You and I and vast multitudes of other human beings are the peasants of 2012. Our unwilling fealty has been purloined by the treacherous feudal lords of 2012. We have been conditioned to accept a control system in which the Gross Domestic Product and upward surges in the stock markets are the yardsticks of economic success or failure. Neither are good forms of measurement.
Any educated peasant should be able to see that a bullish stock market means investors have the opportunity to make more money for themselves in order to invest more money for the purpose of making more money for themselves. Any educated peasant should be able to see that restoring a venerable heritage building adds to the Gross Domestic, but so does tearing one down. Gross Domestic Product makes no value judgements about any kind of economic activity.
We peasants need to know what is really going on in the world, but there are formidable barriers in our way. When an extractive industry locates in some far away police state which masquerades as a democracy, the foreign corporation, so long as it is skilled in all the arts of bribery, is free to mistreat its work force and turn much of the country it a cesspool for toxic wastes. We, the more fortunate peasants, never hear about the evil which is being done because investigative reporters, who might tell us, are effectively muzzled by the state.
In North America, all corporations, including the despoilers of the planet, put on friendly faces. They create the images of benevolent entities that care about cleansing a poisoned planet and feeding all the hungry peasants, down to the last starving child. They even donate small portions of their burgeoning wealth to respectable charities.
The investigative reporter who detects the truth behind the image doesn't have a large pulpit from which to preach. The news gathering networks are themselves corporations and they are dependent on advertising revenues to survive. Any large advertiser whom they offend can always turn off the money tap.
In Canada three mega-projects soon will add to the total of the GDP. Two of them, the Keystone Pipeline into the United States and the Gateway line to the Pacific Ocean are both intended to take oil from the Alberta tar sands to new markets. Both are intended
Both are intended to increase the consumption of fossil fuels in a world which needs to incrementally reduce its reliance on coal, natural gas and oil. Both have the support of the Canadian government.
The third project, already approved is the huge Lower Churchill project in Labrador, also supported by the Canadian government. Although hydro projects have no carbon footprint, they are ecologically destructive. In a world which needs to reduce it s energy consumption, the Lower Churchill project will provide more energy to be wastefully consumed.
Why not channel a relatively small portion of the investment in these mega-projects into research and development to reduce energy demand? Why not do whatever is necessary to replace both incandescent and fluorescent lights with light emitting diodes? Why not begin to rebuild our hacked to pieces railway system? Why not speed the development of the only completely non-polluting energy source, solar power? Why not use solar panels anywhere and everywhere they can be used? Why not encourage more use of small wind turbines? Why not give hybrid dirigibles a more important place in the transportation system, including their use as people-carriers? Why not invest more in the development of fuel cells as a replacement for internal combustion engines? These are not all the questions an educated peasant might ask, but they do illustrate the wisdom of directing investment into the most promising technologies.
As one lonely peasant, I expect these questions to be answered with meaningless words or not to be answered at all. We need an army of peasants, loud and visible, to give voice to these concerns. The continuation of life on earth depends on it.
