The challenge for today's youth: Share or Die

Non-fiction can be depressing, reading of political malfeasance, economic injustice, and environmental catastrophe. But recently I received a book about the “lost generation” or “Generation Y”, people currently in their 20s, that is surprisingly upbeat and positive. It’s a collection of essays written by Gen Y members, each focusing on some aspect of the obstacles their generation faces and their response. Produced by the online magazine Shareable, this tome’s title challenges us to “Share or Die”. (Apropos of the title, the preceeding link is to a free, shareable version of the book. You can also purchase a copy here.)

Gen Y occupies a world of contradiction. Society steers young people to post-secondary education and a productive and high-paying world of work, in the process becoming consumers of vast quantities of material wealth and somehow finding time to raise a family. Yet jobs for new graduates are scarce or underpaid, and the only thing an education truly guarantees is staggering student debt. Rather than become enraged or just give up, these young people are charting a new course. Share or Die covers such varied topics as employment in the volunteer, non-profit, or entrepreneur sectors, worker co-ops and career as a lattice (rather than ladder), collaborative consumption (car shares, bike-shares, co-housing, tool libraries, co-ops), resilience and food self-sufficiency, even low-cost self-education. As a change of pace, some parts are mini graphic novels instead of straight text.

Two common threads link the essays. One is about finding non-market ways to satisfy basic human needs (housing, food, education, entertainment) outside the capitalist-consumption paradigm; as one writer puts it “depending on each others’ living labour rather than the dead value stored in commodities” and recognizing that wealth is more than money. Less stuff means less destruction of our resources, less pollution of our biosphere. Yet a shift to access rather than ownership means we can still enjoy healthy lives in a thriving community. This isn’t just smart; it’s necessary for our survival as a species.

The other thread describes new uses of communications infrastructure, such as internet and social media, to create sharing communities. Connectedness becomes the way to coordinate, working together to achieve goals, because with all your friends pulling in the same direction, you can do more for less money.

As another writer notes, we have two choices: innovation or stagnation. Luckily, the realistic hopefulness of the creative, thoughtful young people showcased in this book proves that alternative paths to happiness are possible and achievable, although not without effort, trade-offs, and setbacks.

This is a daunting new path, one different than that taken by any of our living ancestors. Gen Y represents a massive generational force, one that outnumbers the baby boomers, coming of age in this time of crisis. Read this book and learn how this generation is taking on a hero’s mantle, helping society to resolve this crisis by applying the mindset and tools of sharing.

Published as my Root Issues column in the Barrie Examiner under the title "Gen Y not afraid to push the concept ‘share or die’".

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins is a director of Living Green and the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation. 

Nuke billions dwarf gas-plant millions

Ontario politics is presenting us with lots of storm and fury over money wasted on energy boondoggles, without much accountability, consistency, or perspective.

The lead story remains the money lost when the Liberal government cancelled two gas-fired electric plants during the last election season, to garner votes and save seats. Obviously the local residents didn’t want those gas plants, and democracy is supposed to mean doing what voters want, but here the Liberals ignored local objections until the last minute, running up a huge bill. That’s the second strike, that they did this without any idea of the cost. Actually, the attack narrative swings between the Liberals lying about how much it would cost and the Liberals doing this without knowing what it might cost. Sure, these are contradictory accusations, but in politics what seems to matter is the mud, not the clarity.

Either way, it cost a bundle. Critics tout the figure of a billion dollars, although the real costs seems to have settled at just over half that. Yet there are two aspects to this whole kerfuffle that I find disturbing, beyond, of course, the wasted money.

The first is that although the other parties are doing their best to excoriate the Liberals for cancelling the gas plants without knowing the cost, they themselves had the exact same policy, and if they don’t know the cost now, they certainly didn’t know it then. They listened to the voters, too, so they also promised to shelve the gas plants, the only real difference being the Liberals were actually in a position to do it. It’s a weak platform from which to hurl attacks.

But the other, more sinister problem, is what’s happening now without a spotlight. Ontario is steadily moving ahead with plans to refurbish our expensive, aging, underperforming nuclear reactors, and may yet build new ones. Although the decision to refurbish the Darlington reactors hasn’t been finalized, the government has already signed contracts totaling almost a billion dollars (there’s that figure again) to start the estimates and design. The lion’s share is going to SNC-Lavalin, exposed this week for years of illegal bribery and kickbacks. The actual job could cost as much as 10 billion dollars, from the government’s own estimates. And recall that this plant was supposed to cost less than $4 billion to build, yet the final bill came in at over $14 billion. So how much will refurbishment really cost? No one can say, but the best guess is in the double-digit billions. Vastly more than was lost in the gas plant cancellations. Yet I bet you haven’t heard anything about this, until now.

Our elected officials need to cut the attacks, and start looking at a better energy plan for all of Ontario, one that puts conservation first, shifts supply to renewables, and takes us away from the pig-in-a-poke cost overruns of nuclear power.

Published as my Root Issues column in the Barrie Examiner under the title "Forget attacks and focus on better energy plan".

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins is a director of Living Green and the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.

Going post-carbon: just do it, already!

Last week I wrote of the simple math compelling us to transition from our current, carbon-based lifestyle to a carbon-free economy, as soon as possible. The bad news is we’ve already found more than enough fossil fuel reserves to push our climate far past the red line, if we extract and burn them all. The good news is we are perfectly capable of transforming our energy supply to a better one, just as we have done many times in the past. We need only decide on a course, commit to it, and invest our resources accordingly.

First we must resolve not to dig any further into the hole we find ourselves in now. That means not locking in further fossil burning with new infrastructure like pipelines or refineries. It means companies like Exxon, which alone spends $100 million every day unearthing new fossil fuel reserves we must never burn, need to shift their investment strategies and become energy creators rather than fossil fuel extractors.

Although we can’t change the climate math which prohibits burning all this fossil carbon, we can change the economic math that encourages it. Right now, unique among industries, coal, oil, and gas companies are permitted to dump their waste into our air for free. So why wouldn’t they? Yet with a fee on carbon emissions, their bottom line analysis would change. Suddenly the efficiency with which they extract or process fuel would become more important to their profits, and finding carbon-free ways to provide energy would become more lucrative. Renewable energy like solar, wind, deep geothermal or wave power would be able to compete on a level playing field, instead of requiring “green” subsidies to offset the massive subsidies ($1.9 trillion per year) the fossil fuel industry enjoys world-wide.

And as I’ve written before (and British Columbia has proven), a carbon fee does no harm to the economy, so long as it’s returned to us through tax cuts or a citizens dividend. Each industry that feels a pinch is balanced by another that gets a boost, while innovation and job-creation expand overall.

Another measure we can adopt is divestment. Pension funds and the endowments of public institutions like colleges and churches typically hold a generous share of fossil energy stocks. By using our influence as stakeholders, we can demand those overseeing our future financial security stop investing our money in industries threatening our future health and food security. Studies have shown this needn’t reduce returns, and in fact the growing consensus toward carbon fees means these stocks won’t be such a good investment in future anyway, so offloading them now is a wise step to reduce financial and climate risk.

What can you do? Remove fossil fuel companies from your own savings. Visit gofossilfree.org for tools on how to persuade your church, college, or public pension to divest. And support politicians at all levels who stand for putting a fair fee on carbon and returning the money to taxpayers. Together, we can build a secure and prosperous carbon-free future.

Published as my Root Issues column in the Barrie Examiner under the title "There are ways to create carbon-free future". And, inexplicably, posted to their website with a photo of some cattle standing in a field.

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins is a director of Living Green and the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.

Need for retiring carbon as simple as 1 2 3

I saw two films recently that unexpectedly fit together: “Jurassic Park 3D” and “Do the Math”.

Do the Math, by 350.org, boils the climate crisis down to three simple numbers: 2 degrees, the amount of warming that we must not exceed, and so far the only global consensus position that even the Harper government has supported. 565 gigatons, how much more fossil carbon that lets us burn; more and we heat the planet beyond supporting human prosperity. 2,795 gigatons, the total fossil fuel reserves currently identified and tagged for extraction. This means 80% of known reserves of coal, oil and gas must remain in the ground, unburned, if we are to continue to flourish.

As author Bill McKibben says: when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging! That means not building any new infrastructure for extracting, distributing, or refining fossil fuels. Even the very conservative International Energy Agency agrees.

Yet instead we see editorialists, lobbyists, and most politicians pushing new pipelines and tar sands expansion, fracking, and other enhanced extraction. Ignoring the contradiction, they defend new high-cost fossil infrastructure because the alternative would require new high-cost renewable infrastructure. Wouldn’t it make more fiscal sense to spend our money on infrastructure with a permanent, renewable supply than on energy we know will run out? And how crazy is it to expand an industry whose own success in extracting resources must eventually put itself out of business?

Some wrongly think being Green means I’m left-wing, and note that I sometimes criticize political parties with Conservative in their name, ignoring that I also call out Liberals and New Democrats. I’m actually deeply conservative: I believe we should be able to live on the same planet our grandparents did, and our grandchildren deserve the same, too. As fast as they can, fossil fuel companies are transforming the basic chemistry of our atmosphere, changing temperature, precipitation, sea levels, weather and climate such that our children will literally live on a different planet than the one we were born to. What could be more radical than the uncontrolled world-changing actions of Big Oil/Coal/Gas?

Another deeply conservative belief of mine: responsibility for our own waste. Generally individuals and businesses must pay to dispose of their garbage. Only fossil fuels are allowed to break the rules by dumping carbon pollution into our air, our very life-support system, for free (and profit).

Jurassic Park had a simple message: just because we can do something (for a profit), doesn’t mean we should. Re-introducing extinct dinosaurs from 65 million years ago to the modern world was clearly a bad idea. Releasing carbon sequestered millions of years ago into today’s biosphere is a similarly bad idea, no matter how much money some pocket.

So what to do, how can we be energy wise and not fossil fools? Read next week for a couple of powerful solutions to get us off fossil fuels quickly while maintaining our prosperity.

Published as my Root Issues column in the Barrie Examiner under the title "Films offer clear environmental message".

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins is a director of Living Green and the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.

Stop obsessing on youth and focus on policies

With the Liberal leadership race over, Canadians are reflecting on the trend of younger people seeking high office. Let’s have a closer look at the issue of age in politics.

Observe a young man, never having run a significant business, rather spending most of his life in academe, either studying or teaching, and surrounded by the old guard of a major Canadian political party. He was a member of his high school’s Young Liberals club. At the tender age of 34 he is elected to Parliament, never having previously served in elected office, not city councillor nor school board trustee. A rising political star, he is made his party’s leader while only 42 and fresh off his 45^th birthday has the temerity to seek the highest office in the land.

He didn’t win, but less than 2 years later, on his second try, he did, becoming Right Honourable Prime Minister at the still relatively young age of 46.

Hold on, Justin Trudeau hasn’t been elected Prime Minister, what am I on about, you ask? Well, the bio above is actually that of Stephen Harper. Yet it strikingly parallels that of Mr. Trudeau, though Justin didn’t enter the Commons until he was 36 (two years older than Harper), became party leader at 41 and will be first running for PM when he’s almost 44 (in both cases a mere year younger than Stephen at that stage).

Harper cut his political teeth working with Deb Gray, Preston Manning, and Tom Flanagan, advising Reform and Alliance parties. Trudeau, surrounded by MPs and world leaders from birth, later chaired the Liberal task force on youth renewal. While out of politics, Justin chaired Katimavik, bringing Canadians together from coast to coast; Harper led the National Citizen’s Coalition, bringing some Canadians together to oppose the interests of some others.

As private citizens, both have been active in national causes and criticized government in ways that have later been highlighted as controversial. For a charity gala, Trudeau removed his shirt; at another gala, Harper sang of getting high with the help of his friends. What of it?

The city I live in has elected councillors at the tender young ages of 21 and 22 with little prior life experience who have nevertheless gone on to re-election with record-setting support. We elected an MP at age 27 who has likewise seen popular re-election with solid majorities. I really don’t see the point of the argument that someone is “too young” to lead. After all, Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte were both emperors by their own hand at 30 (not that I’m endorsing that leadership style today). No Prime Minister governs alone (well, not before Stephen Harper, anyway); they always have the support of other MPs and expert advisors. My own party’s leader has demonstrated wisdom and leadership since her teenage years. So how about we stop obsessing over youth or supposed inexperience and instead focus on the policies each party leader offers?

Published as my Root Issues column in the Barrie Examiner.

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins is a director of Living Green and the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation. 

Ontario Tories typify conservative political hypocrisy

New rules requiring members of all trades in Ontario pay annual fees to the College of Trades has created a backlash by the Progressive Conservative party, including our local Members of Provincial Parliament. They declare that it is unfair to make tradespeople pay annual fees of $120 just to be able to work in their field, and are calling this a “tax”.

Apparently, they have short memories, because the last time they were in government, under premier Mike Harris, they did exactly the same thing to teachers. Ontario teachers were already organized and professionally supported by their own unions, but Tories formed a College of Teachers all teachers working in elementary and high schools in Ontario had to join; the membership fee is now $138.

I’m not defending the College of Trades or attacking the College of Teachers. I’m just wondering why one is a “job-killing tax” while the other was Tory dogma. Is there any reasoning behind this apparent hypocrisy?

One might assert that teachers are paid better than those in trades, so they can better afford it. But that ignores the reality that teachers must pay the fee even in years they aren’t working, and newly-graduated aspiring teachers must pay even if they aren’t teaching yet. New teachers in this area commonly spend as long as 8 years working in supply positions with uncertain hours and unreliable income, and sometimes wait even to get on the supply list. Even though the work opportunities may be few and far between, they can’t take on another regular job lest they lose crucial supply opportunities, yet still have to pay the rent, the other bills – and the OCT annual fee.

Is it a matter of pitting professionals against “working people”, with an idea that those working primarily with their minds are less worthy than those working with their hands? This generalization would be offensive to both groups, since teachers do a lot of hands-on work while tradespeople need good thinking skills.

Perhaps it’s part of a general trend among conservatives, from supporting education to suspecting it. In past centuries, conservatives created and staffed institutes of higher learning, and ensured their children attended them. Ontario’s free elementary schools were founded, funded and administered by establishment religions, Anglican (public system) and Catholic (separate), in the conservative belief that education was the key to a richer economy and stronger nation. Yet nowadays conservatives commonly dismiss the “ivory tower” and seek to cut teacher salaries and benefits, or force them to work extra unpaid hours.

(The “wage freeze” imposed by Ontario’s Liberals with Tory support was actually a 1.5% wage cut due to the 3 days of school closures, and Tory leader Tim Hudak is on record proposing that extracurricular activities be mandatory.)

So is there a conservative bias against educators? If not, how to explain that what was good for teachers then is bad for trades now?

Published as my Root Issues column in the Barrie Examiner under the title "Is there a conservative bias against educators?"

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins is a director of Living Green and the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.

All allies welcome in saving Springwater Park

I commended Ontario’s Liberal government for putting participatory democracy into action when crafting the Lake Simcoe Protection Act & Plan. However, this same government has become acutely non-participatory, seemingly deaf to entreaties to save Springwater Provincial Park.

Representative government should administer public lands on our behalf, acting as if we were making the decisions ourselves. Sometimes this means trade-offs, where local groups must accept measures favouring the greater good. But in Springwater, no greater good mandates ignoring the very strong local desire for this Park to thrive.

The sole justification for closing this park is budgetary: costs exceed revenues. Yet the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) itself is a prime culprit, having failed to repair the automatic payment machine for years, costing them unknown amounts of potential revenue, and in general failing to promote the park’s charms. Running the park is estimated to cost between $59,000 and $300,000 per year; repairing facilities is floated as around a million dollars.

But as C. D. Howe first explained in 1945 and Dr. Evil confirmed when thawed out in 1997, a million dollars is a drop in government’s budgetary bucket. Tourism in Simcoe County is a $570-million-a-year industry; surely local governments and industry can produce a business plan to save and expand the Park? I’m confident they can, but the government is hearing none of it. Rather than working with local partners to step up and boost park revenue, last fall MNR arbitrarily announced park closure within six months. Since then, despite a huge groundswell of support at all levels from citizens, local business, local municipalities and even provincial and federal parliamentarians, the Ministry’s shown little interest in plans to keep the park operational, or even delay closure to give time to establish a new plan, instead sticking with the original deadline.

This park is a unique gem where people can see the native wildlife living near or sometimes in our sprawling communities. With this area targeted for heavy growth in coming decades, that valuable link with nature only becomes more important.

Valiant members of citizen’s groups including Friends of Springwater Provincial Park and the Springwater Park Citizens’ Coalition have been lobbying hard and keeping the issue in the local spotlight with demonstrations, marches, and meetings, but so far to no avail. Now, once again, our downtrodden First Nations are putting their own lives on hold to protect what is of value to us all. Park occupation may finally force the government to give a meaningful response to our community’s concerns. I commend these bold women, because not only do they face arrest and conviction, they now must withstand the racist backlash I already see on news comment pages. No Johnny-come-latelies, Idle No More has enjoined this struggle from the start, hosting teach-ins and protests, and have now put forward their bodies as a last resort where sensible words have failed. I hope that with the 41 and Mega-Quarry victories already on the board, together we can help Nature score a hat trick.

Published as my Root Issues column in the Barrie Examiner under the title "First Nations protest can only help park situation".

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins is a director of Living Green and the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.