The world oil supply is running down and we have no ready substitutes.

Climate change is happening now – stronger storms, more devastating wildfires, rising sea levels, diseases spreading – the list goes on, and there is every indication that it will continue to worsen.

The US economy, upon which the world economy still depends, is unstable due to corruption at the top, from most Congressmen to presidential advisors all being former bank executives.

Our leaders are not moving quickly enough to protect the economy in general, never mind your or my livelihoods in particular. Some of our leaders are actually doing things to worsen the situation, such as denying the very existence of climate change or ignoring the ever-rising price of oil.

We are facing “interesting times.” The turbulence has begun, and it’s buffeting us from all directions. Have you ever had the experience of going for a walk and, no matter which direction you were going, the wind always seemed to be in your face? That’s what the future is going to feel like for many people.

I could (and have) proposed large-scale responses to the situation, which frankly at this point need to be a WWII-scale mobilization to re-industrialize and re-do our living arrangements to drastically cut oil dependence immediately and, long-term, eliminate pollution of all kinds by moving to a ‘restorative economy.’

But we’re not going to do that in the foreseeable future, are we? Or anything even remotely close. If you take your family’s security seriously, then you will do what you can to buffer yourself against the coming storms. The best way I have seen to do that is Transition Initiative, and you should seriously consider joining (or starting) one in your area.

TI is a completely grassroots, apolitical initiative, and this is what they do:

Transition Network helps communities deal with climate change and shrinking supplies of cheap energy (peak oil). This process, which we call Transition, aims to create stronger, happier communities.

That’s how we’re going to get through this; by working together in local communities. As the Transition Network site puts it well:

What we are convinced of is this:

• • if we wait for the governments, it’ll be too little, too late
  • if we act as individuals, it’ll be too little
  • but if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time.

Your level of involvement can be minimal or massive; the choice is yours. Here are some things that local TIs do:

• Teach people how to grow a garden, save seeds, preserve foods
• Educate people by showing documentaries about peak oil, climate change, solutions, and more
• Host online and IRL forums to discuss and learn
• Show people how to insulate their homes or build a solar greenhouse

Like it or not, the world is changing. You can adapt, or not.

With all due respect to Jean Chretien, he is a big part of the reason that many Canadians no longer trust the Liberal Party. It wasn’t just Adscam, during which Mr. Chretien was the:

Prime Minister of Canada at the time the Sponsorship Program was established and operated. The Gomery Commission, First Phase Report which assigned blame for the Sponsorship scandal cast most of the indemnity for misspent public funds, fraud on Chrétien and his Prime Minister’s Office staff, though it cleared Chrétien himself of direct wrongdoing.

That was bad enough. But for many of us, there is a long history of big talk and little action. To give three prime examples:

1. The Liberals campaigned against NAFTA – but then embraced it once elected
2. The Liberals campaigned against the GST – but then embraced it once elected
3. The Liberals signed Kyoto – but then did less than nothing to meet that commitment

Tell me again why we should trust Liberal promises?

For me, the Kyoto betrayal offers a particularly compelling reason to not vote for the Liberals. Had Mr. Chretien’s government redirected oil and tar mining subsidies to green energy – say solar thermal, wind, and geothermal – then today there would be thousands of clean and green jobs in these fields in Alberta and Saskatchewan. The prairies would be an ‘energy superpower,’ but in clean energy and high-tech jobs, the way Denmark and Germany are today.

Subsidies to tar mining amounted to approximately $1.5 billion taxpayer dollars per year in 2010. Multiply that by the number of years since Kyoto was signed in 1998 and you get a heck of a lot of money: $19.5B in today’s dollars. That’s also a lot of jobs:

• Siemens plans to build a CDN$ 120M wind turbine factory in the UK, anticipated to create ~2,200 jobs
• GE plans to build a CDN$ 160M wind turbine factory in the UK, anticipated to create more than 2,000 jobs
• The Pembina Institute estimates that “for every million dollars invested, an average 36.3 jobs are created in the energy efficiency sector, 12.2 jobs in the renewable energy sector, and only 7.3 jobs in the development of conventional energy.”

That was an opportunity squandered and an international commitment broken. Using the Pembina Institute’s figures, Jean Chretien’s Liberals could have put us on the path to creating 237,900 jobs in the prairies just from the subsidies alone.

The Liberals campaign from the left and govern from the right, and it looks like Canadians have finally had enough and are going to elect the real deal.

The latest poll has Mr. Layton and the New Democratic Party he leads in an odd situation: The party remains stubbornly at about 16% in the polls, while Jack Layton himself is the second most trusted politician, and the most trusted to lead a coalition, should it come to that. His personal credibility is not rubbing off on the party he leads.

I suspect many Canadians feel as I do about the Conservatives and Liberals: meh. Uninspiring, either one will keep us on much the same path Canada has been on for decades: largely following the U.S. lead, basing our economy on exports of raw resources, and pork barrel politics.

The latter is what got the Liberals tossed out some years ago, and from which they have never recovered, thanks to the rise of the Bloc, the Greens,and of course the Conservative Party. The Conservatives have turned out to be no better, with a long list of scandals that easily equals the worst the Liberals did with Adscam. (In my own riding, the Conservatives built “an overpass to nowhere.” They spent millions on an overpass to the Victoria airport, a tiny airport with no need whatsoever of an overpass, while promising to build the much-needed Mckenzie Road overpass in a nearby – Liberal – riding if those voters elected a Conservative.  If that’s not porkbarrel politics, I don’t know what is, and from a guy who promised to clean up government.)

And yet, none of this seems to ‘stick’ to Mr. Harper or his Conservatives; they remain stubbornly at around 35%, give-or-take, in the polls. I suspect the reasons are that people are utterly uninspired by the alternatives, most of us in the west don’t trust the Liberals as far as we could throw their bloated and festering carcass, and combined with the loss of 50 seats in Quebec to the Bloc, the Liberals may well be done as Canada’s “natural ruling party.” No loss, as far as many of us are concerned.

However, that does leave us with two uncomfortable problems: Porkbarrel Steve is clearly getting more blatantly corrupt  the longer he is in power. This seems to be a natural thing; power really does corrupt. Really, building prisons – while the crime rate is declining – for “unreported crimes?” How does Mr. Harper plan to fill those new billion-dollar prisons? Or the relatively recent and quite disgusting gorging at the public trough that were the G20 and G8 summits – how does Mr. Clean justify that massive doling out of pork in the middle of a recession? There are a lot better ways to create jobs, and it shouldn’t mainly go to your buddies. It’s time to change the political diaper.

It seems to me that Stevie has had his day. As Layton says in one of the NDP’s campaign ads, Stephen Harper has simply replaced Liberal scandals with his own. But, given that many of us no longer consider the Liberals a viable alternative to the Conservatives, where do we go?

Go Green?

I find the Green Party actually very progressive conservative in many ways, but they haven’t been able to elect a single candidate since their inception. The momentum they had after Jim Harris greatly increased the Green vote has sputtered and stalled under Elizabeth May. Suggestions that proportional representation are needed may be true (all European democracies use some form of PR), but the Reform and then Conservative Party managed to gain seats without it.

Overall, I doubt the Greens are going to make much of a breakthrough under Elizabeth May and with their current messaging strategy.

NDP: Social Democrats with a Failure to Communicate

Like the Green Party, the NDP seem to have a very difficult time appealing to those outside their ‘base.’ They are stuck at ~16% in the polls, and I believe the main reasons are:

• The economy is doing tolerably well, which always favours incumbents, and
• They just don’t know how to talk to people who don’t already ‘get’ what they’re saying.

The Greens also suffer from both problems, but the NDP do have seats and decent organization. What they lack, completely and utterly, is humility. The result is that they keep preaching to the choir while getting frustrated when nobody outside the church converts.

If you look at what the NDP want to do, it could actually be quite popular with a much broader cross-section of Canadians than it currently is. Essentially, the NDP want to bring Canada more in-line with what well-run social democracies like Germany, Denmark, and Norway do. Germany, for those not paying attention, is an economic powerhouse.

• Germany is who the broke nations of the EU turn to for bailouts
• Germany has a trade surplus of high-tech manufactured goods with China
• Germany has a high rate of unionisation, yet labour problems are rare – because the unions serve on the Boards of Directors and have a significant say in a company’s strategic and tactical decisions (and guess what: workers think longer-term than CEOs, who tend to focus on next quarter’s profits and their own bonuses)
• Germany has a solid, stable manufacturing base
• Germany is moving into the ‘green’ economy in a huge way, including being a leading producer of things like wind turbines, high-speed trains, and buildings that use zero energy for heating and cooling

What Canadian wouldn’t want Canada to be doing the same? We don’t just have to export our raw resources, leading to a boom-and-ultimately-bust economy. How much will a house in Fort McMurray be worth when the tar sands have been drained dry? About the same as houses in any other mining town when the mine closes: A heck of a lot less than people paid for them during the boom.

If the NDP would shift us in a more German/Nordic economic direction, this would be a very good thing. It would rebuild our manufacturing base while ensuring unions and management work for the best for all. It would give Alberta and Saskatchewan a manufacturing base to buffer the ups-and-downs of a resource-based economy.

The NDP would shift tar sands subsidies to things like wind and solar factories, both energy sources the prairies ultimately have more of than oil. Imagine if Jean Chretien had done this after he signed the Kyoto Accord; billions of dollars would have been put into clean and green energy and thousands of jobs created.

We need to start doing things like this: rebuilding a competitive manufacturing base, becoming a world leader in ‘green energy,’ and eliminating labour-corporate strife.

Too bad the NDP doesn’t know how to talk to anyone but themselves. Jack, if you want some help talking to people outside the church, give me a call. I won’t hold my breath; I bet tonight’s debate will be yet another wasted opportunity to reach out.

UPDATE:

As requested, here is some information on the German economy, and why it is a model that Canada would be wise to follow.

A good place to start is Wikipedia, of course, which points out that Germany, despite being “relatively poor in raw materials,” and needing to import two-thirds of its energy, is “the largest national economy in Europe, the fourth-largest by nominal GDP in the world.” Germany exited the recession in 2009.

Keep in mind that Germany had the very heavy burden of reunifying the formerly Communist East Germany with the free West, and that placed a very heavy burden on the country as a whole that has still not been overcome.

Here’s an excellent article on German economic strength. Some high points:

• “Germany’s per-capita income was $44,600 [compared to] America’s $47,500 — an impressive performance in itself and all the more so when you realize that the typical German worker put in just 1,432 hours in 2008 versus 1,792 hours for the typical American.”
• “Germans now live nearly 14 months longer on average than Americans.”
• “From 1998 to 2008 the German current account went from a deficit of $5.9 billion to a surplus of $267.1 billion. The contrast with the United States could hardly be starker: The American current account deficit shot from $233.8 billion in 1998 to $568.8 billion in 2008.”
• “Germany is a leader in key new technologies, including renewable energy such as solar and wind power.”

There’s lots more, from six weeks annual paid vacation to a much better social safety net to worker involvement in corporate decision making, which results in higher productivity (if lower executive salaries). Google away.

UPDATE 2:

This post has sparked quite a bit of comment; for an interesting discussion, head over to the thread at Reddit.

Following the multiple partial meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, I find it mind-boggling how quickly the pro-nuclear shills are out claiming that a) nuclear is safe, really, and b) it’s our only hope for a future energy source that is sufficient to meet our needs and not destroy the planet via climate change.

Both are utterly bogus, but you can’t tell the shills that; they are fanatics on a par with the climate change deniers. They believe what they want to believe, and that’s that.

a) Nuclear power is NOT safe

Sorry, lads, but it just isn’t and to maintain that in the face of what has happened and is happening in Japan is just nuts. Numerous dolts are trying to claim that nuclear power is perfectly safe, but that can be disproved with a simple Google search, so I must conclude that people who say this are wilfully dense or are paid shills.

As to the safety record of nuclear power generally, it’s really quite poor. Again, numerous pro-nukers want to say the risk of accident is minuscule. Again, not true. It’s easy enough to get a rough calculation of the odds of disaster: Divide the number of nuclear plants on the planet by the number of major disasters:

According to this site, there were 442 plants as of January 2011. According to Wikipedia, there have been at least 18 serious accidents, so the odds of a serious accident are 18/442 = 4%, or 1 in 25.

Those are terrible odds, and that’s not counting the countless smaller leaks that are routinely covered up by the nuclear industry.

(Note: This is being generous. In reality, the odds are worse because most of these accidents happened when there were fewer nuclear reactors on the planet. And the argument that newer reactors is safer is debatable techno-optimism, given the recent meltdowns in Japan.)

The shills often then retreat to the position that nuclear is safer than coal, but this is hardly difficult and not-at-all comforting. We simply have to stop buying into the idea that we have no choice but to trade off the greater evil for the lesser.

b) It’s nuclear or collapse!!!!

This is simply scaremongering by the shills to prevent us thinking sensibly about other options, like heaven forbid, conservation. Or passive solar combined with geothermal storage. Or storing excess wind/solar/wave/tidal/whatever in molten salts, pumped hydro, hydrogen, and whatever else we come up with, none of which risk making large areas of one’s country, and perhaps a few neighbouring ones, uninhabitable by humans for the next 100,000 years or so.

The fact is, we have non-nuclear options and we need to start exploring them. There may well be a further economic collapse as the price of oil increases, but building hundreds more nuclear plants everywhere is a highly risky ‘solution.’ There are better ways to go.

And by-the-way, Japan’s wind turbines survived the earthquake and tsunami.

UPDATE: An interesting article, from the Toronto Sun, of all places. It contains this gem:

The potential power, energy and financial returns were calculated for the indirect subsidy that is currently provided to the U.S. nuclear industry in the form of liability caps, with providing the same level of indirect subsidy to the solar photovoltaic manufacturing industry in the form of loan guarantees. The startling results show even if just this one relatively minor subsidy was diverted from nuclear power generation into large-scale solar manufacturing, it would result in both more installed power and more energy produced by mid-century. Such a policy would increase the cumulative solar industry over the 500 TW-hrs mark in just 10 years and by the end of the study the cumulative electricity output of solar amounts to an additional 48,600 TW-hrs worth more than $5 trillion over the nuclear case.