Good War

Seth Klein

Description

In A Good War, author and activist Seth Klein looks at the Second World War strategies and shows how they can be repurposed today for a rapid transition. He demonstrates that this change can create jobs and reduce inequality while tackling our climate obligations. From enlisting broad public support to new economic models, from new job creation to investment in green infrastructure, Klein shows us a bold, practical policy plan for a zero-carbon Canada.

Informations

• Publié par: Ecw Press
• Date de parution: 15 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781773055916
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

A Good War
Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency
Seth Klein



Contents Dedication Preface Part One: Again at the Crossroads of History Chapter 1: Introduction: Confronting Existential Threats, Then and Now Chapter 2: What We’re Up Against: The New Climate Denialism in Canada Part Two: Galvanzing Public Support and Social Solidarity Chapter 3: Ready to Rally: Marshalling Public Opinion, Then and Now Chapter 4: Making Common Cause: Inequality, Then and Now Chapter 5: Confederation Quagmire: Regional Differences, Then and Now Part Three: Mobilizing All Our Resources Chapter 6: Remaking the Economy, Then and Now Chapter 7: Mobilizing Labour: Just Transition, Then and Now Chapter 8: Paying for Mobilization, Then and Now Part Four: Bold Leadership — from the Grassroots and in Our Politics Chapter 9: Indigenous Leadership Chapter 10: Civil Society Leadership Chapter 11: Cautionary Tales: What Not to Do Chapter 12: Transforming Our Politics: Bold Leadership, Then, There and Now Conclusion Epilogue Notes Acknowledgements Advance Praise for A Good War Index About the Author Copyright


Dedication
For Christine, who inspires me as she mobilizes others. And for Zoe and Aaron, my love and anxiety for whom motivated this project.





Preface
The climate emergency is upon us.
Ever since my wife, Christine, and I started living together, for a few days every August we join her parents at a place they rent each summer in the southern end of British Columbia’s Okanagan region. It’s a lovely spot on a lake I enjoy swimming in, and a nice tradition my wife’s parents have established of unplugging and spending time with friends and family.
The south Okanagan is always hot in the summer. But in the last few years, it’s been different. During our visits in the summers of 2017 and 2018, wildfires throughout B.C. blanketed the area with smoke. With the full sun screened from view, the days were a little cooler. That came as some welcome relief. But it also felt a little apocalyptic as we sat outside only to have ash fall from the sky.
As our 2019 visit approached, the wildfire season in B.C. had proven less severe than the previous two years. We joked that we would finally see a return to normal skies and ash-free outdoor meals. Then, the night before our arrival, a fire broke out on the ridge behind where we visit. Not knowing what to expect, we made the drive nonetheless.
When we arrived, we came upon a scene unlike any our family had ever experienced. Residents in the area had been put on evacuation alert. All afternoon, a fleet of four water-bomber float planes had been scooping up water from the lake directly in front of our rental house, flying in low over the homes in formation, collecting water in their pontoons and then doubling back to the fire on the mountain ridge behind us to dump their loads. Right up until sundown, four helicopters likewise circled back to the lake in five-minute rotations, dropping massive buckets on long cords to collect water, and then racing back to the mountain to release their cargo. This continued all week. Swimmers and boaters had to stay close to shore to keep the path clear for the aircraft. And the noise was overwhelming. Our peaceful family time suddenly felt more like a scene from Apocalypse Now , with people trying to go about their routine but for the deafening sound of the helicopters. We had to huddle together and shout to communicate. As darkness fell, the hills behind us were dotted with flames, and the sky glowed ominously red.
This is what people now nervously joke about as “the new normal,” although it is, in truth, not normal and but a taste of things to come. These weather events we are increasingly experiencing — and the war-like mood they create — represent attacks on our soil. They are a call to mobilize.
Compared to other places, my home province of British Columbia has been lucky. As I complete this book, Australia, which has been wrestling with record heat for years, has become the latest country to confront the terrifying reality of the climate emergency. Australia has just experienced a wildfire season unlike any before — over two dozen people killed, approximately six million hectares burned (an area larger than Switzerland), an estimated half billion wild animals perished, over 1,400 homes destroyed, tens of thousands evacuated, whole coastal communities in New South Wales cut off from road access as flames surrounded them. The impacts that climate scientists have warned of for years are now here.
While Australia’s current government ranks among the world’s leading climate policy foot-draggers, there is no question the 2019–2020 bushfires will have a major impact on the country’s politics and the public discourse on climate. Support for the tone-deaf administration of Prime Minister Scott Morrison plummeted in the wake of the catastrophe. A poll commissioned by the Australia Institute in November 2019 (even before the worst of the crisis had occurred) found that two-thirds of Australians believe their country is facing a climate emergency, and 63% agree that “governments should mobilise all of society to tackle climate change, like they did during the World Wars.” 1
In the face of the wildfire emergency, the Australian government was forced to deploy the most military assets since the Second World War. 2 Sadly, the emergency response was purely defensive, a rearguard action. Our governments have not yet seen fit to adopt a wartime-scale response that pre-emptively tackles the climate crisis. We mobilize to put fires out, but not to prevent them.
I suspect the wartime approach employed in this book makes some of you reading it uncomfortable. Me too.
I am an unlikely person to be writing a war story.
I am the child of war resisters.
My parents came to Canada from the United States in 1967. The Vietnam War was in full swing. In September of that year, after trying unsuccessfully to gain formal “conscientious objector” status, my father received his military induction notice. Further complicating matters, about a month earlier, my mother discovered she was pregnant — with me — and my folks had decided to hurriedly get married. Then, along with tens of thousands of other Americans, rather than accept military service or continue to live and pay taxes in a country engaged in an immoral war, my parents chose to come to Canada.
I am Canadian because of my parents’ refusal to participate in war. And I am forever grateful for the choice they made. Coming to Canada in those days, and in those circumstances, was very different than it is today. During the Vietnam War, a network of peace activists existed to help American draft resisters make their way to Canada — good folks who helped these young Americans cross the border, offered temporary shelter and assisted these immigrants in settling in a new country.
My parents had been living in New York City. My mother, Bonnie, was beginning her career as a documentary filmmaker, and my father, Michael, was a pediatric resident at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. The Montreal Council to Aid War Resisters advised my parents to fly into what was then Dorval Airport (now Montreal-Trudeau International Airport) after midnight. They were told that the immigration officers on duty late at night were more likely to be French-Canadian, since in those days the Francophones generally got the crappy nighttime shifts, and the French-Canadians were much more likely than their English-Canadian counterparts to oppose the war.
So that’s what they did. And sure enough, my parents were met by a Francophone immigration officer who, upon hearing their declaration (and with much more discretion than exists today), gave them landed immigrant status in 20 minutes and a kiss on both cheeks for good measure. Imagine that.
My family’s war resistance goes even further back. My Jewish great-grandparents all escaped Tsarist Russia, fleeing the pogroms. My paternal great-grandfather, fearing conscription into the Russian monarch’s military, set sail for America in the early 1900s and later brought over his family.
My own social activism started as a high-school student in Montreal in the 1980s, where I became engaged in the peace and disarmament movement near the end of the Cold War. That’s where I cut my political teeth. It was an era when many felt the possibility of a cataclysmic nuclear war was very real. In fact, according to research at the time by the Children’s Mental Health Research Group at McMaster University, 67% of Canadian teens believed a nuclear war was likely in their lifetimes, and the same percent thought there was little or nothing they could do about it. 3 That was the existential threat — a very real one — faced by an earlier generation.
And in that context, a group of Montreal teens including me created a youth disarmament group we called SAGE (in English, an acronym for Students Against Global Extermination; and in French, the far more elegant Solidarité Anti-Guerre Étudiante). As I made my way through grades 10, 11 and first-year CEGEP, I would frequently skip school to give presentations in other schools about the dangers of nuclear weapons and what young people could do to turn the tide.
Then in 1986–1987, when I was 18, four of us from SAGE (Maxime Faille, Désirée McGraw, Alison Carpenter and I), feeling the urgency of the issue, decided to take a year out of our studies and travel the country, speaking in schools and organizing youth peace groups.
We spent the summer of 1986 organizing the tour, foll