Glenn Hubbers

I haven’t heard a great deal about this story but this video from The Real News tells quite the tale of the workers fight with this global mining company.

This story is current and local, but other than that is not really news.  Every industry is now dominated by these multinational corporations.  Their mandate, which is the driven by the market economy that our culture has embraced, is to increase shareholder value with all other considerations being secondary.  Another example of this on a somewhat smaller scale was very well articulated by George Monbiot in a recent column which he ends with, “This might look like a battle over diversity and local character. Underneath it is a struggle for democracy.”

No amount of effort on the part of citizens or workers, regardless of the small successes in battles that may be won from time to time in communities around the world, will have any appreciable or lasting impact on the relentless drive to consolidate, merge, grow, profit or manipulate the circumstances under which these companies operate.

Only a change of mandate for corporations will do that, and that gets to the very definition of corporation and the bedrock definitions in our world economy.

Whether it’s the effect on Vale-Inco workers in Sudbury, the decimation of locally owned small business in Britain by big box stores, the poverty and malnutrition of the citizens of the Nigeria, the genocide in Darfur, or 100,000 dead Iraqi’s killed by the Americans in order to open the country back up to the oil industry, you name it, it’s the same story.  Virtually all of these examples are a direct result of our economic system.

So long as the workers of Sudbury, and everywhere around the world that people are still allowed to vote, continue to fight these small battles while simultaneously voting for the status quo, the long term outlook is bleak.

Monbiot is absolutely correct.  It’s a struggle for democracy.  Not the sham that most of the democratic world is involved in where most of the world votes between 2-3 parties with the same world view anyway and electoral results would not actually change anything meaningful.  Real democracy.  Where the basis of the world economy, the results of the drive for never-ending growth, and the mandate of corporations to profit above all else rather than benefit local communities can be questioned and debated.

In small groups around the world, when the results of all of this hit home, we rally and fight and say we want it to be different, and then every 1-2-3-4 years or so we vote for it to be exactly the same.

Glenn Hubbers Economics

I’ve just arrived home after a two week holiday in New Brunswick (what a lovely province!) and Nova Scotia, sorted through the mail pile and found the latest Conservative bulk mailing.  You know the ones, they come on a single 8.5 x 11 black and white sheet with some policy initiative or other outlined and a “Who is on the right track” question (Ignatieff, Harper, Layton or May) with an arrow pointing to Harper’s name of course.  We seem to get one every week or so.

Of course, all of this is merely a means to compile the Conservatives electoral database and that’s fine as that’s the way the game is played, though I would strongly object if they were found financing this through MP’s budgets rather than party funds. Hmmm…

This latest mailing, though, states, “The Conservative government.  Investing in airports. Investing in you.” and goes on to talk about the investments in airport security that the feds are making.

Well no one would object to being safer, of course, but I have to ask how often have you not felt safe on a flight from a Canadian airport?  We had that Air India event, but that was quite a few years ago.  And 911 not so long ago.  Of course joining with the US and going round the world pissing people off will make enemies, so I guess it’s logical that we may be at some increased threat level from what used to be.

Frankly I feel far safer using air travel that driving in a car, particularly here in the GTA where we seem to license almost anyone who can see over the wheel and many who cannot, with no consideration of testing people on manual transmissions, no consideration of the differences in winter driving, no consideration of mandated snow tires, etc.

And half of this expenditure seems to be based on making air travel more efficient to “improve the passenger and freight air service experience.”

To what end? To decrease the hassle factor and thus increase people’s interest in traveling by air?

Where is the recognition from the Conservatives that air travel will seriously decline as a means of personal transport in years to come? Serious Climate Change policy would make this necessary, so I can understand why the Cons don’t mention this as many of them still don’t believe in it, and they still view such policies as a choice.  Fair enough, even if I disagree.  But Peak Oil will make the diminishing of air travel inevitable in the not too distant future, except for the super rich (and likely the politicians spending our money) so there is really no choice involved.

If you don’t believe me, reference what Jeff Rubin has to say about air travel.  He lays out the case fairly well.

It’s astounding that the Conservative Party still manages to snow people into believing they are strong stewards of the economy, when they get so much of it wrong.  They completely failed to predict the current recession even though many of us were saying as loudly as possible that it was coming.  And they seem to be missing all the signs of economic upheaval that Peak Oil will bring.

Banking on the future of air travel is a flight of fancy.

Glenn Hubbers Book Reviews, Economics, Energy, Environmental, Peak Oil, Transportation

President Barack Obama laid out a sweeping vision for high-speed rail in the United States this past week.  Obama has already secured $8 billion in funding in the stimulus bill and plans to pursue another $5 billion over the next 5 years.

Joe Romm at Climate Progress provided an excellent summary of the announcement.

In the meantime, Canada’s [non existent] national transportation strategy looks like this:

Yeah, I know, they’ve been really busy planning for our future, haven’t they?

Once the global recession ends, oil prices will resume their inevitable march to record levels which will be heralded with great fanfare in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland, but will serve to continue to hamper the economies of all other regions.  Airlines will switch from fighting off bankruptcy due to the recession to fighting off bankruptcy due to rising fuel costs.

In the age of Peak Oil and Climate Change, High Speed Rail must be a national priority in Canada as a means of minimizing short haul flights and large numbers of cars.  We need to outline this vision now and put the systems in place before it’s too late.  Government economic stimulus would be well placed to be working toward that vision.

I fear, however, that what we will see first is >$200 per barrel oil, airlines asking for bailouts, a public clamouring for alternate transportation plans, and a government who says, “Well, you can’t blame us because no one saw this coming.”

Glenn Hubbers Climate Change, Economics, Peak Oil, Transportation

While istening to a podcast from the National Post this morning about the upcoming leaders debates, I was curious about one of the comments from a political science professor Dr Brooke Jeffrey from Concordia University.

She stated that the Green Party is “not running candidates in, I think, over 50 seats.”

So, doing a bit of quick internet search, which the good Dr Jeffrey is obviously incapable of doing, reveals that the Green Party is in fact running in 303 of the 308 ridings in the country.  It then took me about 5 minutes to get confirmation from the party.

Further, I found out that no party has a full slate, and I am referencing the CBC for that.

OK, technically the NDP have 308 but one resigned after the registration deadline over the controversy of skinny dipping with someone he shouldn’t.  The Liberals have 307, deciding not to run against Elizabeth May in Central Nova and the Conservatives have 307, deciding not to run against André Arthur, an independent who is seeking re-election Quebec’s Portneuf-Jacques Cartier riding.

Interesting stuff.  But my point here is that if this is the state of knowledge by a political science professor, a person expected to have in depth knowledge about the political choices available to Canadians, it is small wonder that explaining the necessarily complex policy to address an extremely complex issue like Climate Change, with it’s far reaching economic implications, is difficult.  Especially so in the forced 30 second sound bytes demanded by our mainstream media.

Glenn Hubbers Canada Votes!, Climate Change, Economics, Media

At the halfway mark in the campaign, various people have been strongly encouraging “strategic voting”, particularly the Liberals as they try to make the (false) sales pitch that “they are the only party other than the Conservatives who can form government, so we should all just vote for them to stop Harper.”  There’s even a web site (built by Liberal supporters, but who’s counting?) saying it’s necessary to vote for the Liberals for action on the environment.

Ah, the memories.  In the last election, I think I recall Jack Layton wanting to “borrow our vote” and Paul Martin wanting us to vote strategically “just this once.”  Or was it the other way round?

I’ve written about so-called strategic voting before, and obviously I’m dead set against the practice since I believe that we should all vote for the party whose core values most agree with our own.  Unless we vote for what we want we will never get it.

The problem with all this is that I can’t ever remember any election in my entire lifetime when voters have not been asked to vote strategically, either by the Conservatives or the Liberals depending on their position in the polls.  Can you?

The perceived need vote strategically, otherwise known as hold-your-nose-and-vote-for-what-you-dislike-to-stop-what-you-hate, is directly related to our backward first-past-the-post voting system.  You know, the one that results in false majorities and even false governments.

So we’re caught in an impossible situation, because the two parties who always urge us to vote strategically are the very ones who gain the most from not changing the system that makes it necessary to even contemplate.  The two parties who will remain in power if we continue to answer this call are the very parties who are committed to not changing the system.

Are we seriously going to buy into these lies once again?  Does anyone seriously imagine a future election where either the Liberals or Conservatives are not asking us to vote strategically for them?

There is only one way to eliminate the perceived need for strategic voting, and that is to stop doing it, so that people who are committed to ridding our country of the yoke of this antiquated voting system are elected to do so.

The Green Party is (the only party) committed to doing just that.  So my strategic vote, my vote for the future of our country, to get rid of a self-perpetuating system that does not work, will be to vote Green.

If you decide that you must vote strategically “just this once more”, well, I can’t and won’t tell you how to vote.  But please remember these words from Albert Einstein,

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.”

The Strategic Voter…

Glenn Hubbers Canada Votes!, Economics, Green Policy, Peak Oil, Strategic Voting

The discussion in any election campaign inevitably turns to “The ballot question” or voters Top-of-Mind Issues.  Unfortunately, these are usually whatever the media and pollsters decide they will be, rather than what the public is actually concerned about.  And that is where contact with voters through door knocking, community events, or the internet (particularly for a small, growing party such as the Greens) is vitally important.

Regardless, it is abundantly clear that the economy is a top of mind concern, particularly for voters in Ontario and even more particularly for any communities dependent on the manufacturing sector, auto jobs, pulp and paper, etc.  Whether it is the number 1 issue or number 2 or number 3 is hardly important.  It is number 1 for anyone affected by the economic slowdown by losing their source of income.

As you talk to people and move through the spectrum of “I’m already unemployed”, “I’m afraid for my job”, “My job is fairly secure” to “I’m  not worried” (though the last group is getting smaller by the day), you find the focus moves from short term to long term economic policy.

In other words, when you are out of work, you are focussed on whatever short term policy is going to change that situation, and rightfully so.  Long term can wait till after you know where your mortgage payment is coming from.

I can understand this completely.  While my job is not (yet?) in jeopardy, given the unpaid leave time that I took to run in this campaign, Mollie and I had some long discussion about the implications of the financial hit.

But the danger in focusing on short term fixes is that they can result in the worst long term policy, or potentially hide that these policies are, in fact, achieving nothing at all.

My example comes from this story in today’s Globe and Mail.

The U.S. government is preparing to escalate its emergency market bailout and “address systemic risks” with the creation of an agency to take bad assets off the balance sheets of the nation’s foundering banks.

While on the surface this may appear to be a good thing, and certainly the US government had to do something in an attempt to halt the failure of the financial sector, it should be noted that this does not actually remove the debt, it just transfers ownership of that debt from shareholders to someone else, namely the US taxpayer.

My point of all this is that, while short term measures are certainly necessary to protect an industry or large groups of citizens, unless these are followed up by proper long term economic planning, the entire exercise is rather pointless.  Without a long term vision in everything we do, we are dooming ourselves to a repitition of the same mistake.

Thus I come to the Green Party economic policy.

One of the things that I have been saying about the difference between the Green and Liberal tax shift plans, besides the obvious details and watering down when the Liberals adopted this plank from our platform, is to ask yourself, if not for the Climate Crisis and needing to differentiate from the Conservatives, would the Liberals be doing this at all?  If they were still in power, would they be proposing this policy?  I think the answer is absolutely not.

But the Green Party would, for the simple reason that we believe fundamentally that, regardless of how you feel about how large the tax burden should be in Canada, and regardless of your spending priorities for that money, the best allocation of the tax burden should be on those things that we want to minimize in society.  Pollution. Waste. Resource use.  Energy use.  And greenhouse gases happen to fall into the category of pollution.  We also believe that we should not be placing the tax burden on things that society wants more of, like jobs, income and profits.

This tax shift concept, along with any policy to address climate change, is a significant departure from the economic policies of the past which have focused merely on economic growth.  It would therefore cause some reconfiguration of the economy as Canadians and companies adjusted to the new reality of paying lower income taxes, payroll taxes and corporate taxes, while at the same time facing higher costs for energy, waste, and resources extracted from the environment.

Eventually a green economy means hiring more people, not less.  But there are people who will find themselves working in a different job than their one in the past.

That’s why we’ve developed policies to help people through this transition, and those same policies would be the short term solutions needed for today’s economic uncertainty.  But they make the best sense in the context of a long term vision.

You can read more in Vision Green, Part 1.

Glenn Hubbers Canada Votes!, Economics, Green Policy

After viewing this a few times, I am still dismayed that Global news made at least two errors in their report on the release of the Green Party Platform, “Looking Forward.”

I mean, come on, the document is only 8 pages long, not that tough of a read!  (Based, of course, on the more comprehensive policy document, Vision Green.)

You be the judge.  Here’s the clip, and below are the two errors that I caught:

In the lead off, the platform DOES NOT call for increased taxes, but instead calls for a change in the way taxes are collected.  The platform was released with a budget which indicates that the budget will still be balanced going forward.

And later, the platform DOES NOT call for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.  That would cause a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.  We call for a shift from the current NATO mission to a UN mission, for the regulation of poppy growers to supply legal, much needed pain killer medications to developing nations, and a focus on rebuilding.  Elizabeth May explains it all very eloquently in her recent interview with Steve Paikin on The Agenda.  If I can find a clip I’ll post it here later.

And then of course there is the clip in the middle from Stephen Harper.  I think his tired old rhetoric about Elizabeth being the Liberal candidate in Central Nova is getting very old for most Canadians who know it for the lie that it is.  It’s time to talk about real issues.

Glenn Hubbers Afghanistan, Canada Votes!, Economics, Green Policy, Media

Since PMSH announced last week the withdrawal of Canadian Troops from Afghanistan by 2011, some pundits are saying that because the Liberals and Conservatives now agree on a withdrawal date that Afghanistan, short of many more of our soldiers being killed during the campaign, is a non-issue for this election.

But is it really?  You be the judge.

First, I’d like to state my personal stance on the Afghan war, lest I be accused of “not supporting our troops” as some might like to say.  It goes like this.  I have a very strong disagreement with the mission in Afghanistan.  That said, my disagreement is political.  If/when I lose the political fight and the decision is made to send our fine young men and women into harms way, then I want them to be as well equipped as possible in an effort to keep them safe.  And THAT said, I believe that neither our elected representatives NOR the Canadian public should be asked to make the decision to send our troops on any mission OR keep them there to some arbitrary date without full knowledge of the implications, and that includes the dollar cost as well as the cost to the Afghan people of early withdrawal.

My view on how the Afghanistan mission should proceed is in line with Green Party policy, which you can read fully in Vision Green. My political disagreement with our mission in general stems from my belief that, while it is a justifiable action to assist the people of Afghanistan to throw off their oppressors and rebuild the democracy and vibrant culture they once had, the entire cause of the situation in Afghanistan was the decision by the Americans and Soviet Union in the 1980’s to fight their (not-so) Cold War there.  In other words, the Americans and Russians caused the problem in it’s entirety.

So while Canadians may support our contribution to the effort to free the people of Afghanistan and help the democratic government establish itself and rebuild, I really doubt that many of us support being on the front lines of a situation created by our allies.

But of course, I am digressing from the issue of dollar cost and whether it is appropriate to have parliamentary votes or elections without this information.  For my part, I think it is completely unacceptable.  To repeat, I am in no way suggesting that we leave our troops there while cutting funding, but the decision of whether and how long to extend the mission MUST be backed up by the full knowledge of the implications of that decision.

I suggest that everyone reading express their opinion at Global News.  And ask everyone you know to do the same.

Glenn Hubbers Afghanistan, Canada Votes!, Economics

Thomas Homer-Dixon wrote what I thought was an excellently worded article in today’s Globe & Mail.

In response were comments such as this:

JD Strong from Oakville, Canada writes: I’m not willing to sacrifice my freedom of choice for environmentalist fear mongering. Especially after the brutal winter we had and the cool summer we’re having now.

Environmentalism is an excuse to impose state control and planning in place of individual freedom. It extends to every aspect of our lives: cars, lightbulbs, health, work, transportation, food, clothing… everything.

Keep your laws off my freedom.

This is clearly someone for whom “environmentalism” is a bad word.  Everything even remotely associated with the word must, by definition, be bad.  He/she is clearly pre-disposed to being against everything that those “loony environmentalists” support.

This is not to say that there are no environmentalists with whom I disagree, either on goals or methods or both.  There are actually many.  But heck, I’m struggling to come up with a single label for any group of people which I look at with such revulsion that I believe they are incapable of even a single good idea.  Not one.  I believe that even the most radical groups out there have reasons for their opinions, and I would choose to hear them before I dismiss them.  It is just not in me to be that close minded.  I’ve even found myself agreeing with Stephen Harper from time to time.  (George W. Bush, not so much, but I’d never say it’s impossible!)

Now I’m certain that JD Strong from Oakville, Canada likely has some strongly held opinions about the level of tax burden in Canada/Ontario/Oakville, and perhaps he/she could make some very strong cases as to how that money is spent by the particular level of government.  Fair enough.  He/she is entitled to those opinions.  We may disagree, but that’s what makes a healthy democracy, and I’d be willing to listen and consider the points.

But just for the sake of discussion, if I agree to stipulate to all of his/her points on both the size of the tax burden and the spending priorities, I still cannot come to grips with why anyone argues with the central philosophy of modern environmentalism (and for that matter the central philosophy underlying Green Party policy) which, in the words of Homer-Dixon, is to “tax things we want to discourage, such as pollution and resource waste, not things we want to encourage, like income, employment and investment.”

I will admit, this has to be my single biggest internal struggle with my involvement in politics.  This philosophy seems to me to be so obvious, so in-line with the long term interests of our society, that I can’t quite come to terms with how anyone can argue against it.

Even if you are one who thinks Climate Change is bunk.  Even if you believe that Peak Oil is a myth.  Fine, for this discussion only I will stipulate that.  Now please tell me how this philosophy, placing the tax burden squarely on the things we want to discourage, does not make sense?

And yet people continue to reject the idea out of hand and Canada has exactly one political party which holds this philosophy as a basic premise of economic policy.

Glenn Hubbers Canada Votes!, Climate Change, Economics, Environmental, Green Policy, Media, Peak Oil

Since the introduction of the Liberal carbon tax and tax shifting plan a couple of weeks ago, I have found myself in numerous conversations trying to explain the difference from the Green Party’s plan.

Boiling this down to sound bytes is a difficult, but necessary task for us.  There are many small differences, but a few key ones.

1. Essentially, the Liberals have proposed a very watered down version of the GPC plan.  It’s pointed in the right direction, but is taking baby steps, and we don’t believe that it will get us where we need to be in the time frame necessary to avoid dangerous climate change tipping points.  The Liberals propose to start at $10 per tonne, increasing to $40 per tonne.  The GPC proposed $50 per tonne to start.  The Liberals claim our plan is “excessive.”  We say, well, do you want to address climate change or do you want to just talk about it some more?
2. Half of Canada’s emissions come from the largest industrial emitters.  This includes power generation, the cement industry, and the oil & gas companies.  (This is why the GPC also endorses a cap & trade system for these emitters.  This is similar to the Conservatives, except we want actual caps instead of intensity caps, and similar to the NDP except that we admit that the costs will be passed on to the consumer where they seem to be under the illusion that those big fat corporations will just absorb all the costs.) But a great portion of the other half comes from transportation, which is why we do not agree with the Liberal’s exemption for gasoline.
3. Most importantly, suppose for a moment that climate change did not exist.  Do you think that the Liberals would still be proposing this policy?  I think not.  But the GPC would.  Why?  Because we believe in tax shifting, or placing the tax burden on resource use, pollution and waste and decreasing the burden on employment and personal income, as a basic concept of fiscal policy.

Glenn Hubbers Canada Votes!, Climate Change, Economics, Energy, Green Policy