Power & Energy

We in the west are the beneficiaries of the development of energy originally produced by the burning of coal. I am old enough to remember the arrival of the coal man who provided fuel stored in the basement of my house - a scary person, because he was necessarily covered in soot. Later the oil truck arrived to deliver fuel. Still later, my father had a heat pump installed in a newer house - in the late 1970s. His motivation probably had little to do with saving the planet, but saving money.

Canada is blessed with much electricity produced by hydro electric power and my province has more resources than others. But it is human power that also plays a role. There is news this morning that young people in Montana have been successful in suing their state government asking for the right to “a clean and healthful environment” through a provision relating to energy projects. It’s the first successful case following a number of others started by young people. The impact on climate has to be a consideration in approving projects, and more rulings will now have a better chance of success. The suit was brought on behalf of the Children’s Trust and it involved 16 young people aged 5=22.

The oldest of these will be 49 in 2050. I have a friend who is now in his 102nd year and he has said that he thinks 144 would be a good age for a lifetime. He is a retired professor and when he retired at 75 as a University professor, he thought working five hours a day on academic research would be a good aim. He still does - without either a TV or a computer - but attends both opera and Blue Jays games as a fan. His environmental impact is much lower than mine - and since he has never driven a car, it undoubtedly is.

The likelihood of his making age 144 is small. But the politicians who want to slow down the use of climate change might think about how old they will be in 2050. The premier of Alberta will be 79 that year. I’m in a better position than she is to imagine what life will be like for her then. She won’t have her current job. She may have health issues relating to climate change or be affected directly by floods or fires. But basically she will have left the problem of pausing the support of renewable energy for a bit - as she has just done- to the current five and 22 year olds. I wonder how she will feel then.

What we generally lack is imagination and a realistic picture of human nature - the latter with its combination of strength and limitations. Politicians start with the best of intentions - to make the world the better place. After a term of office the intention becomes to stay in office. They like power after having a taste of it. Companies are good at telling us that climate change depends on us as individuals so they can keep doing what they do, which is to make a profit. They like power too.

That doesn’t mean that individual actions don’t count. I continue to recycle in the hope that at least some of my trash gets re-used. I send letters to my premier urging him to reconsider his original promise to retain the Greenbelt. Individuals matter - but governments and movements matter even more. Young people are teaching us that the law matters. What if all these elements converged? That’s a story that imagination could start to tell.

Hot Enough Yet?

We are featured today in Bill McKibben’s New Yorker Article - we being Canadians and he’s asking the question about our politicians. You can guess the answer. While the temperature breaks all records, how are we responding?

• Polls show 75% of us are anxious about climate change - and we are a liberal democracy, so that should help.

• The Arctic is warming faster than any other place and we have a front seat to watch that.

• Wildfires have burned the most forest ever.

• Air quality related to fires made ours the worst in the world.

This should result in some good political action. What is happening?

• We’re building a natural gas exporting terminal - and we may count exports as part of the carbon tax.

• Politicians say we are making progress - but we don’t want anything to change locally because that would upset too many people and mean not get re-elected.

• We’re not alone. But we are absolutely the poster child for how these things work. Will any radical solution break through even with democratic societies who suffer the least?

Dining with Senators

Not everyone gets to do this too often - if ever. But I had some interesting experience this weekend that is, in some ways, a truly Canadian story.

By a fortunate accident of fate, I acquired a nephew via marriage on my late husband’s side of the family. Though our lives have changed, we keep in touch for family events and these recent events were pleasant ones - watching his daughter conduct a master class with the Toronto Symphony and later conduct a world premiere of a new opera with triple affiliations to Tapestry, Soundstreams, and Luminato - all long part of the Toronto contemporary music scene. We were able to have dinner together in advance of the second event. The nephew is a Canadian senator - and he had invited one of his retired colleagues and his wife to join us for dinner. We met still another recently senator and his wife at the performance.

There was a bond shared by all three. They were all appointed in 2016 as independent senators and I was privileged then to also have an invitation to their initial seating, though I knew only one of them at the time. Working together through the years has created bonds of friendship for the three men that extends well beyond their official duties. But it is their individual histories that make their stories even more interesting.

One has served in all three branches of parliamentary democracy - executive, judicial and legislative. He also worked as a senior public servant in both the Ontario provincial and federal governments and as a federal court judge. His family fled Poland and came to Canada after spending time in Uzbekistan and relocated to a displaced person’s camp in Germany where he was born. They were eventually able to settle in Sydney, Nova Scotia when he was two years old.

Another earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Calcutta, a Masters in economics from University of Delhi and MBA (Finance) from UCLA Los Angeles. He has had a distinguished career in banking and prior to his senate appointment was Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Office of Scotiabank. He has made a contribution to the cultural life of Canada serving on the boards of major hospitals and arts organizations as well as being a founding member of the Sikh Foundation of Canada.

The third has worked on public policy issues related to Canada’s relations with Asian countries for more than 30 years. He is a former President and CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and currently a joint chair of the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations and a member of the following Senate Standing Committees: Foreign Affairs and International Trade; Banking, Trade and Commerce; and Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament. On June 23 he will be present for the unveiling of a plaque commemorating the Chinese Exclusion Act. something most of us know nothing about and could learn more here.

He was born in Malaysia and his family moved to Singapore shortly afterwards. After early education in and Anglo-Chinese school, he attended the Canadian United World College, Lester B. Pearson, in Victoria, which provided the Canadian connection before further studies at Cambridge and the University of London and later settlement in Newfoundland.

Three interesting Canadians - serving the country and enjoying personal friendships beyond their careers from such diverse starting positions. How grateful we all need to be for our own country and all those who settle here and work hard - both to heal our past and contribute to our future.

Language reveals us

Through the years I have watched Peter Baker on PBS and read him in the New York Times - as well as his wife Susan, who writes for the New Yorker. When the couple recently produced a book on the Trump era it looked like an interesting read. Rather than buying it I put a hold on it on Libby to read on a tablet - and assumed that since it has just recently been published, there would be a long wait - I certainly wasn’t at the top of the line.

And then it arrived. It was some 1200 pages on the device with a limited time to go through it, but I have persevered. I’m not surprised that those waiting for it an anticipating learning something new have given it a rather quick read and are somewhat happy to be freed from it. It would never have been a keeper that I would want to return to for either facts or inspiration. This is what stands out.

The Trump era has mostly been in plain sight, so there is surprisingly little that an American politics obsessive like me didn’t know already from reading or watching the New York Times, PBS, Washington Post and even Canadian news and the Globe and Mail. The main takeaway from their comprehensive reporting is the perpetual use by all the key players is - the F word. It must occur in quoted conversations in the book at least as many times as Trump’s 30,000 plus lies. I suppose there was a time when such quotations were shocking but now it’s just banal.

The authors never comment on this. I have no idea how they feel about it, though they are quick to pass judgment on many other issues in the book. But I will. I grew up in an era when the use of profanity was a shocker when it occurred; it was rarely used even in private. Get on any bus now and the F word has actually replaced “like” as something to amuse one’s self counting.

But words do say something about our society. Occasional profanity in the past suggested that the sacred actually mattered. Using the F word in every sentence means we have moved way beyond obscene - and any kind of violence is okay now. Civil society used to demand something better. It suggested a world of citizens who were polite to one another because others were human beings. There was such a thing as civil rights. Civil law had to do with things that had different implications than criminal law. Those who worked at any level of government were described as civil servants.

As Americans head into mid term elections, our own little news cycle here notes that the provincial government has withdrawn its use of the Notwithstanding Clause of our constitution - due to a good deal of backlash to shut down a strike - and the union has called off its strike of school support workers and custodians - those who support the lives of our children. It’s a small consolation that both will at least return to the negotiating table. I have no desire to be a fly on the wall in that room. But let’s hope for even a small degree of civility. When tempers flair, no amounf of use of the F word is going to make things better. It’s always arrogant because the speaker is always responding to the other. I echo my fellow octogenarian Ursula LeGuin in her wonderful essay in the book, No Time to Spare. “Would you please just F-cking STOP.

Turning up the Heat

People throughout the world are baking in the heat and occasionally there is a faint recognition that this has something to do with climate change. The country that puts the most carbon emissions into the atmosphere is nevertheless stymied by one key player.

• One politician, Senator Joe Manchin, says he will not support his party’s climate change initiatives

• The US Supreme Court has limited the ability of the government to curb emissions from power plants

• The opposition party is against any climate legislation.

• The US loses its ability to influence other major emitters, like China. India and Brazil.

• The US is not on track to meet its goals for the Paris Accord. It doesn’t provide a great example to other countries.

• One man’s action has severely limited the role of the party in power leaving it dysfunctional in a democratic system.

  It’s no wonder that E. M. Forster suggested only two cheers for democracy. He expressed his concern for the individual in a world facing totalitarianism, as well as extremism from both the left and the right. He claimed at the time that the title was a joke when his writings included material going back to 1936, the year of my birth. One writer evaluating the collection suggests that it has worn well. He was looking ahead at the time to the rise of Nazi Germany.

  Leadership demands morality for the public good. We need it now more than ever.