Friday, April 23, 2010
CANADIAN LABOUR/CANADIAN POLITICS:
GREEN ECONOMY NETWORK LAUNCHED:
This past Earth Day which Molly successfully ignored the Green Economy Network was founded. This is a collaborative effort on the part of a large number of Canadian labour, environmental and social justice groups, and is dedicated to promoting "green jobs" in the Canadian context. Here's their self introduction from their website. All very well, though I have some doubts about the statist methods which they intend to use to promote their goals. The federal government should do this, and the federal government should do that, etc.,etc.,etc.. Little attention seems to have been given to either local or cooperative initiatives. Yet such initiatives are the very ones that could actually both invoke the greatest public participation/enthusiasm and generate the greatest number of jobs. Dependence upon government, especially the federal government, is like depending on giant corporations. Much will be lost in waste, and what results is not necessarily the best outcome in terms of either ecology or employment. For what it is worth, however, here is their introduction.
GEGEGEGEGEGEGEGE
Vision Statement--Green Economy Network
We have come together as members of unions, environmental and social justice organizations to form a common front of civil society groups for the building of a green economy in Canada. In so doing, we realize we are living in one of those critical moments of history wherein urgent decisions and actions must be taken that will ultimately affect our destiny as a people, a nation, and the planet itself.
Like most of the world, Canadians continue to experience the turbulence of an ongoing global economic crisis. It is increasingly evident that the current economic model is broken. Any economic recovery based on a simple return to the old status quo would risk being a feeble and jobless one. At the same time, this economic crisis both augments and is compounded by an environmental crisis, highlighted by the alarming advance of climate change and global warming that now threatens civilization and global ecosystems. In turn, this environmental crisis is further reinforced by an emerging energy crisis in which our societal addiction to fossil fuels is now threatened by diminishing conventional and cheap oil supplies. What’s more, our economy and society are seriously plagued by an equity crisis of increasing poverty marked by growing gender, race and class disparities.
We believe the time has come to chart a new model and direction for Canada’s economy. This country can no longer afford an economic model that treats the natural environment and human beings as disposable goods. Instead, Canadians need to rethink our manufacturing processes, the way we use and generate energy, and the ways we construct our buildings. We need to rethink the way we transport ourselves, move goods, use water, fuel industries, and heat our homes and businesses. In doing so, we also need to break our addiction to fossil fuels and overcome the poverty and inequalities that plague our society. In short, we need to build a green economy that transforms the mode of production and consumption in our society, makes existing jobs more environmentally sustainable, and simultaneously creates new decent paying, full time, safe and healthy green jobs in all sectors of society, to address the pressing economic and social inequalities of our time.
Although both the public and private sectors have key roles to play in building a green economy for the future, we maintain that governments and publicly-owned institutions must now take the lead, since they alone have the tools to marshal resources of the magnitude and speed necessary for this kind of economic transformation. Through public sector-led investments and infrastructure, sound regulation and targeted incentives, governments can stimulate the private sector to play a key role in greening the major industrial sectors of the economy - such as manufacturing, resource, transportation, and construction industries. Moreover, much of the impetus for creating green jobs is going to come from local and regional economies where people live and work in closer relationship with their environment.
As civil society organizations, we are committed to make every effort to inspire Canadians to join in building an economy aimed at providing good green jobs for all, so that current and future generations can meet their needs while living in harmony with each other and the ecosystems that support human life and prosperity. To advance this transition to a real green economy, we will vigorously advocate concrete proposals and organize campaign activities designed to meet the pressing environmental, energy and equity challenges of our times. In doing so, we will make use of all the educational tools at our disposal, not only to inform and animate our members and the public at large, but to cultivate a broad-based movement for a green economy in this country and in solidarity with like-minded movements around the world.
It is only by progressively developing, step-by-step, a new economic model in Canada - one which is clean and sustainable, just and participatory - that we have any hope of contributing to the building of a better world in the 21st century and protecting the biosphere for succeeding generations to come.
Vision Statement--Green Economy Network
We have come together as members of unions, environmental and social justice organizations to form a common front of civil society groups for the building of a green economy in Canada. In so doing, we realize we are living in one of those critical moments of history wherein urgent decisions and actions must be taken that will ultimately affect our destiny as a people, a nation, and the planet itself.
Like most of the world, Canadians continue to experience the turbulence of an ongoing global economic crisis. It is increasingly evident that the current economic model is broken. Any economic recovery based on a simple return to the old status quo would risk being a feeble and jobless one. At the same time, this economic crisis both augments and is compounded by an environmental crisis, highlighted by the alarming advance of climate change and global warming that now threatens civilization and global ecosystems. In turn, this environmental crisis is further reinforced by an emerging energy crisis in which our societal addiction to fossil fuels is now threatened by diminishing conventional and cheap oil supplies. What’s more, our economy and society are seriously plagued by an equity crisis of increasing poverty marked by growing gender, race and class disparities.
We believe the time has come to chart a new model and direction for Canada’s economy. This country can no longer afford an economic model that treats the natural environment and human beings as disposable goods. Instead, Canadians need to rethink our manufacturing processes, the way we use and generate energy, and the ways we construct our buildings. We need to rethink the way we transport ourselves, move goods, use water, fuel industries, and heat our homes and businesses. In doing so, we also need to break our addiction to fossil fuels and overcome the poverty and inequalities that plague our society. In short, we need to build a green economy that transforms the mode of production and consumption in our society, makes existing jobs more environmentally sustainable, and simultaneously creates new decent paying, full time, safe and healthy green jobs in all sectors of society, to address the pressing economic and social inequalities of our time.
Although both the public and private sectors have key roles to play in building a green economy for the future, we maintain that governments and publicly-owned institutions must now take the lead, since they alone have the tools to marshal resources of the magnitude and speed necessary for this kind of economic transformation. Through public sector-led investments and infrastructure, sound regulation and targeted incentives, governments can stimulate the private sector to play a key role in greening the major industrial sectors of the economy - such as manufacturing, resource, transportation, and construction industries. Moreover, much of the impetus for creating green jobs is going to come from local and regional economies where people live and work in closer relationship with their environment.
As civil society organizations, we are committed to make every effort to inspire Canadians to join in building an economy aimed at providing good green jobs for all, so that current and future generations can meet their needs while living in harmony with each other and the ecosystems that support human life and prosperity. To advance this transition to a real green economy, we will vigorously advocate concrete proposals and organize campaign activities designed to meet the pressing environmental, energy and equity challenges of our times. In doing so, we will make use of all the educational tools at our disposal, not only to inform and animate our members and the public at large, but to cultivate a broad-based movement for a green economy in this country and in solidarity with like-minded movements around the world.
It is only by progressively developing, step-by-step, a new economic model in Canada - one which is clean and sustainable, just and participatory - that we have any hope of contributing to the building of a better world in the 21st century and protecting the biosphere for succeeding generations to come.
Labels: Canadian labour, Canadian politics, cooperativism, Earth Day, ecology, environment, Green Economy Network, labour, statism
Monday, April 19, 2010
HOLIDAYS:
WHY I WILL IGNORE EARTH DAY:
This Thursday April 22 will be the now traditional Earth Day. While there is some small competition from people who hold that the day of the Spring Equinox should be the date the powers that be have pretty well made this artificial holiday into a worldwide event. As seems usual for this sort of thing the child has grown and grown, and now we have 'Earth Week'. For those who are interested, in addition to the Wikipedia article highlighted above you can find more information on the USA Earth Day site and the Earth Day Canada site. No doubt other countries have their own pretenders to the title of "official site". For myself, however, I really don't care. Why ? Read on.
Now, I have no objections to people taking the opportunity to have a big party. I'm rather pleased by it as a matter of fact. I could only wish, however, that it wasn't mixed up with a gigantic, almost Roman clerical, dose of hypocrisy...the pretense that the participants are actually doing something that will accomplish the nebulous goal of "saving the Earth".
That's what it is - pretense. It's all very "nice" to send the yard apes out to pick up trash
from the local parks for instance, but whatever this has to do with changing to a more "sustainable" economy escapes me entirely. Similarly I have no desire to mindlessly consume "green bric-a-brac". I have plenty of green shirts already thank you very much, and once more the point escapes me. Except to observe that such consumption is the precise opposite of the sort of simplification that might actually make our societies more ecologically sustainable.
Neither do I have much interest in listening to the barely disguised advertisements for corporate and government sponsors as they tout their 'green credentials'. To me it smells of scam, and yes I have more than my fill of advertising every day as well. I'd prefer new green shirts. If the reader is interested in one of tens of thousands of examples of how business hopes to expand into this lucrative market then check out this salivating call to prosper. Think I'm wrong about the snake oil aspect of the whole thing ? Consider what sort of business Canada's reigning King of Con Rahim Jaffer was involved in. That's right. 'Green Technology'.
I think the key word in all the above is the term "expand". I have no doubt that certain important reforms can be accomplished even in our present political and economic system. Still, if we are to lead a life that is both sustainable and also humanly fulfilling I cannot see how this can be done when we are burdened with an economic system whose very nature demands continual expansion. Neither can I see how this can be done when this drive is mirrored and quite often exceeded by centralized government and its planning. Both the corporations and government presuppose the division of society into order givers and order takers. Any reforms that might come about by their efforts will see the costs borne chiefly by the order takers and the benefits reaped disproportionately by the order givers. That's the way it will be.
I see little to celebrate about such a skillful piece of fraud, unless, of course, you wish to admire its sheer larcenous beauty in a purely intellectual fashion, like admiring the work of a safe cracker. I wish everyone a good party, but it'll be an ordinary workday for me. Now if organizers of such events would borrow a page from the month before and promote green beer as part of their anti-consumption consumption well then I might at least stop off for a drink.
Labels: Corporate criminals, Earth Day, ecology, environment, holidays, hypocrisy
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
CONSUMERISM:
EARTH DAY AND MARKETING:
Earth Day is coming tomorrow, whoop de ding dong. Most good ideas are subject to the law of inevitable chintz, and the whole hoopla around Earth Day may indeed be the primary modern example (though I am sure that there are many close competitors). What exactly is more absurd, the declining portion of leftists who imagine that 'ecology" poses some "fundamental paradigm" for changing society(and their absurd religious apotheoses in our dear "primitivists) for the better or those who buy into the "propaganda model" as promoted by the official sponsors of such events as Earth Day ? Who knows ?
What I do know is that the official promotion of Earth Day by government and corporation has gutted the original concept of any useful meaning. What I did't realise was how far this process had progressed. the story below is from the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, and it questions the idea of the overwhelming corporate sponsorship of Earth Day. What Molly finds most jaw droppingly amazing is the idea almost mentioned in passing ie "Earth Day shopping". Do people actually do this ? That is truly amazing. Holy Jesus H. Christ ! Turn your back for a minute and the kids and the dog are wrecking the house. It is right up their with the anarcho-nonsense spewed across the internet (using the height of technology) to promote some idea of the end of civilization. The difference is that large numbers of people buy the former idea while the latter is confined to an ever diminishing cult. I guess it's the old Biblical adage of the beam in one's own eye.
In any case, if you don't find the idea of "consuming for the ecology" silly then what can I say ? Welcome to Orwell's dystopia.
$$$$$$$$$$$$
MARKETING EARTH DAY(AND OTHER STUFF) TO CHILDREN:
Between Sesame's new green Elmo and Nick's Big Green Help, the children's media and marketing industries are going green in a big way this Earth Day. Or are they? In today's Huffington Post, CCFC's Susan Linn and Josh Golin lay out the harms inherent in the environmental lessons promoted by companies whose profits depend on inculcating consumerism in children.
Between Sesame's new green Elmo and Nick's Big Green Help, the children's media and marketing industries are going green in a big way this Earth Day. Or are they? In today's Huffington Post, CCFC's Susan Linn and Josh Golin lay out the harms inherent in the environmental lessons promoted by companies whose profits depend on inculcating consumerism in children.
In the coming year, CCFC will work to make the connections between marketing to children and environmental degradation more explicit. If you have ideas for campaigns that highlight this link, please send them to ccfc@jbcc.harvard.edu.
A link to the article is below. Happy Earth Day!
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Marketing Earth Day (and Other Stuff) to Children
By Susan Linn and Josh Golin
Have you done your Earth Day shopping yet? Between greeting cards, jewelry, mugs, and teddy bears commemorating the day, its roots in environmental activism have all but been forgotten. Now corporations use Earth Day to sell us on the belief that we can buy our way into ecological sustainability. We can't.
Marketing Earth Day (and Other Stuff) to Children
By Susan Linn and Josh Golin
Have you done your Earth Day shopping yet? Between greeting cards, jewelry, mugs, and teddy bears commemorating the day, its roots in environmental activism have all but been forgotten. Now corporations use Earth Day to sell us on the belief that we can buy our way into ecological sustainability. We can't.
Reducing consumption is essential to preserving the earth's resources and preventing its degradation. The same companies that are painting themselves green depend on the profits they earn convincing us to buy more than we need.
Nowhere is this more obvious, and more troubling, than in the world of children's media and marketing, where companies like Disney, Sesame Workshop, and Nickelodeon are eco-marketing as never before.
Labels: Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, consumerism, crooks, Earth Day, hypocrisy, primitivism
Saturday, April 21, 2007
TOMORROW IS EARTH DAY:
Tomorrow, April 22nd, is the "official" Earth Day in the USA and Canada. The late US Senator John McConnell first called for an international Earth Day at an UNESCO meeting in 1969, the same year as he designed the 'Earth Flag' pictured to the left. The original idea was that Earth Day was to be held on the Vernal Equinox (either March 21st or 22nd). The first Earth Day was held in San Francisco on March 21st, 1970, and on February 26th, 1971 then Secretary General of the UN, U Thant, signed a proclamation naming the Equinox as the official UN recognized Earth Day. Today this event is celebrated in over 175 countries. The official site for the international Earth Day is at the Earth Day Network.
In the USA there was a move to change the date of Earth Day to April 22nd. The main force behind this was another US Senator Gaylord Nelson. While the world marks Earth Day by ringing the peace bell in March Canada and the USA celebrate this event of concern for the environment in April. This shift is not unlike the way that International Labour Day has shifted from May 1st to September in these countries. Needless to say the change has provoked more than a little criticism. For some more polemical views go to the International Earth Day site.
A lot of the urge to move Earth Day from its more appropriate time came from a desire to have it coincide more closely with the American Arbor Day. See this for a history of this US holiday. April 22nd is the birthday of J. Sterling Morton, the Nebraskan founder of this holiday (in 1872). Today the holiday is usually observed on the last Friday of April in most states, but a number of states have set dates that are more consistent with the best time for tree planting, from January in the south to May in the far north.
The actual motivation of changing the date of Earth Day is pretty obvious ie to "Americanize" the holiday, but insanity springs eternal, especially in the USA. This patriotic move was criticized by some as a "commie plot". The "proof"...April 22nd, 1970 was the hundredth birthday of Lenin. The Daughters of the American Revolution were quoted as saying "Subversive elements plan to make American children live in an environment that is good for them". Why those dirty commies ! How sneaky and vile. This legend persists to this day in some of the wackier right wing quarters. The Young Republicans had a rejoiner to this plot. Their official Earth Day 2000 slogan was "Earth First ! We'll log Earth first, other planets later".
To return from the further reaches of the imagination- Earth Day today is still the occasion for demonstrations expressing concern about the environment, but it has become increasingly commercialized over the years, losing a lot of its original radical content. In the USA there is an official government site, EarthDay.gov. that provides an entry to the planned events of tomorrow. Here in Canada further information can be found at the Earth Day Canada site. Tree planting are a common event here in Canada as well, imitating the American Arbor Day.
Locally the annual Walk for Mother Earth will begin at 1:00 pm at the Winnipeg City Hall. After an hour of yap yap by speakers the walk to the forks will begin at 2:00 pm where a water ceremony will be held by Garry Raven in the Odena Circle, followed by a free lunch. Later in the day, beginning at 5:00 pm, an Earth Day celebration and fund raiser for the Just Community Market and the Organic Food Council of Manitoba. It will take place at the Pyramid Cabaret at 176 Fort St. The Just Community Market is a marketing co-operative for locally produced food and other goods. For more information or to purchase tickets go to http://www.mysweetspotproductions.com .
Labels: Earth Day, history, holidays
