'Be Fruitful, and Multiply'

Phil Burpee

Phil Burpee, Columnist, Pincher Creek Voice

So sayeth the Lord in Genesis 1- 28. The injunction goes on to command us to: - "...replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."

Unequivocal stuff. I mention this passage not only because it occurs in the foundational first chapter of the Holy Writ of Judaeo/Christian tradition, which invests, or rather infests, the deepest corpuscles of our civilization, but also because we are even now mulling over the latest offerings from the legion bean-counters at Census Canada. Clearly the replenishment referred to in the above passage is that of the numbers of human beings, and with this we are proving to be enormously successful. In fact, most exemplary in this department is our own province of Alberta. And judging from the latest environmental assessments of the current state of Nature amongst us, it looks like we've pretty much got the 'dominion' thing down pat, too - if it moveth, shoot it - if it groweth, dig it up. It is written.

The new census information provides us with an interesting and somewhat sobering assessment of where we are as a people and where we seem to be heading. These data have the broadest implications for all three of the great pillars of our collective life as a community, and as a community of communities - viz. social, environmental, and economic. It is now clearly understood by all but the most perniciously ante-diluvian of our fellows, some of whom worryingly still stalk the Halls of Power in Edmonton and Ottawa, that these three deep tenets of our existence are inextricably intertwined. Pick any one of the three, and you cannot achieve success in it without the full and healthful engagement of the other two. For decades we have seen the government of Alberta try to buck this inescapable fact with a mind-numbingly persistent belief that focusing solely on the economy can somehow bring social and environmental shortcomings into line. I offer the comprehensively-documented social and environmental ills of this province as clear and compelling evidence to the contrary. Money can do a lot of things, but it can't fix a broken child, and it certainly can't buy a new planet.

Economic and demographic power is changing in this country. These are tectonic shifts, and their implications for the challenges associated with governance in Canada are profound. In Alberta, a virtually unregulated commodity market is supercharging the economy and cranking up a huge job-creation machine. It's a flies-on-shit sort of phenomenon - or maybe better - bot-flies on an open wound. From a planetary perspective (and what other perspective is of any actual relevance these days?) the great, festering sore that is the Tarsands, the primary economic engine of our newfound mega-affluence, is highly attractive to a multitude of opportunistic organisms. They catch the scent of it, zone in, lap up its ample calories, prosper, lay their eggs, elect compliant representatives to assure further food supply, turn their progeny out to likewise toil, then retire in wide-bottomed comfort with fine motor-homes and a penchant for holidays in the sun. Dare one notice a dark cloud in this sunny sky?

At a meeting last year in Cowley attended by our MLA Evan Berger and then recently-stepped-down Minister of Sustainable Resource Development (SRD) Ted Morton, who was actively plumping for the leadership of the PC Party at that time, Mr. Morton made a very candid observation. The meeting itself was to do with regional concerns over proposed mining and logging operations, as well as a general concern for the growing assaults of a wide range of development interests within a scattered and poorly-focused regulatory regimen. Mr. Morton became mildly exasperated and reminded the gathering of a fact now recently confirmed by the census - the population of Alberta will roughly double over the next twenty years to at least six million, and the bulk of that increase will occur in the corridor running down from Edmonton to the U.S. border. That anticipated wave was, in a nutshell, what motivated him to attempt to formulate a land-use mechanism to try and mitigate the worst effects of the incoming flesh tsunami. This was the now-contentious Bill 36 - the Alberta Land Stewardship Act (ALSA). It is to his credit that he tried to modernize and consolidate a wretched mess of outmoded and often contradictory chunks of ill-considered legislation and regulation. The fact that this bill is now so hotly contested is a result of Mr. Morton's perhaps ill-advised over-reliance on bureaucrats to craft the actual mechanisms of the document, as well as a wide array of parochial resistance to what appear to be certain overly-centralized control switches inherent in the legislation - too much politicization of what ought to be objective framing of land-use based on clear determinants, resulting in an over-emphasis on ultimate Cabinet decision-making.

Of course, Mr. Morton is now Minister of Energy and the gloves are off for dealing with all the whiners and contrarians who might think that perhaps there's more to life than tallying up gigajoules and dollars. But such is politics.

Like it or not the crowds are on their way. Economic and political power is oozing westward, even as Ontario, which is way broker than broke, considers various draconian measures that would make the so-called austerity measures currently being brought down in Greece look like parking fines. Because we are a federation in Canada, it will increasingly fall to us in Alberta to buffer some of the worst effects of Ontario's plight, which are themselves merely a function of history on the march, coupled with geological serendipity beneath the boreal forests of Athabasca. There will be kicking and screaming. We have already forgotten massive shipments of hay from Ontario some years back during a bad drought cycle here. It will be our turn again someday when the flush of activity moves elsewhere, as it inevitably will. Meanwhile, Alberta separatists and firewallers will start to squawk and squabble once again no doubt, dusting up their little chicken runs like so many banty roosters. If we can stay on the high side of all this moral consideration, we will pop them in the waiting stew-pot where they belong before they can finish their first cock-a-doodle... CHOP!

We're in for a ride. And it's gonna be a wild one. Some folks will lose their cookies for sure as the roller-coaster hits the hair-pin at the bottom of the first big run. Others will be having the time of their lives, laughing and squealing and throwing their arms up in the air in pure glee as the little train hurtles on. Meanwhile, if you've ever paid attention to the guys who run these sort of rides at the midway, you will have noticed that they tend to look like brokedown bikers, or recently reformed (or not) meth addicts - lots of missing teeth and tattoos and bleary boredom - "Yeah, hope ya enjoy the ride, ya little pukes" - at root, not unlike the hereditary politicians and captains of industry who yank the levers on our own screeching juggernaut. We wonder, if we stop to think at all, if the wheels just might finally come off this time at the next hard turn.

Astonishingly, there is a very real body of science and economics out there doing calculations right this very minute as to the potential advantages that might accrue to certain parts of the world as a result of global warming. One of those places is Canada, and especially the north-central and boreal regions, where we envision new expanses of golden, waving wheat fields. And there are actually those for whom the prospect of pumping out even more CO2 into the atmosphere, and thus achieving a rising temperature gradient, is the basis for a particularly aggressive business model. It is, in every respect, the madness of the syphilitic brain of pure linear capitalism, but it motivates the sort of anticipatory excitement we see today as the melting of Arctic ices draw in the same hydrocarbon-craving hordes of flies we saw descend on the blister at Fort McMurray. Of course, these are projections based on, at most, a one or two degree temperature rise - a rise of three or four degrees, which is as likely as not, changes all the calculations, and delivers us into the unknown reaches of exponential calamity.

Yee Haw!!

Ah, but what the hell. It's party time. What's ours is ours, but very negotiable. Sell out while the selling’s good. Send some snorkels over to the Maldives as the waves lap over those disappearing jewels in the sea. Tell the Bangladeshis to head for the hills. So sad, too bad. Everybody's gotta get with the program and recognize that we gotta do what we gotta do over here. It is our fate to so dominate - what can you do? - it is written. If anybody doesn't like it, thusly-anointed Canaberta can only say -"Hey - bite me!" And even as we get shunted out of our squandered birthright as global citizens, surely a tear comes to the eye as we remember that moving and anthemic refrain, celebrating the time-honoured blessings of selective Providence, and its sublimely articulated scripture of Corporate Proprietary Law, flipping the almighty bird to the whole, wide world: -

"This land is my land - it is not your land

I've got a shotgun - you haven't got one

If you don't get off - I'll blow your head off

This land is corporate pro-per-ty."

Phil Burpee

February 18, 2012