Canada’s genocidal legacy

    “This is an issue not many Canadians care about,” said Chief Robert Joseph (below), executive director of the Residential Schools Survivor Society, during UBC’s Dialogue on the Legacy of Indian Residential Schools. This event was set up to decide what UBC’s role could be in the healing process of Residential Schools’ survivors, intergenerational survivors, and the decolonization of all aspects of our country, First Nations people and settlers (non-First Nations people) alike. Looking around the Sty-wet-tan Hall in the UBC House of Learning during the gathering of survivors, students, UBC faculty and administrators, there were a lot of nodding to Bobby Joseph’s statement, which to me, got to the core of what is stalling the reconciliation process.

       UBC President Stephen Toope’s address which opened the event is a perfect example. Toope compared moving forward from Residential Schools to Remembrance Day, with “lest we forget” as a tag line throughout the speech. While this may seem appropriate to many, it missed the reason for the urgency in dealing with Residential Schools: this is not about remembrance, but dealing with the schools’ ramifications, which continue to cause the deaths and suffering of First Nations people. Toope also missed the opportunity to understand why his speech was inappropriate, firstly by not admitting his unfamiliarity with the subject, and then also by leaving soon after he finished speaking.
    In the public sphere, these schools are often referred to as a “sad chapter in our history”, as an anomaly unconnected to the present rather than a crucial step in taking from First Nations people their land and resources, which has led to the enormous poverty, lateral violence, addictions, mental illness and high suicide rates in First Nations communities we see today.
    The program of government mandated Residential Schools was begun in 1892; the last school closed in 1996, with some families and nations facing five generations of torture and separation from a way of life practiced for time immemorial. Children were forcibly taken from their families, a practice forbidden by the UN Convention of Genocide Article two, which Canada signed in 1948, which defines genocide in several ways including “forcibly transferring children of [one] group to another group.” Not only were they removed from family, but they were also taught through example that the way to deal with one another was through violence. 
       At these schools, children were beaten and tortured for speaking their language, with the expressed aim to assimilate First Nations peoples into the lower ranks of Canadian society. These facts are fairly well-known to the mainstream Canadian public; however, what happened to children during their time at Residential Schools was only the beginning of a cycle of violence, abuse, and devaluation of Indigenous people which continues to this day. The government’s response of paying survivors off, and setting up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission can only be a ineffective, given there is little incentive for settlers to attend.

    Bev Jacobs, an activist and academic who spoke at the Dialogue, framed the issue using the metaphor of an abusive relationship: a spouse who is being abused cannot reconcile with her abuser until the abuse stops. The abuser needs to know that what they are doing is wrong: we, the mainstream settler public needs to know both what Residential Schools were, how their legacy has been passed down, and how we benefit from the genocide of First Nations people by the dispossession of their lands and resources.

    Many settlers respond with guilt and defensiveness when they hear these stories. However, both emotions simply allow us to avoid the work of changing our nation so that it lives up to the standards of goodwill and justice in its image. The action we need to take was clearly outlined by the speakers at the Dialogue: settlers must educate themselves about Residential Schools, try to not consign it to some distant past, and spread it to those who do not know.

deconstructing doctrine: R2P and Kosovo

    In 2004, I took Poli-Sci 260 (“intro to global politics”) at UBC. We studied “humanitarian war”, and examined the 1999 Kosovo conflict as a case study. We learned about the doctrine called “the reponsibility to protect” (or R2P), described as a new, emerging norm in international politics. The doctrine supported the use military force to prevent civilian killings in other countries. Frequently described as being endorsed by the U.N, what’s rarely also mentioned is that to attack a country without U.N. Security Council authorization, is still a war crime. No such authorization was sought before this war.

    The Kosovo Conflict was an air campaign by NATO countries (including Canada) against Yugoslavia, ostensibly a reaction to ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands of Kosovar Albanians by ethnic Serbs. However, NATO was only using claims of human rights abuses as a pretext for war. After the war, inspectors were unable to find the tens of thousands dead bodies alleged to exist in mass graves. It was later learned that the Racak massacre, critical to NATO’s propaganda efforts, was planted by Albanian militia. Of the ethnic cleansing that did occur, the overwhelming majority happened after the bombing began, when Yugoslavia invaded Kosovo in response to NATO’s attack. But ethnic cleansing that happened after a war started surely can’t be used to justify starting it.
    To be sure, when studying a topic, it’s good to study all perspectives of a conflict, and it’s valid and useful to study legal justifications offered for war. It’s really inappropriate however, to teach a lecture hall filled with students, about the doctrine of R2P and the Kosovo context, and not bother to mention that NATO’s claims were totally bogus.
    Poli 260 is a foundation course for poli-sci students, and a popular elective for many students. Making sure those students don’t leave university with delusions about world affairs and of Canada should be a high priority for us.

Book Review–Joel Bakan's "childhood under siege: how big business targets children"

   “I live in Vancouver, British Columbia, one of the most beautiful cities in the world,” UBC Law professor Joel Bakan writes in his new book Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children. “Surrounded by mountains and ocean, the city is a paradise of beaches and gardens, parks and yoga studios; a hub of green ideas, progressive politics, and entertainment industry glitter...But there is a dark underside to my hometown”.
    In case there was any doubt, Bakan’s affinity for the city was again demonstrated by his decision to officially release the book on October 1st to a packed audience in Woodward’s second lecture hall. Presented by the Vancouver Institute, his roughly hour and a half talk touched on several important points raised in the book, and was united by the question: “what did neoliberalism do to children and childhood?”
    To those familiar with Bakan’s work, his willingness to tackle broad areas of economic, political and social concern will be nothing new. Seven years after his luminary book and documentary film The Corporation established him as one of the leading critics of corporate power and influence, Bakan has released what can be seen as a sequel of sorts to his earlier project, exploring many of the same concerns through the lens of a topic often overlooked in contemporary activist circles. Living in a city like Vancouver, where issues surrounding poverty and homelessness are rightly given their fair share of attention, it can be easy to lose sight of the concerns surrounding those equally vulnerable to the ill-effects of corporate power, particularly when such power is manifested in the forms of entertainment, science, education, and the material goods around us.
    Indeed, although children and childhood are hardly marginal or invisible concerns, it has long been asserted, counter to the traditional values of collective concern and responsibility towards the young, that the role of raising children should rest solely upon the shoulders of parents and its (chronically underfunded) supporting institutions like schools and daycares. Society at large, in other words, should mind its own business. As Bakan points out in the book, what we’ve seen evolve is a rift between our civic traditions, and the laissez-faire, utilitarian attitude promoted by big business, particularly ascendant since the early 1980s.
    While we live in a country where the group still comes slightly ahead of the individual, we are often told that parents should be “free to choose” how their children are raised, and that through consumer choice, the market will decide how this is best done. While the slogan “free to choose” on its own may not seem particularly malignant, when combined with the corporate values of “free to market to” and “free to profit from,” the results can be highly damaging, as corporations proceed to promote behaviours and attitudes more amenable to their bottom lines than to the welfare of their young and impressionable audiences. One of the main points Bakan asks us to consider is the extent to which corporations exert a direct influence over the conditions under which those formally free choices of parents are made: while a parent may do his or her utmost to avoid fast-food for example, they are less able to control their child’s desire for it.
    Particularly engaging on this point is his discussion on the “central curriculum of childhood,” which offers a novel way of conceptualizing the role corporations play in children’s daily lives. Were a middle- or high-school to subject its students to an average of eight hours of commercial media a day (ten if we count the simultaneous use of different media), with much of it featuring violent content and promoting consumerism, egoism and the sexualization of girls and women, parents would be outraged. And yet this is how the average American adolescent spends his or her time, immersed in an education of an entirely different, but no less significant sort.
    In his book Bakan discusses five issues relating to chaildhood and big business: the emergence of a “kid marketing industry,” increased prescription and use of psychotropic drugs, exposure to harmful chemicals in commercial goods, the employment of child labour, and the infiltration of business into education. In devoting two chapters to each topic (aside child labour, which is given one), Bakan does remarkably well, in the relatively short length of 175 pages, to present the pertinent points of his arguments and  to really hammer home his message in a clear and succinct way. Scattered with engaging anecdotes, the writing succeeds in both maintaining the reader’s interest through the thick of the content, and in humanizing the harmful effects of the issues he describes. Bakan’s book equally avoids the inclination to “sensationalize” the subject matter, a pitfall he could easily have succumbed to, given the extraordinary nature of much of what he describes.
    While his focus rests mainly on the United States, Childhood Under Siege has much to say about Canada, and in fact has much to say about broader issues than simply children and childhood. Even for those with no particular interest in child-rearing and development, much can be gained from a reading of Bakan’s book, intersecting as it does with the problem of corporate power in general. How a society treats its youth rests equally at the crossroads of many other fundamental human concerns--to employ the famous quote from Nelson Mandela (as Bakan does twice in his book): “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way it treats its children.”
    One notices another thing from a reading of Bakan’s work: he’s what you might call, in the words of Chris Hedges, a “true conservative.” Not particularly radical politically, he is the perfect advocate for exposing the system itself as radical, documenting how the rise of corporate power has interfered with and debased the conservative values we really ought to cherish: civic duty, the precautionary principle, responsibility towards the young, and the possibility of a value system independent of wealth and power. Written with strong moral conviction, Childhood Under Siege continues in the direction of The Corporation in forcing us to deeply question, for our ethical well-being and perhaps ultimately for our own self-preservation, the institutions that envelop our daily lives.
    So what is this “dark underside” of which Bakan writes? As it turns out, in addition to the ignoble distinction of having the worst rate of child poverty in Canada for nearly a decade, British Columbia also has “the most astonishingly neglectful child labor laws in North America, indeed in the world.” Since 2004 in fact, it has been legal for children as young as 12 to work anywhere aside “mines, taverns, bars, and lounges,” in contravention to the International Labour Office’s 1973 Minimum Age Convention, signed by 156 countries.  A recent development in the medical world is also worthy of mention: the decision of the American Academy of Pediatrics this past month to lower its age for diagnosing and treating ADHD to four. According to these guidelines, in other words, preschoolers may now be given Ritalin or equivalent drugs, although it should be mentioned that in practice, many doctors have been doing this for some time.
   For these reasons and others, Childhood Under Siege is very relevant to the situation as it stands today in B.C.  For those especially concerned with the welfare of children, this book will be a blessing. For those concerned with some of the other subjects Bakan’s work touches on, this book is also worth a read as it adds an important dimension to the critique of the corporate institution and the set of economic policies we call “neoliberalism.” In short, for anyone wishing to understand why the process of growing up is not what it used to be, a good place to start might just be here.

What are we remembering with the red poppy?

    You’d have a difficult time finding someone who thought that a day of reflection and solemn recognition of the victims of war and fallen soldiers was a bad idea, or a waste of time. But Remembrance Day in Canada is a lot more than just that, and it always has been. I was once a patriotic, flag-waving youngster (like most people, I imagine) who enjoyed Remembrance Day. But over time I grew increasingly reluctant to identify with remembrance traditions at all (including wearing a poppy), worried about endorsing what I perceived as its dangerous implicit ideological functions. Disparate social values and attitudes come together to define this holiday that we observe (or celebrate, if you will). Deeply interwoven, these values and attitudes are also contradictory.

    Veterans Affairs Canada runs a program called “Canada Remembers”. Their website describes its mission, to help the public “come to understand and appreciate what those who have served Canada in times of war, armed  conflict and peace stand for and what they have sacrificed for their country.” You’ll notice that this sentence doesn’t focus so much on the people themselves, but rather on what they stand for. They go on about Canada’s reputation as a peace-loving country, and laud Canada’s ultimate reasons for fighting in wars: namely to protect the freedom of others and the human rights of all. This, we are told, is what has motivated soldiers to sacrifice so much, and why we must pay our respects to their sacrifice.  As romantic an image as that all is, the history of the British Empire (and by extension, Canada) is far from one of glimmering benevolence. The blame for past wars is well shared, having historical origins in imperial struggles for dominance, and succeeded by 20th century nationalism. If we’re to have a realistic picture of past wars, we must acknowledge that the historical origins of conflict have rested in the deficiencies and vices of all sides.
    I think it is also fair to say that soldiers often do not know why they are fighting, exactly, and that their motivations cannot be described as simply patriotic fervor. For example, what often motivated enlistees in WWII was the prospect of employment, which was in very short supply after the devastation of the Great Depression. I also think it’s fair to say that enthusiastic soldiers more often have a desire to simply rise up in defense of their nation, and care less about the overall narrative they are offered. This equally applies to soldiers of Nazi Germany, who undoubtedly also saw their nation as oppressed. At the very least, it is dubious to assume to know exactly what soldiers stood for and quite problematic to speak in their names. I imagine that if soldiers had sufficient insight to know the ultimate political reasons for their fight, they’d mostly be dismayed by the terrible waste of it all.
    In 1926, the white poppy was suggested by the No More War Movement (of which Albert Einstein was a prominent member) as an alternative symbol, to dissociate from the military aspect of remembrance. It added the meaning of hope for the end of all wars and recognized the casualties of all wars, including civilians (and not just British soldiers). The white poppy is covered occasionally by the Canadian press. Lately it’s been reported that the Royal Canadian Legion has considered suing the distributors of the symbol for violating their trademark. Many say that the red poppy is “already a symbol of peace” and that another symbol “denigrates remembrance”. We may want to believe this is true, but given the nationalist nature of Remembrance Day celebrations and the state’s official adoption of the poppy as a symbol, this is a bit optimistic. It’s also worth noting that the poem from which the symbol derives (Flanders Fields by Lt. Col. John McCrae) could hardly be called a lamentation on war. Sure, it is a solemn tribute to the heartbreak of soldiers’ deaths--but only to be used as a call to arms:

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
  The torch; be yours to hold it high.
  If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
        In Flanders fields.

    Lamenting war, as such, it does not. Cultural and literary historian Paul Fussell actually goes further, describing this stanza as “recruiting-poster rhetoric”, which, “first appearing in the early stages of World War I, would have, at that time, served to denigrate any negotiated peace which would end the war.” Of course, we’re all entitled to our own interpretations of symbolic meaning; if you wish to call the red poppy a symbol of peace, I won’t bother you about it. For me however, the notion is a bit of a stretch.
    Veterans Affairs was basically accurate: Remembrance Day’s primary purpose is about creating a national narrative to future generations about why wars are fought. So let’s face it, Remembrance Day is not about remembering fallen soldiers. At least not primarily, at any rate. Actually I think it is fair to say that Remembrance Day would be best described as the celebration of Canada’s war efforts and an assertion of Canadian identity. The paying of respects to fallen soldiers and veterans is a ritual within a much more important overall narrative which implicitly tells us a story of our wars. That story is one of a great nation, motivated by noble ideals, which reluctantly sacrificed its brave, young soldiers in the name of peace, justice and democracy. We celebrate the great victories that those patriotic young men helped our proud nation achieve, and recognize their selfless contribution.

Patriotism is a devotion to a certain place and people, contrary to nationalism which is inseparable from lust for power.

- George Orwell

This yearly ritual serves to rationalize in the minds of soldiers that what they did was a good thing and that it was not a waste of their lives and energies. More importantly, it is also a tale to be taught and repeated to all Canadians, of what Canada is, what ideals and values it stands for, and what its role was in historical conflicts (all in a positive light, of course). I cannot imagine describing this yearly celebration, a long part of Canadian tradition and identity, any other way. Could you picture a Canadian prime minister calling upon all Canadians to reflect on the young men whose lives were cut short in wars of debatable value and necessity, emphasizing what an appalling waste of lives war always is? I don’t think it would really be in the spirit of our day. Instead, in our solemn thanks to our troops, we note Canada’s moral superiority and tell everyone that supporting our nation at war, by itself, was a fine deed. I find this spirit inappropriate.

Remembrance Day, Vancouver.

    The specific purpose of my article in expressing my strong dislike of how Remembrance Day is celebrated is not necessarily to pass judgment on past conflicts and our participation in them (that would be beside my point). Nor is it intended to dismiss or trivialize the difficult toil or suffering veterans endured in war. Quite the opposite, in fact. Precisely because we recognize the tremendously gruelling demands of war, in addition to its staggeringly traumatic nature, we must ensure that any remembrance of it should focus primarily on recognition of its victims and not its victors. I cannot help but think that if we really wanted to recognize their ordeal, and do justice to the Canadian (or other) soldiers of the past, present and future, the majority of discussion on this day would reflect on the tragic waste that war is. In so honouring the soldiers whose lives were devastated or cut short, maybe we can protect our descendants everywhere from a similar fate. We should not allow celebration of nationalist militarism to in any way distract from this goal. Current Canadian remembrance practice tends to obscure the true nature of our war-fighting nation and what it stood for, and also to distort our role in history by framing our actions in terms of “us and them” (with “us” being the good guys, naturally).
    To support nationalism is to support the divisive force which has driven nations to hate and to make war on their enemies. I’m not hopeful that this approach will help our human race learn to co-exist in peace. It is time we stop indoctrinating ourselves and our children with simplistic and romantic caricatures of ourselves and of our past, and give them a more realistic picture of politics and war. It is the responsibility of all to prevent war, without loyalty to a nation, and without allowing our pride and investment in our own national identity to divide us from our extended human family.

Reason: the monty hall problem

    Twenty-one years ago, a reader of Parade magazine sent in a seemingly simple probability question to Marilyn Vos Savant’s “Ask Marilyn” column. The problem was as follows:
    Suppose you’re watching a game show whereby the contestant is asked to choose one of three doors. Behind one of those doors is a prize (a car) while behind either of the other two doors is a goat. The contestant picks one of the doors, but before opening it, the game show host tells the contestant to stop, then opens one of the remaining two doors, revealing a goat. The host then offers the contestant the opportunity to switch doors.

    Should the contestant switch from their initial choice, stick with their initial choice, or does it not matter either way?

    If your answer is that it doesn’t matter either way, since after an incorrect door is opened, two unopened doors remain and therefore the contestant’s chances are fifty-fifty of winning the prize, you’re in good company. Like nearly everyone who has encountered this problem for the first time, you are, however, wrong. If the contestant wants to maximize their chances of winning the prize, they should always switch away from their initial choice and pick the remaining unopened door. If they do, they have a two-thirds chance of winning the car. If they stick with their initial choice, their chances are only one in three, the same as it was before the host revealed an incorrect door. Confused yet?
    It may help to consider that, initially, it is clear that the contestant had a one-third chance of choosing the door with the car behind it. Having made that choice, the fact the host reveals additional information shouldn’t affect the probability of the contestant winning the car. This may help clarify why it is good for the contestant to switch doors. But then why does the contestant’s chances of winning jump to two in three rather than fifty-fifty from a switch? The answer lies in the fact the host reveals an incorrect door that the contestant did not initially choose.

    Let’s break it down. The contestant’s initial choice could either have been the car, goat #1 or goat #2. If it was either of the goats, of which there is a two-thirds chance, then the host would have revealed the other goat and the contestant wins the car from switching. If the contestant’s initial choice is the car, of which there is a one-third chance, then the host would have revealed either goat #1 or goat #2 and the contestant doesn’t win the car from switching. Two-thirds chance of winning for switching, one-third for staying put.
    Still confused? You’re still in good company. In fact, better company than you may realize.
    After the answer was published in Parade, no less than ten thousand readers wrote letters protesting that Vos Savant’s answer was clearly wrong. Of those, nearly one thousand had PhDs. Yep, you read that correctly. Not dozens, not hundreds: almost a thousand.
    Which brings me to the central point of this anecdote: sometimes common sense fails people spectacularly. Moreover, sometimes common sense spectacularly fails people with PhDs. Why is this so?
      Well, for one thing, in the case of the people with advanced degrees (some of which were in Math) we can partially chalk it up to academic specialization. Since these academics weren’t trained in probability specifically, they weren’t used to the highly unintuitive thinking that goes along with understanding the Monty Hall problem. Of course, this didn’t seem to stop them from being certain of their incorrect answers, since, of the letter writers, PhDs were overrepresented ten to one relative to the general population. With articles like “The Way They Were: Celebrity Breakups”  it’s unlikely to be a mere by-product of Parade’s PhD-laden readership...
   But probably the most important reason for this grand failure in thinking is that our brains haven’t evolved to be good at understanding probability. In our ancestral hunter-gatherer communities, it’s unlikely that any situation would have arisen whereby a deep understanding of probability would have been important for survival. What evolved instead was our reliance on heuristics, or rules of thumb, in decision-making. These were intellectual short-cuts that saved time and energy and were accurate almost all of the time anyway. Unfortunately, in today’s modern mega-societies our reliance on heuristics leaves us prone to thinking about things like the Monty Hall problem incorrectly. So how can we do better?

    Well, if there’s one area of study that teaches us to think more correctly, it would be critical thinking. The word is thrown around a lot in the introduction to various University classes but the only one likely to advance one’s ability in that area is its namesake course (PHIL 120). Aside from that, a little self-study can go a long way. Take some time to learn about logical fallacies, cognitive biases, and problems like the Monty Hall problem, and you’ll find yourself fooled less badly and less often.

"Occupy", so far

    On October 15th, with the sun making a surprise appearance in the city and with Autumn’s chilly weather in full-force, Vancouver joined hundreds of cities worldwide in protest against rising inequality and lack of accountability in government, thus beginning Occupy Vancouver. Beginning a month after the inception of Occupy Wall Street, the “occupation” has since been the source of much hope, inspiration, imagination, derision and controversy. Needless to say it has captivated the attention of most thinking people over the past month. Here’s a brief chronology of the Occupy movement so far:
July 13th: The Vancouver-based anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters “tweets” the following under #OCCUPYWALLSTREET: “Are you ready for a Tahrir moment?/On Sept 17th flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street”
September 17th: Roughly 1,000 demonstrators march through the streets of New York and begin to set up
September 24th: Occupy Chicago
September 27th: A small group of SFU students occupy the offices of the SFU Student Society in protest of the now settled lockout of CUPE workers
September 30th: Occupy Boston
October 2nd: Over 700 arrested on a march over the Brooklyn Bridge
October 5th: Solidarity march draws over 15,000 to Lower Manhattan
October 8th: First General Assembly of Occupy Vancouver
October 15th: Hundreds of cities begin their own “occupations.” 4,000 people show up to Occupy Vancouver, making it the largest Occupy event in Canada
October 16th: Occupy Albuquerque changes its name to (un)Occupy Albuquerque to connect the movement to issues surrounding indigenous land rights
October 25th: Occupy Capilano University hosts a day-long event with speakers and discussion
October 30th: Global “Robin Hood” March for a tax on financial transactions and currency trading: approximately 300 march through downtown
November 2nd: In the first general strike in the United States since 1946, over 20,000 protesters manage to shut down the Port of Oakland; 70 students stage a walkout during an introductory Economics class at Harvard
November 5th: Ashlie Gough found dead at Occupy Vancouver
November 6th: Students from UBC, SFU and Capilano meet as part of Occupy Education
November 7th: Small skirmish with police over a small fire on Occupy Vancouver site; Occupy UBC holds its first meeting 
November 8th: City of Vancouver approaches the B.C. Supreme Court for an injunction to close down the tent city
November 10th: Riot police are deployed to quell a large protest at McGill University against rising tuition following a march by thousands through the streets of Montreal.
November 12th: 150 demonstrators march for affordable housing in Vancouver
November 15th: In the early hours of the morning, police move to evict Occupy Wall Street, dismantling the Occupy library with its 5,000-plus books, and destroying many valuable equipment and personal possessions.

Global Warming and the 99%

What does global warming have to do with the global Occupy Movement? Absolutely everything. Flooding in Bangkok, heat waves in Russia and rising sea levels in Tuvalu, like growing income inequality, obscene corporate profits and foreclosed homes, are all indicators that the system is broken. Just as tinkering around the edges of global finance isn’t going to resolve it’s fundamental flaws, neither will investment in carbon capture and storage or the creation of carbon trading schemes do more than, at best, temporarily slow the rate of increase of heat trapping emissions into our atmosphere.

The science tells us that if we don’t drastically scale back global warming emissions, now, it will be too late. Some say we have less than 100 months to take radical action to avoid reaching the tipping point of run away climate change.

Think about that for a minute. This is the future of our planet we’re talking about! We’re facing a world wide existential crisis, and our response so far has been pretty underwhelming.

Can our current system make the radical self-corrections needed to ensure we avoid a climate crisis? More to the point, would the interests that benefit from the status quo -- the big corporations that profit from delay and inaction on global warming -- let it? Not a chance. At best they can offer us fine tunings of their current agenda: “clean coal,” “ethical oil,” and greener,TM more eco-friendly © shopping choices.

If we are going to achieve the massive reductions in emissions needed to avoid runaway climate change, we will have to fundamentally alter every aspect of our lives -- how we eat, how we travel, where we live, and what we do for fun. We are pretty much going to have to rebuild society from the ground up in a way that is more sustainable which seems to me to be exactly what the Occupy Movement is proposing.

However, while the financial meltdown provided an opening for change -- a chance to tear the financial system apart and rebuild it in a way that is fairer for all -- global warming has given us no “easy” opportunities for radical revision. If we want to start the revolution needed to stop global warming, we can’t wait for the tipping point. We’re going to have to consciously and deliberately step out into the streets and start it ourselves. We’re going to have to engage in direct action and civil disobedience to physically stop the things that cause global warming.

We need to keep pushing forward with all other strategies at hand - writing letters, holding rallies, meeting with politicians, etc. -- but we have to recognize that they alone are inadequate, given the urgency and scale of the climate crisis. As Churchill said, some times it’s not enough to just do what we can. Sometimes we have to do what is necessary.

People across BC are joining together to take these necessary next steps. It starts by building strong, trusting, face to face connections, learning about the philosophy and legal implications of civil disobedience, and carefully thinking through strategy and tactics -- all important prerequisites to action. The grassroots group I am involved with is working to end the age of coal in BC. If you want to learn about the role that BC plays in exporting coal and what you can do about it, visit StopCoal.ca. Take the direct action pledge and join us in helping start the revolution.