In the film The Dark Knight, there’s an exchange between Bruce Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth about limits. Specifically, Alfred warns Bruce that he needs to “know his limits.” Bruce first rejects this idea, claiming that “Batman has no limits.” When Alfred points out that, while that may be true, Bruce Wayne does have limits, Bruce counters that he “can’t afford to know them.”

“And what’s going to happen on the day that you find out,” Alfred asks.

“We all know how much you like to say ‘I told you so,’” Bruce says.

“On that day, Master Wayne,” Alfred says, “even I won’t want to.”

People within the green movement have been talking about limits for years. On a finite planet like ours, there are limits to growth, whether you’re talking about energy generation, the economy, or how much we can squeeze out of the environment. In fact, the recognition of limits has often been used as the key distinction between the Green party and other political parties. In 2004 David Suzuki was the keynote speaker at a federal Green party convention in Bragg Creek, Alberta where he told us that the Green party was the only party that understood limits to growth.

Contrary to popular belief, and despite the party’s own messaging and positioning, most Greens I know have been very concerned about an impending economic collapse for years, and have been focused on it as the core challenge we should be addressing. We have recognized that the environmental, economic and energy crises are interrelated and must be dealt with in a coordinated fashion.

The response from most people to these realities, including our political leaders, has first been one of denial (“we have no limits”) then one of inconvenience (“we have limits but we can’t afford to know them”). The first goal of the green movement was to convince people that it was better to understand our limits and discover them on our own terms rather than encounter them unexpectedly in a way that would have disastrous consequences.

By many measures, that objective was not met. I don’t mean to say I’ve lost hope for a better future, because I have not. But realistically, many of the things we should and could have prevented will now come to pass. There were limits to how far we could push destructive economic growth, and we have learned (some of) them. There are limits to how much we can abuse and take for granted our environment, and we are beginning to learn them. There are limits to how long we can continue to exploit our current sources of energy at current rates, and we are rushing towards them. We are stumbling towards the triple E crisis instead of meeting it on our own terms.

The day has arrived where we can now say “I told you so.” And on this day, we don’t want to. Nor should we waste our breath. The fact that we’ve allowed the great challenges of our time to become even greater only means that we must focus more than ever, and work harder than ever, on solving them. Every time we miss the mark, we will redouble our efforts and start anew.

After the many seductions, logical and visionary, have been played—I shall make a plea for the salvific aspect of the act of walking. Yes, salvific. Not just to save the environment, but to save ourselves, and not just by regarding the environment. We will not save the environment until we have found a reason for living together. Until we discover civic care in each other, until we restore the city to its definition as a place of unexpected intimacies, not just as a place of amenities, convenience, business, and entertainment, we will not have sustainability. For sustainability is about replacing an ethic of entitlement with an ethic of sufficiency. And sufficiency is what we find in each other. In an era that glorifies independence and even inter-dependence we are shy of admitting the awful truth: that is, we are dependent on each other, not by connectedness, but because we are one body breathing the same air. It is not cars that are the enemy of the pedestrian. The enemy is the absence of civic communion, the lack of empathic citizenship, our inability to see cohabitation as that place where we enjoy ourselves, by enjoying others. All human traffic is under siege, because it is becoming increasingly purposed, guarded, and negotiated. The body is not just a means of locomotion. It is our chief means of restoring a city to its raison d’être, its purpose. And that purpose is civil encounter.

But civic trust has been corroded. Our cities are becoming disinhabited, even when the streets are safe and landscaped; gentrified neighbourhoods are no more interactive than the brownfields and cloverleafs they replaced. The problem is not, fundamentally, to get people to slow down, or to move without being toxic to their environment. The problem is to make people aware that anonymity is as toxic to the ecology of heart as hydrocarbons are toxic to the atmosphere. The problem is how to restore intimacy, curiosity, trust, and play into the happenstance encounter of citizens, in an era when the happenstance and the unpredictable are a threat.

When all the cars will have been taxed or tolled on their way to the cities, when bike paths and parks will have reconfigured our neighbourhoods, when safe and cleaner transportation has cut emissions, a fundamental question will remain. Is the safe city, the sanitized city, the sustainable city, the same as the livable city? If all we want is clean and well-designed cities, it will likely come to pass. But in the long run, to save the environment means that we will want to save the environment not just for ourselves, but for each other. And to reverence each other means that we will have to discover each other.

I wonder if any of the delegates and observers to Bali channeled Dr. Eleanor Arroway on arrival, saying “they should have sent a poet.”

“What are you doing tonight,” asked a friend of mine Monday afternoon. “Well,” I said, “I’m going to an event called ‘Caribou Country: Our Shield Against Global Warming.’”

“You lost me at Caribou,” my friend replied.

We’re told that environmental issues are at the top of everyone’s mind, but anecdotal evidence suggests that that attention may be narrowly focused. This new environmentalism, it seems, is all about carbon: emissions, taxes, and credits. Carbonmania, the result of increased awareness around the climate crisis, is perhaps a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it has undeniably given the environmental movement a shot in the arm and triggered a new wave of awareness and debate about our only home’s life support systems. On the other, it has hogged the spotlight, leaving other equally important environmental issues in the shadows.

Or, it should be said, other related aspects of the same macro-environmental issue. Because, as climatologists routinely point out, climate change is a crisis that did not evolve in isolation from other environmental crises, nor can it be solved in isolation. In short, there’s more to this than carbon itself.

And yet, with a title like “Caribou Country,” Monday night’s event—presented by Wildlands League (the Ontario chapter of CPAWS, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society) at the University of Toronto’s Hart House—caused our friend to think of the old “hippy, tree hugging” environmentalism: a kind of thinking that seems (to many) to exist in isolation from the practical reality of every day life, the kind of environmentalism that is “out there,” and doesn’t affect us directly. This line of reasoning, as the speakers at the event explained, is faulty.

“Caribou Country” refers to Canada’s boreal region, which occupies 35% of total Canadian land area and 77% of Canada’s total forest. It also refers to an ecosystem that is on the run. In 1880 the forest (and, along with it, the caribou population) extended south almost to Algonquin park; today it has retreated to the remote north of Ontario, well above Sault Ste Marie. And while its preservation may seem like a distant “nice to have,” the health of the boreal ecosystem is inextricably linked to our choice between increasing or decreasing the destructiveness of climate change.

Crisis Gone Global

The difference between the amount of intact forest pre and post industrialization—a reduction of 70%—is striking when seen on a map. Overlay that map on a photo of the Earth at night from space, and there’s an inverse relationship between the areas that are lit up and the areas that still have wildlife. The immensity of that change means that environmental problems are now global instead of local, which is why we can no longer afford to think of wilderness protection as an altruistic frill.

It also means that we’re entrusted with decisions and responsibilities that have effects far beyond our own boarders. Canada has 20% of the Earth’s wild forests, 20% of its fresh water (which is purified by forest systems), and 50% of the global population of 40 species. In other words, we hold the ability to have a huge impact on the entire globe, be it positive or negative.

Burning The Planet At Both Ends

In order to understand why that is, we need a basic understanding of the carbon cycle. Discussions regarding global warming tend to focus on one half of the cycle: those things that emit carbon, including fires, volcanic explosions, and decompositions. It’s equally important for us to understand the other half of the cycle, however, which is concerned with those things that store (or sequester) carbon: forests (trees and other vegetation), oceans, other biological process, and deep storage including petroleum, marble, coal, and lime stone.

Most people now have a good understanding of how we’ve contributed to climate change by burning fossil fuels and thereby emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases in a short period of time. What’s less well understood is that we’ve also seriously harmed the planet’s “carbon sinks,” those systems that store carbon and keep it out of the atmosphere. You could say we’re burning the Earth at both ends. Therefore, when we talk about fighting climate change, we need to recognize not only the importance of reducing emissions, but also the importance of preserving and ultimately expanding our planet’s natural carbon sinks.

Those sinks are in serious trouble. Recent evidence suggests that the world’s Oceans—which normally absorb a full quarter of all carbon emitted into the atmosphere—have become saturated and are shutting down their absorption. Other research has shown the level of carbon in the atmosphere to have exceeded 450 parts per million, a particularly frightening reality since the scientific consensus was that that wouldn’t happen for another ten years. The last thing we need to be doing is actively destroying the boreal forest, which has the highest concentration of land-based carbon in Canada, which, in turn, holds 30% of all the land-stored carbon in the world.

Oh, and here’s a kicker. Global warming is having a negative impact on the boreal ecosystem itself, so the more of it we damage, the more vulnerable it becomes to future climate shocks, creating a feedback loop.

Paying The Price 

The primary cause of destruction of caribou habitat is logging, while diamond mining and large-scale hydro electric projects also have a serious impact. Dr. Anastasia M. Lintner, a lawyer and economist with Ecojustice (formerly Sierra Legal Defence Fund), spoke last and had the responsibility of suggesting solutions to these problems. She proposed a move towards a “low carbon economy,” which she described as an economy where there are deep reductions in emissions due to the internalization of carbon costs (you must pay a price to pollute), and where we aim to “sink carbon” once we’ve reduced our emissions. (In other words, it’s not enough to reduce our emissions, we must actually reverse them.) One of the ways to do this is to set up a carbon trading system, where companies (or, theoretically, individuals) who have made reductions in carbon can sell those “credits” on a stock exchange-like market to other companies or individuals who have not reduced their emissions. Linter emphasized that these kinds of actions must be mandatory if they’re going to work, unlike the current federal government’s plans to promote “aspirational” targets (which are a step below “voluntary”). As an example, she pointed to the EU carbon exchange, where there are mandatory rules and the price of a tonne of carbon is around $30. On the Chicago carbon exchange, which is voluntary, the price is less than $2 per tonne.

It’s important to place a price on carbon so that we can make intelligent decisions about what it’s worth to release it into the atmosphere. So, what does that mean in real numbers? According to Linter, “allocated forest” in Ontario (meaning the parts that are slated to be cut down) currently stores 1,363 Mt (mega tonnes) of carbon, even without including the peat lands (which store far more carbon per hectare than the forest area does). On the EU carbon exchange, keeping that carbon in the ground would be worth $8,200,000,000. At that price, it makes no economic sense to log any more of the forest

Although, Linter argued that the area of forest below the cut-line isn’t commercially viable without subsidization anyway. Our forest industry is struggling because we can’t compete with fast-growing other parts of the world with lower labour costs. Instead, we need to think about how this industry will transition and diversify. We can take advantage of emerging “green” markets while simultaneously preserving threatened woodland Caribou habitat and fighting climate change. And we need to ask ourselves, “what is the dollar value we want to place, as a society, on keeping the forest intact, on the water and air that it cleans, on the carbon it keeps sequestered?”

Using this strategy, Linter says we can successfully 1) fight climate change, 2) preserve caribou habitat, and 3) position Ontario as a leader in emerging green markets and the future low carbon economy.

Caribou live in the most carbon rich environment on the planet. We in Canada have a global trust to keep that carbon where it is, and to keep the ecosystem intact so that it’s more resilient to the impacts of climate change. If we succeed, our success will be global. Likewise if we fail. From a climate change perspective, a wilderness perspective, and an economic perspective, the choice is clear. We must act before it’s too late, and the clock is ticking.

One of the more interesting and lesser known facts about Cuba is their position as an environmental leader. They’ve made investments in renewable energy, legislated forest protection, significantly increased their country’s tree canopy, spoken out about the dangers of biofuels from food crops and, perhaps most remarkably, made the transition to 100% organic agriculture while simultaneously improving yields (proving for the rest of us that it can be done).

When it came my turn to speak, most of these examples had already been lifted up by the other panel members. So, instead, I wondered aloud why it was that Cuba had so many positive environmental examples. Here’s a theory: Cuba is not only an island, but one that has in many ways been cut off from the world. Without detracting from their accomplishment, many of their systemic changes have not been made out of a desire to “do the right thing,” but out of necessity. The shift to organic agriculture, for example, happened rapidly when the Soviet Union collapsed and took with it Cuba’s supply of petroleum-based fertilizers (the artificial energy inputs required for non-organic agriculture). In other words, on an isolated island you have to live within your means.

We, of course, do not live within our means. As much as we’ve grown to loath financial deficits, we continue to operate with huge environmental and social deficits that will come due someday soon.

And there it is. This Earth, too, is an island. As Carl Sagan wrote, “on it [the Earth] everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” Every breath of air you ever breathed, every drop of water you ever drank. Every barrel of oil you ever burned.

He goes on: “Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.”

We’ll have to learn to live within our means soon. Islands who haven’t have paid a high price.

Stay with me, I’m going somewhere with this.

Last night I had a nice long political debate with a friend of mine. Let’s call him “Sean,” because, well, that’s his name. (I think it’s unfortunate and somewhat dangerous that talking about politics with friends and family is increasingly considered impolite. I don’t know how we expect democracy to work otherwise.) Our conversation jumped around a lot, but the argument basically came down to Sean’s belief that the status quo was more or less great and that concerns about converging environmental crises were overblown or entirely made up. I, uh, maintained a different viewpoint.

I love debate, and one of the things I enjoy doing is getting a good understanding of why people think what they do. As a result, Sean and my conversation got more and more fundamental, as I searched for things we could agree on. Eventually, I said, “ok, well I know that we can at least agree that the Earth has limits.” Sean did not agree. “Um, ok,” I continued, “well, let’s make it more specific then. We can agree that energy cannot be created….” But again, Sean did not agree.

That’s when we changed the subject. The first two laws of thermodynamics state, in essence, that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, and that you can’t get something for nothing. Somehow, there are now at least a handful of people in Canada and throughout the western world who think (actually, feel might be a better word) that that’s not true. As James Howard Kunstler points out in The Long Emergency, some of our culture’s most basic assumptions have become misaligned with the realities and limitations of the physical world. For example, energy policy is based on the assumption that energy is “generated” (created), and can continue to be created in increasing quantities in perpetuity. Similarly, much of our economic activity is based on the assumption that it’s reasonable to get something (like, money) for nothing (see speculativebubble.com).

Sean’s not a dumb guy. He’s no Homer. In fact, that’s the crazy part — he’s come to his conclusions in a rational way by observing the world around him. Problem is, the world he and I have grown up in is currently in the process of throwing all the wood on the fire, so of course we’re lacking perspective. (Except, of course, that instead of wood we’re using oil, which, well, doesn’t grow on trees.)

Brownie points will go to the first MP willing to stand in Parliament and say, “Mr. Speaker, be it resolved that this House will obey the laws of thermodynamics.”

Of course, this isn’t really new news. Canada’s been a target of al Qaeda and similar groups since before 9/11. All the same, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day reacted by saying, “we’ve always said that Canada is not immune to threats. We take this threat seriously.” (Between the lines, it sounds like he’s almost excited to get his first real threat as Public Safety Minister, but hopefully that’s just my over-active cynicism.)

Day also added that it’s possible to protect “all of our assets, both human and structural.” (Nice to know that the protection of human life and the protection of oil drilling operations are of equal priority.)

One of the more interesting quotes, however, came from Stephen Harper, who told MPs that “the most important responsibility of government is the preservation of order and the protection of its citizens.” (And its structures. Don’t forget its structures.)

I’m not the first to point this out, but we’re currently facing an even greater threat to order and our protection. We now know that even if Harper and Bush see the light (or, say, a bunch of Green MPs get elected) and start enacting plans to actually reduce our greenhouse gas emissions dramatically, the planet will continue to get hotter for centuries. It’s past time to start thinking not just about preventing further climate change, but about how we’ll manage with the changes we’ve already set in motion.

For example, where, and how, will we grow our food? Where will our water come from? How will we deal with increased pressure from the United States and China for the freshwater in our boarders? How will we prepare against new diseases? What plan do we have for replacing all of the infrastructure we’ve built on the now-melting permafrost? How might rising ocean levels affect our coastal provinces? How can we build secure, local economies as international ones become less stable and viable? How will we keep our national economy strong as more jurisdictions like California refuse to buy our tar-sands oil because it’s too dirty?

There are answers, but there’s also much work to be done. Terrorism is a real threat that needs to be guarded against, but if our government really cares about public safety, order, and the protection of its citizens, there are other threats that deserve more of their attention.

Inside, there was a much calmer atmosphere, inspired by a mix of anticipation and the soothing influence of the Winter Garden’s decor, which includes fake tress and a mural of mountains and the sky. (It also didn’t hurt that the new Raffi song “Cool It” was playing on a continuous loop. Nothing controls a crowd like Raffi.) It was an appropriate atmosphere to hear from two of Canada’s most respected voices on the environment and social justice. (The decoration also allowed for an amusing moment in the question and answer period, when the moderator called upon “the woman standing in the back beside the tree.”)

The guests of honour were, of course, David Suzuki and Stephen Lewis, in conversation facilitated by the CBC’s Eleanor Wachtel. They should need no introduction (though they were each given lengthy ones). In brief, Dr. David Suzuki is a geneticist, educator, and broadcaster, who has written approximately forty books, received nineteen honorary doctorate degrees, and is a Companion to the Order of Canada. Stephen Lewis, a former leader of the Ontario NDP, was Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations from 1984-1988, Deputy Director of UNICEF from 1995-1999, and the UN’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa until last December.

Together, they can leap over tall buildings, walk on water, and deactivate an explosive device using only a paper clip and their combined sense of moral outrage.

Getting To Crisis

A crisis is a problem that’s been ignored for too long. Therefore, it was particularly painful to listen to a detailed account of how long we’ve been ignoring the environmental crisis that’s now gotten so bad it may be threatening our survival. It must be even more painful for Suzuki and Lewis, who lived it.

Suzuki remembers hearing about global warming in the 80′s, but admits that at the time, they (the scientific and environmental communities) thought of it as a “slow motion catastrophe” that would have effects in 100 years, but not sooner. Instead, Suzuki focused on other issues, such as deforestation. He was never so pessimistic or alarmist to believe things would get so bad so soon. (The Globe and Mail now reports that 4 out of 5 Canadians report personally witnessing the effects of climate change.)

Lewis was even more involved with climate change in the 80′s, charing the previously mentioned 1988 Toronto Conference, which was quoted last night as concluding that, “humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment, whose ultimate consequence could be second only to a global nuclear war.”

That year, says Suzuki, was the last peak of environmental awareness before our current one. It was in 1988 that George Bush Sr. campaigned on a promise to be “an environmental president.” Public demand for action led to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, but by then the pressure was off, and Bush was able to “blackmail the summit into watering down the agreement.” Lewis adds that the activists who were in Rio never understood the degree to which back-room pressure by politicians and corporate (so-called) leaders co-opted the whole event.

The result of the Rio conference was Agenda 21, where the poor nations of the developing world agreed to pay more than the rich nations, only to have those rich nations (in a move that’s simultaneously tragic and offensive) turn around and say “we can’t afford to do this.”

That takes us to the 1997 negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol, Canada’s ratification in 2002, and the protocol’s coming into force as international law in 2005.

So, Here We Are Then

1. End subsidies to the auto and fossil fuel sectors. These are often called “perverse subsidies,” because they represent public money going towards public harm. Also, ExxonMobil’s recent $40 billion-with-a-B first quarter profit announcement makes the subsidies insane, and, according to Lewis, “gives new definition to obscenity,” especially when one considers the fact that ExxonMobil is still using some of that money to pay the same people who used to tell us that smoking doesn’t cause cancer to deny climate change is happening.
2. Create a carbon tax. Speak the language business will understand by sending the right price signals to the market. Suzuki also shared that in a recent conversation with him, Preston Manning (former leader of the REFOOOOOOORRRM party) essentially endorsed a carbon tax by saying that currently externalized costs in the tar sands (water, pollution) need to be internalized.
3. Set targets and timelines for greenhouse gas reduction. Enshrine them in legislation so that the next government is forced to meet them too.

Refuting the Opponents

Even though most of the public “gets it,” there are still a few individuals (mostly in government or business) who continue to make the same, tired arguments against action. Various devil’s advocates set these arguments up throughout the night, only to have them soundly knocked down.

The most common of these frames the environment against the economy, and comes in various forms (it costs too much, the economy will crash, the economy’s more important, etc). For this, Suzuki went to etymology, pointing out that the “eco” in both economy and ecology comes from a Greek word meaning house, or home. Ecology is the study of home, while economy is the management of home. And since you can’t manage something you don’t understand, it doesn’t make any sense to put economy before ecology, as our current minister of the environment still does. “Let’s put the eco back in economics,” proclaimed Suzuki, to more applause.

They also pointed out that the Stern Report pegged the cost of not fighting climate change at greater than both World Wars combined, and would result in the collapse of 20% of the economy.

Evoking some more war imagery, Suzuki drew another analogy. “After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, can you imagine if the US government had said, ‘oh well, it’s too expensive to go after them so I guess we’ve got to let them take Asia?’” If a foreign country were polluting our air, water, and food, killing thousands and threatening even greater destruction, would we say, “oh well, it costs too much to defend ourselves?”

In the end, the message was that all of us need to put pressure on politicians to make the change, because, according to Suzuki and Lewis, they’re not going to change on their own. Suzuki pointed out that Al Gore, despite being the politician who understands both the treat and the solutions more than any other, still campaigned for president without making environmental concerns an issue. The reason he didn’t (and the reason George Bush Sr. did) is because of the degree to which the public spoke up and said, “this matters to us.”

Lewis is very excited about the next election, because it will give us all another chance to go to all candidates meetings and use our votes to get action. Suzuki’s excited and hopeful too, because many of the solutions are already there, just waiting to be implemented.

“And what happens,” asked one audience member, “when we elect a government that says they’re going to take action but then doesn’t?”

“Just keep fighting,” replied Lewis. “The pendulum always swings, you can’t give up. Keep at it, endlessly, tenaciously, and people start to move. Hammer them into submission. There’s no time to equivocate anymore.”

This post also appears on Torontoist.

At least one Minister was appalled. “And there will be nothing for us between now and the next election?” the minister asked. “Why would we do this?”

“You do it for your grandchildren,” Dr. McBean replied. (Fortunately for the Minister, and unfortunately for us, Dr. McBean isn’t naming names.)

That story is yet another illustration of why Canadians should be very cautious when considering the born-again policy positions of political parties claiming to have seen the light. In most cases, I suspect, all they’ve really seen are polling numbers.

Also in today’s Globe, Preston Manning argues that politicians must not do to the environment what they did to health care: produce nothing but “sterile, destructive, polarized debate,” that succeeds only in convincing the public that “their No. 1 public-policy concern cannot be resolved by political processes and institutions, and that politics is part of the health-care problem, not part of the solution.” (The fact that Preston Manning is now sounding reasonable is a good demonstration of, 1) how far off-side Stephen Harper is, and 2) how much nicer, smarter, and productive politicians are once they’ve gone through parliamentary detox.)

Keeping that in mind, I suggest there are three things people should ask themselves when assessing which party has the best environmental approach:

1. Do they have staying power? Do you believe the party is actually committed to addressing the planetary crisis, or will their resolve melt if our next winter happens to be a cold one?
2. Do they have the best solutions? This is different than asking if they appear to care the most, or if they have the best TV commercials. The benefit of living in a country that’s fallen so far behind on environmental leadership is that there are lots of proven solutions that can be borrowed from other jurisdictions.
3. Do they understand how different issues are interrelated? Not just the way that the environment is linked to health and economy (though that’s important), but also how climate change relates to resource depletion, toxicity, ocean health, agribusiness, peak oil, etc. Be very skeptical of any party with an environmental platform that claims to be able to solve the climate crisis without addressing these other issues.

Today is Parliament’s first day back. Here’s to hoping they achieve at least the bare minimum.

Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment, whose ultimate consequence could be second only to a global nuclear war.

This week, thousands of birds fell from the sky in Australia, dead. As of now, we don’t yet know why.

In Green politics, there’s something called the precautionary principal. Basically, it states that if there’s a chance that a series of actions could, for example, shut down our life support systems, we should maybe not take those actions until we’re sure they’re safe (as opposed to conducting business as usual until there’s absolute proof that business as usual is destructive). In other words, even if things ain’t exactly clear, it’s still worth stopping, listening, and looking around.

Bird deaths can’t help but remind me of the proverbial canary in the mineshaft. Problem is, unlike miners, we don’t have anywhere to run to once we notice the canary has stopped breathing.

For what it’s worth.

For one, Rona Ambrose never had a chance. Initially, she wasn’t even supposed to be good at her job. The PMO didn’t consider it a priority to maintain our life support systems. Then, when it became clear to him that environment = votes, Harper took over the file and stopped letting Ambrose speak. My first hope for Baird is that he’ll be allowed to do his job.

Defining the nature of his job is the next big challenge. The Conservative government is yet to acknowledge the obvious fact that addressing the climate crisis is priority number one, but they’ll probably have to. Then, they, like the rest of us, will have graduated from if to how. That’s the tricky bit, because as the UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment explained, the climate crisis did not develop in isolation from other problems, nor can it be solved in isolation.

For government, that means two things. First, it means that climate change cannot be addressed unless we also address other environmental problems, including toxicity, over-fishing, air pollution, access to water, etc. Second, it means that much of what has to be done falls under the jurisdiction of other departments, including the ministries of…well, I was about to list them, but I would have had to list almost every single one. (Not to mention the over-arching challenges of addressing cancerous economic growth and destructive cultural assumptions.)

So that’s why I don’t think this shuffle will matter much one way or the other. There’s a joke that the Green Party wouldn’t even have a minister of the environment if we were in government, since we’d take our species’ survival — as opposed to our political survival — into account when making all decisions. (I know, we’re radicals.) And besides, to quote Roy MacGregor, this isn’t about the minister of the environment. “This is about Canada, and the rest of the world, ministering to the environment.”