Leap Manifesto: 'A Call For A Canada Based on Caring For the Earth and One Another' 2

It's quite simple, really. All you have to do is blame the Chinese for all the emissions, then it's not your responsibility to cut back, it's theirs. Problem solved.

I notice also that all of these plans are for many years in the future. No one has a plan that starts today, or even next year. It's all a very comfortable twenty years or so in the future, so no one really has to worry.

Interesting discussion from Bill McKibben of 350.org working with Bernie Sanders calling for a WWII  FDR New Deal democratic socialist type mass mobilization to bring corporate powe to heel and to effectively fight climate change. ( a fight we are losing):

There are powerful forces, of course, that stand in the way of a full-scale mobilization. If you add up every last coal mine and filling station in the world, governments and corporations have spent $20 trillion on fossil fuel infrastructure. “No country will walk away from such investments,” writes Vaclav Smil, a Canadian energy expert. As investigative journalists have shown over the past year, the oil giant Exxon knew all about global warming for decades—yet spent millions to spread climate-denial propaganda. The only way to overcome that concerted opposition—from the very same industrial forces that opposed America’s entry into World War II—is to adopt a wartime mentality, rewriting the old mindset that stands in the way of victory.

https://newrepublic.com/article/135684/declare-war-climate-change-mobili...

In Canada, how about a NEP II?- a National Energy Program  for Climate Change that honours Justin Trudeau's committments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and if that means no pipelines, no subsidies to profiting polluting petroleum plutocrats  and recognizing the rights of aboriginal people, so be it. Public ownership may be the solution to many challenges.

As a current issue, we must not only stop  the privitization of Ontaro hydro and similar public utilities but reverse the process - expand the role of public resources to incclude such things as free energy assessments and retrofits for homes, including the installation of solar panels or other alternative engergy, all tied in to the grid. My local utility company should be a public company under community control and it should be installing, running repairing , upgrading solar panels,  wind turbines and other forms of energy generation.

Ontario Hydro, established in 1906 as the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, was a publicly owned electricity utility in the Province of Ontario. It was formed to build transmission lines to supply municipal utilities with electricity generated by private companies already operating at Niagara Falls, and soon developed its own generation resources by buying private generation stations and becoming a major designer and builder of new stations. As most of the readily developed hydroelectric sites became exploited, the corporation expanded into building coal-fired generation and then nuclear-powered facilities. Renamed as "Ontario Hydro" in 1974, by the 1990s it had become one of the largest, fully integrated electricity corporations in North America.

By 1900, a total capacity of 400,000 horsepower (300,000 kW) was in development at Niagara, and concern was expressed as to whether such natural resources were being best exploited for the public welfare.[3] In June 1902, an informal convention was held at Berlin, (now Kitchener) which commissioned a report by Daniel B. Detweiler, Elias W.B. Snider and F.S. Spence, who recommended in February 1903 that authority be sought from the Ontario Legislature to allow municipal councils to organize a cooperative to develop, transmit, buy and sell electrical energy.[4] The provincial government of George William Ross refused to allow this, and it was only after its loss in the 1905 election that work began on creating a public utility. During that election campaign, James Pliny Whitney (who would become Premier) declared: “

The water power of Niagara should be as free as the air.[5]

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

”

Rev Pesky wrote:

epaulo13 wrote:

..from the above piece. my bold.

quote:

...to avoid dangerous climate impacts therefore requires another approach — one that is grounded in social ownership and democratic control over energy resources, infrastructure, and options.

This is another one of those ststements that's long on optimism, but short on detail. When the speaker asks for democratic control of energy resources, what does that mean? In Canada, resources are the property of the provincial governments. So presumably that would mean Alberta would control their resources. But they already do, and I don't see any Alberta government voluntarily stopping the oil sands.

I just returned from ONDP Provicnial Council, and I felt that, as the Babbler' who raised the issue of the September 30 deadline for the LM submissions, I should provide an update. THe good news is that we had an excellent presentation today by the federal party's new National Director, Robert Fox. He impressed the delegates with his passion, which we haven't seen much of in quite a while.

To the point, when I raised the issue of the the Discussion Guide and the deadline, he responded, very candidly, that the party erred in setting the September 30 deadline. He said the party would continue to accept submissions from riding associations and that the dialogue was still very much open.

I appreciated the openness of his response. I don't think I could have asked for more. We now plan to go ahead with our discussion. I'm glad to be able to post some good news. The opportunity doesn't present itself very often these days.

epaulo13 wrote:

The key to making the Leap in Canada

quote:

In the Autumn 2016 issue of Canadian Dimension magazine, George Martell argued that "the Leap Manifesto offers a genuine opportunity to move beyond social democracy--to directly face up to capitalism--if we are prepared to take the Manifesto's demands seriously."

Martell's essay was followed by responses from activists representing a variety of viewpoints, including the following contribution co-authored by Ian Angus, editor of Climate & Capitalism and an activist with Sustainable North Grenville, and John Riddell, a historian of the socialist movement active in Toronto East End Against Line 9. Their response to to Martell was first co-published at Climate & Capitalism and John Riddell's blog.

GEORGE MARTELL correctly notes that the Leap Manifesto's impact on the New Democratic Party has opened new possibilities for the left. Its "direct opposition to the oppressive logic of global capitalism" offers us a "genuine opportunity to move beyond social democracy."

But to seize this opening, the left must resolve a timescale problem that Martell does not address. His movement-building program is long-term, but the world climate crisis demands immediate action. We believe that the Leap Manifesto can bridge that gap.

How much truth do you think there is to the rumour that, should the NDP reject the LM, a new party will arise from its ashes to promote its values  (Which are anything but barbaric)?

In the Church of Naomi Klein

quote:

Naomi Klein, who chose Toronto’s Trinity St. Paul Centre earlier this month to release her latest incendiary device, No Is Not Enough, began her reading positioned before an ornate pipe organ, her lectern placed in front of the word “Alpha” in gold lettering above the stage. She finished the evening seated under the word “Omega,” fielding softball questions from a TV host. The congregation loved every bit of it.

Klein, as author of a different kind of faith than the Nazarene’s, has come to command a degree of adherence that is so rare in modern public life as to be nothing short of extraordinary. There is something almost soothing about having Klein at the pulpit, as a Vancouver audience will get to experience tomorrow night at St. Andrew’s Wesley United Church at a sold-out Vancouver Writers Fest event.

These times cry out for an antidote to the mayhem that has come to grip the world’s capitals, and empty its deserts and plains. Paradoxically, perhaps, it takes the world’s greatest chronicler of the evils of neoliberalism to bend the arc of our collective moral anxieties towards optimism — something that seems so counter-intuitive in an era of Donald Trump, Brexit and, locally, our homegrown disaster capitalist and, relievedly, soon-to-be-ex-premier Christy Clark.

quote:

No Is Not Enough does us many favours, but of all of them I most appreciated Klein’s explainer about “the word neoliberalism, and about who is a neoliberal.

Neoliberalism is an extreme form of capitalism that started to become dominant in the 1980s, under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, but since the 1990s has been the reigning ideology of the world’s elites, regardless of partisan affiliation. Still, its strictest and most dogmatic adherents remain where the movement began: on the U.S. Right.

Neoliberalism is shorthand for an economic project that vilifies the public square and anything that’s not either the workings of the market or the decisions of individual consumers. It is probably best summarized by (one) of Reagan’s famous phrases, ‘The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’

As Thatcher famously declared, ‘There is no alternative.’ (Another way of thinking about this is that neoliberalism is simply capitalism without competition, or capitalism lying on the couch in its undershirt saying, ‘What are you going to do, leave me?’

Neoliberalism is a very profitable set of ideas, which is why I am always a little hesitant to describe it as an ideology. What it really is, at its core, is a rationale for greed....

THE CLIMATE MOBILIZATION BEGINS IN L.A.

City Councilmember Paul Koretz, author Naomi Klein, and LA climate justice community leaders, announce the launch of an effort to mobilize the nation’s second largest city against climate change on the scale of the home front mobilization of WWII. This unprecedented campaign aims for no less than a Leap forward to climate justice and carbon-neutrality by 2025.

"I’m calling on all Angelenos to mobilize once again. We need a World War II-scale mobilization in order to keep our City safe and our planet habitable and resilient. And we need to ensure that we do it in a way that honors frontline communities, ensures equity, and protects workers. I’m asking the creative minds of Los Angeles to join with the grassroots activists in creating the City of the future, not some fictional Tomorrowland, but here, on the ground, in the City of Angels we all love." - Councilmember Paul Koretz

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