Will Nuclear Free Thinking Spread to the Arctic?

President Obama announcement today that he has reached agreement with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to further reduce the two countries' nuclear weapons stockpiles. Weapons of mass destruction have no place in a world that calls itself 'civilized' and we are seeing again in this announcement the sea-change in political life that now allows us all to think such rational thoughts.

Disarmament campaigners have for years made the case that until the 'official' nuclear weapons states (Russia, the US, UK, France and China) control their addiction to nukes, no one else who covets them (Iran, Iraq, Isreal, India, Pakistan, etc) will be the slightest bit interested in even talking about, let alone actually, getting rid of theirs. You say we can't have nuclear weapons? how come they formt a central pillar of your foreign policy? (Beyond this rationale, the 'official' weapons states are also bound by the Non-Proliferation Treaty to move toward total nuclear disarmament, and unless they do there are concerns that this treaty will simply collapse for lack of legitimacy in the global South.)

Now Obama and Medvedev are applying that logic, and explicitly hoping to influence discussions in the Middle East, where constant flareups of violence look ever more ominous as the 'unofficial' nuclear arsenals of the beliigerents (including Isreal) grow.

Let's take this another step though, and not just put pressure on Mideast nations, but actually model steps to total nuclear disarmament. Russia and the US can take the lead on a treaty to impose a permanent ban on nuclear weapons (and nuclear-powered vessels) in the Arctic region. This area is turning into a geopolitical hotspot in its own right, what with all that oil under the ice and that ice disappearing faster than you can say 'catastophic climate change'.

Our own Canadian hawk, PM Stephen Harper, has repeatedly rattled his little sabre about Canadian sovereignty in the North, and a major public debate about the future of this region is long overdue.

Michael Ignatieff, are you listening?

Here's a major foreign policy angle for you to outflank Mr Harper (as you've failed to do on the Arctic since you won the Liberal leadership earlier this year) - Canada pressing for a nuclear free Arctic would be credible internationally, it would strengthen, not weaken, our claims to the North, and it would prove difficult for Mr Harper to follow suit since his own base finds that kind of policy shift both unappealing and untenable (they still think that Harper's Arctic rhetoric is based in military thinking).

It would also give Mr Ignatieff the chance to speak truth to Mr Obama while at the same time directly engaging the other Arctic nations (in addition to Russia and the US - Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland), and making a practical proposal that would echo very powerfully in the Middle East. Obama would then have another international plank to build the scaffold around Isreal and Iran, pressuing THEM to consider a nuclear-free Middle East.

This would be a big improvement on Mr Ignatieff's ridiculous preening about Arctic issus so far, which have been a laughable imitation of Harper's hawkishness (see the 23.1.09 Arctic post here on NC). As such, such a move by Ignatieff would raise all the right sentiments about the Liberal Party among centrist Canadian voters - nuclear disarmament is not a leftwing issue, after all.

As we've all been saying, that Obama sure does open up possibilities, doesn't he? If only the rest of the geopolitical class was as bold.

The Coming Change in Climate

During the US election, novelist Ian McEwan mused in The Guardian that Barack Obama may be our world’s last hope for significant action to avoid catastrophic climate change. But Obama’s powers are fleeting, McEwan says, because they rest on a sort of ‘collective dreaming’ by millions of hopeful citizens in America and around the world: ‘Obama may succeed in tipping the nations [involved in climate change negotiations] toward a low-carbon future simply because people think he can... Having persuaded everybody else, he may be doubly persuaded himself. This aura will be his empowerment, as numinous as good luck, as permanent as spring snow.’

McEwan concludes that Obama must ‘move decisively’, lest our collective dream of his immense power end, and we awaken to find our civilization already pitching forward into a deep chasm.

We would go further here at NC: if Obama is to succeed there must be a determined application of practical wisdom from other governments, including Canada’s. And for that to happen there must be widespread engagement of citizens, both politically and in daily life, and a ‘revaluation’ away from consumerism and endless accumulation of material wealth towards collective fulfillment and happiness even when that means lower growth or fewer luxuries for the wealthiest among us.

Unfortunately, our recent federal election threw into high relief just how disconnected our national institutions are from the imperatives we face. Dion's 'green shift' debacle, the worst communictions effort since Joe Clark tried to sell higher gas taxes, put carbon taxes off the agenda for years to come.

Focusing the mind of our bankers, CEOs, and politicians is no small task, but it is not just a matter of reaching them with 'better information' (as our mainstream environmentalists have preached for too long). This challenge is fundamentally political: The concentration of power at the top of our social pyramid is a key reason that the ecological crisis continues to deepen. As archaeologist/novelist Ronald Wright notes of every civilization’s top dogs: ‘They continue to prosper in darkening times, long after the environment and general populace begin to suffer.’ (A Short History of Progress, House of Anansi Press)

As for our ‘creative class’, on whom so much of our practical future depends, many artists, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, planners, and designers are fascinated by the challenge of finding a sustainable way to live. It appeals to their moral code and requires great things of them, so it naturally feels like a 'fit'. See, for example, Massive Change ("it's not about the world of design, it's about the design of the world").

But, for this all-important caste, solidarity with the powerless and with future generations vies with 'top dog-ism', the well-known tendency of people who have priveleges, but little power, to think of themselves as brethren of the really influential Masters of the Universe.

A lot will hinge on the credibility of whatever economic ideology emerges from the wreckage that Wall St. has brought upon us -- if American Republicans and their ilk succeed, we will dive deeply back into the one-dimensional 'new economy' in which winners take all and being poor is a sure sign of moral weakness. In that world, we only measure success by the size of your bank account, and ignore the clearcuts and wasted oceans like we ignore street people outside the Metro. If NC and it's ilk get their way, we will take a much richer view of what progress is, using measures such as those outlined by the Canadian Index of Wellbeing or the Happy Planet Index. In that world, equity and ecological sustainability will underpin a society bent on the welfare of its children and grandchildren.

So keep dreaming the dream of Obama's power, but look forward to big changes in your waking life too.

The upside of global catastrophe: A long-term strategy?

The people of the United States now own more than a third of the world's largest bank, Citigroup, and the shrinkage of the US GDP was revealed to be near an an believable 7% in 2008. The Dow-Jones index is now hovering below 7,000 -- half the value it had only two years ago -- the possibility of all-out collapse of the US stock market is on some minds, I kid you not.

And here I thought that the collapse of global fisheries within the next 30 years, coupled with catastrophic climate change that will flood a third of the world's cities and cut European food production by more than half, was a serious threat to our way of life. Now I know the real problem is that our money is disappearing.

Just ask Labour MP Ed Balls in the UK. He caused a political stir when he said on February 10th that the global economic downturn is "the most serious global recession for over 100 years." Harkening back to 1909 is indeed strong stuff, considering that this period encompasses the British recession after WWI, the German crisis of 1920s, and the Great Depression. According to The Guardian, he warned that events were moving at a "speed, pace and ferocity which none of us have seen before" and banks were losing cash on a "scale that nobody believed possible".

This international crisis may not be the end of free-market capitalism, but it sure as hell is a pause in the action. And it will be the political frame of reference for at least the next 15 years, maybe 20. Is this a problem for those of us who are pushing for climate policies that would see the total 'decarbonization' of OECD energy systems by 2040? Is environmental concern now a thing of the past?

Hardly. Fifteen years of economic downturn is enough time to move ahead with 'sweeping change' (as Barack Obama termed it) -- to 'revalue' what is 'normal' for our society, both in domestic and foreign policy. And the backside of a financial crisis is a good moment to be questioning the real value of consumption in wealthy societies -- just the kind of debate that deep ecology has implied but that environmentalists themselves have eschewed for fear of being shut out of government roundtables and industry consultations.

In short, this crisis will last long enough to allow a whole new way of thinking to take root, making equity and sustainability the touchstones of progress, and 'gross domestic happiness' the measuring stick of civilization. It isn't long enough to achieve all of what we strive for, but it is enough to lay healthy soil for new developments to take root.

Worldwatch Institute President Christopher Flavin puts it this way:

“We should be practicing a sustainable approach to economics that takes advantage of the ability of markets to allocate scarce resources while explicitly recognizing that our economy is dependent on the broader ecosystem that contains it.”

But do we have the skills or the guts to plan and implement a strategy over that timeframe?

Many of the 'progressive' advocacy groups in Canada, whose job is to dramatically change our frame of public discourse on key issues, have resolutely stuck to the lessons of the 1980s, focusing inordinate resources and energy on their organizational capacity and reputational capital. This may be a good strategy for reactionary times, but with everything to play for now, it can only be described as the 'feet of clay' approach -- 'we'll get there eventually'.

No, actually, you won't. Without significant rethinking by the leadership of popular groups, and much more alliance building across a broad front of social, economic, and institutional reform, Canada will remain a laggard in progressive politics.

More to come in future posts, including some points on how the US situation is more hopeful.

Arctic Sovereignty -- But Why?

After the ignominious failure of the Liberals' 'Green Shift' under former leader Stephane Dion, we should expect the party to take a step to the right as new leader Michael Ignatieff waltzes onto the dance floor with intentions to cut into the Harper Tories' centrist positioning. How else to dispel the down-market leftist Eau d'Ion that clung to the party during the fall election campaign?

Right on cue, and with Barack Obama still only President-elect, Ignatieff polished up his tough guy credentials by assuring a hooting, cheering audience of more than a hundred Young Liberal that he will keep Yankee hands off our beloved Arctic regions.

"This is sovereign Canadian territory, okay?" he told his audience, referring to the Northwest Passage.

"And let me remind you, Mr Obama, that Canada exports more petroleum to the United States than Saudi Arabia [does] -- so I suggest respectfully that you listen very, very carefully when the Canadian Prime Minister soeaks."

So from Dion's embrace of a significant new economic policy (carbon tax coupled with broad income tax reductsions) the party is poised to embrace the dramatic loss of sea-ice in the high Arctic as a segue to preserving the old petroleum economy and the bellicose rhetoric that goes along with it. Take that, Stephen Harper.

The metaphorical temperature ins the Arctic has been rising dramatically eve since it became clear around 2005 that the actual temperature is rising so fast, as a result of global climate change, that the whole vast region is turning from impenetrable ice sheet to open water. Again this year, scientists report record-breaking open water where there should be cool, sunlight-eflecting ice. Not only does this phenomena create a positive feedback that accelerates global warming, it also stirs the aquisitive spirit of every nation encircling the Arctic because it raises the possibility of a huge mineral and oil bonanza.

The Americans touched a nerve with Canadians (who fantasize that they really do care about the Arctic as a kind of 'missing child' of Confederation) when they sailed an icebreaker through the Northwest Passage in 2005 without asking Canada's permission. The Danes pissed us off with their assertion of sovereignty over an obscure island off of Greenland.

But it is the Russian government that has made many in the diplomatic community nervous. Grandstanding events like the 2007 planting of a Russian flag at the North Pole are one thing, but Germany's Der Spiegel mag reports this week that the most recent iteration of the country's National Security Strategy states that

"It cannot be ruled out that the battle for raw materials [in the Arctic] will be waged with military means."

But it is precisely such a confrontation that we must rule out, and soon. Hunger for raw materials is driven by economic growth and competition, two forces that humanity must get to grips with if we hope to stop the global slide into the ecological trashbin. Mr Ignatieff is hardly helping the situation.

There are more sensible voices speaking up to give the Arctic a fighting chance at sustainable co-existence with human beings - especially that made by aboriginal activist and Nobel Prize nominee Shiela Watt-Cloutier:

"We [Inuit and other northern aboriginal people] are Canadians, and we can continue to assert sovereignty for Canada if Canada would build sustainable communities here."

That's the catch - what is sovereignty for? What end is served by one country or another controlling a vast part of the Earth's lands and seas?

That's the question we must ask and answer, together, internationally. Luckily we have international law and we have civil society organizations ready to take up the challenge, and to those actors we will return in future posts.

See the latest detailed map of the disputed territories, drawn up by UK researchers.

See a recent CBC documentary 'Battle for the Arctic'.

(with thanks to Remi Parmentier - chezremi.blogspot.com)