Lessons from Nigeria

Canada has a problem. We are never going to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions if we allow the Alberta tar sands to continue to be "developed". A lot of us are trying hard to stop them. We are attending meetings, holding discussion groups, talking to ordinary people and lobbying our politicians. We know the problem is serious and needs action now.

And we're getting nowhere. Every few weeks a new contract is handed out and the tar sands expand and Canada gets further away from any meaningful action on climate change.

We have to stop this death machine called the economy. We have to stop it now. It's a daunting task for sure one that many of us aren't ready for.

Of all people Nigerians can teach us a lot about bringing down an unjust and destructive economy. Like Alberta, Nigeria is swimming in oil. To "extract" it many thousands of foreigners come to the country to facilitate the drilling and polluting of oil production. Perfect situation right? Rich Europeans get to keep driving and they get jobs in their colony, oops, I mean partner economy. The best part is all the pollution and toxic waste gets left behind. Everyone should be happy right?

It turns out that many of the Nigerians impacted by these "developments" actually have a deep understanding of power, class and race. You have to be pretty stupid to not tell when you're being taken; only North Americans could be so stupid. So many of them are taking up arms against the industry. They aren't going to meetings, they aren't calling their politicians, they're pulling the trigger.

Granted, many of these gangs don't actually want to stop the oil from flowing. They just want a piece of the pie. So they kidnap foreign workers, bomb pipelines and do anything to make a buck. They've learned well from Europeans. Despite their mercenary nature, the result is ideal, oil goes up in price as "instability" grows. Oil is going up anyway but their violence is pushing it higher. The higher oil goes, the more likely the economy is going to crash and the less likely people are to drive or go on that weekend trip to Las Vegas.

As unsavoury as their methods are to the civilized (who like to keep their violence at arm's length), Canadians concerned about the tar sands could learn a lot from them.

Two Weeks, Young Man

Outrageously, the ruling five nuclear powers today gave Iran two weeks to come clean about its nuclear program. Do as I say, not as I do. These countries (US, Russia, China, UK, France) have thousands of nuclear warheads at their disposal and no one, repeat no one, can demand one scrap of information about their nuclear programs. Why do we allow this hypocrisy to continue?

Yet no one asks these questions. Not the media, not politicians, not pundits, not religious leaders, not CEOs, nobody with power. Can you hear all the sheep braying along with the chorus line. To war!

I shouldn't even be wasting these key strokes. What can you do with an insane system?

For once, Iran has the moral high ground and I think they hold all the cards. The powerful always fall. We just have to make sure that there are no other powers rising from the ashes after they come tumbling down.

In the News . . .

Two articles stood out for me today.

For a great overview of the excess of the G8 menu check out "Over caviar and sea urchin, G8 leaders mull food crisis." This is a beautiful example of elites ignoring the suffering of the lowest on the hierarchy at their peril. If you can't face the truth and want to rub the poor's face in your excess then your civilization is probably doomed. But you deserve it at least, it's too bad for the rest of us.

And George Monbiot does a great job exposing what protesting fisherman (and women?) are actually demanding through their actions. By demanding subsidies and fuel price drops, they are actually saying they don't want a future for their children. Amazing! Keep up the insane work boys!

Tennis Anyone?

It's perhaps strange but I'm going to try and tie a tennis match to what's going on in the world. Today Rafael Nadal beat the most amazing tennis player I've had the pleasure of watching at Wimbledon. And I've been watching for as long as I can remember, my father being a tennis nut of sorts. I can still recall a friend at probably age twelve complaining that all my dad and I did was watch tennis. If only I'd been playing all that time.

Anyway for the past few years Roger Federer has won it all. He was unstoppable. He was a machine. Serve, volley, backhand, forehand. He never broke a sweat but you can believe all his opponents did. He cruised. I went to see him in Toronto once, such was his legend. We had to see him in the flesh if from the upper decks.

But now there's a new champion, another machine. Federer has been displaced. Nadal is even better it seems, though I haven't seen as many of his matches to judge.

So what's happening? Obviously it seems that Federer has peaked. He has lost to one or two other players before today at Wimbledon. So there is a temptation to view this as the end of his reign. But he's only 26. What has happened, I surmise, is that another player of even more complexity than Federer has come along. Up and up the level of complexity in men's tennis rises.

And it's the same for the world. We become more and more complex every day and with every new degree and qualification and technology to do the smallest task. Each of us accepts a role in society that makes complete sense and contributes to the whole. However we have boxed ourselves into a corner. With increasing complexity comes a decline in resiliency.

Resiliency is essential to the survival of all beings. As humans, we cannot expect that complexity will continue to grow infinitely. Eventually complex systems, both natural and human (which are arguably natural as well) collapse thanks to their complexity. They are unable to cope when the status quo changes. Humans, above all animals, have both the potential to mitigate this threat but also to reach staggering heights of complexity.

Do we have the strength to increase our own resiliency against the powerful desire to increase complexity?

Mine Your Own Business

The Government of Canada is designating 16 lakes across the country to be tailing ponds for mining operations. These lakes will be poisoned forever but it makes perfect sense to the government and corporations such as Vale Inco and Imperial Metals. According to the law invoked the lakes will become "tailings impoundment areas."

According to Elizabeth Gardiner, vice-president for technical affairs for the Mining Association of Canada: “In some cases, particularly in Canada, with this kind of topography and this number of natural lakes and depressions and ponds … in the end it's really the safest option for human health and for the environment."

Further evidence of the insanity of civilized humans.

Stone Age Anarchism

A friend of mine once remarked: "We're either going to walk to the Stone Age or be catapulted to the Stone Age".

Most of us would view a return to the Stone Age with suspicious eyes. No television, no McDonald's some might lament. Others, more wisely, would look to vaccinations, stable food supplies and, to quote George W. Bush, "living in caves" when questioning a return to the Stone Age.

The Stone Age was a tough life with lots of suffering but strong people using sharp minds survived and thrived in an abundant world. In their observation and study of the natural world they inhabited, they were our intellectual equals. In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond lauds a hunter-gatherer friend in Papua New Guinea as being just as intelligent as himself, a Western academic. It's just a different kind of intelligence based on different life ways. Don't be quick to judge people as not as intelligent as you just because they don't have a high IQ; after all if you invented the test you're going to do well at it.

At the start of the 21st century, many of us think humans have never been higher, never been more developed. Thanks to oil, we barely have to use our muscles anymore. We can eat what we want because if we make ourselves sick our doctors will have a cure or at least a long-term remedy. We all get cancer and other environmental diseases and consider it normal. We stare at screens all day and all night. Does putting a person on the moon make these truths moot?

Life is beautiful but it is also sad and full of suffering wherever you live. This has never changed. Even the very rich, hiding away from the world, are victims. Every time they squeeze that trigger on the Febreeze bottle, they can't escape cancer and the chemical soup soon to flow through their veins. Why me, I can hear them cry.

But the worst part about today is that we are taking down the rest of the species of the world with us. A third of amphibians are endangered and many are going extinct. The polar bear is about to join them. If you listen carefully you can hear rainforests felled in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia. How many more species that we never knew (and never should have known) are silently departing at our hands. And very worst, we are pushing the earth's climate to levels unseen for millions of years. All because our greed is never satiated. All because the only way we know is up. Many voices warn against this ecocide but they are ignored unless they say we can buy our way out of climate change and mass extinctions.

Now realistically few people are going to choose the Stone Age over this rampant civilization. The advertising is just too good, think about all those car ads versus public transit; public transit always loses. It's too scary to actually have to take control of our lives. So we hand our power over to governments and corporations who are extremely happy to have it. They'll tell you that you can be sustainable and responsible as long as you pick up this new miracle product.

But more and more people are rejecting these false dreams and are taking their power back. They are turning away and powering themselves down. They are building communities and using the fading power of civilization to prepare for the low energy world to come. They are rejecting the state and only using their own two hands and their sharp minds to create what they need to create to survive. This means no destructive mines sucking minerals out of the earth to be sent to a factory in China to make a product that to purchase you must sell your labour and become a slave.

Humans can make homes without civilization. They can make tools without civilization. They can hunt and grow food without civilization. They can most definitely be healthy without civilization. Most importantly they can live in balance with the rest of the natural world and not threaten all life and leave their children and other beings with a diminished world.

These are the lessons of the Stone Age.

Civilization will never be sustainable not with 7 billion grasping hands and hungry mouths crying out for more, more. There is no plan. Civilized humans have no goal, no finish line. We have nothing to live for. If we are here for our children then why do we threaten their future? If we are here to "fix" nature then we have it coming and deserve our fate. Is it to know everything in the universe, to become gods? The only thing that makes sense, to me, is that we are here for ourselves, for this moment and we don't care about the future.

Turning away is finally a meaningful goal. Living as just another creature on this earth is a happy choice and one that I, and my friend and many more people are starting to make. Maybe the Stone Age is too far for you. Turning away is a start. The lights are much too bright the way we are all currently headed.