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Reporter’s call for Trudeau to grow the economy ignores threat to humanity’s very survival
Reporter’s call for Trudeau to grow the economy ignores threat to humanity’s very survival
Read my critical letter in reply to reporter John Ivison, of the National Post, who wrote the article. —
My letter to John Ivison
Dear John Ivison,
Your article “How Trudeau wasted a chance to spark Canadian economic growth during the pandemic” reflects your appalling ignorance of humanity’s existential predicament.
Decades of unrelenting global economic growth have driven us to a planetary breaking point of ecological overshoot – way too many people are using way too much energy and material resources and dumping way too much waste.
Moreover, there’s already way too much disinformation and misinformation in circulation. As a newspaper reporter, you have an added responsibility to become responsibly informed about the science-based reality of the human predicament. Judging from your readers’ comments to your article, you, sir, are adding to the dissemination of disinformation.
But that is about what I have come to expect from the rightwing National Post.
Yours truly,
Frank White, etc.
**********
Excerpts from Ivison’s article
How Trudeau wasted a chance to spark Canadian economic growth during the pandemic, That’s the title of reporter John Ivison’s article that appeared in the National post’s Saturday, October 16 edition.
Ivison’s article, 1934 words in length — reposted in full at the bottom of this post — begins:
The Liberal government is more focused on redistributing the existing economic pie than generating the wealth needed to ensure future prosperity
Paul Romer coined the phrase “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste” back in 2004. “I tried to suggest that there is a risk of complacency in ordinary times and that a crisis is the time when you might be able to mobilize some coordinated efforts to do better,” the Nobel Prize-winning economist said in an interview with the National Post this week…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
“In my analysis, I think we’re headed for a financial recalibration.” — Nate Hagens
“In my analysis, I think we’re headed for a financial recalibration.” — Nate Hagens
We need to plan for a smaller economy, but decision makers see growing the economy as the solution. —
BACKGROUND
1/ In my February 19, 2021 piece, I reposted a report co-authored by 17 scientists that documents, in considerable detail, the evidence of humanity’s existential plight. My repost is titled: Just how bad will future environmental conditions get? In a word, “ghastly!”. The title of the report that I reposted is “Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future”, by Frontiers in Conservation Science, January 13, 2021.
2/ Included at the bottom of my February 19 repost is a link to a 90-minute video titled OMEGA – Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future . This 90-minute video brings together six experts, including two commentators, Bill Rees and Nate Hagens, for a ZOOM discussion of the January 13 report co-authored by the 17 scientists.
3/ Although the hosts of the 90-minute video refer to the event as a “discussion,” I found the format of the proceedings was more along the lines of a Q & A directed at the participants and the two commentators, Bill Rees and Nate Hagens, with very little discussion among the respondents.
4/ Below is my transcript of Nate’s response to the January 13 report, “Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future”.
5/ At the bottom of this post is the 90-minute embedded video of the full ZOOM discussion where you can watch Nate’s opening ten-minute response.
*****
Those who are unfamiliar with Nate Hagen’s work, may, in places, find his choice of words, his phrasing, and his explanations in the transcript conceptually and cognitively challenging. I suggest you skim those and move on to the many passages that are illuminating, thought-provoking and worthy of contemplation.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
If humanity’s critical planetary overshoot is not corrected deliberately, nature will impose a chaotic implosion
If humanity’s critical planetary overshoot is not corrected deliberately, nature will impose a chaotic implosion
“If we wish civilization to continue, human beings must learn to live more equitably, well within the means of nature” – William Rees. —
No 2709 Posted by fw, February 14, 2021 —
“So, if I can just summarize and put the choice before us –.
1/ Climate change is indeed a serious problem. We must deal with it.
2/ But it’s a mere symptom of a much greater disease, which is the generalized overshoot of the human population above and beyond the long-term carrying capacity of Earth. We cannot solve any of these problems in isolation, and doing so would be futile because the others would take us down. They are a collective issue under the umbrella of overshoot.
3/ Well, we are in that critical overshoot, and the present trajectory resembles a plague phase of a one-off population cycle. And if it is not corrected deliberately, it will crash.
4/ We may or may not already be on some critical tipping point, not only in climate but in other ways as well.
5/ In my view, in coming years, there’s no question that the human enterprise will contract.
6/ But, as an intelligent, planning-capable, moral species, we can theoretically make a choice between —
6(a) Insistence on “business as usual”, which risks, in my view, a chaotic implosion imposed by nature, followed by geopolitical turmoil and resource wars;
6(b) Or we can come together as a society, realize the flaws in our currently globally-shared constructed vision of reality, accept what our science is telling us, and, in that context, cooperate internationally toward a well-planned orderly and cooperative descent toward a socially just sustainability for all.
7/ So, human beings must learn — if we wish civilization to continue – to live much more equitably, well within the biophysical carrying capacity, well within the means of nature.” —William Rees
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
