Politics, Re-Spun

Olympic Threat Mathematics

Almost a year ago I wrote about how VANOC was exploring risks to Olympic corporate sponsors. People don’t like them because they have co-opted the Olympics and are pimping the athletes and glee-seekers for their own exposure, which is now most evident in Olympic logos all over the TV, skyscraper advertising condoms downtown and inane transit ads that merely say that XYZ corporation is proud to sponsor the Olympics.

But if the sociologists want to examine the mathematics of Olympic distress, here’s my equation from last year. In the spirit of Create Commons, feel free to suggest improvements!

((The Olympics corporate welfare program) + (obscene reductions in government spending for human beings) + (radical and radicalized groups who object to the billions wasted on this spectacle, and what in our culture it has steamrollered) + (sponsors and government groups that flaunt their glee in the faces of those suffering) + (an opportunity to capture attention on a global scale)) x (an unpredictable economic depression [ooops, Great Recession]) = a perfect storm of wariness.

Or if you’d like it less cluttered:

(a + b + c + d + e) * f = g

where,

a = the Olympics corporate welfare program

b = obscene reductions in government spending for human beings

c = radical and radicalized groups who object to the billions wasted on this spectacle, and what in our culture it has steamrollered

d = sponsors and government groups that flaunt their glee in the faces of those suffering

e = an opportunity to capture attention on a global scale

f = an unpredictable economic depression [ooops, Great Recession]

and g = a perfect storm of wariness.

Now, you do the math.

PS…I spent an hour in Grandview Park today. It now seems the black helicopters just live over that park now. But as one friend mentioned, there are enough helicopters that various of them could be living over other spots as well.

Seeing Social Movement Theory in Christmas Movies

I’m hyper-attuned to building a social movement. In fact, I’m seeing it all over the place, from tight clusters of birds whipping around in their collective unconscious to Christmas movies.

Watching Polar Express tonight reminded me of my favourite part of the film near the end. Everyone’s waiting for Santa to come out and play. All the elves are standing around mumbling. Then there’s this converging anarchy of voices leading to an “ooooooOOOOOOhhhhhHHHHH yyyyyyYYYYYooooooOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU…” that coalesces into “Oh, you better watch out,” etc. of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” Many disparate voices joining together.

So I’m thinking about the abject failure of the Copenhagen summit for climate change a few weeks ago. Not surprising, really, when I think about it because the other day I was cutting some french toast in half [well 2/3 and 1/3] to see if my daughter would pick the bigger half. Game theory: the person who cuts is not the one who picks which half. I figured that was related to the realpolitik BS that killed Copenhagen.

So then I started reading up on the The One Degree War and how Evo Morales is convening a climate summit for social movements on Earth Day next year. The first begins a dialogue on solving a global crisis in an open-source, non-proprietary way; it feels quite cooperative. The second recognizes that a way past the 17th century political culture that killed Copenhagen is to convene a movement of movements.

I was thinking of that when I started Canada22.org on Earth Day in 2006, but I didn’t have the mobilization juice to scale it up to a provincial or federal level. But it’s nice to see now that organizations like TckTckTck.org have been able to hack together 15 million people to mobilize in advance of Copenhagen and we now have 11 months to mobilize before COP16 in Mexico next winter.

If we are ever going to get from zero-sum politics to positive-sum gains, we have to change the rules and deligitimize the old politics. And the people have to take control. And we have to see through the corporate greenwashing of Hopenhagen and realize their vibe contributed to the pablum document in Copenhagen and destroyed real movements for climate justice.

Social movements are a dire threat to political parties that still operate in the 17th century and maybe even the 20th century paradigm. Paradigm mechanics like TckTckTck.org and Evo Morales and George Monbiot are most able to pivot us into a new era. We have to get on board or our leaders will sell us down the tar sands river, starting with the Canadian prime minister.

Now I just have to figure out if Bert and Ernie [the cop and cab driver..which is which? and does it matter?] in It’s A Wonderful Life are really the inspiration for the Sesame Street characters and if there’s a nascent social movement brewing there. Then I’ll really have something.

Economic Growth is a Cancer: Meet Steady State Economics

For decades I’ve been hearing about and studying how humans are living beyond the planet’s capability of sustaining us…and that we’ve been doing so quite unequally.

And what have we done about that? Embraced neoliberal, deregulated free market capitalism: the economic expression of rape and pillage.

Reduce, reuse, recycle neglects the real first R: refuse.

Our notion of progress requires growth and improvement. We measure this in expansion of GDP and trade. But we are so divorced from the ramifications of our lifestyle that despite all the canaries dying in coal mines, we still might screw up Copenhagen beginning this weekend and leave the meeting with a world lacking unity on averting climate breakdown. And Canada may end up being the spoiler.

We are divorced from the reality of nature’s cycles. We think of growth as linear and upward and not cyclical and level. Nature goes in a circle of seasons. We don’t get more winter or spring each year, we just have equilibrium.

Even our calendars do not help us realize this, which is why this new way of envisioning a calendar is quite liberating: Chris Hardman’s Ecological Calendar.

And if people whack the equilibrium, the ecosystem responds. My children may be the victims of that response for decades more years than I will remain alive. If we cannot stomach that, we need to make sure Copenhagen works.

But how do we get off the economic growth addiction?

It requires a massive reframing. 20 years ago, there were no drink or paper recycling containers in schools and offices. Now they’re ubiquitous.

That took a reframed mindset.

Take also environmental footprints, a concept virtually unknown a decade ago. Now it is a useful and widely understood analytical tool for thinking about our individual contribution to a better or worse environment.

Getting off the economic growth fix can mean embracing steady state economics. This is an economic model that treats the economy as a means to human ends, not maximizing short-term shareholder wealth.

But what does anyone know about this model of zero-growth economics? Follow the link above and read the brief description of the values inherent in the model: sustainable scale, fair distribution, efficient allocation. Do they resonate with you? Do they seem more appealing for your moral goals for our relationship with the planet than getting a 9-18% return on your investments until you retire? Because that is the trade off.

More blatantly, the trade off is between something more like a 1-5% return on your investments or reframing our economy so the majority world living in poverty has a better chance at surviving and living in dignity.

If we cannot conceive of economic growth as being a cancer, it may not be because it’s wrong. It may be because we’ve been drinking this Kool-Aid fed to us in a steady marketing diet since birth. How could we be expected to see things differently. We need to use our imagination to contend with liberating ideas that are challenging to our unquestioned mindset.

Try steady state. 4 out of 5 dentists surveyed find it a healing tonic for ecological turmoil caused by neoliberal economics.

BC NDP Convention Minus 5 Days: Why We’re the Natural Governing Party of BC

I had this amazing daydream a few weeks after we failed to win the election last May.

The NDP is the naturally governing party of BC, so when the legislature was to open earlier this fall/summer, the NDP MLAs should stroll in there and behave as if we actually represent the poorest 95% of British Columbians, which we do, and we should do our best to represent them.

And truly, the MLAs are taking it to the streets this session, for sure. Being critics, challenging the government on its priorities and process are reflective of the masses who have been suffering for this whole decade.

But we really should embrace a humility and a public service mode to recognize that we represent the values of most citizens and we should act as if we are governing. It’s just that we can’t pass legislation.

This goes along with this idea I have that behaviour in parliament is a joke, with all the “grand traditions” of idiocy and compromises to actual debate that so many people claim to be an unquestionable tradition.

But honestly, I have never seen a school board, NGO or even city council meeting operate like our provincial leaders. But reforming the operation of the Westminster Parliamentary System is on my list of long-term reform goals.

In the short term, we start with the reality that most working people in this province are being abused by the government. Tiny lures of tax cuts are combined with user fee increases.

Token, cynical concessions to the poorest British Columbians are matched by massive service cuts.

In the end, the intentional defunding of the BC government is designed to undermine the progressive tax system, reduce the tax burden of the rich and bilk the middle class.

The NDP is rich in convention-passed resolutions framing our party’s beliefs. They exist to represent working people in the province and do not cater to the richest 5% that the Liberals worship.

I would direct you to BC NDP policy on our website, except that it is only available in the internal section where party activists can log in to view the resolutions passed by conventions over the last 30 years. This policy needs to be on the outside of the website for members, the public, the Liberals, the media…EVERYONE…to see it so that we can say to the world that we follow our policy.

Not doing so reduces our credibility, which we saw in abundance in how we lost the last election. Our members chose to not vote and risked Campbell getting in again to avoid voting for us. It doesn’t really get any worse for a political party than that.

My first goal upon being elected to the provincial executive is to make sure everyone knows what we stand for. I’ve read our policy documents. I read our campaign platform during the last election. But you shouldn’t have to take my word for it that we represent the majority of British Columbians.

But beyond internal party problems, why don’t most citizens vote for us when we actually represent them?

Well, why did millions of poor Americans vote against their economic interest this decade by supporting Bush as he abused them like Campbell is abusing the working classes of BC?

Fear.

The neoliberals have scared the pants off of citizens with the idea that an NDP government would bankrupt everyone.

Since someone in the NDP is still afraid of the phrase “fast ferries,” the party in general has not spent this decade having monthly lunch meetings with the dozens of progressive economists in BC to bone up on economics. It’s not like the CCPA hasn’t been coming up with innovative alternative budgets every year!

We should be able to clean the Liberals’ cobweb logic. What kind of justification in the universe is there to build BC Ferries in Germany while our industry languishes?

And if you get our your mental calculator and zoom into Burrard Inlet on Google Earth, you can make your little camera zoom from where the fast ferries are parked, and glide over the water to the new convention centre and every second you can tick away the dollars. The new convention centre cost overrun basically matches the fast ferries. So what are we afraid of?

There seems to be a rule in politics to never apologize for the past, never to admit mistakes. Maybe because we’re afraid that the other side will point out that we screwed up.

Well we did screw up. The fast ferries don’t fit BC’s geography. And we knew it.

But who knew it? A bunch of people who aren’t in the party right now. I disagreed with the boats back then and I do now. Integrity means admitting mistakes. What do we owe former party leaders who screwed up? We owe ourselves and our children more integrity than we owe loyalty to the past.

Here’s another mistake. As much as the party had some valid criticism of the Liberals’ specific carbon tax legislation, the Axe the Tax campaign failed almost from the beginning, in part because of the awful coincidence that gas prices went through the roof around the time of the introduction of the tax, making a criticism of a 2 cent tax petty.

Oh yes, the NDP has affirmed policies supporting a carbon tax consistently for this whole decade. So the other reason why the campaign failed was because our party actually wants a large and effective carbon tax, despite the feelings of whoever decided on that campaign.

So. Where does this leave us?

We have lots of policy that most citizens would embrace:

• framing the economy to serve human beings and not maximizing offshore corporate shareholder wealth
• investing in human services and not cutting healthcare and education
• reframing all government policy so that it fits a grand regulatory plan to avert climate breakdown, since we only have a few years left to turn our economy around before we’re past the point of no return
• everything else we love about social, human, economic, environmental and political justice and equality…something the Liberals hate as they pander to greed and elitism.

So we need to post our policy and be proud of it.

We need to acknowledge that the fast ferries were a mistake and reflected bad decision-making among people who haven’t been in the party in a decade. We need to throw them under the bus. Right now.

We need to recognize that good policies designed to avert climate breakdown reflect our values and we need to educate people and bring them along to recognize how domestic food security and bioregional economic development are critical to cutting down on carbon usage. Oh yes, and peak oil is either here now or close by so we need to pro-actively get off oil.

Sounds simple.

Apparently it’s pretty hard though, but that’s just not good enough for me.

So, I’m running for one of the 6 Vice-President positions of the BC NDP to do these “simple” things and sift through whatever rationalizations have kept the party from working with integrity.

In the end, whatever explanation exists for why the party has screwed up the carbon tax, fast ferries and a myriad of other problems, none of them hold water. Why? Because they’re justifications for compromises designed for us to win the election.

We haven’t won an election this decade. So with some pretty simple hindsight, our tactics have failed and are continuing to fail.

If we keep the same tactics and expect a different result, we’re mad.

I’m not mad. And clearly, neither are the members who didn’t show up to donate time, money and their vote to getting us in power.

It’s time for the BC NDP to behave according to its principles so we can properly represent the values and interests of the majority of British Columbians who should feel eager to support us.

If they don’t it’s not their fault, it’s ours.

And I’ve had enough of that.

My New BPA-free SIGG Bottle: I’m Still Bothered

The consumer uproar has been eye-opening for SIGG CEO Steve Wasik. He thought going green just meant being good to the earth; he didn’t realize it meant fessing up too. “Being a green company also means being held to the highest degree of corporate transparency,” he wrote in an e-mail. “I fully expect that SIGG will not let consumers down in the future.”

via Eco-Friendly Water Bottles: SIGG Gets Stung by BPA – TIME.

So Halloween marked the last day that SIGG would exchange your BPA-bottle with a non-BPA bottle. A real commitment to honesty would be to not end the exchange program, and especially not on Halloween.

Greenwashing is distasteful, and increasing infuriating. Time is running out to keep my children from living some version of Mad Max when they’re my age. And if the best the corporate world can come up with is “I fully expect” to not let consumers down in the future, then I am right in having virtually no faith in market capitalism to contribute to meaningful dialog and action on climate change.

Oh wait, I didn’t have any faith in them. So, no change there.

Regulation, regulation, regulation!

Which Politicians Think We’re Imbeciles?

When I try to infer the mental state of some politicians from what they say publicly, I can only conclude that they must think we’re too profoundly stupid that we’d not be able to think for 3 seconds to realize that they are full of shit. Let’s look at Kevin Falcon and Gregor Robertson.

Health Minister Kevin Falcon: “when we are making changes in health care delivery, it doesn’t mean it’s just a cut.” The provincial government decided to “change” the funding to the 6 health authorities in BC by negative $360 million. It’s certainly a change. To stress that it isn’t a cut means Falcon thinks the air coming out of his lungs is worth forming into these words because there is some value to it all, that enough people will believe he has achieved plausible deniability of cuts occurring.

Vision Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson: “The core traditions of the Olympics are very powerful, and we lose sight of that with all the corporate sponsorship, Olympic bylaws and the gigantic scale of the event.” What a nuisance, hey, so let’s get over our criticism of the following and just get that lovin’ feeling!

1. VANOC has bought ALL the outdoor advertising for Olympic corporate sponsors.
2. Corporations are going to wrap ads as mammoth building condoms around the tall buildings all over the place, with video ads broadcast on buildings–think Blade Runner.
3. BC neoLiberal MLAs and cabinet ministers get to use swanky private boxes in stadiums to watch events…paid for with our tax dollars.
4. VANOC has set aside $30 million for bonuses to ostensibly keep their employees WHO ARE ACTUALLY PLANNING THE OLYMPICS from quitting before the big show–hard to imagine; $30 million works out to around $23,000 for each of the 1,300 employees, though I doubt it will all be distributed equally.
5. The IOC business model requires communities to sanitize society of the ugly: homelessness, poverty, dissent; so, we have broad, sweeping legislation that threatens our civil libertiies.
6. The IOC will not allow women’s ski jumping regardless of domestic courts ruling the action unconstitutional.
7. Provincial legislation will allow law enforcement to come into my home to seize anti-Olympics signs, under penalty of up to 6 months in jail and $10,000/day fines, while neoLiberal cabinet minister Bill Bennett says that’s a reasonable thing to do when the Olympics are in town.
8. Officials can now round up the homeless and forcibly house/confine them during the games; this, in the context of massively neglecting effective social housing for the whole decade.
9. $1 billion to be spent on security with 5,000 imported rent-a-cops and military, not to mention the black helicopters that were buzzing the downtown east side this morning, with much more of that to come.

So what core traditions is Gregor Robertson waxing on about as he gets on a plane to go to Greece for the flame lighting? Nobility, competition, purity of athletic competition? Is that what the Olympics mean now? Or is it special rights for global corporations using the Olympics for a marketing bonanza at the expense of democracy, domestic constitutions and court rulings, and civil liberties?

People are coming around to the reality that the Olympics stink, that they aren’t worth the social, political and economic costs and that with the overwhelming majority of Canadians unable to acquire or afford tickets to the actual events…people are starting to feel duped. A recent survey shows only 9% are very excited about the show, while 71% or not very excited or not excited at all.

This is showing up in not enough people volunteering, signing up to rent out extra bedrooms to rich Olympic tourists, or applying for the scut jobs needed to make the whole thing function.

Well. I told you so.

As did the entire No Olympics campaign years ago. And now we all get to eat it…with the black helicopters flying overhead as I test out my remaining civil liberties as I wear my “I am a free speech zone” t-shirt wherever I can. I also have a “Democracy is Nice” sign I carry on the end of my hockey stick. I wonder which of those will be a security threat.

Ambient Media Has Now Killed Off Broadcast Media

Time of death: 11:14pm, Saturday, August 15, 2009. And I’m qualified to call it because of how media works today. See below if you don’t get it yet.

This clip above is the most important 4 minutes and 23 seconds of the rest of your 21st century. Watch it.

If you’re like me, much of the data in this piece will be new to you and somewhat astonishing. I had to pause it a few times because I don’t read as fast as young people today, I suppose.

If it’s not all new, it’s because you likely already get how communication will exist for the rest of the 21st century.

Simply: linear consumption of communications, broadcasting, is gone.

We are in a 3D world of ambient information and simultaneity.

Get up to speed or be left in the 20th century.

One-way broadcasting via TV, radio and newspapers to passive recipient consumers is dying fast.

Newspaper circulation is declining rapidly. Soon we’ll see cable TV subscriptions declining fast as information is just everywhere.

I have virtually no need for subscriber TV anymore. The half dozen shows I watch are available for downloading in less than 20 minutes from torrent sites within hours of their broadcast on the east coast. And half the shows aren’t available in Canada without delays of months. I don’t like to wait.

News is online. Hockey? I’m still working on that one. When I figure it out, out goes my cable TV subscription for good.

The internet is a crucible now, it always has been. It is forming new means of communication. Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube have survived the burning. New forms will continue to emerge as the new printing presses. When they become ubiquitous, newspapers, TV and radio will finish their tailspin.

I spent many of the last 12 months working up a design to convert some of my editorials into op-eds for community newspapers. I have written recently how community papers are newly critical in sustaining democracy. I still believe this, but I’ve altered my sense of time about this.

Community papers are still generally owned in blocks by media oligarchs. We’re seeing daily newspapers and regional TV stations dying. We’ll see media oligarchs suffer at the core some more.

Community papers won’t have a chance to become critical for democracy until the current ownership mode burns out, leaving new forms of democratic communications to emerge as a phoenix rising out of putrid ashes.

But along side concrete [as opposed to electronic] media in the future, the wired world of ambient media will define a new relationship of information. Community papers of the future will not be so linear and broadcast as they are now. They will be more vibrant and interactive…as much as that can happen through periodical publishing on paper.

So, hold on to your crash bar for the wild ride ahead. And you can join me on the deathwatch of the CanWest media chain as today their stock price is at $0.14. Click on the 5y chart to see how they’ve fallen. All they are is biased, right wing TV, radio and newspapers and some lame web portals, all pretending to be objective because their model is pre-post-modern. They are a dinosaur stumbling over a cliff. I will not miss them and I will toast their demise as I welcomed the departure from this earth of Milton Friedman and Pinochet.

And what I’ve learned tonight is that I can’t convert a media activity in the 3D ambient media world into a 2D linear, broadcast media world by sending my editorials into community papers.

I can’t yet imagine how the future of media will look. I’ve never understood “the medium is the message” as fully as I do now, but I also know that in 5-10 years I’ll understand it far more profoundly as the internet crucible continues burning.

I must go spray some kerosene on the fire now. Join me?

We’re Failing Our Grandchildren on Stopping Climate Breakdown

Our grandchildren will hate us for our informed inaction on climate change. I refuse to bear this.

I’m watching a National Geographic documentary on climate breakdown right now on the Knowledge Network. Saharan dust storms are madly increasing the rates of asthma and decreasing the health of sea fans on the reefs…in the Caribbean!

The increase in effects of GHGs in the last 30 years has increased the Saharan dust flying to kids’ lungs in the Caribbean. We KNOW this. Pleading ignorance is an offense to my children’s children.

US satellites are documenting more and more decline in ice. Are we acting yet? Only in a greenwashing way. Click on the photos to read about what is happening while we embrace mostly inaction.

New polling indicates real inconsistencies. Strong majorities of citizens in some countries are demanding more action, while similar sizes in other countries are dancing with complacency. Two of the latter countries are China and the USA. Together, those countries can eradicate efforts by the rest of the world.

We have to massively reduce our energy consumption in how we live, work and consume. We must force our leaders to lead in this.

I know I’m going to answer to my grandchildren. I already blame my parents’ generation for somewhat ignorantly contributing to many of our current problems, not the least of which are massive materialism and consumerism. How much more will we be judged by our descendants for ruining their world, knowing that we know better. The answer? To a degree I refuse to accept passively.

Alarmism and reactionary pleas seem to be increasing, policies seem to be improving somewhat, but we’re squandering our handful of years left to make the massive changes necessary to avoid breakdown. Now, shake your head and read this. And let’s get busy.

Think about how you will look your grandchildren in the eye. I’m not looking forward to that conversation.

“Axe the Tax”: NOW We Need that Campaign!

While the Axe the Tax campaign ruined the BC NDP’s green credibility last year and helped lose the election, it is time for an Axe the Tax campaign now with the regressive HST.

The government is consistently lying that it will save money by harmonizing the logistics of tax collection. They simply refuse to respond to complaints against the reality that they are also removing so many goods and services that are exempt from the PST right now. This is nothing new from this neoLiberal gang.

While the NDP is going through several internal reform movements since it squandered its chance to remove this anti-social government, one thing is sure: the party needs to do a better job of education, including, listening to and motivating members to be activists.

Judging from the mobilization so far against the regressive HST, this may be a good focal point for building a social movement within the party to improve BC and destroy this neoLiberal government.

Nearly nine out of 10 British Columbians oppose the new harmonized sales tax and believe it will hit them where it hurts — their pocketbooks.

via British Columbians overwhelmingly reject harmonized tax.

Handcuffing a Community’s Resilience: Bata in the 21st Century

I first knew Bata shoes as a kid taken shopping to try on new shoes. As a teen I learned about the nexus of globalization and apartheid with Bata as a model, since they were operating in South Africa. Thomas Bata said, “We expanded into Africa in order to sell shoes, not to spread sweetness and light.”

Not only was it neoliberal globalization’s low-wages that lured Bata to they shift production overseas decades ago to take advantage of cheap labour, foreign competitors also helped force the closure of Bata’s domestic shoe production in Batawa in 1999.

But now Sonja Bata is trying to redevelop Batawa, Ontario into a post-industrial community, it is clear that she hasn’t read Jeff Rubin’s book, Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller, on how peak oil will end globalization and force us to spend far more time developing bioregional social, economic and political communities.

She has partnered with design students from Carlton University, encouraging them to get all radical in creating a new vision of a community with artists, urban farms, research incubators and even a microbrewery. While these ideas reflect a healthy respect for a mixed community, since her model is post-industrial she may be in for a surprise when oil goes back up to beyond where it went last year and the global human supply chain constricts.

What will likely be needed in Batawa is for her to open her factory to make shoes again, not convert it into condos.

So, it is more than a little ironic that she is planning to miss out on developing some appropriate infrastructure for the community upon globalization’s decline.

While Bata is now in the gentrification business, the Globe’s Gordon Pitts correctly writes, “the region needs jobs, not fanciful ideas,” as a local Quaker Oats plant recently closed.

Ultimately, Bata’s vision and paradigm are hopelessly obsolete. In discussing the process of Batawa’s gentrification, she says redeveloping the factory is a symbol: “we have to get that done.” Destroying the factory’s capacity to manufacture products local certainly is a symbol, but it’s a symbol of a business model which will become more irrelevant every month the price of oil creeps back up.

But that’s not the only problem with paradigms involving Bata. Carlton characterizes its partnership with Bata as a university-community collaboration. Bata is a corporation with a real estate gentrification agenda. They are not a community. They don’t speak for a community. They are, in fact, hampering the Batawa community’s resilience to transform its local economy to a more sustainable one.

The relationship is really a public-private partnership with public university design students subsidizing the creative function of a corporation. It would be far more appropriate for the design students to be remaking Batawa in a way that will allow it to function in the transition we’ll be encountering when oil prices rise.

Instead, they are creating a community that will have no place in our near future.

They should be recognizing that bioregional social, economic and political units will be the sustainable size of communities since getting products from outside local zones will require expensive transportation. Bioregional communities will have to be as self-sufficient as possible to ensure that what they do trade will provide real value to justify the costs.

At 82, Sonja Bata may not be able to properly envision what our communities will require in a future with peak oil, climate change/breakdown, discredited deregulated and privatized neoliberal capitalism and declining globalization.

The key to managing such a profound paradigm shift is for all the rest of us to have more foresight than her. What the world needs now is the sweetness and light of sound community planning.

Peak Oil Will Kill Neoliberal Globalization: More Support

A year ago today, I wrote about how a few years earlier at lunch with friends I was thinking that peak oil will kill neoliberal globalization. Last year, there was a piece in Report on Business about just that, making me feel mighty vindicated. It’s nice to see corporate media affirming your views.

A few minutes ago, I finished watching a Tuesday rerun of the now former chief economist at CIBC, Jeff Rubin, plugging his new book, Why Your World Is About To Get A Lot Smaller, on Stroumboulopoulos’ The Hour. Watch the clip. He’s all over this thing now, which is part of the reason why he left the CIBC two months ago. This helps his credibility.

So at first, I thought that he’s more vindication for my ideas from a few years ago, but not so much.

When I went back to look at last year’s piece, wouldn’t you know it, but Jeff Rubin is one of the fellows quoted in the article. And since his book is out now, it was in the can last year when he was mentioned in the article. So the fellow was already planning his exit strategy.

So despite all the greenwashing miniscule attempts at mitigating climate change without altering our consumerist and corporate worship, it’s nice to hear the CIBC’s former chief economist talking about bioregional survival, the necessary rise of domestic manufacturing, eating local food and skipping winter avocados unless we move to avocado-land, which I won’t do. I’ll be reading his book!

So what’s our job? Start planning to voluntarily simplify our lives. Read Thomas Homer-Dixon’s The Upside of Down to learn what real resilience-building means. Crippled markets with unaffordable gasoline, ecological crises and a deepening recession/depression will force us to simplify anyway, so we’d best get on it! And even if that 3-part perfect storm doesn’t happen, simplifying is better for you, your family, your friends, the planet and the abused workers who make all the shit that you won’t have to buy anymore since when global markets decline they’ll be out of work making the Wal-Mart junk and they’ll do what we’ll be doing: eating bioregionally.

Force your political party to start developing truly ecologically progressive policies that recognize 1) the crippling effects of climate change that the UN scientists say are accelerating faster than predicted, 2) the end of a local, national and global trade regime built on cheep energy, and 3) a global economic crisis that manifests the paradigm shift we will endure–either pro-actively or reactively, we get to take our pick.

So we have to become assertive paradigm mechanics to start re-tooling for a future that will start soon after the Olympics debacle cripples BC’s resilience next year with some kind of $74b debt. Lucky us. We also have to re-imagine community interdependence, bioregional agriculture and markets, and an end to greed-based individualistic consumerism. And the sooner we begin, the better.

Neighbours Organic Weekly Buyers Club [NOWBC] has figured this out, going one step past organic food delivery companies with local sourcing. Last week they held a community potluck at Heritage Hall on Main Street in Vancouver, which was delightful, child-friendly, entertaining, educational and full of healthy, yummy food. They talked about doing that event annually. They need to do it monthly, judging from the eager crowd!

Oh, by the way, while we’re on it all, let’s let the auto companies go under, or better yet, nationalize them to build transit and post-carbon autos. GM and Chrysler are on the brink and for a change, how about we insist that governments–who are elected by actual human beings–bail out the pension commitments to workers instead of tossing more of my future grandchildren’s income taxes into more corporate money pits!

So, what are you waiting for? If you have read this far, contact me and let’s get talking! And if you belong to the BC NDP, you absolutely HAVE to contact me because you need to get in on the ground floor of making that party the leader in wise planning for a tumultuous future!

Now. Let’s get busy!

Obama Is Not Anyone’s Economic Jesus

It’s time to get over ourselves with thinking of Obama being any kind of economic Jesus. Eric Margolis reflects many people’s hopes, but it is time to leave our naivety back in 2008 because its best before date has expired:

“The axis of sleaze between Wall Street and Washington’s politicians has to be broken. Time for Obama to drive the money lenders from the temple.”

- Eric Margolis, columnist, Toronto Sun, April 5, 2009

Margolis’ quote shows up on page 2 of the current CCPA Monitor journal from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Ed Finn, the editor, juxtaposes it with his own assessment of what Obama will not be able to offer:

“Obama may be helping some of the hardest hit victims of the financial meltdown in the US with his huge stimulus budget, but his massive trillion-dollar bailouts of the fraudulent financial system that precipitated the crisis reflect no desire on his part to replace or even moderately change it. Instead, the obvious intent seems to be to restore and perpetuate it.”

- Ed Finn, editor, CCPA Monitor, May 2009, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Being optimistic for massive reform to global corporate neoliberal capitalism is one thing, but it truly pains me to acknowledge that expecting Obama to have messianic economic reform powers is just not realistic.

While I cheered his election and have significant respect for his demeanor, honesty, boldness in facing dire economic and social challenges domestically, we need to remember that the vetting process that takes place in the two major US political parties precludes any real reformers from having much of a chance at the White House.

Dennis Kucinich has been the most progressive Democrat to seek the nomination in recent elections. His policies reflect a profound desire to make America a beacon of social, economic and political justice and advocacy. 

He never stands a chance.

And I won’t even going into how credible Ralph Nader is on the corporate autocracy that runs America and the world. 

He’ll never make the White House either, barring some massive global economic depression and even more widespread corporate corruption leading to thorough delegitimization of free markets [though the fact that we tolerate this much says little about our civic critical capacities].

So those who have a solid chance of winning big party nominations are able to secure funding from broad sources. And while the stranglehold of corporate control of candidates is diminishing–but by no means disappearing–with more union and citizen financial support of the most progressive of the bunch, America is still America.

American capitalists and the majority of the middle class still believe in the American Dream[tm], or at least the perception that they can buy  in one day, despite Marxist arguments about false consciousness. Canadians exhibit much the same tendencies.

We are not so much interested in anyone challenging our beloved capitalism. When “excesses” occur, some tinkering is good enough because in the end, we can trust capitalists; after all, many of us have them as neighbours and they don’t seem to kill our pets for sport or empty our car tires on rainy Tuesday nights.

Part of the explanation for this lies in the lack of imagination and discourse about alternative economies. Free market capitalism is only about as old as America itself. That probably explains part of it right there. But before free market capitalism, we weren’t pre-social hunter-gatherers. We traded, we had markets, we even used markets to pursue social and economic justice.

And we can do that again, granted we have some leisure time to indulge in imagining economies that actually serve human beings.

But what about Obama, then?

He’ll tinker. He’ll sound resolute. He’ll speak like a disappointed patriarch scolding teenagers who took the car without permission and scratched it at the 7-11. Those capitalists [wag your finger with me, now]: always up to hijinx, so we have to ground them for a week or so to make them reflect on what they did!

He’s certainly better than Bush and McCain/Palin, even with McCain having spent most of the decade plugging his nose to suck up to the radical reactionary right of the Republican party to be a presidential contender, ignoring elements of his more moderate core.

But in the end, there is no way that Obama would have been a contender if the American and global corporate oligarchs weren’t comfortable that he was not going to close down the World Bank, IMF, WTO and OAS and invite Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales to the White House to build a new economic, social and political vision for the Americas.

And while I’ll continue to be pleased with Obama when it’s warranted, our relief at the end of the Bush dynasty should not keep us from recognizing when America is just being America some more. They are economic, political, social and cultural imperialists with a now-global manifest destiny that is rarely questioned, though the Chinese economic war with America may ultimately defeat them, leaving merely another global economic monster to contend with.

So feel free to leave your naivety in 2008 and when Obama does something not so progressive, develop a healthy critique of him. When he buckles to the healthcare lobby over the next few weeks, make sure he knows that Americans deserve to have a better healthcare system than to be stuck at the bottom of OECD rankings.

And if his foreign policy is more engaging and peace-building, celebrate that, but if his diplomacy is twinned with neoliberal assaults on other countries’ ability to develop their own economic, social and political structures, take a moment to demand more.

But in the end, if he leaves office without overturning any money lender tables in the temple of the global economy, don’t be dismayed. Reality will teach you all you need to know to assess his ultimate political value.

Olympic Ad Pollution with Building Condoms and Commercials: Vision Vancouver’s Vision

Honestly, it’s bad enough that every billboard will be literally monopolized by VANOC for its corporate johns during the Olympics, but now we are going to get dozens of buildings wrapped in ad condoms and “celebratory images …including video imaging and projections on walls” to Blade Runner proportions for about 5 months. That’s almost as long as Expo ‘86 lasted!

So much for the Olympics being a mere 16-day inconvenience and distraction. But the stink of this horrible decision will land squarely on Vision Vancouver.

Huge Olympic-themed building wraps will pop up in Vancouver three months earlier than expected under a new deal involving the City of Vancouver, Vanoc and 3M Canada.

The city originally planned to restrict the installation of 2010 building murals and graphic designs until Jan. 1, 2010, but has relaxed the rules to allow them any time after Oct. 1 this year.

3M was concerned the Jan. 1 restriction didn’t give it enough time to properly transform buildings into Games-themed displays, especially if bad weather delayed the application of clings, wraps and films to building exteriors.

via Olympic signs of the times – three months earlier than planned .

The rising and now falling tide of excitement tracking Vision Vancouver is astonishing. A party with no firm policy or governing experience signed up thousands of new members a year ago. Bandwagon city.

Now that they are in charge, we get to watch how their visionary talk doesn’t match their governing walk.

We’ve already seen how Vision Vancouver believes in the sanctity of billboards, but we now see that a weak and flimsy excuse of possible bad weather 5 weeks before the Olympics debacle starts is good enough to extend for 3 months the length of time the corporate sponsors of the Olympics can pollute our eyes with ubiquitous ads and projected commercials on our skyline.

Add these new ad condoms and building commercials to the CCTV arriving “for the event only” and we’ll have an Olympic legacy that will set new standards of intrusion and erosion of all things public.

Thanks, Vision Vancouver, for polluting our vision with advertising ubiquity! All we need now is to hear loudspeakers throughout Olympic zones blaring, “A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies! A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!”

We’ll remember all that when we cast our ballots on November 19, 2011.

Coining Phrases for Fun and Profit: “Paradigm Mechanic” and “Peak Clutter” Are the New Ones

First there was “The Four Horsemen of Structural Adjustment,” which showed up in my MA thesis on Canada’s squandering of an authentic human security agenda as our neoliberalism has made an economic colony of Haiti. I googled it and it was nowhere to be found in the context I determined. It’s all about how the IMF and World Bank cripple developing countries with conditions on their currency and development loans that lead to four of the worst of the ten elements of the Washington Consensus: rampant privatization, free trade, free capital flows, and government deregulation. Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine details the carnage of implementing neoliberalism.

But it took two years to come up with another google-free phrase: “Paradigm Mechanic” which erupted in a thoroughly inspiring conversation with a friend a few weeks ago about the paradigm shift we are on the cusp of. With the triple nexus, perfect storm of a collapsing neoliberal global economy, peak oil/water/food and climate change, we are going to be dragged into a new paradigm of economic, political and social existence…dragged because we are not pro-actively adjusting to mitigate the consequences of our rapacious global economy. And there are people who are already paradigm mechanics, inspiring me to build resilience in my local worlds: Thomas Homer-Dixon, Vandana Shiva, Maude Barlow, George Monbiot, Arundhati Roy, James Howard Kunstler. So while these and other folks are clear paradigm mechanics, our calling–for all of us–is to be paradigm mechanics. We need to tweak and [at times] smash elements of our current paradigm and fix it so our economy serves human beings and is respectful of our ecology and scarce resources.

And the last phrase coined came today. I was discussing an internal wiki page with a work colleague. It had been a work in progress over the last many months as a sort of to do list of meeting agenda items. My colleague found it was necessary to build a new wiki page to reflect a smoother arrangement of ideas because the current page was far too cluttered, in fact it had reached “Peak Clutter” where the rising curve of debris passed the falling curve of conceptual utility.

So. Feel free to use and propagate these new coined phrases. When I can figure out a royalty regime more effective than PayPal, I’ll let you all know.

Poor Bashing in the BC Liberals’ Online Store

I was so annoyed listening to Gordon Campbell pull a Sarah Palin [I hear your question, but I think I'll just talk about this instead] on the leaders debate on CKNW this morning when asked about poverty reduction strategies. He talked about how he loves to help create high paying jobs and that the average wage in BC is $22/hour. 

Mouspad for the "average" BC worker

Let’s do some simple arithmetic. The global GDP is estimated at around US$69 trillion. The world population today is around 6.7 billion. That means the average annual income of everyone in the world is around US$10,000! Goodbye poverty, hurray for us! Oh wait, averages can be the devil’s pool cue crashed over the back of the homeless fellow outside the pool hall and a rainy winter night.

This is what I think of every time Gordon Campbell quotes the average BC wage. Anyone who finds solace in it needs to re-think how insidious averages can be and ask themselves if they wish to be inadvertently complicit in poor bashing. 

So when I cruised by the BC Liberal party’s online fundraising merchandising store, I examined the prices of the trinkets that, with Campbell’s love of globalized trade and the race to the bottom of production, I assume are made in Chinese sweatshops.

$22/hour is the average wage in BC? Hmm, that would buy you a mousepad promoting the Liberals’ strong BC. But it would take you longer because I’m sure Campbell is talking about $22 as a gross wage, so that after deductions it would take far more than one hour of work to buy that mousepad.

The Liberal Homelessness Toque

And what about a toque to keep your homeless head warm while promoting the BC Liberal brand? Let’s not assume that none of the homeless have jobs, because many do and are still homeless. $17.50 is the price. that would take an $8/hour minimum wage worker around 2 hours and 12 minutes to earn it.

An apron for those summer barbeques? $20 or 2.5 hours of pretax minimum wage work or even more, 3.3 hours, for the victimized trainee/new workers making $6/hour.

But if you really want to save up for the eco-friendly women’s plasma jacket, perhaps by foregoing protein for all 3 meals each day next week or maybe skipping lunches altogether, $8/hour workers would have to toil for 24.4 hours. 

A week of sufficient protein, or a jacket? You decide.

So as we’re watching economic stimulus packages devolve into corporate welfare programs, we should applaud the NDP and their commitment to raising the minimum wage to $10/hour. Minimum wage workers spend their wages in their communities to create a multiplier effect that recycles wealth and improves the economy from the ground up. The neoLiberal party never talks about this kind of stimulus because their constituency is not the poorest 95% of the British Columbians, let alone the economically destitute and those barely hanging on, living one pay cheque away from the streets.

But then, why would the BC neoLiberal party care about raising the minimum wage, since the poor wouldn’t buy their $22 mousepads anyway.