Counterpunching
The CounterPuncher
By
Jeff Berg
30 November,
2007
Countercurrents.org
Hmmm.
It would seem I am about to have a bit of a tiff with Alex Cockburn,
the famed editor of CounterPunch, America’s first great electronic
newsletter, and a man I’ve always admired. For those of you expecting
fireworks and bloodlust you are now officially in the wrong place :-)
Dear Mr.
Cockburn,
A) Thank
you for correcting my misspelling of Holbrooke as Holbrook. Lesson of
the day: The ‘Change All’ function of Spell Check should
never be used.
B) The former
Canadian Ambassador to the U.S. spells his name Gotlieb. Not my mistaken
spelling Gotleib or your mistaken spelling Gottleib.
C) I did
not spell Ahmadinejad's name wrong unless we both have as we've spelt
it the same way.
D) My apologies
for the absurdly disproportionate pique I evinced in communicating my
disagreement with how my piece was edited. Mea culpa or as the kids
like to say today "My bad".
The following
is in no way meant to excuse my horse's butt behaviour - but while we
are on the subjects of butts. I have long believed the cognitive scientists
and linguists who say that swearing is an effective way to catch people's
attention and stick things in their mind. As a result I like to say
that I swear scientifically as I drink medicinally. There was however
wayyyyy too much medicine on the night I wrote my last missive to you
I'm afraid. (It's the only thing I have in common with Hitchens though
I promise!:-)
And while
I have you on the line so to speak I would like to take the opportunity
to say publicly what has long been on my mind privately and see if I
can't silken a bit the sow's ear I must no doubt now seem to you.
Counterpunch has for a long time been a very important voice of reason
in a world gone mad. This is however very much going to change if you
personally do not begin to appreciate what has become the zeitgeist
of our age.
I say this
because the fact of the matter is that your grasp of resource geology
and atmospheric chemistry is as weak as your tongue is tart and your
sense of justice is strong. If this does not change it will doom Counterpunch
to being no more than a side show I'm afraid. (A pity and a waste) Albeit
the side show that still best describes the U.S.'s fall as dollar hegemony
jumps the shark, oil fungibility goes with it and natural gas fungibility
never materializes. Global warming or no global warming many of us here
in N.A. have got some cold natural gas and oil free winters ahead of
us.
To many it
is hard to believe that these days are finally upon us. I.e. The days
when Pax Americana is finally crushed by the ridiculous economic and
ecological contradictions that its corporately fostered mythologies
forced on to the mind of its citizenry and its public policy, budgetary
and infrastructure building processes.
"When
reality and theory collide it is always theory that gives way."
And while
the map is of course not the territory, UNEP and the WMO have a far
sounder understanding and far superior predictive abilities than do
you in the area that matters most to we air breathers: The atmosphere.
As to the
key that unlocks the most doors that we would like to walk through as
today becomes tomorrow it is not even in your mind mon frere much less
in your hand. In a word that key is energy.
It is the
key to development throughout the world. It is what cooks and grows
our food and pumps our water and brings food into our cities and takes
the waste out of them. It is the key that unlocks the door that finally
allows us to understand that conservation makes us wealthier not poorer.
That solves the problem that we have been all too long saddled with
due to the "discipline" that is economic theory. By this I
mean to specifically refer to the problems caused by adhering to the
"principles" espoused by Net Present Value and Future Discounting.
Because while it may be true to business that a dollar made today is
worth more than a dollar made tomorrow. It is not true that a molecule
utilized today is worth more than that same molecule will be worth tomorrow.
And I here
suggest that the solution to very many of our problems, at least until
we all become the much better people that the social justice movement
has long and rightly suggested we should be, is Molecular Patrimony.
Molecular Patrimony (Jeff Berg TM :-) differs from Resource Nationalism
in the following ways. To the idea of resource nationalism it adds the
idea that the commons that are the Petro, Aqua and Carbon banks are
national treasures that continuously grow in value. I.e. The longer
you delay using up these existentially important molecules the more
valuable and utile they become. They become more valuable both from
the point of view of the law of scarcity as well as from the point of
view that the longer fossil fuels are kept in their original form the
longer the carbon stored in them stays out of the atmosphere. Not to
mention out of the increasingly acidified oceans.
N.B. If we
acidify our oceans it will take tens of thousands of years to undo this
disastrously lethal mistake.
It also adds
the idea that the energy dense, exceedingly malleable, and non-renewable
liquid fuels and carbon assets at our disposal must a.s.a.p. be primarily
dedicated to building our civilizations much needed bridge to sustainability.
Nothing else will get as many of we species who share this Spaceship
of an Ark safely across the carbon chasm that is yawing dead ahead.
This time
the times they really are a changing mon vieux and the real action and
money is very much elsewhere to where it used to be in the rest of the
world and this will very, very, soon also be true of your adopted country.
And unless you change your view so too shall I be elsewhere from Counterpunch
from now on. I know you will not consider that a lack of any kind and
I am happy for that as we all have too much sorrow in our lives as it
is n'est-ce pas? Though before I take my leave I do again wish to thank
you for the vigour that you have brought to the arena of social justice
over the years.
Bonne chance
a vous et votre et a nous tous. On en aura besoin.
P.S. On the
whole I blame Einstein for our problems today. In 1905 during the year
of his annus miraculus he created a formula that pointed to the underlying
equivalence that exists between energy and matter: E = MC2. If instead
he had used his prodigious intelligence and equally formidable powers
of persuasion to convince us instead that Energy Matters even dullards
like you and I would have caught on much sooner :-)
Now I very
much doubt mon chere Alex that you have made it even this far but just
in case.
I direct
to you my very last word (or two :-), I promise.
They are
the words from a (slightly reworked) speech that I gave this year to
the Ontario NDP Socialist Caucus.
Be well I
wish you nothing but the best, you deserve no less.
Yours respectfully.
The, hopefully, useful idiot.
Et ton confrere,
Jeff Berg
Aka Jean-Francois Toupin*
www.postcarbontoronto.org
www.pledgeTOgreen.ca
*I adopted
this second name to pay hommage to my belief that first languages and
the matrilineal line are as important as the patrilineal line and the
language I now speak and write as a result of being assimilated by the
Anglosphere. I should also mention that I am using the French language
spelling of hommage because Frenglish is the birthright of every Quebecois,
and because I know how you hate mispelling. Oops, there I go again:-)
A Three Way
For The Real Third Way
By Jeff Berg
You know
how politicians are always talking about a third way? Bill Clinton had
“Triangulation”, Tony Blair “The Third Way”,
even the Bush’s had “Compassionate Conservatism” as
their third way. That and the fact that sex sells led me to call this
piece written especially for you who are here today:
"A 3
WAY FOR THE REAL THIRD WAY" Science – Sustainability &
Distributed Generation in the Information Age
Two things
to start. The first being, that by every measure we humans can agree
on, moving as quickly as possible to get off of fossil fuels will leave
ourselves and future generations the richest of all possible lives.
The 2nd is
that I am not an environmentalist or even a socialist per se.
Now don’t
get me wrong I completely accept that the weight of scientific evidence
proves that anthropogenic factors are a major contributor to climate
change & I too think Tommy Douglas was the greatest Canadian.
I also accept
the consensus among marine biologists that states that if we don’t
change our fishing practices we are going to collapse fish stocks so
thoroughly that all commercial fisheries will be wiped out by 2048!
And I do see how this problem is being generated by the economic distortions
known as net present value, future discounting & the maximization
of shareholder profit and so is a social issue.
So yes in
the sense that I believe the scientists’ information I’m
an environmentalist & a socialist. Or at least I am when these movements
are in alignment with the best available information. This point notwithstanding
the subjects that I write about mostly these days aren’t so much
about what’s coming out of the tailpipe in terms of emissions
as they are about what’s going into the industrial engine in terms
of fossil fuels.
And the message
that I am involved in massaging for the purpose of increasing its general
consumption is about the increasingly strong consensus that is taking
place in the field of resource geology and petroleum and mining engineering
about the future of coal, oil, gas and even uranium.
In two words,
ENERGY is my bailiwick and EMISSIONS are our bane.
And speaking
about the future of energy how many of you here feel you have a strong
understanding of the term peak oil or peak gas? Please raise your hands
(Less than half did)
One last
question how many of you believe that oil and gas are finite? Please
raise your hands if you think oil is finite. (All but one did)
Exactly!
Which is
why I prefer the term fossil fuel finitude over peak oil. Everyone gets
that this stuff is finite. And once you dispose of that fact the whole
rest of the sound and fury surrounding the peak oil & gas &
coal & uranium debate is about nothing more than timing and urgency.
Not that
timing and urgency are unimportant by any means. They are after all
near and dear to my heart very precisely because I know how little understood
are the necessary lead times for the ramp up to sustainable systems
and how pressing is the urgency that we do everything possible in this
direction now!
Fossil fuel
finitude has been shall we say misunderestimated. Unsurprisingly given
his pappy it is also one of the few things that GW Bush has not been
guilty of doing.
My favourite
line concerning the reams of “Is peak oil just a theory?”
literature was actually told to me by a climate scientist - U of T's
very own Dr. Danny Harvey and a lead author of the IPCC's AR4 - who
said: "Peak Oil is just a theory in the same sense that Round Earth
is just a theory."
On the other
extreme from those like me who are studying fossil fuel finitude and
peak energy are the environmentalists who think the whole peak oil debate
is pointless.
In fact one
of the best environmental minds in Ontario, now a Toronto city councillor,
Gord Perks, said just that this summer to myself and Greg Greene the
director of two documentaries on peak oil and gas, The End of Suburbia
and Escape from Suburbia.
What Mr.
Perks said verbatim was, “Peak oil’s a crock!” And
yes he did say it with a smile and with an intention to rile. Still
why he said it is for the very same reasons a lot of environmentalists
say it. Which basically comes down to two reasons. Reason #1.
1) To them
if we burn what we have we’re cooked anyway, so what does peak
oil matter?
&
2) They think
to themselves, even if only privately, “We’re running out
of COG? Good can’t happen soon enough!”
COG is by
the way how I refer to the trinity of fossil fuels Coal, Oil and Gas
as they are the cog to our industrial wheel. Whether it be a holy or
unholy trinity I leave to you.
And even
after five years of banging my head against the wall of indifference
on an issue that I have chosen to specialize in still I say. "I
hear you and you are not wrong."
But! Yes
the proverbial but.
The thing
is Energy Matters! For one thing people want it. I can’t tell
you how many people I’ve heard say, “Ya, ya, the greenies.
All they care about is the planet; they don’t care about the people!”
This is of course not a socialists’ problem but people, especially
them pesky engineering types, nonetheless wonder where is the guts and
nuts and bolts of the NDP's energy plans?
People want
the services that fossil fuel energy today provides and I got to say
on this one I side with the people. Because if you don’t care
deeply about energy & fully attend to all it does negative and positive
then you are not truly caring about the people in an effective and responsible
way. Point finale, full stop!
It truly
is that profoundly and fundamentally simple in this global warming and
fossil fuel finitude parmetered world of ours.
And yes if
we were to stop using all COG tomorrow the planet would be happier,
and the plants and the animals would be happier, and more abundant,
and prolific, which has a certain amount of attraction to it sans doute.
But at the same time if we stopped using COG tomorrow a whole lot of
people would die prematurely as well.
How many?
Well I’m no expert in this area but I can tell you since the start
of the oil part of COG in 1856 we have gone from 1.2 billion to 6.7
billion.
Beyond that
straightforward fact I am as I say no expert. And in any case we don’t
have time to today to go into this aspect of the energy, sustainability
and carrying capacity debate. Suffice to say if you don’t make
energy a centerpiece of whatever sustainability and social justice programs
you’d like to see implemented then you are economically and therefore
politically and culturally dead from the get go.
Now there
is no doubt that this fact has begun to penetrate deeply into the environmental
community. The NDP’s energy platform this past provincial election
here in Ontario (thank you peter Tabuns), the work of Pembina, WWF,
Sierra, Greenpeace, Environmental Defence, ICF International and Science
for Peace among others, including our government staff researchers and
scientists who were part of the national round table on economy and
the environment, are very clear proof of this.
And speaking
of proof I could have talked to you today about geoscience, linearization
curves, creaming curves, pool size distribution, tectonic plate theory
and what the fractal law of self similarity tells us about the possible
range of extraction rates that we can expect as we make our way to “Ultimate
Resource Recoverability.”
I could have
talked about the various forecasts that are being made for the end in
the growth of supply of hydrocarbons and even uranium and sought to
prove to you that the consensus among resource geologists is now for
all intents and purposes as strong and meaningful to the future of humanity
as the consensus that exists among climatologists.
I could have
prattled on about why ASPO’s & EWG'S and IFE's analysis is
more reliable than the EIA and the IEA and even the EIEIO. I could have
explained why production is a better indicator of the future of reserves
than reserves are of future production .
I could have
talked to you about the findings of Dr. Stuart Staniford and the data
gnomes at the Oil Drum and throughout the U.S. and what Mathew Simmons
study of over 200 technical papers from the Society of Petroleum Engineers
and his book ‘Twilight in the Desert’ says about global
oil production.
But these
are not the facts that should matter to you. These are merely the means
necessary to vanquish the deniers. You all know that we have to get
off oil and gas and coal and uranium and you all know that 95% of all
transportation is today wholly dependent on oil. That’s why you
have added this section to your conference. You are ready to move on
the next stage of the energy discussion and the why doesn’t matter
so much anymore.
The facts
you need to know are that the U.S. General Accounting Office’s
most recent finding is that if the U.S. pushes hard in the direction
of biofuels it might get up to 4% of current liquid fuel consumption
by 2015. In numerical terms this translates to less than 1 MMb/d. In
other words no matter what you think of biofuels they are no silver
bullet for Business As Usual.
To my mind
in any case Fidel Castro got it right in an essay published on the internet
a few months ago when he called the biofuel revolution the ‘Internationalization
of Genocide’. This summer for example saw corn riots among Mexican
peasants because they now have to economically compete with the biofuel
market for their corn flower tortillas.
Another fact
you need to know as we battle to get off the sauce and save our transportation
system is that the hydrogen transportation economy is an impossibility
from the basic standpoint of the fundamental laws of physics.
Not to mention
the fact that virtually all hydrogen today in North America is made
by burning natural gas. The techno “solution” being proposed
for this problem? Nuclear fired electricity.
How ruinous
would a hydrogen economy diversion be? Let me count out for you just
one of the ways.
If you start
with a 100 barrels of natural gas energy and convert it into electricity
for the electrolysis needed to create hydrogen; and then you store that
hydrogen in a fuel cell; and then you step on what is still very much
your gas pedal powered car; you will have lost more than 50% of the
energy you started with to unavoidable physical laws. Much better to
heat or cook with this non-renewable fuel. Or at the very least use
it for a source point heat purpose.
To instead
now start entirely new industries that will act as competitors for corn
and natural gas and electricity at a time when natural gas is ready
to go off a cliff here in N.A. in terms of production & when there
are people that are going hungry would be the height of car addicted
folly. It is true I know that we have paid every other possible obeisance
to our metal gods but are we now really going to feed the car and our
war machines our heat and food? Really? Sigh!
By the way
many an environmentalist & others got caught out by these developments
thinking them great green ideas and lending them their greenwashing
support. And the reason that this happened is because they did not pay
attention to the energy analysis. Energy has been and will as long as
we remain corporeal always remain the nub of the matter.
The other
nub of the matter is that the problem of energy as it relates to the
environment, transportation, sustainable systems and social justice
is for the most part not a technical problem but a social one. Which
is why it can be so useful to the New Democratic Party.
Oh sure there’s
an essentially infinite number of things that will need to be done from
an engineering p.o.v as we make our way off the sauce that even GW jr.
knows we are addicted to (addiction being something that he actually
knows something about) but that’s really just a chat about job
opportunities.
The real
problem is not this, the real problem is the social problem we face.
That problem being that too many people believe & are afraid that
the real third way - sustainability & social justice – demands
of them that they lose their creature comforts.
The solution
to this is very simple. All we need do is to reassure them, over and
over and over again, that we love comfort just as much as they do. Which
is after all nothing less than the god’s honest truth. Ashes &
sackcloth is not what we are practicing or preaching.
After this
is done what we then need do is to utilize the minds in the fields of
energy, geology, economics and environmentalism who can illuminate for
the public that it is in fact their governments and their industries
that are involved via a conspiracy of dunces to fail away those very
comforts that we are trying to save for them.
Socialists
have never in fact had a problem with comfort. Their problem, and a
legitimate one it is, is that the way our systems are going about creating
that comfort is ensuring that many/most other people end up really depressingly
poor and uncomfortable. The good news is that today this is also viewed
as a problem by just about everybody. And yes some do less about it
than others it’s true, but this fact notwithstanding everybody
but everybody today at least pays this problem lip service and that
wasn’t always true.
That it is
so completely true today is a political advance & a significant
evolution in human thinking methinks or at least mehopes.
The bad news
is if we do not change business as usual a whole lot more of us are
going to end up in the depressingly uncomfortable category.
People very
much need to understand that this is one of the very real implications
of the fact that we have essentially come to the end of the growth in
fossil fuel availability. People in Canada and the U.S. also need to
know that this is especially true here in N.A.! The tarsands notwithstanding!
A great many
of our citizens are being put in grave jeopardy of becoming part of
the depressingly poor ‘others-class’ and since its true
anyway we may as well sell this fact as a political and environmental
& conservational tool. Sure a lot will not pay attention until they
actually get whacked but we must do this work now if we expect to be
listened to then.
When our
middle class does finally get hit it will help a great deal with the
enlistment of new supporters, though this will not come as much comfort
to as many as it should.
As for the
political competition and how to maneuver the other parties to try and
out compete us on these issues, truer words ne'er were spoke than these:
“A moral threat may serve to change your rulers rhetoric, but
an economic one will change their behaviour.” Senor Juan G. Carbonel.
This economic
threat will more importantly also serve to clinch the argument for conservation,
relocalized economies, a reinvigoration of our appreciation for our
neighbours, walkable communities and a slower pace of life, not to mention
the successful selling of the virtue of a simpler lifestyle.
It will even
extend to include the fact that the potential of ‘Distributed
and micro generation of energy in the information age’, the age
of the great neurally wired collective mind that the internet has made
possible, very certainly represents the greatest opportunity for real
power to the people in every sense of that phrase that the world has
ever seen.
And I say
again to you that what stands in our way is not primarily a technical
challenge. Once we get started down the implementation road in a major
way it will be readily apparent to everyone just about immediately how
much work/ employment opportunity is ahead of us. What stands in our
way is what has always stood in our way. The problem of capital and
its infinitely mutable talent for concentration and inexpert and uncreative
destruction.
Before all
else what lies before us is the challenge of putting into place the
mechanisms that prioritize best in class data and peer reviewed information
far above dollar concerns and even higher above $ interests. The fact
of one dollar one vote must go the way of all slave and chattel concepts
and become as odious.
To my mind
events have redefined left and right.
With freedom
of information as the new left and monetization as the new right.
Or as my
more poetic friend senor Carbonel puts it: “Today information
is the new left, money on the other hand is very much still the old
right. The scientists is who they are battling over.”
And as it
is very much a zero sum battle between these two combatants for diminishing
resources and the world's greatest minds there is no real room for compromise.
And since we are going to have to enlist all but everybody if we are
truly serious about winning this fight this means that we are going
to need to be far more flexible and inclusive than we have ever been
before.
Now to some
of you no doubt this kind of rah-rah is beside the point and you’d
like more steak to go with the sizzle. If that be the case then I very
cordially invite you to Post Carbon Toronto’s next three events.
And sorta wonder why you weren’t at our last five:-) Because this
spring on May 24 as part of Doors Open Toronto and the Festival of Architecture
and Design we had engineer Greg Allen and climate scientist Dr. Danny
Harvey detail the challenges of Energy and Emissions and the many solutions
that are already available to architects and engineers.
This summer
we had Dr. Gordon Laxer from the Parkland Institute telling us about
the book he is writing about energy security, sustainability, global
warming , NAFTA's energy provisions and the Security and Prosperity
Partnership plan the corporate class has in store for us.
We then had
Dr. Richard Gilbert present us with the data sets and information from
his new book Transport Revolutions which you all should buy if you are
genuinely serious about this subject as his book is entirely focused
on post carbon transportation solutions.
We then had
geoscientist David Hughes in Toronto city hall council chamber, fresh
from 35 years of research for NRCAN, the Canadian Geological Survey
and the Canadian Gas Potential Committee detailing for us the inconvenient
truths about fossil fuels for N.A. and the globe.
For the last
150 years we in N.A. have been uniquely advantaged in terms of fundamental
resources this worm has now very much turned.
We followed
this presentation up the very next day with a meeting featuring once
again Mr. Hughes this time along with the irrepressible Ralph Torrie
from ICF International and Cherise Burda from Pembina. Each of them
handing out free of charge more meaty data than most can handle in one
sitting.
We then we
had Dr. Gilbert again, this time reporting on the events of the global
conference on energy held by the geoscientists at ASPO in Cork, Ireland.
This conference was attended by 400 scientists, researchers, writers
and interested citizens and the presentations that were seen there are
available on DVD. This DVD too is very much worth buying if only because
it was at this conference that the arguments for nuclear power were
demolished from the technical standpoint of the paucity of uranium rich
veins to bleed into our proposed reactors. (By Michael Ditmar of CERN
and ETH Zurich)
Everyone
of these events was held within walking distance of the subway, most
of them in fact happened inside Toronto’s city hall, and Post
Carbon Toronto both invited and kept abreast of each event our Mayor
and city Councillors.
Next up this
month on October 24 we have Paul Gipe who was one of the driving forces
behind the standard offer contract that was so instrumental in moving
Ontario from a few to 700 windmills over the last four years. We then
in the middle of November have Daniel Lerch the author of Post Carbon
Cities and at the end of the month we finish off our year long program
of monthly public lectures & outreach by showing a DVD on biofuels
featuring Dr. David Fridley.
A DVD that
scientifically debunks corn ethanol as a sustainable biofuel and very
clearly illuminates the limitations of biomass fuel en todo. Dr. Fridley
by the way is employed as a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley national
laboratory. Since its inception this lab has won 11 Nobel prizes. He
is also part of the China Energy Group where his work involves extensive
collaboration with the Chinese on end-use energy efficiency. He is a
Mandarin speaker.
So yes we
at PCT can put some meat on the bones of this argument if and when you
like. And yes I could have made this talk more data driven but I think
at a forum such as this it is far more important to make the point that
what is really needed is to point out to social justice advocates and
environmentalists that peak energy clinches the argument for conservation
of all kinds. Not just of the environment but also a very, very, deep
conservation of fossil fuels as well.
The simplest
solution to the problem of GHG’s and global warming is after all
to keep hydrocarbons sequestered right where they currently are. Admittedly
effecting such an outcome is a mite more complicated but starting by
dedicating their use to the primary purpose of the building of sustainable
systems is an idea whose time has come.
For once
you think even a little bit about the shape and scope of the energy/emissions
problem we face it is not all that difficult to come to the realization
that the deep conservation of fossil fuels, and their almost complete
dedication to nothing but the creation of sustainable systems, ties
very neatly and directly into what we need to do to save the planet
from our mismanagement. If only because conservation is from the most
selfish of perspectives what is best for ourselves & the creature
comforts with which we are so sensibly enamored.
This is so
because peak energy in fact totally and utterly slam dunks the argument
for conservation. Again, if only because it is such a potent economic
threat to the established order.
And don’t
think for one second that the military industrial complex and the Pentagon
and the CIA and the NSA haven’t picked up on this fact and are
not planning to use it to advantage their world view. Believe you me
that just ain’t the case. For example just this past September
at the 6th ASPO conference, James R. Schlesinger said: “Conceptually
the battle is over. The Peakists have won – everyone is a Peakist
now.” Schlesinger for those of you who may not know is a former
U.S. Secretary of Defence, former head of the CIA, and was the very
first Secretary of Energy in the U.S.A. In other words this is one of
the most connected and influential militarists in the whole damned white
world.
And while
its true that environmentalists & social workers can ignore fossil
fuel depletion and, unlike engineers and militarists, go back to their
work with a clean conscience. They cannot do so and win! And really
people it is now officially past time for the forces of life to win.
Which means
that it is also past time that the environmental and social movements
reach out and fully embrace their natural allies in the peak energy
movement.
Today all
but everybody, thanks to the environmental pioneers, understands just
how right these folk always were about the living systems crash we are
enacting.
And “thanks”
to the disastrous failure of Pax Americana as practiced by Cheney, Rumsfeld,
Blair & Brown all but all of the techs and geeks and engineers get
the peril that genuine socialists have long been detailing.
We all get
the peril. It is time you all got the potential that lies begging.
Because for
all the rightness of the environmental arguments and for all the virtue
of the socialist positions the fact is that emissions and military spending
are still rising and they are doing so at an increasing rate.
And while
fossil fuels and uranium may be limited, and will fix both of these
problems eventually, even if we do nothing, this will not be sufficient
to the task of saving us and our sister and brother species from ourselves.
It really
is time to end the car culture. Given what our climate scientists and
resource geologists know today Nascar and Indy car and Formula 1 and
motocross and funny cars and drag racing and demolition derbies and
monster trucks must go the way of the dodo before we do. It is time
to end the obscenity of $1.2 trillion yearly spent on creating things
that go boom. Over half of that being spent by the U.S.
Canada FYI
is actually 12th in the world in military spending and 7th in the OECD
in absolute terms. And that’s before our PM Harper and the bipartisan
consensus among the Conservatives and the Liberals finishes muscularizing
our military.
For Christ
and our sake - if we as a people won’t abide by the moral threat
implicit in renouncing our Christian and secular moral values –
will we not then at least listen to the arguments of the moneylenders
and the security professionals who have proved that militarism drains
the treasury and not the swamp?
Dead ahead
is one of the greatest revolutions human society has ever seen and by
hook or by crook it will take place even if we make no choices. The
geology of this still blue planet alone makes this inevitable. If best
information dominates the policy process as we move forward to meet
the enormous challenges facing us then we can use this unavoidably radical
transformation to gain more social justice and a higher quality of life.
If instead
we fail again and let consumption manage us and not us it, I’m
guaranteeing here and now that energy fascism is the jackboot that we
will all be ground under.
Most of the
rest of the world gets this already. They do not hate us for our freedoms
they hate us for the insane recklessness and abuse of freedom that our
everyday fossil fuel lifestyle screams at them.
And who can
blame them?
Thank you
for listening.
Jeff Berg
This is an
extended version of a speech given to the Ontario NDP Socialist Caucus
Conference held at the Ontario Institute for Science and Education held
on October 13, 2007. It was first published by the webzine Countercurrents,
October 15, 2007. It appears here in slightly modified form from that
version and with less spelling errors:-)
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