A Prophecy

 Abbreviations used:

CC - climate change

CO2 - carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas (GHG) responsible for global warming (GW)

GHG - greenhouse gases. Gases like carbon dioxide and methane which trap outgoing infrared radiation (heat) thus contributing to global warming. GHG act like an insulating layer: the more there are, the better the insulation and the hotter the earth gets.

GW - global warming 

           Each of our action produces unintended consequences. Some of these consequences are beneficial; others, not so much.. (Edgar Morin: La Méthode, "écologie de l'action)

           In thinking about the trajectory the world is following - ecocidal, suicidal -, I am led to reflect on the role that neoconservative values, ideology and hubris play in the unfolding tragedy. Neocons adulate the Brash and the Bold, the iconoclasts, the mavericks and scofflaws: Donald Trump, the Philippines' homicidal macho president Rodrigo Duterte, France's Islamophobic populist Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage of Brexit (in)fame. You get the picture: the folks who love to strut their political incorrectness (and gain popularity and votes doing so).

                                           Let's hope Honest Abe was right..

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2017/06/b-ook-review-corey-robin-reactionary.html
 
        I believe this political attitude can be legitimately seen as an extension, intensification (or degeneration) of the hubris of Western European Christian culture. Five centuries ago, Christian Europe arrogantly assumed the role of converting the "lost souls" outside Europe to the One True Faith. Over time, the power of the Church dwindled, the mask fell away, revealing economic exploitation - and the political leverage it brought - as the true goals.

          Today, the folly of this approach to running a planet is becoming evident. Global warming (GW), due to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of human industry, transport and industrialized agriculture, threatens the world's major food production centers. Terrorism and war wait in the wings. The traditional horsemen of the apocalypse: famine, plague and war.. or - more cynically - "Mother Nature's birth regulation program"..

         It is now becoming clear, that in order to survive and thrive, human societies should act to minimize the production of "unknown unknowns". (We except those hardy individuals who select themselves as "expendable", who deliberately adopt risky occupations, for example, astronauts, soldiers, doctors fighting ebola epidemics, firefighters. There are legitimate risks that need to be taken and someone has to take them!) Unknown unknowns are the most troublesome unknowns, the ones we are ignorant of. Such unknowns generally emerge and become impactful when a system (ecosystem, social system, organism, enterprise..) is pushed beyond the normal range of values it was designed to function in. Known unknowns, on the other hand, are the one's we have learned to live with like the natural seasonal variations in temperature and storm risk. In principle we can adapt our behaviors to the expected range of variation of known unknowns. We put aside light jackets and sweaters as well as raincoats and umbrellas to deal with the (known, expected) variations in spring and fall weather. For winter, we put aside snow shovels, heavy boots, salt and sand.

          When it comes to the health of essential ecosystem services, to maintaining climate stability, or the potential for ethnoracial conflict, we should act, collectively, so that the primary unknowns society has to deal with are known unknowns. In particular, we should avoid pushing vital systems - upon which our lives depend - outside the normal range of operating values they were designed (or evolved) to handle. Such wise policies would, for example, stabilize GHG emissions to minimize nasty (unexpected) surprises in the functioning of vital climatic systems and large regional ecosystems. 

         A prophecy: it is now too late to avoid Imminent Mass Human Die Off (IMHDO). Put bluntly - the world is screwed (note 1). I predict (going out on a limb here) that it is now too late to stabilize global warming within 1, 1.5, 2 degree Celsius (or whatever the limit of the month is..) A Permian style meltdown of polar region carbon stores has begun, reinforced by powerful positive feed backs (note 2). If the brakes on greenhouse gas emission were slammed on hard, there is a decent chance the planet would move back from a transition to a decidedly warmer global climate. However, this would just be good luck. It is just as likely, if not more so, that "rising living standards" will continue to pump up greenhouse gas levels and that Gaia, the planetary ecosystem, will soon tip into a warmer climatic submode (note 3). Perhaps future generations will live on an earth warmer by 4 or 5 C compared to the world we live in today. Portions of the world could actually become too hot to sustain human life before the century is over.

http://www.dw.com/en/climate-change-could-make-south-asia-too-hot-for-human-survival-by-2100/a-39944935 

            A wounded earth would then - eventually - slide into the next Ice Age. The warmest portion of the present Interglacial warm period, the hypsitherm, occurred several thousand years ago. We should be cooling off now, slowly sliding into the next glacial era. It is interesting to note that the earth was, in fact, beginning to cool off until the industrial revolution came along and began pumping all those GHG into the atmosphere. The collapse of industrial civilization and global population will, one presumes, allow natural Ice Age dynamics to re-instate themselves. A diminished humanity living on an ecologically diminished earth will encounter the challenges of the next Ice Age with diminished technological capacity to adapt. A Karmic payback, one images, for our arrogance, inflation and hubris.

"As a man sows, so shall he reap" - Jesus

"As you sow the seed so shall you reap the fruit."  - Buddha

            God/dess knows how the combined impacts of species extinction, ecosystem service destruction, and planetary overheating will affect the dynamics of the next Ice Age. Would a damaged earth experience a harsher than normal Ice Age? Or would it be delayed and shortened in length because of all the GHG? At this stage of the game, it is anyone's guess - unknown unknowns!

               Yes, indeedy, the world is a ball of confusion - and our current (failing) culture is only making things worse. Please take a few minutes to read these wise words.

http://milwaukeereflections.blogspot.ca/2017/08/writing-in-end-times-comprehensive.html 

               Can anything be done to stave off the impending collapse (or, at least, mitigate its effects)?

dodging-extinction-part-3-what-can-we-do

             I also strongly recommend the following two "experimental" novels by our friend Don Hayward. These explore how the collapse of industrial society might unfold in Ontario providence, Canada, and how a new civilization based on respect for Earth, cooperation and local production and governance could arise (if we are lucky).

Hayward: after-the-last-day 

Hayward: the-seventh-path 



notes:

1- Note that I wrote "the world is screwed", not "the earth is screwed". The earth, the planet, and the life thereof will survive. We may succeed in damaging the earth's ecosystems to the point that all vertebrates - including ourselves - go extinct (an extremely unlikely proposition!) Nevertheless, insects, plants and bacteria (including primitive bacteria living buried miles deep in rock under the sea floor) would survive. 

             By "world" I mean a civilizational or cultural perspective on the human condition. A "world" - the Late Classical world of the Mediterranean or the world of the Inuit (Eskimos) before the arrival of Europeans - arises from the interaction of human imagination and the biological and physical world in which that human spirit is immersed and from which it arises. Whether or not humanity goes extinct, our present "World" is dead meat because it is ecologically and demographically unviable, unsustainable.

2- The Permian mass extinction event, 250 million years ago, was the worst: more than 90% of plant and animal species on land and sea went extinct. This mass extinction bears creepy similarities to what is happening to our earth today. Then, as today, massive releases of GHG caused planet-wide GW. The only difference is that then the GHG were due to vast subcontinental volcanic eruptive zones (the Siberian Traps), today the GHG are due to human economic and agricultural activity. 

         One of the most disquieting similarities relates to the nature of the actual kill mechanisms. The initial Permian volcanic GHG emissions warmed polar regions. This caused permafrost to thaw and decompose, releasing massive quantities of GHG (CO2 and methane). These new emissions amplified the initial GHG warming (positive feedback loop). In addition, methane - an even more potent GHG than CO2 - was released in industrial quantities as buried methane containing ice thawed in shallow polar coastal waters. It is this second pulse of GHG that is generally accepted today as the knock out punch that did most of the killing. In addition, Late Permian ocean waters became stratified (reducing the vertical circulation that oxygenates deep water) and acidified (from atmospheric CO2 absorption and seabed methane release). Life disappeared from large regions of the oceans as toxic anoxic (no oxygen) zones spread. Now, all these kill mechanisms are becoming active today: permafrost is rapidly melting, methane ice in shallow coastal waters is thawing and releasing methane, anoxic zones are spreading..

                          massive Arctic methane blow hole, Siberia (aerial photo)

             Close up of blow hole. Note tiny human figures on upper rim (left side)

  
3- Ice Ages are periods of about 100,000 years in which global temperatures drop by about 5 C or more. These are separated by shorter Interglacial warm periods lasting several tens of thousand of years. The current Ice Age / Interglacial periodicity is a relatively recent phenomenon in earth's climatic history. It is due to the current patterns of deep water ocean circulation arising from the joining of North and South America about two million years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age

           Not all Ice Ages and Interglacials are created equal! Some Ice Ages are colder than others, some Interglacials are warmer than others. If Ice Ages and Interglacials are two dominant modes that the earth's climate systems swing through then Ice Ages and Interglacials possess several sub-modes. It is conceivable that our current GHG emissions might "pop" our current climate system into a warmer sub-mode. An analog to the world we are probably headed toward would be the last Interglacial (Eemian) when hippopotamuses waddled in the Thames and Rhine rivers while forests grew on what is now arctic tundra.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian 

B ook Review: Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind

Corey Robin: The Reactionary Mind, Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, Oxford University Press, 2011, 248 pages, chapter notes, index.

".. an inspired move, characteristic of all great counterrevolutionary theories, in which the people become actors without roles, an audience that believes it is onstage. (emphasis added)


"'A free act is only that which proceeds from the free election of the rational will'. And 'where there is no consideration nor use of reason, there is no liberty at all.' Being free entails acting in accordance with reason or, in political terms, living under laws as opposed to arbitrary power." 

             Prof Robin's approach to Conservatism and socio-political Reaction (he does not distinguish the two) is iconoclastic. He rejects the idea that the core of Conservatism is a desire to hold onto the good things of the past - "Tradition" - and, instead, sees a power dialectic at work:

“Though it is often claimed that the left stands for equality while the right stands for freedom, this notion misstates the actual disagreement between right and left. Historically, the conservative has favored liberty for the higher orders and constraint for the lower orders. What the conservative sees and dislikes in equality, in other words, is not a threat to freedom but its extension. For in that extension, he sees a loss of his own freedom.” In Robin’s understanding, conservatives aren’t traditionalists who seek to maintain the status quo, but counterrevolutionaries: “People on the left often fail to realize this, but conservatism really does speak to and for people who have lost something. It may be a landed estate or the privileges of white skin, the unquestioned authority of a husband or the untrammeled rights of a factory owner. The loss may be as material as money or as ethereal as a sense of standing.”
  
            While I might harbor some doubts as to the identification of conservatives and reactionaries (note 1), Robin's portrait of the conservative / reactionary co-incides pretty well with my own observations of true reactionaries. Traditional definitions of Conservatism tend toward the bucolic, toward the idealization of the "pastoral" and (supposedly) simpler - and better - life of the past. Conservatives are said, and themselves often claim, to respect Tradition. 

            However, reactionaries I have met - and most of the conservatives I know are reactionaries - , schoolmates, neighbors and family members, don't fit these traditional depictions. My reactionaries tend to be mavericks, wild cards, innovators, iconoclasts (or, at least, see themselves as such). On one point in particular I concur with prof Robin, reactionaries seek power and, specifically, power over others (as opposed to power wielded to empower, liberate or heal others).

                          Can you identify these two famous reactionaries?

              Today, and since at least the end of World War II, the forces of political Reaction are in ascendancy in the West. This is true despite some tactical, battlefield victories like second (or third) wave feminism, the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s (U.S.A.), the decolonization of third world countries, the founding of the United Nations, the overthrow of apartheid in South Africa and the fall of Communism. However, if one looks closely, one sees that these (apparent) victories for Reason and the empowerment of minorities and the oppressed are, at best, partial, incomplete or truncated revolutions. Thus, racism is still very much alive and well, despite attempts over the last five decades to render it politically incorrect and to empower its victims. Witness the recent shootings of young black men in the U.S.A. and Canada, the oppression of the Roma in central and eastern Europe, the general rise of anti-immigrant sentiment, and growing religious intolerance and fanaticism. Liberal and progressive forces may still be able to win battles, but the forces of reaction seem to be winning the war (note 2).

             The cultural signs of the rise of Reaction are everywhere, if one takes the time to look.

"In 1998 readers responding to a Modern Library poll identified [reactionary Ayn Rand's] Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead as the two greatest novels in English in the twentieth century.." Page 76


http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/
 
".. the conservative position stems from a genuine conviction that a world thus emancipated will be ugly, brutish, base and dull. It will lack the excellence of a world where the better man commands the worse. When [conservative theoretician Edmund] Burke adds,.. , that the "great Object" of the [French] Revolution is 'to root out that thing called an Aristocrat or Nobleman and Gentleman', he is not simply referring to the power of the nobility; he is also referring to the distinction that power brings to the world. If the power goes, the distinction goes with it. This vision of the connection between excellence and rule is what brings together in post-war America that unlikely alliance of the libertarian, with his vision of the employer's untrammeled power in the workplace; the traditionalist, with his vision of the father's rule at home; and the statist [fascist], with his vision of a heroic leader pressing his hand upon the face of the earth. Each in his own way subscribes to this typical statement, from the nineteenth century, of the conservative creed: 'To obey a real superior.. is one of the most important of all virtues - a virtue absolutely essential to the attainment of anything great and lasting.'"


               We are now left with a plausible - but yet to be empirically tested - mechanism to explain the rise of Reaction today, particularly in its populist forms: Donald Trump, Marie Le Pen in France, Putin's appeals to Russian chauvinism, the anti-drug war of Duterte in the Philippines, the Brexit campaign in the UK. 

populism: definition Encyclopedia Britannica 

               In Western democracies, the populace is taught that the people is king. Some, of course, are "superior" to (more gifted than) their fellows; these are the "natural rulers" lauded by novelist and reactionary theoretician Ayn Rand. The problem is that today the average citizen (the "King" of democratic societies) feels himself threatened from all quarters: climate change, environmental degradation, the loss or risk of loss of employment as blue collar jobs are off-shored to third world sweatshops, incomprehensible and incredibly violent international terrorist movements capable of striking our homeland, uppity minorities and "deviants" who refuse to accept their status as inferiors.. The general sentiment today is one of loss of control or power, a generalized attack on status (climate change threatens to destroy everyone's status!) Since many of these threats are "tentacular" - hard to comprehend and omnipresent - , deep, but poorly focused, fear is generated. Now fear is perhaps the greatest incitement to violence (the classic "fight or flight response"). To provide temporary relief from chronic invasive fear, scapegoats are sought. Attacking the scapegoat provides temporary stress reduction but, since it does not affect the root cause of fear, its effects soon wear off and, like the junkie, another "fix" is soon needed. 

              It is interesting to note how contemporary populist leaders lash out against vulnerable - and expendable - groups: immigrants, Mexicans, Muslims, drug addicts, gays, transgendered,.. and how they promise to deliver the harrowed populace from their enemies, real or imagined. All of which coincides with prof Robin's definition of Reaction as a response to a sense of impending loss.

              Since our social, political and economic institutions seem helpless either to address - or even  to adequately define the challenges we collectively face - , Reaction must surely grow till a social explosion (war, revolution) occurs. We are in the early stages of that detonation today..

             Perhaps because I am a congenital optimist (who sees the glass as half-full as opposed to half-empty), I don't see The Reactionary Mind as a doom and gloom book. My take away is a positive message. Prof Robin argues that a language of displacement and falsification is employed by reactionaries. Rather than frame political struggle in terms of power and powerlessness, reactionaries falsely frame struggle in terms of security. Thus Hitler tried to protect the Aryan race from the nefarious Jew. Trump wants to protect Americans from criminal Mexican illegals. The Reactionary Mind teaches us to look past the verbal smoke and mirrors of security-speak to the real issue of empowerment. 

                                  interview with Prof Corey Robin

 
notes: 

1- I have encountered "red Tories" who describe themselves as fiscal conservatives and social progressives. One red Tory mother held up American president John F. Kennedy and his civil rights project as an exemplar for her children to emulate. When speaking of red Tories and moderate conservatives (on a case by case basis), we may indeed be justified in adhering to traditional definitions of Conservatism (such as the valorisation of Tradition, Hierarchy and Authority). In the case of the red Tory, one's rank in the social order is determined by earned merit, not inherited status or Machiavellian thuggery. I would therefore nuance my appreciation of Robin's thesis by making a pragmatic distinction between more moderate conservatives and reactionary power trippers.

2- Reaction will probably win the war for a number of reasons, the most salient being  a growing perception (often unavowed) that the world is going to hell. Climate change, for example, threatens disruption of major regional agricultural systems in the near future which will trigger regional conflicts and (most likely) intensified global terrorism. ISIS terrorism in Europe is probably only a foretaste of the globalized terror to come. Those who have - the peoples of the West in particular - (consciously or not) are afraid of losing what they have and becoming have-nots.

 

Bleeding Québec

January 29, 2017. Québec city, Québec. Around 8 pm, at the conclusion of prayers at the Grande Mosquée, a lone gunman stormed into the men's section, killing six and injuring around a dozen. Alexandre Bissonnette, age 27, was captured by police the same night. He has been indicted, so far, on six counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder with a restricted firearm. He had no previous police record but had recently gained a reputation as a xenophobic, misogynist troll.

         Why? Why did this happen in tolerant, liberal, easy going Québec. Such horrors are only "supposed" to happen elsewhere, in present or defunct empires: the United States, France, Belgium, Russia.. , or in the Third Word and Israel, societies riven by ancient ethnic and religious hatreds. But not here, not in peace-loving Québec. No. Never..

          Of course, it is always easy, in retrospect, to tease out an infinity of plausible causes and links. Some are immediate and obvious.

           Hate waves. "La radio poubelle", trash radio, spewing bigotry, anger, hatred, frustration against all that is not conform with their populist reactionary world view. Radio-poubelle is popular in the ethnically homogeneous provincial capital. With a population of 1.1 million Québec city "boasts" of no less than 5 hate radio stations. Bigotry apparently sells! At least in Québec city. Radio poubelle, one notes, failed to take root in cosmopolitan, ethnically diverse Montréal. This being said, even Montréal mosques have noted an uptick in vandalism and hate graffiti recently. 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-city-radio-poubelle-mosque-attack-1.3964005 
  
             World going to hell in a handbasket. The neoconservative "Free Market" globalized economy is patently broken. Wildlife is going extinct at a rate that matches or exceeds extinction rates at the time of the extinction of the dinosaurs. Essential ecosystem services that humanity depends upon for its very survival are being destroyed. The gap between rich and poor is growing, generating irresolvable social tensions. The planetary climate is going to hell due to greenhouse gas emissions (which never cease rising).Worse, our "leaders" have nothing new to offer. The dominant ideologies (or what is left of them) are impotent even to formulate the challenges we face or have been instrumentalized to maintain ruling elites in power for as long as possible (fundamentalist religion is a case in point - think of ISIS). To hide their nakedness, our "leaders" resort to the cheapest electioneering tricks: witness Donald Trumps' presidential campaign or the Brexit campaign that took the UK out of the European Union. Increasingly, the powers-that-be are forced to appeal to the baser instincts of increasingly frightened, frustrated publics. Consider the rise of xenophobic, proto-fascist populism around the world: Trump in the US, Le Pen in France, Putin in Russia, Duterte in the Philippines, the rise of the New Right in Hungary, Poland, Scandinavia, Holland, Italy, the UK..

            Québec, alas, is not immune from the general distemper. Last summer, Jean-François Lisée, the current Parti Québécois leader, stated:

«Nous avons un ennemi déclaré, l'État islamique, qui recrute ici des gens pour poser des bombes. Notre seul choix est de débattre de l'interdiction de la burqa AVANT qu'un jihadiste s'en serve pour cacher ses mouvements pour un attentat, ou APRÈS.»  

http://www.journaldequebec.com/2017/01/31/debat-sur-la-laicite-il-faut-changer-de-ton-reconnait-lisee 

"We have a declared enemy, the Islamic State. They recruit members in the province to plant bombs. The only choice we have is to debate the banning of the burqa BEFORE a jihadist uses one to hide his preparations for an attack or AFTER the attack"

                           burqa clad women: a picture is worth 1,000 words..

             One may indeed find the psychology behind the burqa repugnant but Lisée's words go much further, too far. They constitute a thinly veiled incitement to hatred and fear of all muslims by association with "islamic" or "jihadist terrorists". This is vintage populism! Meanwhile, real issues concerning the integration of immigrants and the numbers of immigrants accepted annually are conveniently swept under the rug by Lisée's simplistic knee jerk associations. In reality, the number of burqa wearing women in Québec is vanishingly small. I have yet to meet one! (The hijab, the head scarf or hair covering, yes but burquas, no.) 

            When one looks at religious fanaticism dispassionately, one is about as likely to encounter fanatics among Christians and Jews (not to mention atheist neonazis). The statistics from muslim communities in Québec are rather revealing on this point. Concerning mosque attendance:

15 % ont dit y aller assidument.
25 % ont dit s'y présenter de façon plus ou moins récurrente.
60 % des musulmans au Québec n’ont jamais fréquenté une mosquée.
10 % des femmes musulmanes portent le hidjab.
60 % des femmes converties à l’islam par choix revêtent le hidjab.

15% - one out of seven - attend mosque "assiduously"
25% - one out of four - attend "more or less regularly"
60% of muslims in Québec never attend mosque
10% of female muslims wear the hijab (head scarf)
while 60% of native female converts to Islam choose to wear the hijab.

           The last two stats are interesting in their own right, given Lisée's fear mongering attacks on female attire. Québécois women coverted to Islam are SIX times more likely to wear the hijab than muslim women who immigrated here: 60% versus 10%!!

http://www.journaldemontreal.com/2017/02/04/qui-sont-les-musulmans-du-quebec 

              Politicians who whip up xenophobia to gain cheap votes are playing with fire (or dynamite). Once out of the bottle the genie of race hatred is not easily controlled or calmed. Québec's recent flirtation with xenophobic populism goes back at least four years to the infamous debate on a proposed "Quebec charter of values". This "debate" was launched by Parti Québécois minister of Democratic Institutions and Active Citizenship, Bernard Drainville and proposed, among other measures, baning the "ostentatious display of religious symbols" by employees of public institutions: hospitals, schools, daycare centers, public offices.. The debate had the effect of fanning the flames of racism, always lurking in the human psyche's depths - a legacy of our tribal past. Racism became "legitimized", no longer muzzled by political correctness. Muslim women wearing the hijab reported verbal insults while walking the streets. A few were spat upon. A new automotive sport was born: playing chicken with hijab wearing women pedestrians at stop lights. As she approaches, you gun the motor, then hit the brakes. Scare the hell out of her, ha, ha.. funny, funny. (This is what I referred to above as "appealing to the baser instincts". Not all of human nature is pleasant..)

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/09/left-wing-populism-in-quebec.html 

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/09/pandoras-box-to-open-or-not-to-open.html 

             Recently, on a late night Montréal radio talk show, I heard a caller claim that when she sees a woman wearing a hijab, she feels fear. Interesting - and dangerous - reaction. The "reptilian" - more primitive - part of the brain which regulates basic survival instincts doesn't distinguish between fear and aggression. A cornered rat - or human - will fight like hell to save itself, out of fear. Hitler's anti-Semitic propaganda always emphasized the threat that Jews constituted to the German people and to the German's "superior" values - a past echo of our recent Quebec charter of values debate. We note that a certain Donald Trump is employing the same tactic to whip up a lynch mob mentality in the US against Muslims, Islam, Latinos and "immigrants" in general. With the expected results:

"Get out of my country!" shouted the gunman

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/02/28/fbi-investigating-shooting-of-two-indian-men-in-kansas-as-a-hate-crime/?utm_term=.557f0a2a2a13 

"Jewish centres and schools across the U.S. coped with another wave of bomb threats Monday as officials in Philadelphia made plans to repair and restore hundreds of vandalized headstones at a Jewish cemetery."  

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/02/27/hundreds-of-gravestones-smashed-at-jewish-cemetery-in-us-_n_15051506.html 

          But there are causes and there are causes, some causes are deeper, more fundamental. One of the major, rarely - if ever - discussed, causes of our recent "immigrant and refugee problems" in Europe, Australia, North and South America is the failure to achieve Sustainable Development in the Third World in the seven decades following World War II. Small scale, participatory, community based development employing local resources, supplying local markets and employing simple technologies, these are the key elements of true Sustainable Development. This is the road not taken. Not having taken the road of Sustainable Development is the source of much of our troubles today, along with overpopulation, climate change and rising socio-economic inequity. (In reality, these challenges are interconnected and mutually reinforcing which means that solutions to one challenge will often - not always! - have positive spillover into one or more of the other challenges.) Simple, sustainable, locally based technologies are founded on renewable energy sources: sun, wind, biomass (plants, organic wastes of all sorts), tidal and wave force energy, geothermal energy. Such Sustainable Development would, on the whole, not have required much more than mid-ninetheenth century to early twentieth century technology to get off the ground and drastically improve the standard of living and life opportunities of billions of people living in the Third World: metallurgy, electric motors and generators, early 20th century vacuum tube technology. The road not taken would also have required a massive reduction in birthrates in developing countries which implies assuring universal female education (the factor most correlated with reduction in birthrate). Rapid Sustainable Development post-WW II required free or accessible public primary and secondary education, sex education with access to contraception and universal old age pensions. One reason people in countries with high infant mortality rates have lots of children is to assure that a few of them will live to care for their parents in old age. Sustainable Development would require that this vicious circle of poverty - high mortality - high natality be broken.

Robert Frost, the road not taken 

              The Road actually Taken. Such a developmental trajectory - one in which economy serves humanity - did not fall in favor with the Masters of the World, the multinational corporate elite and their servitors in government and the professions. In today's world, the objective of economic activity is not - except as a pious, aspirational goal - "the Common Good". The true objective of economic activity is to maximize profit (or, at least, to build the infrastructure required for future profit maximization). In a sense, the Road Taken inverts the logic and logistics of the road not taken wherein economy and technology exist to serve wo/man. On the developmental trajectory the world has followed post-World War II, wo/man serves the economy and her servant technology. 

            Cheap mass produced goods designed to be replaced often (planned obselescence) require massive inputs of fossil fuel and mass transport (ship, truck, rail, air) and thus have highly negative environmental impacts: greenhouse gases, acid rain, acidified oceans, fine particulate matter, carcinogens.. The production of such goods has been offshored to third world countries with poor environmental and worker safety regulations. Working conditions border on slavery. Outmoded, highly polluting technologies - China is a case in point - are usually employed. The real costs of mass industrial (multinational) production are conveniently swept under the rug by the accountant's / economist's trick of "externalized costs": one simply ignores costs that cannot be easily entered in a financial ledger. The family devastated by the death of the breadwinner who died from workplace cancer does not count in the unreal, abstract world of profit margins and Free Market "laws".

              The following draft article contains an outline of what a really sustainable economy would have to take into consideration. Please note that this is a draft article. We would appreciate any suggestions you leave in the Comments section..

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2014/08/four-pillars-of-sustainable-economy.html 

      
           It is my argument that, because the West (and the now defunct Communist World) failed to launch the Third World on a Sustainable Development trajectory, we now face a rising tide of refugees. Refugees from failed and failing states, from poverty, war, famine, environmental degradation, ecosystem collapse and climate change. Quite a litany of failures to lay at the feet of non-sustainable "development"!

           In short, if we are faced with immigrant and refugee "problems", we should ask who created those problems in the first place..

           It is possible - quite likely - that another cause of Islamophobia in Québec is the proliferation of right wing extremist groups in the province. Québec, as a French speaking cultural and linguistic minority in North America, may be more prone to fits of xenophobia and intolerance when we feel ourselves under threat. That is, feeling ourselves to be a vulnerable minority on the continent, we may over-react to percieved collective threats. And this, despite the fact, that on the whole, Québec is seen by immigrants as an open and welcoming society for those willing to make the effort to learn and speak French.

Some food for thought:
 

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/as-quebec-shooting-victims-mourned-montreal-mosque-vandalized-1.3269120 

"I don’t think people are more racist than they were,” Maxime Fiset, a reformed neo-Nazi who now works with Montreal’s Centre for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence, told CTV News earlier this week. “I think they’re just more outspoken -- and social media gives them a perfect platform to organize.”

And part of the reason they are more outspoken is that the Inner Baboon has been given permission to act out by hate-mongering populists on the podium and the (anti-)social media..

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/words-hurt-quebec-politicians-link-values-debate-to-shooting-1.3265600

"Couillard acknowledged the province has its "demons" in terms of attitudes toward Muslims and that "xenophobia, racism and exclusion" are present in the province."

http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/quebec-citys-trash-radio-under-microscope-following-mosque-shooting 

profile of a mass murderer? 
 

“We were good friends. He was a really good guy, and his parents were great,” said Kingma-Lord, now an international business consultant in Quebec City.
Bissonnette, who has a twin brother, Mathieu, was bullied at school for being a “nerd” with “unpopular tastes,” he said. Together they used to go looking for quartz rocks at recess. Bissonnette also played chess.
“People were mean to him, and called him a weirdo. Your popularity is important as a child,” Kingma-Lord said. “But he would be mean back at them. He developed a very thick skin.”

"Debroise described Bissonnette as a boyish, skinny young man who didn’t make an impression.

“If he wasn’t there, you might not notice,” he said. “So it’s hard to understand that he could become so violent.”

                    Actually, from the description you provide, I find it rather easy to understand that he became so violent. He was primed to explode and the current unsettled, anxiety generating times provided the spark..

 

             Mass murderer? Said to have been regularly bullied in school for being a nerd.

"He was known in the city’s activist circles as a right-wing troll who frequently took anti-foreigner and anti-feminist positions and stood up for U.S. President Donald Trump."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/quebec-city-mosque-shooting-what-we-know-so-far/article33826078/ 

               manifestation of solidarity with Muslim community after the shootings

                  Rising tide of racism? Pig's head left on steps of the Grande Mosqué during Ramadan in June of last year