Today we're launching our NEW Strategic Plan for Nature, Justice, and Democracy - including ways you can take part in it. We also have a new action item by which you can send a message to New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt to oppose fracking.
Our new strategy could not be ready at a more vital time. As we wrote last week the true struggle we face is the Many, and nature and justice, versus the Money:
"The U.S. Government works FOR the same wealthy interests that were at the Canada Investment Summit [U.S. aggression is not about benefiting the U.S., but about benefiting the 1%]."
Today we're launching our NEW Strategic Plan for Nature, Justice, and Democracy - including ways you can take part in it. We also have a new action item by which you can send a message to New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt to oppose fracking.
Our new strategy could not be ready at a more vital time. As we wrote last week the true struggle we face is the Many, and nature and justice, versus the Money:
"The U.S. Government works FOR the same wealthy interests that were at the Canada Investment Summit [U.S. aggression is not about benefiting the U.S., but about benefiting the 1%]."
If our Federal Government were actually doing anything it is doing for the sake of sovereignty, then why - after one and a half YEARS - have they done almost nothing to address Federal Government reliance on U.S. tech (a massive, well known, national security risk). Why are U.S. corporations benefiting from the public financing of gas plants to build their data centres, in Canada, with little public input and without binding regulation. Why has Palantir been given military contracts (after all what defence benefit does other military expenditure bring to Canada if the U.S. has access to every detail).
The Federal Government tabled an omnibus bill yesterday that "gives government the new and expanded power to end a legal strike," they've given wealthy U.S. interests control of airport privatization (it IS privatization) and - as we warned last week - resulting cost increases for Canadians will not be regulated in any serious way. As Althia Raj writes:
"[the new bill allows] the Carney government to do the same run around [of] Canada’s environmental protections for species at risk, like the orcas [that they had previously had to walk back on due to public outcry], just without the public closely watching."
While the PM talks about closer ties to the EU, our domestic policies become further from the EU's (and more American) every day. Our defence minister celebrates U.S. deals on Greenland after Canadian oil corporations had offered to aid in U.S. aggression there. Perhaps the PM has a point when he said: EU partnership would make Canada "a better partner" for the U.S. - it certainly will if we pass on pressure to the EU and Greenland to enact similar U.S.-style policies, as we already arguably have, adding to the EU's existing problems in that regard.
Nature, justice, and democracy are our strengths in this moment of crisis, not things to 'throw out the window' as Gretchen Fitzgerald noted in our podcast about our new Strategic Plan. As Julie Rennick puts it, nature is 'literally' what connects us. As both point out it is time to move past fear-based responses to the crises of nature-degradation, U.S. aggression, and democratic erosion to instead understand how they are linked. Only by understanding the connections can we develop functional plans to address those issues.
Connection is thus at the heart of Sierra Club Canada's new mission:
- To unite people and communities to defend nature through justice-driven, democratic action.
- To cultivate hope, belonging, and leadership by boldly pursuing new strategies and amplifying unheard voices.
Hope for the Future from the Larger Picture of Environmental History
There's something about our new plan that makes me particularly hopeful for the future, despite the above. In historian J. R. McNeill's Something New Under Sun the author makes the argument that the origin of politics itself rests in human decisions about the distribution of surplus energy (literally starting at first with the muscle-energy of humans but later energy from coal, oil, and gas). Politics is also about how elites benefit from that distribution. I hope to get more into this subject in a future newsletter but, if that argument has some truth to it, then I leave you with these questions to ponder:
- What happens to politics if every community's energy is generated and stored locally with solar panels and wind power and batteries? (No wonder big oil and gas want data centres, perhaps).
- What happens to the distribution of surpluses that wealthy corporations and the ultra-rich currently benefit from in that case?
McNeill also argues that a major part of the reason pollution has been successfully reduced in many cases after the 1950s was citizen activism and strong regulations combined with technological innovation (not innovation alone). But he argues that a major reason attempts to address climate change have often stalled (in comparison to issues like saving the ozone shield) is the entrenched monetary interests of the fossil fuel industry. Which leads to more questions for us to ponder:
- What happens if economic justice is empowered and that imbalance of power lessens as factors like wealth inequality are addressed? If nature once again starts to make progress in its recognition in regulation and law as citizens gain the leverage to advocate for nature?
Because if plans like ours succeed that's what will happen: a fundamental restructuring of energy and political power (but not without historical precedence) that puts control back into the hands of the many and nature itself.
