The environmental havoc of Canada’s single-minded fossil fuel exploitation is finding more recognition, especially outside of the country. Its economic damage is far less understood, and rather than being under-discussed, is distorted by self-interested energy firms and their political servants in Tory and Liberal governments across the country.
In a bold article as the Tyee’s new writer-in-residence, Andrew Nikiforuk summarizes some of the economic damage and risk being done to the entire country as a consequence of Alberta’s surging dirty energy sector.
Every week Canada’s least favorite Emir, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, earnestly lectures Canadians that the mighty tar sands are a boon to the national economy because “Alberta’s engine drives Canada.”
Just a week ago the eloquent Stelmach told the folks at the annual Canadian premiers conference that the project has the grandest of national visions: “It’s all about jobs and it’s all about the tax revenue that will flow to the federal government and the provinces.” In other words dirty oil now cements prosperity and serves up stacks of cash for fat and lazy governments.
But simple-minded statements from members of Alberta’s Wahabi-like sect, the province’s well-tarred Tory party, are now a dime a dozen. They all read like incredulous Saudi Arabian press releases. For the real economic impacts of the tar sands, an almost untold business story, are really about a monetary hurricane and massive structural change. In fact the economic fallout from rising oil exports, in the absence of sensible national policy, totally dwarf the project’s significant environmental messes.
David Harvey, the geographer behind the “crises of capitalism” video that’s been making the rounds, gave an interview with DemocracyNow! during the 2009 G20 Summit in London. Among other topics Harvey discusses the role of housing and urban development in the recent crisis and the rise of social movements post-crisis, like the Right to the City in New York.
David Harvey, on April 2 2009′s Democracy Now:
I think right now it’s a desperate moment, in the sense that if we’re going to come out of this crisis in any different kind of way, it’s going to be because of the formation of very strong social movements that say enough is enough. We’ve got to change the world in a very, very different way.
Now, social movements of this kind don’t sort of form overnight. They take a little while. I mean, it’s interesting when you look back. In 1929, there’s the stock market crash. The social movements didn’t really start getting into motion until 1932, ’33. It took about three years. Right now, I think we’re in a legitimation crisis. They’re trying to rescue the system as is. And I think more and more people are beginning to say this is an illegitimate system, and therefore we have to think about doing something different.
Out of that, likely to come, all kinds of different social movements. We have this movement, which is a relatively new movement, called the Right to the City movement. It’s here in New York City, and it’s several other cities in the United States. There’s a national coalition. It’s small right now, and it’s getting its act together. But these kinds of things can grow very fast, very quickly.
“Be gay: the peace movement needs you.”
By Mr. Fish at Truthdig.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Best Party’s successful Reykjavik municipal campaign, headed by comedian and punk rocker Jon Gnarr.
The New York Times has produced a fantastic profile of the new mayor, who is now governing the city in a coalition with the Social Democrats.
In his acceptance speech he tried to calm the fears of the other 65.3 percent. “No one has to be afraid of the Best Party,” he said, “because it is the best party. If it wasn’t, it would be called the Worst Party or the Bad Party. We would never work with a party like that.”
With his party having won 6 of the City Council’s 15 seats, Mr. Gnarr needed a coalition partner, but ruled out any party whose members had not seen all five seasons of “The Wire.”
I appreciate the campaign promise of a new polar bear exhibit at the zoo. It seems odd — with me coming from Calgary, where the city’s zoo removed a controversial polar bear exhibit — but is actually thoughtful. Several polar bears have been shot swimming to Iceland, the result of global warming. Better to capture them and introduce them to the Reykjavik Zoo, says Gnarr. (Another sign that we’ve switched into climate change adaptation-mode, rather than prevention).
While Iceland is a very unique case the success of the Best Party might indicate a new mode of 21st century avant-garde politics, our generation’s very own Dadaism perhaps. (Gnarrism? Bestism?) If the world is going to shit, we might as well have a good time on the way down.
Whether it is the end times or simply a moment of crisis, we should still have a laugh while we try to pull our civilization together. “Just because something is funny doesn’t mean it isn’t serious,” says Mayor Gnarr.
The Tyee is launching a four-part series called ‘Re-inventing Co-Ops for Affordable Housing.”
Part one introduces the series:
Vancouver is among the least affordable housing markets in the world, according to a report by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
That hardly comes as news to Vancouver families trapped between rents they can barely afford and the increasingly unobtainable dream of home ownership.
What appears to have been forgotten among the near-daily headlines about systematic renovictions and spiraling house prices is that for much of the last century, a third form of housing tenure frequently filled the gap between ownership and rental.
It’s called co-operative housing. More than 90,000 such homes were developed during the mid-20th century. But outside of Quebec, almost none are being built today.
As part of an ongoing exploration of affordable housing alternatives, The Tyee and The Tyee Solutions Society invited a panel of co-op housing experts to discuss the question: Could co-op housing be reinvented for the 21st century?
I’ve been so horrified by the failure of the so-called ownership society that I don’t intend to participate in the traditional housing-debt system (nor might I be able). But, I’m also skeptical of Richard Florida’s “rentership society” — in the sense, at least, that it replaces a permanent debtor class with a permanent (but more mobile) leasing class.
We need to find new ways to house people with dignity, while insulating them from corrupt finance and the speculation of capital. What has been done to the state of housing during my lifetime has been horrendous and shameful, as the story of Canadian co-operative housing policy and funding shows. Time for another look at co-op housing.
