There Are No Shortages
By Jeff Berg
08 August, 2012
Countercurrents.org
We can have a vision, a vision made flesh. A vision and a world where our leaders play to our fearlessness not pander to our fearfulness. A vision where art, culture and civic engagement are the cornerstones of a civic and civil society. A vision where the most common of human principles, empathy, sacrifice, generosity, and contribution, are the root, tree and branch of a common understanding and the basis to how we organize ourselves and our activities. A vision that holds that the weak are to be protected, not made to compete unto death so as to achieve some imagined greater purpose. A vision that holds that selfishness is a childish attribute that all need outgrow not the basis for whole systems of human endeavor. A vision where the fundamentals of equality include the equality of opportunity, for freedom without opportunity is a devil’s gift. A vision which is founded upon the idea that the resources of nature belong to all for all time and as such they are by law to be nurtured and renewed. A vision which holds that it is an evident truth that nature’s bounty is not held in our portfolios today for the purpose of exploiting to the point of extinction but instead held in trust for all time and for the sustenance of all future generations. A vision which holds the equally evident truth that the future belongs only to those who plan for one. Mankind has no guarantees.
To date our civilization has been like a young child, precocious, selfish, and dreaming of a limitless world where everything is possible. Ever since we were granted the power of Newtonian mechanics we have striven relentlessly with great energy and ingenuity to harness the forces of nature. And when we discovered natures most energetic bounty, the one time gift of hydrocarbons, and then the seemingly limitless potential locked inside the atom, our dream took off like a rocket riding an exponential curve.
Now we had the power to bend Nature to our will, to force her to serve us and our youthful dreams. This was perhaps an understandable part of our development as a civilization, as a species, in many ways laudable. The striving of creative youth to reorder the cosmos in its own image. But it is time now to adapt this project to our more mature understanding that there are limits to this world we inhabit.
Our parents tried to teach us the lessons they learned the hard way about limitations. So too have our wise women and men tried to teach our societies about the nature of limits and the limits of Nature. It can safely be said they have had no more luck than did our parents. As I say, this is perhaps understandable, in any case it is certainly true. But again, now is the time for us to mature, to act like adults, to plan our legacy. For we are but mortal men and women, and what we do is not now nor has it ever been solely or even principally for ourselves but for those that will come after us. Our family, our tribe, our country, our species, all species, are part of a continuum. We were granted extraordinary favours by those who came before us and it is incumbent upon us to do the same for those that will inherit whatever we might leave them.
The next logical question is of course, “Well, then, how do we do that?”
To my mind the first thing is for us to make abundantly clear to our government and business elites that there are no shortages. That’s right you heard me – there are no shortages!
For example we have to completely revamp our energy system.
We need to increase conservation of energy and throughputs by an order of magnitude by 2050. We’ll likely have to do better after that, but we can cross that bridge when we get to it.
We need to pretty much entirely eliminate our reliance on the internal combustion engine. Something that we will be especially important, and difficult, here in Ontario.
And we need to uncouple economic prosperity from the consumption of fossil fuels.
As I say there are no shortages. As long as you are looking at the problem from the point of view of the things that we need to do.
These four areas are where I would start if I had a magic wand that could wave society into the direction I desired.
Admittedly these are very large undertakings. They are however also by no means the end of the list of things that we need to do.
We need for example to address the destruction of our fresh water supply.
We need to give our 1st Nations people the tools and resources they require to live at least as well as they did 500 years ago. That seems the very least we could do. And yes it is too true that when it comes to this file we have long been dedicated to the very least we can do.
We need – as the Quebec students are pointing out – to create a society where talent and drive determine your access to higher education not money. If Mexico can afford this surely we can.
We need to dramatically alter our food system. Loss of topsoil, the inherent fragility of monoculture, fossil fuel dependence for both growing our food and distributing it. The nascent epidemics of obesity and diabetes. On all of these fronts both Mother Nature and our own natures are telling us that we cannot go on this way without great risk to our quality of life, social cohesion, and cost of living. The last of these being the least substantive morally and objectively but the most potent politically. An inversion that is not so much uncommon as the norm. Something we might want to talk about later.
This list as long and imposing as it is does not exhaust the list of things that we need to do to ensure that we leave a Canada that is at least as affluent and politically stable as the one we old timers have enjoyed. Because it merely scratches the surface of the things that we should be doing globally as international citizens considering we are one of the luckiest and wealthiest countries in the history of the planet.
Blessings are after all obligations. Something a devout Christian like our PM should surely understand.
As I say. There are no shortages.
Now we come to the interesting part.
I say now because up to now all I’ve really provided you with is a laundry list of problems and challenges so well known as to almost not bear worth repeating. That these things need doing is so widely acknowledged as to render what I’ve so far said as essentially banal. Or rather it would if our government and our business leaders were acting differently.
Because what our government and our financial elites are telling us is that we must do less. Much less. Not only that the areas that they are busily cutting quite disconcertingly match pretty much exactly the areas that I’ve so far outlined. To which I think we should all say, “Hmmmmm……” Do it with me, “Hmmmmmm…..”. I like doing that, find it helps make molehills out of mountains. ☺
So why the discrepancy? Well you see our government says there is a shortage. And what is that shortage? They say we have a shortage of money. And the Canadian government is by no means alone in this. Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, the U.S., the U.K., the list goes on and on of governments who say, “We must do less, we have no money.”
Now money is a funny thing for a government to be out of. I can understand a clear cut forest being out of trees. A depleted well being out of oil, or water or gas, or a cod stock crash that leaves you out of fish. Those I get. But how can we be out of something that we can create at will?
Well the short of it is we can’t. Countries like counterfeiters have the advantage of having a printing press in the basement. The long of it would take more time than we have here. But I will say this. Once upon a time in this country our national debt was owed to us. The Bank of Canada loaned the government of Canada the money it needed.
As a result the interest on our national debt went to us the holders of the debt. Japan still does it this way. The Mulroney government privatized this function here in Canada. So now not only do we not collect the interest on the debt but we are also reliant on the kindness of strangers. As Greece and Latvia, to name just two, are today finding out this is not necessarily a good or safe place to be.
Our government promises that if we but follow their prescription of austerity we will one day have more money. They do not say if we will have a better energy system. Or the improvement in conservation necessary so that our energy bills are still affordable. Or a food system that is resilient and nutritious. Or a 1st Nations people that are proud to call themselves Canadian. Or a transportation system worthy of the name. Much less do they say that the actions of commerce and industry will be brought into harmony with the laws of nature. Nope. All they are guaranteeing us is that we will work till we are 67, and someday there will be more money for somebody.
I leave you now with my most favourite of double edged swords, a quote from Marion King Hubbert the man who first mathematically mapped the rough outlines of the limits to oil supplies: “Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know.”
For all of us now our work is to ensure that this blade cuts the right way for we are taking on awesome risks. Risks too terrible to be allowed for the lack of something so small, mean and amenable to human control as money. For no matter the difficulties we need to overcome with politics and economics they are as nothing when compared to attempting to overcome the laws of physics, chemistry and biology through the use of a rear view mirror.
Jeff Berg is a a founding member of Post Carbon Toronto and a commentator on the twin issue of energy and emissions.
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