{"id":69681,"date":"2026-05-28T04:29:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T09:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=69681"},"modified":"2026-05-28T04:29:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T09:29:21","slug":"todays-contemplation-collapse-cometh-ccxlii-were-saved-well-canada-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=69681","title":{"rendered":"Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CCXLII–We\u2019re Saved! Well, Canada Is\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CCXLII–
\nWe\u2019re Saved! Well, Canada Is\u2026<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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Before I begin this particular Contemplation, I have a confession. One of my major distractions from the polycrisis our species has led itself into is sports. Primarily hockey (which I follow and continue to play as I travel into my late 60s, skating 4-5 times a week throughout the year) but also baseball (which I did play until about a decade ago; several rotator cuff tears\u2013courtesy of hockey mishaps\u2013in my throwing arm has sidelined this sport for me). While there are others such as curling or downhill skiing that I might watch highlights of and\/or cheer for my nation state during international competitions (it\u2019s tough to completely ignore tribalistic conditioning at times), these are the two I gravitate towards since I began playing both as a child growing up in London, Ontario, Canada.<\/p>\n

My participation in these sports does absolutely nothing in building personal or community resilience or providing harm reduction for our ailing planet\u2013except perhaps for the periodic conversation I might have with others who show an interest in home food production. They are unnecessary and hockey in particular, with its energy consumption to maintain ice throughout the year, is an energy and resource sink. Being a \u201cfan\u201d of these sports I watch\/listen to games of interest. I never miss the World Junior Hockey Championships, and right now the National Hockey League playoffs are on and the Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball are coming off a \u201cCinderella\u201d season of having played in the World Series last year, losing to the Los Angeles Dodgers in extra innings of game seven.<\/p>\n

I raise this personal interest as the focus of this Contemplation,\u00a0Canada Action<\/a>, was brought to my attention because of its propaganda, er, I mean marketing\/advertising taking place on the television sports channels I use to watch the occasional games. The ads slip in during those moments when a fan\u2019s critical guard is down\u2014precisely the space where a simple \u201cwe\u2019re the good guys\u201d message can take root, wrapping itself in team colours or national pride. Now, back to our regularly scheduled program\u2026<\/p>\n

Apparently\u2013because of Canada\u2019s fantastic resource endowment (especially oil and gas), strong work ethic, and phenomenal capacity for innovation\u2013we Canucks can prosper like never before as we build and export our way out of the polycrisis. So asserts the marketing campaign of the \u201cgrassroots\u201d organisation, Canada Action.<\/p>\n

Sounds great for Canada, eh?<\/p>\n

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canadaaction.ca<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

My \u201csalvation questionnaire\u201d\u2013a four\u2011part test focusing upon Narrative, Biophysical Reality, Viability, and Social Aspects that I use to see if a proposed solution honestly confronts ecological and social realities\u2013reveals that Canada Action provides a case study in how industry\u2011backed advocacy systematically evades the hard questions that truly matter for our species and planet. But perhaps even more nefariously, it misleads\/misinforms\/propagandises significantly so as to benefit those at the top of society\u2019s power and wealth structures at the expense of the biosphere and everyone else.<\/p>\n

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Narrative<\/em><\/p>\n

Canada Action presents a story that focuses exclusively upon the benefits for Canadians of exporting our resources and monumentally building and trading our way out of any perceived problems we might be currently experiencing. It is a tale of unambiguous national benefit that highlights employment opportunities, energy security, and the morally superior \u201cfair trade\u201d fuel Canada can provide for the world. Environmental or social costs of what it pedals are completely absent in its advertisements. Even when pushed, the \u201cgrassroots\u201d non-profit refuses to discuss the toxic legacy of tailings ponds, water contamination, orphaned oil\/gas wells, Indigenous land rights violations, and climate impacts of exported hydrocarbons.<\/p>\n

In fact,\u00a0Ad Standards\u2013Canada<\/a>\u00a0(ASC)\u2014a self-regulatory advertising body with no legal enforcement power\u2014has ruled one particular message (claiming that liquified natural gas (LNG) exports would reduce global carbon emissions) as misleading and a clear case of greenwashing. The group\u2019s ads continue, however, given ASC has no legal teeth to compel the group to pull them or acknowledge the full range of environmental consequences of oil\/gas extraction and use. The lies continue to be presented to the public on a regular and repeated basis.<\/p>\n

The public is sold a \u201csolution\u201d by the group that is not a replacement for \u201cdirtier\u201d fuels like coal as suggested but an addition that results in increased material throughput. Analyses repeatedly show that when all aspects are considered (e.g., liquefaction energy inputs, methane leakage, market effects, infrastructure needs, and shipping), LNG expands hydrocarbon consumption with no replacement occurring. And any climate \u201cbenefits\u201d (determined by the most favourable substitution assumptions) are marginal at best and delayed, with infrastructure construction locking in continued and expanding extraction for decades.<\/p>\n

The relatively small-scale and short-term gains for the Canadian economy due to a temporary construction boom and minimal royalty revenues are greatly inflated in the tale of universal prosperity woven by Canada Action. The cumulative impact upon an overloaded atmospheric sink, other negative biosphere consequences, and community instability are conveniently ignored. The story takes a very narrow and context-dependent possibility and scales it up disingenuously to present it as an absolute promise.<\/p>\n

The story is seamless, until you ask what it leaves out.<\/p>\n

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Biogeophysical Reality<\/em><\/p>\n

The narrative woven by Canada Action is completely devoid of the full lifecycle inventory of what it is championing. The unavoidable physical stages for its proposal are completely hidden behind a cloak of invisibility. Raw material extraction for infrastructure (e.g., steel, concrete, pipelines). Manufacture of LNG trains. Methane leakage from wells, gathering lines, and liquefaction. Byproduct disposal (e.g., sulphur piles, petcoke). Decommissioning and\/or reclamation of mining pits and tailings ponds\u2013success of which remains unproven. The tale speaks of \u201cethical oil\u201d but the entire material basis of the system and its environmental and social impacts are invisible.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the energy-return-on-investment (EROI) facts. The oil sands projects that sit at the heart of the agenda provide some of the lowest EROI of any liquid fuel source. Once upgrading, refining and delivery are factored in, they skate perilously close to\u2014or below\u2014the 3:1 ratio of basic survival, let alone the 10\u201314:1 needed to maintain a complex society. Canada Action only speaks of abundance, not the actual numbers.<\/p>\n

The buildout championed by this group requires massive quantities of steel, nickel, copper, special alloys, freshwater, fracking sand, helium and rare gases, and petroleum-based diluents\u2013all finite materials that are already experiencing supply chain pressures and rising costs.<\/p>\n

Even Canada Action\u2019s carbon tunnel vision is flawed. It not only ignores biosphere integrity with its continuing clearing of boreal forests, but also freshwater depletion and pollution, phosphorus and nitrogen loading, contributions to ocean acidification, and chemical contamination of downstream communities. The framing of Canadian hydrocarbons as \u201cethical\u201d is a deliberate narrowing of morality to a choice between two evils, while avoiding the fact that both choices exacerbate ecological overshoot and its broaching of planetary boundaries.<\/p>\n

The long-term waste liabilities with no proven or at-scale management solution are ignored. As are the more than a trillion litres of toxic tailings in ponds whose attempted reclamation processes have repeatedly failed. Then there are the hundreds of thousands of orphaned wells whose tens of billions of dollars in cleanup costs have been downloaded to the public.<\/p>\n

The claim that LNG will reduce emissions depends entirely upon oceans and forests but avoids the harsh reality that our atmospheric carbon sinks are already demonstrating declining absorption capability, a sign of being overloaded.<\/p>\n

Canada Action\u2019s response to these concerns is to dismiss them as being solvable with future technologies that have yet to be proven at scale, or aren\u2019t even yet successful at a small-scale. This is creating an intergenerational toxic debt while arguing that the ledger is quite balanced.<\/p>\n

What Canadians are being sold is a physical impossibility dressed in patriotic language.<\/p>\n

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Viability<\/em><\/p>\n

The projects promoted by Canada Action cannot survive without externalised costs, public loan guarantees, and significant government subsidies. The oil and gas industry benefits from tax holidays, exploration incentives, royalty breaks, public assumption of liabilities, and externalised health costs borne by downstream communities\u2013especially Indigenous ones.<\/p>\n

The federal government\u2019s purchase and multi-billion dollar expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline is a perfect example of public subsidy for a private enterprise, where the costs are socialised but the profits privatised. These transfers from the public are conveniently ignored while claiming the industry is a net contributor to the economy.<\/p>\n

The full physical footprint of the massively complex and resource-intensive infrastructure required for the proposed projects (e.g., new and expanded pipelines, new or enlarged LNG terminals and port facilities, upstream fracking networks and water systems, bitumen processing plants) is overlooked while the supposed benefits are celebrated.<\/p>\n

That much of the story told depends upon technologies that have yet to exist or be proven at any meaningful scale (e.g., carbon capture, utilisation, and storage) is well hidden behind claims to the contrary. Breakthroughs in successful tailings reclamations are always just a few years away while the liabilities continue to accumulate. Promises are made that will likely never, ever be realised. All the while, a few people make an awful lot of money.<\/p>\n

A house of cards, held up by public money and promises that never seem to arrive.<\/p>\n

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Social Aspects<\/em><\/p>\n

Canada Action explicitly enables the infinite economic growth paradigm. Its entire narrative is about expanding national prosperity (i.e., employment, increased material living standards, etc.) through the growth of resource extraction, trade, and construction\u2013the very essence of an increasing material throughput.<\/p>\n

This \u201cgrassroots\u201d organisation is promoted by corporate funders such as\u00a0Cenovus Energy<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0ARC Resources<\/a>. The financial beneficiaries of the projects it supports would be the shareholders, executives, construction consortiums, and financial institutions that hold hydrocarbon assets and fund the projects. The workers who the marketing suggests will be the most helped experience only temporary gains.<\/p>\n

The entire \u201cgrassroots\u201d image portrayed in Canada Action\u2019s advertisements serves to disguise the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a small elite that actually occurs and funds the marketing. Resource booms and busts, along with externalised liabilities shouldered by the public, transfer value upwards and leave communities holding the risks. This is a reinforcing of status quo power and wealth structures, as opposed to any type of challenge to them.<\/p>\n

It would appear that the entire function of Canada Action is to protect the ongoing acceptance of the oil and gas industry practices that reside at the heart of Canada\u2019s political economy. Environmental groups are attacked as foreign-funded extremists and their criticism of resource industries is anti-Canadian. This helps to delegitimise dissent and maintain the political influence of resource industries.<\/p>\n

The vision that the group promotes is very dependent upon globalised, centralised, and extremely fragile supply chains. This works against relocalisation by communities by locking them into volatile commodity dependence and discouraging diversified, resilient local economies.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most crucially, the story being told by Canada Action shuts down discussion of more fundamental changes such as degrowth, reduced consumption, and a just transition. Instead, a false binary is imposed: support resource extraction and trade, or be anti-Canadian and anti-employment.<\/p>\n

The question is never \u201cHow much is enough?\u201d but \u201cHow much more can we take?\u201d<\/p>\n

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Conclusion
\n<\/strong>In every dimension of the above analysis Canada Action\u2019s story fails the salvation questionnaire. It suppresses drawbacks, ignores material realities, depends greatly upon public subsidies and unproven technologies, entrenches corporate power, and blocks the transformative conversations human societies urgently need.<\/p>\n

And so I\u2019ll keep periodically watching my favourite sports, but I\u2019ll also keep my eyes open when the commercial break rolls around, knowing whose story is being sold and who\u2019s paying for it.<\/p>\n

What makes this more than just another industry greenwashing exercise, however, is what it reveals about our species\u2019 collective trajectory. The campaign is not simply a lie about one country\u2019s resources; it is a microcosm of the broader denial that keeps us hurtling toward ecological overshoot.<\/p>\n

Every \u201cwe can build our way out\u201d advertisement, every \u201cethical oil\u201d soundbite, every invocation of future technologies that never quite arrive, serves to extend the lifespan of an energy system that is literally unravelling the biosphere. The planetary boundaries that might have buffered such recklessness\u2014stable climate, intact forests, functioning nitrogen cycles, a forgiving ocean\u2014are already breached or strained to breaking point.<\/p>\n

To double down on hydrocarbon-fuelled expansion at this moment is not merely unwise; it is to accelerate the collapse of the life\u2011support systems upon which every human community, including the ones Canada Action claims to champion, ultimately depends.<\/p>\n

Recognising stories like this for what they are is a small but necessary act of intellectual self\u2011defence. But recognition alone will not build resilience.<\/p>\n

The work that matters now happens at the local scale, far from the television ads and the corporate boardrooms. It looks like strengthening neighbourhood food networks, restoring watersheds, learning to repair instead of replace, and re\u2011skilling in the practical arts of shelter, care, and conviviality. It means disentangling our own lives, however imperfectly, from the centralised systems that propaganda like Canada Action\u2019s is designed to protect\u2013in other words, \u201ccollapse now to avoid the rush\u201d.<\/p>\n

None of these efforts will stop the collapse of the old order, but they can buffer the worst of the harm, preserve fragments of dignity and mutual support, and perhaps plant the seeds of cultures that can outlast the extractive frenzy. The commercial breaks will keep rolling, but what we build in the spaces between\u2014grounded in honesty, limits, and community\u2014will matter far more than the constant barrage of marketing telling us \u201csalvation\u201d is at hand, if we simply stand out of the way for the people with all the \u201csolutions\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Post-Script<\/strong>
\nWhile working on this Contemplation the past couple of weeks, I\u2019ve been somewhat more attuned to the propaganda being spewed by growth advocates. Typically I tune out during advertisements, even turn the volume off, but I\u2019m seeing and hearing quite a few marketing campaigns from\u00a0Canada\u2019s federal government<\/a>,\u00a0Ontario\u2019s provincial government<\/a>, and a variety of techno-fix corporations bleating on about \u201csolving\u201d the economic woes being experienced via building, constructing, and growing. The noise seems to be getting louder, suggesting to me that the elite are getting more desperate in their attempts to maintain the various Ponzi schemes from which they profit. And it\u2019s not about \u201csaving\u201d anything, except perhaps the privilege that flows to the top of our society\u2019s power and wealth structures. And one of the things that drives me crazy about the \u201cgovernment-funded\u201d propaganda, er, I mean advertisements is that I\u2019m having to contribute to the lies through my taxes.<\/p>\n

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What is going to be my standard\u00a0WARNING\/ADVICE<\/strong>\u00a0going forward and that I have reiterated in various ways before this:<\/p>\n

\u201cOnly time will tell how this all unfolds but there\u2019s nothing wrong with preparing for the worst by \u2018collapsing now to avoid the rush\u2019 and pursuing self-sufficiency. By this I mean removing as many dependencies on the Matrix as is possible and making do, locally. And if one can do this without negative impacts upon our fragile ecosystems or do so while creating more resilient ecosystems, all the better.<\/p>\n

Building community (maybe even just household) resilience to as high a level as possible seems prudent given the uncertainties of an unpredictable future. There\u2019s no guarantee it will ensure \u2018recovery\u2019 after a significant societal stressor\/shock but it should increase the probability of it and that, perhaps, is all we can \u2018hope\u2019 for from its pursuit.<\/p>\n

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If you have arrived here and get something out of my writing,\u00a0please consider ordering the trilogy of my \u201cfictional\u201d novel series, Olduvai (PDF files; only $9.99 Canadian)<\/strong>, via my\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0or the link below \u2014 the \u201cprofits\u201d of which help me to keep my internet presence alive and first book available in print (and is available via various online retailers).<\/p>\n

If you are interested in purchasing any of the 3 books individually or the trilogy, please follow the link below indicating which book(s) you are purchasing.<\/p>\n

Costs (Canadian dollars):
\nBook 1: $2.99
\nBook 2: $3.89
\nBook 3: $3.89
\nTrilogy: $9.99<\/p>\n

Feel free to throw in a \u201ctip\u201d on top of the base cost if you wish; perhaps by paying in U.S. dollars instead of Canadian. Every few cents\/dollars helps\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

https:\/\/paypal.me\/olduvaitrilogy?country.x=CA&locale.x=en_US<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

If you do not hear from me within 48 hours or you are having trouble with the system, please email me: olduvaitrilogy@gmail.com.<\/p>\n

You can also find a variety of resources, particularly my summary notes for a handful of texts, especially William Catton\u2019s Overshoot and Joseph Tainter\u2019s Collapse of Complex Societies: see\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CCXLII– We\u2019re Saved! Well, Canada Is\u2026 Before I begin this particular Contemplation, I have a confession. One of my major distractions from the polycrisis our species has led itself into is sports. Primarily hockey (which I follow and continue to play as I travel into my late 60s, skating 4-5 times […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4,5,6,7],"tags":[1535,26071,617,14221,30370,33947],"class_list":["post-69681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","category-survival-2","tag-hydrocarbons","tag-narrative-management","tag-peak-oil","tag-societal-collapse","tag-todays-contemplation","tag-todays-contemplation-collapse-cometh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69682,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69681\/revisions\/69682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}