Alexandra And The Consensus Trance
By Bill Henderson
16 September, 2011
Countercurrents.org
You learn more from failure. My summer project was a three segment look at how the golden straitjacket accepted by our neoliberal governments keeps us from managing ourselves in due diligence to future generations. I got it published in one of Canada's foremost web forums, rabble.ca , and because my project was centered upon Alexandra Morton , an activist scientist trying to protect wild salmon from fish farm disease, it should have received a lot of attention.
It sank like a stone. One comment, a couple of e-mails and no mention at all in any blog anywhere. Sent it to many opinion shapers here in BC - nothing. I think now that I vastly overestimated how much people today care about future generations. Economic insecurity focuses peoples attention on their jobs and not on doing the right thing.
I used local (British Columbia where I live) examples: salmon, forests and climate change in trying to explain how stabilizing the growth of our diverse service sector dominated economies has taken away our ability to manage ourselves now as we face overshoot with ever increasing demand. Your local example might be topsoil or aquifers or endangered biodiversity. Given our Bottleneck predicament, protecting 'resources' for future generations should be a foremost concern.
I used local BC examples: people, history, the present Cohen Commission into the fate of Fraser River salmon , but the same straitjacket of business first, deregulation, and greenwashing could just as easily apply to local ecosystem degradation in most every home place in the globalized economy.
The first segment, Alexandra and the Golden Straitjacket , describes Ms. Morton's decade old campaign against salmon farming - open, net cage feedlotting in the wild salmon's path back from the North Pacific to rivers like the Fraser. But even as she has marshalled the best available science (including molecular genetics , for example), forced a transfer of regulatory jurisdiction (from provincial to federal) through the courts, and led BC's biggest ever environmental demonstration, the netcages continued to proliferate - is it possible to get neoliberal governments to properly protect BC's already depleted wild salmon with many seriously endangered individual runs?
I was a foot soldier in the failed 90's forestry revolution: ecosystem (or ecosystem-based) management: No, it is very difficult to get neoliberal governments to protect already depleted forests or salmon runs. The second segment, Second Growth , is about forestry in BC; about the history of forestry in BC and how continuing long term forest industry contracts for volumes of wood rob future generations. In fact, those businesses that would harm both salmon and forests in their search for profit are protected species for those who see economic growth as the business of government.
In Supernatural British Columbia we risk the health and future benefit of salmon and forests but think ourselves Green and Sustainable. What about Climate Change ? I decided to try and shock my fellow citizens out of the consensus trance:
"In B.C. we are not just carbon addict users -- we are into dealing big time. As Vancouver climate activist Barry Saxifrage has pointed out : "The 25 million tonnes of coal dug out of British Columbia each year causes more climate pollution than the national economies of 126 countries." Coal and natural gas exports have emissions about double what BC generates internally from combusting fossil fuels.
" B.C.'s fossil fuel expansion is a crime against humanity. "
I concluded that in order to win back our freedom, our ability to properly govern ourselves so that we can do the right thing, we should take advantage of the opportunity Alexandra Morton has worked so hard for and insist upon complete removal of the disease spreading salmon farms. With this action we could confront the neolib golden straitjacket and turn a corner and then real action to lower our carbon emissions could become possible - like closing BC's coal mines at least.
But when I wrote, silly me, I thought that Canadians cared about future generations. I thought that informing my fellow British Columbians about the threat to salmon, the robbery of nature's services and opportunity for future generations by logging regrowing second growth, and our production of greenhouse gases from dirty fuels would help put these crimes against our descendents front and center and undeniable.
But I think what happened instead is that readers first and foremost saw the obvious threat to jobs and the economy - which is, of course, a threat to their own economic security - and didn't want to go there. You can't close the fishfarms, restrict logging of second growth and close coal mines - our economy would be fucked!!! I might lose my job.
After globalization practise and policies sent factories and jobs overseas and with the present very iffy economy, my audience is feeling very insecure and saw only job loss and not a description of how the neolib straitjacket keeps us from acting in due diligence to future generations. And stopped reading. Probably considered my topic impractical or even too radical. The 'left-wing' rabble.ca audience.
With jobs the number one priority in developed countries - with jobs promising to be the most important issue in President Obama's re-election campaign, for only the American example - protecting resources and the environment for future generations is not allowed in the consensus trance.
Or at least that is the lesson I've learned from my summer project. If you have read this far I'm guessing you too are abnormally concerned about our kids future. Welcome to the real world. Economically insecure people - everybody in today's world - discount the effects of their actions on their kids future. The Bottleneck is only beginning and things will only get worse as peak everything bites and insecure people try anything with ever diminishing ethical constraint - like Easter Islanders or Sahel refugees cutting down the few remaining trees. What are we going to do about it?
Bill Henderson is a frequent cotributor to Countercurrents.org He can be reached at Bill (at) pacificfringe.net
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