photo: Charles Campbell representing the Dogwood Initiative at Earth Day, late April, in one of the warmer parts of the northern country of Canada.You are an elite group, able and willing to travel to Copenhagen for this conference. Lacking my own opportunity to participate (I guess there are no eco-geeks there who can set up an on-line conference ability?) I can only blog my thoughts on your process.
I have some very serious concerns. What I’m hearing is that everyone in the north owes everyone in the south a whole bunch of money.
Really? You think we all live in mansions with three cars in the driveway?
I realize there are those, in the “industrialized” world who enjoy all their creature comforts precisely because the poorer, less industrialized world is maintained as such with sweatshop labour and cheap exports. But many, in the “richer” nations, are not enjoying those luxuries. In Canada, this winter (and it’s friggin’ cold out there), anywhere between 200,000 and 300,000 homeless people are struggling to survive. These people die on a regular basis, unaccounted for, unreported. They are our “disappeared.”
When I learned, twenty years ago, that my lifestyle choices are directly connected to the quality of life of my brothers and sisters in poorer nations I began to make significant changes. There are others like me. Not enough, but there are some who live in poverty, with a vow of voluntary simplicity precisely because we care about the earth and all our relations. We do not work for corporations, we will not buy their products, we do not encourage them in any way.
Here in the “first world,” where we have unprecedented levels of child poverty and homelessness, our tax money is being stolen to pay for expensive Olympic games, unelected Senators, and irresponsible government officials. We’re seeing closures to hospitals and schools, an end to arts funding, and the destruction of indescribable ancient forests for an oil pipeline that will connect to tankers running up and down our coast for export purposes. Why in the world should we, who are barely managing to keep from freezing to death, be expected to give up more of our tax money?
I agree that those who created the climate crisis ought to be held responsible. But me, and my tax money, did not cause the climate crisis. I am an exemplary environmentalist. There are corporate elites and the ultra wealthy living in mansions in the desert, using way more resources than anyone is entitled to. Go after them for money!
Better yet, negotiate for equipment and technology rather than money. Ask corporations to donate equipment and expertise to build transportation systems in your land, ask them to provide wind turbines and solar panels, ask for agricultural specialists to help recreate your soil and establish permaculture systems like your ancestors used. While you’re at it, ask those corporate greed heads to do the same for us!
Money is not the answer. You can’t eat money. You can’t burn it to keep you warm. Well, you could, but it’s not a very efficient use of it.
Money is not the answer, and capitalism is not the solution.
Did you really believe that the world’s government and economic “leaders” were going to show up at your conference and endorse whatever the people demand? They all met in Geneva last week. Their economic policy has been secured. They don’t care about you and your COP 15 conference. The best you can do, having burned up all that fuel to get there, is network and figure out who the independent power producers are and what technology they’ve got and convince them to share a portion of it with those who can’t afford to buy it. Talk them into public or cooperative ownership, so we don’t have to watch them get rich and turn into future Enrons because they built their new energy house on a faulty capitalist foundation.
And think of all the extremely poor and homeless people in every country in the capitalist world who are victims of economic policy. We are, I think, willing to share expertise and materials to help you build something that will sustain you through the dramatic climate changes that will undoubtedly follow. But we, too, are victims of the corporate capitalist greed culture. They’re stealing our land, our resources, our children’s minds …. they’re creating more consumers and more consumerism. We are not them, and we don’t want you to become them either.
I have some very serious concerns. What I’m hearing is that everyone in the north owes everyone in the south a whole bunch of money.
Really? You think we all live in mansions with three cars in the driveway?
I realize there are those, in the “industrialized” world who enjoy all their creature comforts precisely because the poorer, less industrialized world is maintained as such with sweatshop labour and cheap exports. But many, in the “richer” nations, are not enjoying those luxuries. In Canada, this winter (and it’s friggin’ cold out there), anywhere between 200,000 and 300,000 homeless people are struggling to survive. These people die on a regular basis, unaccounted for, unreported. They are our “disappeared.”
When I learned, twenty years ago, that my lifestyle choices are directly connected to the quality of life of my brothers and sisters in poorer nations I began to make significant changes. There are others like me. Not enough, but there are some who live in poverty, with a vow of voluntary simplicity precisely because we care about the earth and all our relations. We do not work for corporations, we will not buy their products, we do not encourage them in any way.
Here in the “first world,” where we have unprecedented levels of child poverty and homelessness, our tax money is being stolen to pay for expensive Olympic games, unelected Senators, and irresponsible government officials. We’re seeing closures to hospitals and schools, an end to arts funding, and the destruction of indescribable ancient forests for an oil pipeline that will connect to tankers running up and down our coast for export purposes. Why in the world should we, who are barely managing to keep from freezing to death, be expected to give up more of our tax money?
I agree that those who created the climate crisis ought to be held responsible. But me, and my tax money, did not cause the climate crisis. I am an exemplary environmentalist. There are corporate elites and the ultra wealthy living in mansions in the desert, using way more resources than anyone is entitled to. Go after them for money!
Better yet, negotiate for equipment and technology rather than money. Ask corporations to donate equipment and expertise to build transportation systems in your land, ask them to provide wind turbines and solar panels, ask for agricultural specialists to help recreate your soil and establish permaculture systems like your ancestors used. While you’re at it, ask those corporate greed heads to do the same for us!
Money is not the answer. You can’t eat money. You can’t burn it to keep you warm. Well, you could, but it’s not a very efficient use of it.
Money is not the answer, and capitalism is not the solution.
Did you really believe that the world’s government and economic “leaders” were going to show up at your conference and endorse whatever the people demand? They all met in Geneva last week. Their economic policy has been secured. They don’t care about you and your COP 15 conference. The best you can do, having burned up all that fuel to get there, is network and figure out who the independent power producers are and what technology they’ve got and convince them to share a portion of it with those who can’t afford to buy it. Talk them into public or cooperative ownership, so we don’t have to watch them get rich and turn into future Enrons because they built their new energy house on a faulty capitalist foundation.
And think of all the extremely poor and homeless people in every country in the capitalist world who are victims of economic policy. We are, I think, willing to share expertise and materials to help you build something that will sustain you through the dramatic climate changes that will undoubtedly follow. But we, too, are victims of the corporate capitalist greed culture. They’re stealing our land, our resources, our children’s minds …. they’re creating more consumers and more consumerism. We are not them, and we don’t want you to become them either.
