A Fitting Commentary for Canada Day

 

One thing that distinguishes Canada from so many other countries is our natural bounty. We have a lot of natural resources, renewable and non-renewable. Most of our achievements that we celebrate on this day have been underwritten by our natural bounty - mining, agriculture, forestry, fishing, power generation, the lot.  Canadians didn't create nature but we've been masterful at reaping its blessings.

On this day, Canada Day, I believe there's a useful message for us in the editorial, "Valuing Nature," from the latest, Lancet - Planetary Health.

We are collectively failing to value nature adequately. This is not true for everyone, everywhere, but the dominant socio-political and economic systems that most people find themselves operating within explicitly place little or no value on the natural world. That this is bad for the planet is beyond serious debate and that a degraded world is, in turn, bad for people, in spite of economic prosperity, is increasingly widely understood. Critiques of mainstream economics and its inability to properly value nature are not intellectually new, but in the context of the past 40 years of neoliberal orientated politics, they have been marginal voices.

As environmental challenges have accrued and become more obvious, and the finger of blame is repeatedly found to point towards certain types of human activities, it is increasingly clear we need to change our relationship with nature. Inevitably, such a prognosis is met with great resistance by those who benefit most from the status quo, but even so challenges to mainstream economic thinking are becoming increasingly hard to keep at bay.

The editorial addresses the UK government's Dasgupta Review into the economics of biodiversity.

A key takeaway from the Dasgupta review is that “our economies, livelihoods and well-being all depend on our most precious asset: Nature”. While this might seem obvious to the ecologically minded, it does offer a fundamental challenge to existing economic norms. The report goes on to state that “We have collectively failed to engage with Nature sustainably, to the extent that our demands far exceed its capacity to supply us with the goods and services we all rely on… [and this is]… endangering the prosperity of current and future generations.”

The report calls for no less than a “change in how we think, act and measure success to rapidly ensure that our demands on Nature do not exceed its supply, and that we increase Nature's supply relative to current levels.” To do this, the review argues, we will need to change measures of economic success, in particular focussing less on GDP, which is transaction orientated and fails to adequately consider natural asset depreciation. The review recommends incorporating natural capital into national accounting systems as a critical first step towards making more inclusive measures of wealth our measure of progress.

The report calls for no less than a “change in how we think, act and measure success to rapidly ensure that our demands on Nature do not exceed its supply, and that we increase Nature's supply relative to current levels.” To do this, the review argues, we will need to change measures of economic success, in particular focussing less on GDP, which is transaction orientated and fails to adequately consider natural asset depreciation. The review recommends incorporating natural capital into national accounting systems as a critical first step towards making more inclusive measures of wealth our measure of progress.

...Perverse incentive structures in our economic system lay at the heart of many of the challenges we face in combating climate change, biodiversity loss, and social injustice.

Liberals are fond of considering themselves progressive, a laurel that neither they nor their party deserve.  Just being to the Left of the ramshackle beast of Harper, Scheer and O'Toole doesn't qualify someone as progressive, especially not when there's not an awful lot of sunlight that gets between them.

This government's own climate report card puts the Trudeau Liberals in the D- to F+ range. Politics in Canada has degenerated into a pissing contest between the Tories and the Grits to see who can win power without the support of three out of five voters.

How can you tell if the Liberals are progressive in this quickly evolving era of high-mortality climate change? You can tell by every mile of pipeline this government builds, by our new coal ports, by the environmental catastrophe of Tar Sands tailing ponds and the many thousands of orphaned, often leaking oil and gas wells. You can tell by the way this Trudeau government conceals the true cost of subsidies, grants and deferrals it lavishes on the Bitumen Barons. The government admits two to three billion, tops. The IMF adds in the value of natural capital - such as free water plus the costs that we're pawning off on future generations - to come up with an estimate of $50 billion per year. Is that your idea of progressive?