Everything is

political...Fall 2010

What Have We Learned?

• The ‘political’ surrounds us, but we are not powerless to affect it– We may not change the world, but we act in it

• Apathy removes us from having any input– Local, regional, national or global, all politics needs

our consideration• ‘Global community’ can only start with better

understanding of our own place– ‘Knowing’ Canada means knowing the world

Common Good

• Won’t settle questions of human nature• But common good is best achieved when

understood in terms of our own contributions to society

• Some will continue to benefit more than others– How can we improve the distribution of public

goods?

Concepts

• Some concepts introduced in Chapter 1 were used right through the entire text

• Concepts are not just useful, they are essential for political understanding and analysis

• Interpretation of many concepts, however, is not always universal

Levels of Analysis

• Impossible to look at just one ‘level’ of politics– Individual, group, state, inter-state

• But we do need to make a choice about what we want to examine

• Some actors are inherently political (state); others not primarily so (corporation)

See the Wiki timeline on the National Post: http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/11/28/a-wikileaks-timeline/

• “We help you get the truth out safely. . . without spin.”

• Loss of trust after “WMD lies”?

• Ultimate openness and transparency?

• Attack on internationalism?

• “It is not the media’s job to protect ‘power’ from embarrassment.” Arianna Huffington

Power of the Media

A Man Named ‘Nobody’

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/how-a-man-named-nobody-became-the-battered-face-of-g20-protests/article1818432/

World NewsCanada must make Web accessible to blind

• Donna Jodhan of Toronto took Ottawa to court because she had trouble applying for a government job online

• A blind woman, Jodhan has won the battle• A federal court ruled Monday the government had denied Jodhan's equality

rights by not providing equal access to government programs online.• "She has been denied equal access to, and benefit from, government

information and services provided online to the public on the Internet, and that this constitutes discrimination against her on the basis of her physical disability, namely that she is blind," Justice Michael Kelen wrote in his ruling.

• The government was not living up to its own 2001 accessibility standards, Kelen ruled, and he gave Ottawa 15 months to make its Web sites more accessible.

• In a rare move, Kelen said the court would monitor the government's implementation of online services for the visually impaired to ensure it complies by the deadline.

The Term in Review

• Values• Political Culture• Mainstream Media – New Media (ICTs, including ‘Net)

• Public Policy • Political Thought• Ideologies• Political Systems• Institutions & Processes• Political Participation• International Relations

“Mercifully, nobody will pay attention to the climate conference at Cancun next week, where a much-reduced group of delegates will go through the motions.

The delusional dream of global action to combat climate change is dead.”

[Margaret Wente, “Can environmentalism be saved from itself?” Globe and Mail, 27 Nov. 2010]

What do you think?

Parliamentary experts say the climate-change bill was killed without debate — the first time in about 70 years that the Senate has killed legislation from the Commons without a hearing.

(Nov. 17, 2010)http://www.thestar.com/news/sciencetech/environment/article/892053--climate-bill-commons-crushed-in-one-blow?bn=1

“so undemocratic nobody actually believed any Canadian government would do it.”

Rick Mercer24 November 2010 Rant

Watch Rick: http://350orbust.wordpress.com/2010/11/25/rick-mercer-weighs-in-on-why-tory-senators-killing-of-bill-c311-is-such-a-big-deal/

• So why is it such a big deal that Tory Senators killed a bill? I mean, the Senate has killed bills before, right? Well, not really, not like this. They didn’t just kill a bill, they killed the bill without debate.

• …The Tory senators took a bill that had been voted on and passed by a majority of the duly elected members of the House of Commons, the people we actualy vote for, and killed it without a debate. To put that into perspective, the last time that happened was in the ’30s.

• …It’s so undemocratic nobody actually believed any Canadian government would do it. It’s one of those things that are just not done.. And so when Marjorie Lebreton, the Senate leader was asked about this, she just laughed and said “Ha,it’s legal.” Well, it’s also legal to walk up to a veteran, stick a quarter in his poppy box and take all his poppies. But people don’t do it because most of us like to think about what is right, not what is legal. And if you are dealing with people who go through life and don’t care about right and wrong, and don’t care about democracy as we know it, and only care about what they can get away with, all the reform in the world isn’t going to make a difference.

“Please call or write the Prime Minister and your Member of Parliament to let them know that we expect them to live up to their responsibility

to be accountable to the will of Canadians and our democracy.”

Bill C-311: Don't allow the Senate to subvert democracyOnline Petition

16,714 messages have been sent. Let's get to 20,000! The David Suzuki Foundation

http://action.davidsuzuki.org/C-311

Accountability – Transparency - Clare Demerse of the Pembina Institute, a non-

partisan think tank, took issue with the way the bill was killed:

• “It would have been difficult to watch the Senate defeat this groundbreaking legislation under any circumstances.

• But to see it lost in this way is even tougher: Bill C-311 was defeated without any debate,

without the chance to call a single witness to explain what it offered, and at a moment when key supporters of the bill happened to be away from the Senate.

• "This bill would have required the government to publish regular reports explaining its climate policy to Canadians - and as things currently stand, every one of those reports would have created bad headlines for the government.“

“Refitted ($30 million to taxpayers) to research climate change. The feds leased the coast guard breaker CCGS Amundsen – Canada’s most advanced research ship for the study of climate change – to BP and Imperial Oil to study the impact of drilling in the delicate Arctic ecosystem. "Part of [the problem] is probably indicative of the fact that we don't have research funds for research people to operate it at the time available.“ This week government funding ended for the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, Canada’s premier funder of university-based weather and climateresearch. Some of the research has helped develop tools for predicting drought in the Prairies, the role of Canadian forests, as well as improving knowledge of urban air quality, eat waves and smog. About the Foundation’s research: http://www.cfcas.org/pressrelease24Nov10e.pdf

Welcome Mat or a Grave Irony?

Government House Leader John Baird has taken on

the environment portfolio, part-time, and he’ll be representing

Canada at Cancun.

Senator Grant MitchellYou Tube video

Bill C-311, the Climate Change Accountability Act, passed the House of Commons last May.

The Sierra Club said the bill was developed with the participation of scientists and environmentalists and “was supported by a petition

signed by more than 150,000 Canadians.”

It passed 3rd reading by a vote of 148 to 116 with the support of caucuses of the federal Liberals, BQ, and the NDP (the Conservatives

voted against it).

Senate defeated it this month. It would have committed the Canadian government to emission reductions (25% below 1990 levels by 2020).

Bill C-311 had not even been debated by the Senate.

“Canadians must not allow the Senate to get away with this…”

• NDP leader Jack Layton said he was appalled to learn last night of the defeat of his party's landmark climate change bill at the hands of Stephen Harper's unelected and unaccountable Conservative Senators. "He [Prime Minister] broke his promise never to appoint unelected senators, and now, he's using them to subvert the will of this House. It's never happened before. It should not be permitted, and where is his democratic impulse?" said Layton.

• Liberal Senator Grant Mitchell: “With only a part-time Environment Minister and no climate change plan, the Conservative Government has seemingly nothing to discuss at the international climate talks in Cancun, Mexico.” “Killing Bill C-311 shows a fundamental lack of respect for the many Canadians who care deeply about climate change. They had a right to have this bill debated properly,”

• Prime Minister Harper: "It sets irresponsible targets, doesn't lay out any measure of achieving them other than ... by shutting down sections of the Canadian economy and throwing hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of people out of work," Harper said. "Of course, we will never support such legislation.”

• "Harper’s assertion that action on climate change throws millions of people out of work is utter absurdity. We could be putting Canadians to work in a Green economy, but this government only hears the special pleadings of the fossil fuel lobby. Even though we pledged at the G20 to kill fossil fuel subsidies, we have not even done that," said May.

• A 2009 study by the European Commission found almost half a million jobs will be created by reaching their target of 20% of energy coming from renewables by 2020.

University of Guelph students bare all in protest against

Senate defeat of climate legislation Friday, Nov. 26, 2010 Globe and Mail

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/campus-strip-mob-targets-bill-c-311/article1814983/?from=1814976 See also: http://news.guelphmercury.com/News/Local/article/727500

I think it is another sad decision that will thoroughly undermine Canada's reputation abroad

on environmental issues.

The idea for JustEarth: A Coalition for Environmental Justice was prompted by discussion at a Status of Women session of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association, held

at the annual congress, York University, 31 May 2006.

Our ethical foundations, concepts of justice, do not consider long-term damage, either global heating from burning fossil fuels, or the depletion of the resource

itself... Justice concepts geared to the here and now, not the young or future generations

Consumerism causes climate change: November 2010 Environics Poll

A majority of Canadians believe that consumerism and a push for economic growth are factors responsible for climate change

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2010/11/18/climate-change-poll-consumerism.html#ixzz16hrS5CzY

Environics poll conducted between Oct. 27 and Nov. 1, 2010 found:• 87% of Canadians strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement: “The root

cause of climate change is too much focus on economic growth and consumerism. We need to have an economy that is in harmony with nature, which recognizes and respects the planet.”

• 85% of Canadians strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement: “Industrialized countries which have historically produced the most greenhouse gas emissions, should be the most responsible for reducing current emissions.”

• 83% of Canadians strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement that: “The Canadian government should invest in green jobs and have transition programmes for workers and communities negatively affected by a shift away from reliance on fossil fuels.”

• 77% of Canadians strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement: “There should be a World Climate and Justice Tribunal to judge and penalize countries and corporations whose actions have contributed climate change and damaged the environment.”

• 71% of Canadians strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement: “The money spent on wars and the military would all be better spent on efforts that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the impacts of climate change.”

• The telephone poll was conducted by Environics Canada and commissioned by the Council of Canadians in association with KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives; Canadian Union of Postal Workers; Indigenous Environmental Network; Common Frontiers Public Service Alliance of Canada; Toronto Bolivia Solidarity

Cochambamba, Bolivia & The Water Revolt

In 2000 the town of Cochabamba made headlines.

Center of a desperate battle to prevent Bechtel corporation -- under the watchful eye of the IMF and the World Bank -- from privatizing water in that city.

Bolivia's conservative government signed a 40-year lease, putting the city's water system into the hands of the San Francisco-based engineering giant, Bechtel. Within weeks of taking over, Bechtel raised water rates by an average of 50 percent, much higher in many cases.

After bitter protests in April 2000, the movement had won. Privatization was defeated, and the control of water in Cochabamba was handed over to a grassroots coalition. Cochabamba in 2000 was a spark that helped ignite the anti-corporate globalization movement of the early 21st century.

From a pamphlet on the events of 2000: ‘a Bolivian woman holds back the advance of government forces with a single slingshot during the Water War on the streets of downtown Cochabamba.’ Photo: Thomas Kruse

2010

• Climate Justice/Global Justice movement, called into being by Latin America's second poorest country, with its first indigenous head of state -- Evo Morales

• Pachamama, or Mother Earth• “The right to water means not having chemicals

in it." Why? As Morales said, "these rights extend to all plants and animals and Mother Earth."

“The Cochabamba Agreement [The World's People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth" held in Cochabamba in May 2010] was loaded with specific proposals: an international climate tribunal to prosecute those that pollute and provoke climate change, full recognition of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, amendment of the Kyoto Protocol to require developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to 50 per cent of 1990 levels by 2020, and rejection of "false market solutions" such as carbon trading and offset mechanisms that allow industrialized countries to keep polluting while investing in environmentally and socially-damaging projects in the South. Cochamba spoke to new, more diverse, and more localized economies as well as the need for a profound shift to sustainable models of agriculture.” [Michael M’Gonigle and Louise Takeda, “Cancun, and more Consequential C Words”, The Tyee, 29 November 2010]

Source:

Michael M'Gonigle is a member of the Faculty of Law and the Department of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria and holds the Eco-Research Chair in Environmental Law and Policy. He is a co-founder of Greenpeace International, the Sierra Legal Defense Fund, and Smart Growth BC.

Louise Takeda is a PhD candidate with the Research Center on Development and International Relations at Aalborg University, Denmark and is a guest researcher at the POLIS project on ecological governance at the University of Victoria.http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2010/11/29/CWords/

“Our democratic deficit is most damaging in the timid monopoly of 'liberal' discourse. Protecting itself behind the false premise of a more responsive operating system, this discourse legitimizes as reformable an economic growth machine that knows no reforming; in so doing, it inherently delegitimizes those who do speak to the evidence, and the alternatives. In trying to get some control of over this machine, the South needs allies in the North who can change the conversation from this side.”

Delegates at Cochabamba:

“…Mother Earth is converted into a source of raw materials, and human beings into consumers and a means of production, into people that are seen as valuable only for what they own, and not for what they are."

The Cochamba Agreement drew on the Indigenous concept of "Buen Vivir" or "living well." In contrast to Western notions of progress, it stresses: the satisfaction of needs rather than luxury; community health rather than private accumulation; and harmonious relations with our surroundings rather than development and modernization.

“Indigenous peoples’ …worldview are concerned of a world that privatizes the air, water and

commodifies the sacredness of Mother Earth. We must de-colonize the atmosphere.”

Indigenous network supports Cochabamba Agreement

May 7, 2010

The closing speaker was Robert Lovelace, a leader of Ardoch Algonquin First Nation.

His speech culminated with an observation, that we will not win climate justice until we recognize that we are all indigenous to the earth.

All of us, he argued, have been separated from the land by forces we don't control.

Recognizing our connection to the land is an indispensable first step in creating a movement to build a society based on climate justice.

Your research quest: Robert Lovelace is an adjunct Professor at Queen’s University in the Department of Global Development Studies, and an activist in anti-colonial struggles. In 2008, he spent 3 and a half months as a political prisoner for his part in defending the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation homeland from uranium exploration and mining. FYI: http://firstnationsdrum.com/2010/07/bob-lovelace-algonquin-protector-of-mother-earth/

“losses in liberty and sovereignty to corporations in the 20th century”

“democratic deficit”: regain principles to deal with climate change”

A C E A ccountability

C autionE vidence-based assessment (including unintended consequences)

“First of all, do no harm”

Rights for trees, insects and mountains“We have human rights… But we have no rights to deprive other

species of their proper habitat…We cannot own the Earth or any part of the Earth in any absolute manner.” (Berry)

University law schools address “expanded jurisprudence”

Change the Economy???• “Earth-based economics” in place of immediate corporate profits

• Enlightenment example in Physiocracy, “rule by nature”?

• Comparable to Constitutional change– Lynn McDonald,"Constitutional Change to Address Climate Change and

Nonrenewable Enery Use," Constitutional Forum constitutionnnel 17, 3 (2008):113-21

http://www.justearth.net/publications_socialchange

• The “great work” for the new generation– Toronto JustEarth - December Planning Meeting and Social

• Start: 12/08/2010 19:30 • Location: 419 Carlton St, Toronto

Liberalism at a turning-point?

• Does the individualism of liberal societies encourage an increasingly wasteful expansion of wants that have less and less to do with genuine needs? – We double the size of our houses and cars simply because “we deserve it.”

• Dangerous belief in the inevitability of progress?• Does the favoured liberal understanding of freedom – in the

negative sense (that is, freedom from) to of being left alone – translates into insistence on our right to abstain from political action to save our common world?

• How might individual freedom be reconsidered in ways that emphasise responsibility and public involvement above (though not necessarily to the exclusion of) private indulgence?

• Hmmmmm...what government would be elected on a platform of limiting economic growth or shifting to a less materialistic lifestyle?

Tue. Dec. 7 & Sat. Dec. 11SFU Segal Centre (Rooms 1400-1410), 500 Granville Street, Vancouver

Saturday, December 4 · 10:30am - 4:30pmHosted by Canadian Youth Delegation - HalifaxMcInnes Room, Student Union Building, Dalhousie University, Halifax

• Earlier this year, a Waterloo based advocate for the environment, Dante Ryel, fasted in an effort to pressure federal M.P.s to vote for the Climate Change Accountability Act. The fast was documented on YouTube.

• Starving for Change is a new activist group specifically designed to influence Canadian federal politics on the climate change issue. The group organizes around popular social networking sites like YouTube and Facebook.

Politics is everything

• The Politics of Food– Conference on New York's Next Policy Challenge

Environmental Security / Food Security• Food Forward Advocacy Alliance• http://pushfoodforward.com/

• “born in 2010 is a new, dynamic organization”• is a registered non-profit organization in Toronto that

provides a people's voice for a better food system. • We work with the public, politicians and those

involved in the food sector to educate and advocate for food that is healthy, local, sustainable, ethically produced and accessible for all.

Re: Defeat of Bill C-311:• Environment is a food issue and vice versa. Now,

much work is left to be done, with nothing sitting on the table to reduce rising emissions.

• We must plan for food security and sustainability, and to adapt to the effect that the climate crisis will play on our global and local food supplies.

The Politics of Food• “You can’t change specific eating behavior without addressing that way of life — without

changing our culture of food.”– Perhaps the most successful government effort to regulate what and how much Americans

consume — the food rationing programs of World War II — recognized this political-cultural-emotional scheme.

– the food rationing programs of World War II — recognized this political-cultural-emotional scheme.

– Needing a number of foods, meat in particular, for the boys overseas, the government realized that it could successfully spread its message of “eat differently” only if it fought on two fronts: • the nutritional and the psychological.

– And so it pursued a two-pronged campaign, with the Food and Nutrition Board handling the nutrition, and the psychology tasked to the Committee on Food Habits, led by the anthropologist Margaret Mead and charged by the National Research Council with “mobilizing anthropological and psychological insights as they bear upon the whole problem of changing food habits in order to raise the nutritional status of the people of the United States.”

– Eating the way the government wanted you to eat — healthfully and with a mind to greater public welfare — was a way of displaying patriotism, adding to the war effort.

• Junking Junk Food, The Way We Live Now, By JUDITH WARNER, Published: November 25, 2010 • NYTimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/magazine/28FOB-wwln-t.html?_r=1

• population demographics— world population will hit seven billion in 2011 and surpass nine billion by 2050;

• resource demand— global modernization and urbanization will require more natural resources than the earth currently provides humanity;

• globalization— the world economy will continue to become increasingly interconnected and interdependent; and,

• climate change— global average temperatures will continue to move upward—and more than twice as fast in the Arctic.

The Term in Review

• Values• Political Culture• Mainstream Media – New Media (ICTs, including ‘Net)

• Public Policy • Political Thought• Ideologies• Political Systems• Institutions & Processes• Political Participation• International Relations

BIRT: Need “system change not climate change."

...considering climate change, Copenhagen, Cochabamba, Cancun, calamity, citizenship, ethics

of caring, and most controversial: capitalism...

Or a Lump of Coal, Clean Coal...? Bah humbug!

Where do I go from here?

• BA degrees are not about training for jobs, but preparation for careers

• Politics teaches us practical matters like political systems, mechanisms of government, and ideological approaches

• Politics also teaches us analytical and critical thinking, and proper research techniques

• There are many futures in politics – talk to your instructors about this!