do something significant about climate change. She said that she was pleased to be sharing the stage today with 2 of Canada’s Warrior Grandfathers,” as she called David Suzuki and Stephen Lewis  Well, that might be true, but she fit right except that she is obviously much younger than her partners today. Later when I did a little research about her, I saw a picture of her with a shirt that read, “She Warrior.”

Today she told us, “I need to talk about hard truth.” The truth she wanted to convey was this: “Canada is killing its own people and the planet and we must do something to stop it.” I think she meant to refer to the conclusions of the recent Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. That report concluded that there were reasonable grounds for concluding that Canada was guilty of genocide against Indigenous women and girls (it did not actually say Canada was guilty because such a statement is legally significant and ought only to be made, it is thought, by a court of law). That is a hard truth. Many Canadians, including many of my friends resist that conclusion. It is hard for me to accept. Secondly, her comment refers to the fact that Canada is participating in the active destruction of human life and many other species on the planet by permitting greenhouse gas emissions to rise unchecked. This is another hard truth though not as difficult for many of us to accept. It is still a harsh indictment of Canadians, though we are far from the only ones facing such indictments.

Palmater also said that these are “the only two issues we should be talking about in this election are ecocide and genocide!” Everything else pales into insignificance. I accept that too.

Palmater also argued, “the pain of climate change is felt first in the north and first there, to indigenous people.” I think that is difficult to dispute as well. Even though indigenous people are the first and perhaps worst affected, this is rarely discussed when climate change is discussed. Just like the unfortunate fact that the people first affected by climate change, around the world, are often the ones who have done the least to cause climate change, it is true this climate injustice is seldom faced with any rigour or sincerity. Our attitude really can be summed up by the expression, ‘It sucks to be you.’ Hardly the most rational response.

According to Palmater, it is time we also faced the ugly truth that “We can’t live without the planet, but the planet can easily live without us.” As a consequence of this uncomfortable truth, we must face the fact that if we are facing a climate emergency, we must change our ways to save not just our descendants, but our species. If we think our species is worth saving.

To really face up to this challenge we have change our system of exploitation of the natural resources of the planet, and convert to working with nature, rather than against it. The colonizing system of which we are an integral part shapes transforms all human systems, and all human interactions with others. That system is so totalitarian it cannot be escaped.

We have to realize, Palmater said, “the planet is crying too.” I always think that if the planet could talk it would speak like the broadcaster in the film Network, “I am mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” This really should be the motto for the earth rather than the populists.

According to Palmater, we also have to realize that the issues of genocide and ecocide are closely. This is the same position taken by others such as Anthony Hall in his magisterial  2 volume history of the relationship between European invaders, Native Americans (in the broad sense) and the natural world in the western hemisphere. I will return to this subject later. As Palmater succinctly put it, “Damage to Indigenous Women and Girls is damage to the planet too.”

All of the three speakers tonight agreed that we are much past the time when we need to debate policies.” It is too late for that. We have to act and we have to act with speed. We can’t allow debate to slow us down though we have to think critically about what we are doing. We can’t plunge ahead blindly. I wish we had more time to debate policies, but we have been dithering around for two many decades. Partly those delays were caused by the energy sector’s very successful decades long policy of spreading doubt about the science. Now we have to live with the consequences of that delay. It sucks to be us!

The problem with emergencies is that they often require a quick action. They leave little time for reflection. You can’t mull your way through an emergency. Or as Palmater said, “Best intentions don’t matter anymore—only action.” At this stage I was beginning to feel uncomfortable with her hard truths. But she wasn’t finished delivering them. She was just starting. This is precisely what Greta Thunberg has been saying. We need action. We have to treat an emergency like it is an emergency. Canada has said this is an emergency but it has not acted like it. If it did it wouldn’t spend $4.5 billion on a pipeline. It would spend $4.5 billion or even more, on transitioning away from fossil fuels. As Palmater bluntly put it, “In the end we either do or we die.”

The Creed of Cancer

Climate change, Economics, New Attitude to Nature

 

At the Climate First Tour in Winnipeg, David Suzuki, who  is always critical of economists and economics said our current economic system is  based on the idea of endless growth. “The philosophy of infinite growth means that progress is measured by growth, constant growth, and this is the creed of cancer. This can end in only way, with death.”

Another pet peeve of Suzuki is that economics, the dim science, is out of whack. According to economics, all of the things that nature does to keep the world intact are externalities. They are all irrelevant from the perspective of economics. Everything nature does is irrelevant; it does not count.  From my perspective, this  is the original  sin of economics. If we are serious about tackling climate change, this is the attitude that must be rejected.

David Suzuki thinks that Stephen Harper epitomized this attitude. Harper elevated the economy over everything else. The atmosphere, for example, according to Harper, was an externality that did not matter. As a result of such attitudes, damage to nature is not counted as a cost. The people who caused the damage, whether to the air, the atmosphere or the ocean did not have to pay for that damage, because such costs were externalities. Externalities do not fit into the equations of economics. That attitude leads directly to our current collapsing natural world and our existential climate crisis. Suzuki categorically rejects this attitude: “Holding up human constructs over nature is crazy.”

Suzuki said the essential characteristic of humans is that we can foresee dangers. Foresight was critically relevant for our survival during our long evolutionary history. Now science and computer technology have amplified foresight. Scientists have warned us that we are headed for danger, but we don’t pay attention. As a result we are ignoring one of our most important characteristics and it will be our peril.

In 1992 in a famous public statement  a large group of scientists of the world warned us. They said that human actions and the natural world are on a collision course. This is already affecting our atmosphere, oceans, soil, forests, corals, and species extinction. It is the cause of over population. This statement was signed by ½ the Nobel scientists who were alive at the time. Yet we did nothing about it. We did not heed the warnings. We ignored our foresight that had saved us so often in the past. Had we heeded the warning, we likely would not have this existential crisis now.

In 2017 scientists gave us a new warning. They warned us that unless we changed our ways within 12 years and drastically reduced our emission of greenhouse gas emissions, we would be destroying the life as we know it. Again little has been done. Again  we are lacking foresight. Greta Thunberg’s big theme is that all she is telling us is to listen to the scientists. Listen to the warnings. Use our foresight.

There is one more thing we need besides foresight. We need to work together. This problem we face, this emergency, demands that everyone work together. All parties have to be set aside.

Suzuki said that when he was a student in the United States in the late 1950s after Russia launched the first space ship into space to orbit the world, America was horrified. How could the Russian do it first? What did this mean? The America reaction was clear and simple: we have to deal with this. No one asked ‘how can we afford this?’ They got together and poured money into the NASA space program. Anyone in science who wanted a grant got one.

With an urgent goal, we can perform what appears impossible. When it comes to climate change, we need that sense of urgency now. It doesn’t look like we can do it.

People who know how to live sustainably

Climate change, Indigenous Issues, New Attitude to Nature

 

 

Last week Chris and I attended the Climate First Tour at the University of Winnipeg. David Suzuki and Stephen Lewis, 2 elder statesmen were travelling across the country trying to fire up the country about the pressing issue of the times—climate change. They were joined by Pamela Palmater an indigenous spokeswoman. They wanted to make this the critical issue of this election, because it was the critical issue of our time.

The first speaker was David Suzuki. I have heard him many times and read many of his books, but he is always worth listening to.   Suzuki made one very important statement at the beginning of his talk. He said that we should always think about Indigenous People who flourished on this continent for millennia. They did not just survive; they flourished.  They are the only example that we have of sustainability over a long period of time. We should learn from them. We should not do what we always did before, namely, ignore their advice. Who is more qualified to give us advice than Indigenous People?

Like each of the other speakers that came after him, Suzuki started with the assumption that we are in fact in a climate emergency. The Canadian Parliament acknowledged it and we should proceed on that assumption. I agree.

He also agreed with the other 2 speakers that this issue is not partisan and we all must address it accordingly. Too many people, and too many political leaders are avoiding the uncomfortable fact that we must dramatically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Nothing less than that is acceptable. It is too late for puny measures.

Suzuki also said that he and Stephen Lewis were elders who had both made many mistakes and a few successes. Elders are required to speak the truth. Elders have a responsibility to share what they have learned. Elders have no need to suck up to power; they are in a unique position to tell it like it is, for they have nothing to lose.

Suzuki said, “We are at a critical in the history of human life on the planet. We need unity like we had when the Toronto Raptors were winning the NBA championship.”

Suzuki was very critical of media coverage of the issue of climate change. I know many people are sick of hearing about it, but it is the critical question of our time. They should be devoting a lot of time to climate change or they would not be doing their job.  Suzuki had one glaring and shocking example of their failure. He said that the recent United Nations report on species extinction was completely swamped by the media attention given to the report of Harry and Meghan’s baby. I think that baby is 6th in line to the throne. Is that important?

Suzuki pointed out that “for 95% of our existence as humans on this planet, we have been hunter-gatherers deeply embedded in and dependent on the natural world for everything and during all this time we had an ecocentric way of seeing the world.” In other words we did not have an anthropocentric view of the world, in which we see everything as if its purpose was to fulfill our needs. Being ecocentric means that humans are part of the natural world like all other creatures.

The first European explorers of the Western Hemisphere had a very different attitude. They were looking for resources and saw them everywhere. According to Suzuki,  “the European explorers saw Indigenous people as an impediment. As a result they did not appreciate the priceless knowledge the Indigenous people had that enabled them to flourish in this hemisphere.  From then on, starting in about 1750, we shifted to an anthropocentric way of seeing the world.”

         Suzuki added, “Ever since about 1750 our legal, political, and economic systems have been based on this anthropocentric way of seeing the world.” It undergirds everything. This reminded Suzuki of what Greta Thunberg said to the world leaders at the UN, “How dare you?”  In other words, “How dare one species arrogantly usurp all rights for itself?” Where is the right of the river to flow? Where is the right of the birds to fly? Where is the right of the forests to grow?

According to the anthropocentric ideology and that is really what it is, we are the superior species entitled to dominate the earth. But that is precisely the attitude that has got us into our current predicament.

The key question of our time, he said, is to shift from the anthropocentric to the ecocentric. I agree with this completely. We need a new attitude to nature. Or rather, we need an old attitude to nature. There are people who already have this worldview. They are all around us.

Many Indigenous people already have this worldview. We should listen to Indigenous people. They have known for thousands of years, how to flourish here. The anthropocentric view has only been on this hemisphere for about 500 years. We have to respect their knowledge. As Suzuki said, “the indigenous point of view that is shared by many Indigenous people is deeply ecocentric in origin, and remarkably, they still seem willing to share it.”

The famous Brundtland Report published by the United Nations in 1987 taught us the word “sustainability”. It really was based on this Indigenous attitude. That report said we should take advantage of that vast source of knowledge from Indigenous People. As Suzuki said, “We have been destroying the only human culture that has managed to thrive on our continent.” It’s time to change direction.

A Climate Emergency

Climate change

 

We are about a week away from a federal election in Canada. I think I have to weigh in on this issue. The Canadian Parliament has declared that we are in a climate emergency. I don’t think that is a hysterical reaction. I think that aligns with most of the science. And it is the scientists we should be listening to at a time like this. Since this issue is so important I think we in Canada should vote primarily based on who will best deal with this crisis.

Yet it is clear that our Canadian government, led by the Liberals who mainly supported that resolution that Parliament made, is not treating it like a climate emergency. They are doing better than the Conservative opposition, but that is not saying much. It is a climate emergency, but the Canadian government has just invested $4.5 billion dollars to purchase the rights to the Trans-Mountain pipeline planned to transport bitumen from the Alberta Tar Sands to the Pacific. To do that they have to cross numerous First Nations reserves. And  many (but not all) of  the Indigenous people on those reserves  do not want that pipeline on their land. Neither the government of B.C., nor the people of B.C.  are very receptive either. Spending so much money to invest in a pipeline that will last for decades, when we should be getting off fossil fuels, does not sound like the Liberals are treating the problem like an emergency. I know Canadians, and not just oil companies, earn a lot of money from the oil and gas industry. But we spend a lot to support (subsidize) it too. Are we being wise? I think not.

As I said, the Conservatives are even weaker. They have promised that within weeks of taking office they will rip up the Carbon Tax, even though almost all economists acknowledge that a tax on carbon is the only measure that makes economic sense.  Alternative proposals from the Conservatives seem weak at best. They have some good ideas, but on balance, they are clearly not treating this as an emergency either. The Member of Parliament who represents the riding in which I live, had a supporter deliver a pamphlet to our door which highlighted cancelling the carbon tax at the top of his list of promises. He lost my vote right there, but I know in my riding there is not a chance that he will not be re-elected. But I won’t vote for him.

The New Democratic Party policy, as far as I can see, follows the Liberal policy quite closely in this respect, but they don’t support buying the pipeline. But this is an improvement.

The Greens have the most interesting idea. They will impose a carbon tax, like the Liberals, and will increase it regularly like the Liberals, but they will not stop at $50 a tonne. Most economists agree with them that $50 is likely to be insufficient. The Greens promise to keep raising the tax until it works and we start to reduce oil and gas consumption enough to reach our targets. Another words, they will raise the tax until it hurts and we do what needs to be done. Unfortunately it is now so late that anything less is wholly inadequate. We have had more than 30 years to deal with the problem and now we are paying for that procrastination.  Partly we have been procrastinating so long because powerful interests have been spending a lot of money to persuade us that this was in our interests. Why this happened is an interesting story in its own right, but I will deal with that later. Because the election is approaching so fast I think I have to concentrate on that right now.

Next I shall report on some famous people who came to the city in the Climate First Tour.

 

 

 

G7 and Climate Change

2019 Trip to the West, Climate change, Trump

As we drove towards B.C.  we heard on the radio that at the recent G7 talks when the subject of climate change came up on the last day, President Donald Trump left the room and the meetings.  There was nothing he felt he had to learn on the subject. He knew it all. The country that has emitted more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than any other country in the world is now led by a simpleton who does not understand the significant dangers of failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As the actions of the G7 countries are currently on track to lead to increased average global temperatures of 4°C rather than the agreed upon maximum of 2°C, with likely catastrophic results, the failure of the American President to take the issue seriously is profoundly unsettling. But no one should be surprised.

Edmonton surprises Us

2019 Trip to the West, Climate change

Our drive through Edmonton was uneventful. That is the best way to drive through a major city.  There was one thing of importance that happened. This was the announcement that the City of Edmonton has declared a state of climate emergency as part of its urgent response to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By itself that is not that amazing.  What makes it interesting is that Edmonton is a city deep in the Oil belt. It is in the heart of Conservative climate denial. Recently elected Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has already announced  that he is getting Alberta out of the climate deal the previous Premier made with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. A number of Canadian Conservative Premiers, including Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario have committed to fighting the federal climate plan which includes a puny carbon tax even though many serious economists, including the recent Nobel Prize winner have stated that a carbon tax is the most effective means of tackling climate change.

Most politicians in Canada are doing little or nothing about climate change, even though scientists agree it is posing an existential threat to the country. Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish climate activist has been haranguing political leaders around the world to treat the climate crisis as an emergency because she sees so few of them treating it as a real emergency. And that is what we actually need. We should be acting like it is an emergency rather than battling each other about how to deal with the problem.

Many local governments in Canada have already declared a state of climate change emergency. I know that mere declarations serve little purpose unless they are accompanied by action, and I hope Edmonton will do exactly that, as its mayor has promised. But doing nothing or advocating that nothing be done, or failing to treat this issue as an emergency, as so many governments are doing, including the Provincial government in both Alberta and Manitoba, is a gross dereliction of duty. It is incredible that it requires a young teen age activist to make that clear.

Stick your nose in the Mess

Climate change

 

Canada and the other wealthy countries have recently been issued a report card by an independent agency about their progress on climate change. And if I ever brought home such a report card I know I would have been in big trouble at home.

According to the Climate Action Network an international association of more than 1,300 climate groups after assessing the performance of the G7 “the wealthiest countries in the world—including Canada—are lagging instead of leading in the fight against global warming.”

It is not a pretty picture. This is how the director of that network described it: The richest countries in the world are delivering the poorest performance, and some of the smallest and poorest are the leading the way.”

The report ranks Canada’s climate plan as having the same effect on global warming as the policies of the United States, where the U.S. President has rejected the Paris agreement. Ouch! Japan is also in this sorry category. Other countries in the G7 are doing slightly better in the 3°C category. Included here are France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

The report got even more specific.  Mia Rabson described it this way: “The report card says Canada’s current policies are consistent with global warming exceeding 4°C compared to pre-industrial levels, more than twice the stated goal of the Paris agreement of staying as close to 1.5°C as possible and absolutely no more than 2°C.”

Well what does a 4°C average global temperature rise by 2100 mean? It doesn’t sound like much. But it is! First, we must remember that more than a hundred countries have agreed that a temperature rise of 1.5°C would be dire, and a rise of 2°C catastrophic. Guardian  columnist George Monbiot called a rise of 2°C “climate breakdown.” He also said, “This is a catastrophe we are capable of foreseeing but incapable of imagining. It’s a catastrophe we are singularly ill-equipped to prevent.”

As such a previously unthinkable temperature rise becomes all too thinkable, scientists are spelling out for us what this will likely mean.

 

Drowned cities; stagnant seas; intolerable heat waves; entire nations uninhabitable… and more than 11 billion humans. A four-degree-warmer world is the stuff of nightmares and yet that’s where we’re heading in just decades.

 

To many of us the end of the century seems like a long ways off. To some it probably is inconceivable. Yet, my grandchildren will be in their 80s then. It is the world they will inherit and I wonder what they will think of us who left it to them.

In my legal career I was a commercial lawyer. One of the things I had to do many times, when my clients were taking risks that I believed they did not properly appreciate, was to make it abundantly clear and understandable. I had to drill the risks home in plain, clear, and understandable terms. The warnings could not be cursory or perfunctory. Often examples were the best way to do that. Sometimes I metaphorically had to stick their noses in the mess to make sure they saw it. I cannot do that for climate change. But Gaia Vince, an independent environmental journalist can. This is what she said:

“Four degrees may not sound like much – after all, it is less than a typical temperature change between night and day. It might even sound pleasant, like retiring from the UK to southern Spain. However, an average heating of the entire globe by 4°C would render the planet unrecognisable from anything humans have ever experienced. The last time the world was this hot was 15m years agoduring the miocene, when intense volcanic eruptions in western North America emitted vast quantities of CO2. Sea levels rose some 40 metres higher than today and lush forest grew in Antarctica and the Arctic. However, that global heating took place over many thousands of years. Even at its most rapid, the rise in CO2 emissions occurred at a rate 1,000 times slower than ours has since the start of the Industrial Revolution. That gave animals and plants time to adapt to new conditions and, crucially, ecosystems had not been degraded by humans.”

 

I think that makes the issue pretty clear. Now we know where we appear to be headed and there is little sign that we are slowing down.

Humans will survive. But I am not sure that is good news. It makes more sense to say it will be bad news. As Vince argues,

“The good news is that humans won’t become extinct – the species can survive with just a few hundred individuals; the bad news is, we risk great loss of life and perhaps the end of our civilisations. Many of the places where people live and grow food will no longer be suitable for either. Higher sea levels will make today’s low-lying islands and many coastal regions, where nearly half the global population live, uninhabitable, generating an estimated 2 billion refugees by 2100. Bangladesh alone will lose one-third of its land area, including its main breadbasket… Indeed, the consequences of a 4°C warmer world are so terrifying that most scientists would rather not contemplate them, let alone work out a survival strategy.” 

After  speculating how it is possible for us to produce enough food to feed the projected population of 11 billion people when climatic conditions will be so unfavourable to agriculture in so much of the world, Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany has also reached some grim conclusions: “There will be a rich minority of people who survive with modern lifestyles, no doubt, but it will be a turbulent, conflict-ridden world.”

As if this is not bad enough I just heard today that Donald Trump skipped that part of this year’s G7 meeting dealing with climate change. After all he knows it all doesn’t he? And his country has done more to create the problem than any other country in the world.

David Suzuki and the Indigenous Attitude to Nature

Affinity, Climate change, Indigenous Issues, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy, Nature, New Attitude to Nature

At the University of Winnipeg talk after showing the film Beyond Climate, Suzuki also discussed a new attitude to nature. He  began by talking about the American economy.

After World War II and the end of the Great Depression, America President Franklin Roosevelt realized that the war economy had saved capitalism from self-destruction. But a war economy carries with it enormous unpalatable costs far beyond mere economic costs. He realized that what it needs is consumption. Constant relentless consumption. That was his solution.

Of course what the United States has actually done is to maintain both a consumer economy and war economy. The U.S. spends as much on the military as the 9 countries that are next in line, spend combined.

Suzuki thought we needed a better way. Climate change was just one of the things such an attitude had ushered in. He said  he had learned a lot from indigenous people. In fact he said, “Indigenous people have taught me all I know.” This was important because much of the film dealt with the opposition of First Nations to the plans of Alberta and the Canadian government to build pipelines from the Oil Sands of Alberta to transport liquefied natural gas (LNG) or oil or bitumen to the coast of British Columbia. Alberta was upset that the federal government could not ram through the pipeline approval process. Of course that is just not feasible. Those days are done. The Supreme Court won’t put up with it.

In the late 1970s Suzuki realized that we needed a new attitude to nature. And he found it. He found it in the 1980s when he went to interview indigenous people at Haida Gwaii. He wanted to talk to them about the protests by indigenous people over logging on their land. He talked to forest company executives, environmentalists, politicians, and, most importantly Haida. That was how he met Guujaaw a young artist who was leading the Haida opposition to the logging.

Suzuki wondered why the Haida were so vehemently opposed to logging since many of their own people got jobs with  logging companies. And many of them badly needed jobs. Suzuki asked him, “What would happen if the trees were cut down?”  His reply was profound, but Suzuki did not realize at first how profound. Guujaaw said, “Then we’ll be like everyone else, I guess.”

A few days later Suzuki thought about that answer and it “opened a window on a radically different way of seeing the world.” As we keep getting reports from the World Wildlife Fund and others about the incredible impact humans are having on the world, I think a new attitude to nature is exactly what we badly need. Suzuki explained it this way,

“Guujaaw and the Haida do not see themselves as ending at their skin or fingertips. Of course they would still be around physically if the trees were all gone, but a part of what it is to be Haida would be lost.  The trees, fish, birds, air, water, and rocks are all part of who the Haida are. The land and everything on it embody their history, their culture, the very reasons why Haida are on this earth. Sever that connection and they become ‘like everybody else.”

Indigenous people around the world have similar attitudes. They  are based on a deep attachment to the land they occupy. They are connected to that environment. It is part of who they are. Suzuki like other people from the west had a different attitude to nature and that has made all the difference. To the Haida, and other indigenous people, and as Suzuki concluded,

 

“…there is no environment ‘out there,’ separate and apart from us; I came to realize that we are the environment. Leading science corroborates this ancient understanding that whatever we do to the environment or to anything else, we do directly to ourselves.The ‘environmental’ crisis is a ‘human’ crisis; we are at the centre of it as both the cause the victims.”

 Suzuki realized he had found the new perspective he needed. It allowed him to see the world through different eyes.  He realized, as the Haida had before him, that what we needed to survive and thrive was not more money in order to live rich and healthy lives. This new attitude to nature was reflected in all the Haida did and found its fruits in how they wanted to interact with the land. As Suzuki said, “Rather than being separate and apart from the rest of nature, we are deeply embedded in and utterly dependent on the generosity of the biosphere.” I use the word “affinity” to describe this new attitude to nature. I will comment on again in these blogs.

It is this attitude that Albertans don’t understand. It is not just a matter of paying the Indigenous people money. They want jobs, they want money, but not at any cost. They don’t want it at the cost of their identity. That is why some of the indigenous people, but not all of them, do not want pipelines on their land and will sacrifice the jobs if necessary. I know that seems bizarre to Albertans and most Canadians for that matter. Alberta and Canada have to learn to respect that. Only then will they be able to successfully deal with Canada’s first nations.  And perhaps Canada will learn something valuable in the process. Perhaps there is something of value in that new attitude to nature.

Max the Tax

Climate change

Conservatives in Canada are already gearing up to fight the next election and an important platform for them is reputedly a war against the carbon tax, as modest as it is.  I have heard their leading line will be, “Axe the tax.”  It has a poetic ring to it, but is it good policy?

The scientists of the world have warned us that we have to reduce our consumption of carbon by 50% in 12 years. That is a tall order. Economists generally agree that the best weapon against carbon is a carbon tax. It makes sense. Make the carbon so expensive people will voluntarily switch to alternatives that have already been developed. Instead of subsidizing carbon, as we have been doing for decades, we have to do the opposite. We have to make the use of carbon painful. That’s why I advocate for a carbon tax to the max. No one likes taxes but clearly we need this one. There is no reasonable alternative on the horizon. The Conservative Party has not suggested any. It wants to continue doing what it did while the federal conservatives were in power, as little as possible. The federal liberals who were in power before that, had the same policy. It is time for change; it is time for transformative change.

Canada has recognized that a transition to a non-carbon economy requires carbon pricing and that it has to curb carbon pollution and lets face it, that is exactly what carbon is at this time in our history. We can no longer afford to pollute with carbon.

Peter Miller in an article in the Winnipeg Free Press put it well: “Absence of a carbon price (or one set too low) is a moral and market failure. It is in effect a subsidy paid to emitters by victims and governments who pick up the costs of more damage from climate change. “Axe the tax” really means “keep the subsidy.” A better cry is, “Make the polluters, not the victims, pay.”

And I’m sad to report I am one of the polluters. And so are you. Most of us are. And we’ve got to pay. Some of us can’t afford to pay. The carbon tax should be used to mitigate the losses for those people. Most of them did not cause the problem. People like me (and you) caused the problem. We should pay. Damn I had to say that, but I think its true.

That’s why Miller said, “Cancelling a carbon tax altogether is destructive tax avoidance.” It’s time to max the tax, not axe the  tax.