True Patriot Love

This documentary piece shows how our country is viewed by the rest of the world, for our inaction on climate change, and our short-sighted intransigence in developing the Alberta tar sands.

It shows how Canada is treating the people of Fort Chipewan, how Canada is exposing people to proven carcinogens, with resulting high rates of cancer and premature death. To write it, to say that Canada’s policies are killing its own citizens, seems like some kind of blasphemy or extremism. It isn't. It's the reality - the extreme belief in the almighty dollar, and the terror of change, the inability to treat fellow citizens with love and respect - that's the blasphemy. 

The tar sands directly cost Canadians $1 billion in taxpayer subsidies every year. That in itself is unacceptable. Add the indirect costs to reputation, health, local and global environment and economy, the indirect costs to our future, and one must either cry, or act, or both.

What's your goal?

I have recently taken a leave of absence from a stable job. Confused, uncertain, guilty, and yet with a mysterious sense of peace, I sought out a life coach. “What’s your goal?” she asked after ten minutes of hearing my story fall out of me in ragged pieces.

Tempted at first to claim no goal at all, at least not one I could define, I took a moment, and what came out of that moment was not completely unexpected for me, but it also was not completely expected – as a life goal it seems a bit impersonal, yet what really could be more personal than my relationship to the planet that supports me and the people I love.

My goal is to see Carbon emissions reduced by 80% by 2020. My goal is to do everything I can to be part of making this happen.

When I realized what it was I wanted to be a part of, what I want to do and be, I felt relief. Relief, because I am finally accepting and taking on that which for some reason, I have struggled to accept for so long. Not the science of climate change – I’ve never seriously questioned that – but I have struggled to accept how much this path means to me.

For many years, climate change was there, as an extra for me, along with related issues like anti-war protests, and buying organic. I tried to satisfy it by going to a rallies, even to the Montreal talks in 2005, or an evening information session when I had time. Eventually, I set off as a teacher trainer for Ethiopia, excited and ambitious about working in a developing country for two years. As much as I tried to feel like I was doing my part for sustainable development, it wasn’t enough. I felt the inadequacy before I left; I felt the inadequacy as I saw my teaching in Ethiopia do nothing to thwart the encroachment of paved roads and processed food on a sustainable local economy and community; and I felt the inadequacy when I returned to Canada. I have struggled for the past two and a half years to reconcile what I believe with how I live and teach. For me, it was a lot easier to take on the defined task of living and working in another country, than it is to take on living differently, very differently, in my own country.

My journey matters because if it’s so difficult for me – 20 year vegetarian, environmental education Masters graduate, whose passion to Save the Earth is evident from as far back as my elementary school science projects about toxic household cleaners buried in my parents’ basement – to come to terms with the personal, local and global shifts needed, how much longer and more circuitous a path to change it must be for those who haven’t been living and breathing environmental sustainability issues for their whole lives, or who might see their current high standard of living as dependent on maintaining the status quo.

Change is hard.

Yet, I have hope. I must have hope. There’s no other choice.

Rob Hopkins, in the Transition Handbook (see http://transitionnetwork.org/), writes of energy descent – the process he believes we need to consciously undergo as we transition to the realities of both peak oil and climate change:

Energy descent is, ultimately, about energy ascent – the re-energising of communities and culture – and is the key to our realistically embracing the possibilities of our situation rather than being overwhelmed by their challenges.

This is my story of fully, intentionally, and consciously investing myself in a new way of life, in energy descent and ascent. It’s my commitment, my visible online contract with my readers to be accountable for putting my beliefs into action. And it’s part of the enactment of my commitment: I hope that my story will inspire other stories, as I have been inspired by so many. I hope that my passion will give strength to your passion.