Author: Mike Bell

Prime Minister Harper will likely make his decision on the Enbridge Pipeline in June. To prepare for the big day the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) is spending big bucks visiting communities through B.C. to generate support.

We’ve had two visits here in the Comox Valley. I attended one of them in Comox along with eight others including one of our elected officials. My purpose for attending was to do my due diligence as a taxpayer.

Every savvy investor knows that before buying into a project he or she should investigate the project thoroughly. This is called “doing your due diligence.” It compares the costs with the benefits and is particularly concerned with the money. As Deep Throat said to Robert Redford playing a reporter investigating the Watergate break-in in the movie All The President’s Men, “Follow the Money.”

The meeting with CAPP was all about money—particularly money in the form of Jobs for the Comox Valley. I was trying to follow the money, but it was impossible.

When CAPP said “Jobs” the magic happened. Most of the participants started talking about how they could use the money in the form of taxes—for schools, health care services, and municipal services.

But there was nothing about the specific number of jobs, the kinds of jobs and salary levels, the length of jobs, the credentials needed to get the jobs, the use of temporary foreign workers, the actual spinoff effects for local businesses, and so forth. CAPP just said “Jobs.” Then they sat back and let the participants do their work for them convincing one another that this was a “good deal.”

In terms of money there was no weighing of the net benefits and costs to the Comox Valley compared to what CAPP, Enbridge and their Multinational investors would get in terms of profits.

There was no discussion about what Comox Valley residents would get for their portion of the whopping $1.4 billion taxpayer dollars the feds were giving to the fossil fuel industry annually in terms tax cuts and subsidies.

Nor was there a discussion about the millions of more taxpayer dollars Mr. Harper and his cabinet were spending as they traipsed around the world promoting the Enbridge Pipeline.

Finally, the CAPP representatives didn’t let the conversation be soiled by discussions about tax-payer costs for spills, public health consequences, increased pollution climate change and its effect upon our Canadian economy. These things are not even in the CAPP Community Tour Playbook.

As I left the meeting I was sad.

I couldn’t help thinking of that $1.4 billions of taxpayer dollars Mr. Harper and company are sending to the fossil fuel industry each year. It is coming back at us to pay for CAPP’s Magical Mystery Tour. They want us to dream in Technicolor and buy a pig in a poke.

Mike Bell
Comox

Without a doubt climate change is the most serious problem facing Earth and our species. In the past many environmentalists believed that if we gave people the facts they would “come around” and begin to take action. But we have been giving people the facts for at least two decades and there is little to show for it. Furthermore, educating the public about climate change often leads to a big downer.

Once people grasp the full implications of climate change, they also come to the conclusion that the problem is so massive that there is really nothing they can do about it. It is something “out there”, way beyond their control or ability to influence. The failure of governments and politicians that are supposed to be dealing with the major climate change issues at the national and international level only reinforces peoples’ sense of helplessness.

So what to do?

We can sit back and do nothing. We can fail to heed the warning of scientists that we are in the midst of a new age of Earth and our species. They call it the Anthropocene, literally the “new age made by man”. We are changing the climate of earth, poisoning the oceans, changing earth’s chemistry, widening the holes in the ozone layer, wiping out species at an alarming rate and engaging in a number of other disastrous steps that an increasing number of scientists believe will inevitably result in the Sixth Extinction.

Or, we can do something—but what?

We must deal with the underlying assumption that climate change is something which we have no power to deal with. Maybe it is not just something surrounding our planet. Maybe it is something within our communities, and even buried deep within our psyches. Maybe what is happening “out there” is a reflection and manifestation of what is happening “in here”, at home.

I’ve come around to thinking of climate change as a sort of a composite, global, holographic message to us earthlings. Think of Princess Leia’s hologram in Star Wars, and her plea. “Obi-Wan Kenobi: you’re my only hope.”

A hologram is a three dimensional image created by lasers. When you divide the image you don’t get a collection of parts. You get a smaller version of the same image with all the parts intact.

So…the reality of climate change that we see as being a global reality out beyond our control and influence is actually an enlarged composite of climate changing situations occurring all around the world at the local level. It is a manifestation of the relationships and interactions among governmental, economic, social, environmental and cultural factors coming together.

The current situation is serious. It is a though a war is going on. We have been destroying Earth and its life-support systems we depend upon for our existence. Now Earth seems to be fighting back against us, threatening our existence.

If the international community ever decides to get its act together it knows it can’t simply pass laws that everyone will agree too. It knows success will depend upon people taking action at the local level. But we can’t hang around waiting for the international community to act. If we are indeed on the slippery slope of the Anthropocene we must take action now at the local level. This requires two things.

First, we must help people reframe—get them thinking about climate change differently—as local issues and actions that also manifest globally. This different thinking begins with adopting Pogo’s observation made early in the environmental movement. “We have seen the enemy and he is us.”

Second, we must get much more politically involved. We must organize to hold our elected leaders at the local, federal and provincial level accountable for their own actions and for the actions of their corporate partners whom they are supposed to monitor but often fail to do so.

Given the seriousness of the climate change reality, these two actions, to quote Princess Leia’s plea to Obi-Wan Kenobe, seem to be our only real hope.

Mike Bell
Comox B.C.

Presentation to the
DEFEND OUR CLIMATE-DEFEND OUR COMMUNITIES RALLY
Simms Millenium Park, Courtenay B.C.
Saturday, November 16, 2013
(Caps in text are the audience response.)

Good Afternoon. This is quite a crowd. Good to see so many of you here.

I’ll start with a question. Why have you come here this afternoon? What has motivated you? Is it because you want to win something? Here is why I’m asking.

Last year our local environmental group had an exhibit at the Fall Fair. In front of our exhibit was a map showing where the proposed Raven Coal Mine was located. I saw a man looking at the map, I approached him and, after a brief discussion about the mine, he said to me, “I really respect what you are doing. But this is not for me. For eight years I worked for Green Peace. But I burned out when I realized that despite all our work we were not going to win.

By sheer coincidence, a little later another man with a history of environmental work came up to our booth and said, “I’m not going to come out against the mine. It will do no good unless we can change the whole capitalistic system. We are never going to win.

I’ve thought a great deal about these two men. I hate the use of “winning” as a motivator. For one thing, this is not a game. Both the Enbridge Pipeline transporting tar sands bitumen across B.C. to huge ships travelling down our coast and the proposed coal mines planned for the Comox Valley are a clear and present danger to our community, to our province and indeed to Canada and to the world at large.

For another thing, when we lose, and we sometimes do lose, some folks just take their bat and ball and go home. They are not in for the long haul.

So what does motivate you? I believe it is a spiritual reality. I’m sure that if you look deeply into your soul you will find two things. First, awareness that you and what you love is being abused. This is often manifest in anger and perhaps outrage. Second, you discover welling up within you a desire to stop this injustice by standing up and doing the right thing.

Many people have gone ahead of us who have faced even greater challenges than we face. We can learn from them.

When Mahatma Gandhi decided to take on the almost 100 year old British colonial Raj, he didn’t get a small group together and say, “Okay Guys, How are we going to win this thing? He and his friends just decided to stand up to the abuse and do the right thing.

Then there was that day on the bus in Montgomery Alabama when Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger and ended up in jail. She wasn’t thinking of winning anything. She just got tired of being pushed around and knew it was the right thing to do. So did Martin Luther King as he watched the events develop in Birmingham. Wounded men, women and children were scattered on the ground after they had been brutalized by Bull Connor’s police with their truncheons, attack dogs and water cannons.

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in South African jails. He undoubtedly continued to hear of the deaths of many of his people killed by the regime for trying to stand up for their rights. But he sat in that cell, became a hero for his perseverance and, after years of international pressure, the regime tried to deal with him. They would let him out if he would be a good boy and stop protesting. “No Deal” he said. He refused to come out until he could be released on his own terms. He knew it was the right thing to do.

As we look to the future there is one thing we can win. We can win the minds and hearts of the people of this valley.

Every year I write these words of Teilhard de Chardin on the front page of my Daytimer. “The future belongs to those who can give a reason for hope.” I really believe that this is a mission for each one of us—to give others hope and the courage to resist injustice.

Take a look around you. Think about the people who are not here—your family members and friends, your church members, your school, your organizations and businesses. You can inspire these people. You can give them a sense of hope—if you are willing to go out and tell them your story—the story of the concern that is in your hearts.

Tell them about how the Harper’s Government’s Northern Gateway Pipeline will desecrate the Great Bear Rain Forest and how the inevitable oil spills from tankers coming down that narrow passage to the sea will inflict untold damage on the environment. Ask them to join you and get involved. And when they ask you why they should get involved, say to them, “Because… IT’S THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

Tell them about how the Harper Government is stealing your rights as a citizen; how it is ramming through omnibus bills that remove environmental laws that have taken thirty years to develop; how it constantly promoting the toxic tar sands; how it is handing over our resources in bargain-basement deals to foreign countries; how it is silencing its own scientists and having their cabinet ministers attacking environmental and other non-profit groups that dare to speak out against them. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/an-open-letter-from-natural-resources-minister-joe-oliver/article4085663/ Ask them to join with you and speak out against these injustices. And when they ask you why they should get involved, say to them, “Because… IT’S THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

Tell them how the Harper government is abusing our aboriginal brothers and sisters. In 2012 the Harper government was one of the very last UN countries to sign on to the United Nations Declaration of The Rights of Indigenous People. http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1309374239861/1309374546142 That signature was the ultimate in hypocritical political gestures. Among other things the Harper Government pledged to recognize aboriginal rights to traditional lands and to self-government. But, at the very moment it was signing the document it was working with large corporations to drive a pipeline across traditional lands and to do it without adequate consultation. Ask your friends and acquaintances to join with you in protecting the rights of aboriginal peoples. And when they ask you why they should get involved, say to them, “Because… IT’S THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

Tell them how the Christy Clark government has agreed with the Alberta Government to support the Northern Gateway Pipeline across northern B.C. Tell them how this government is intent on turning our valley and Island into Appalachia North. It has recently issued 18 new coal licenses in our valley to Chinese companies, all of them in close proximity to critical water sources. And make sure to tell them about the news reports in the press this week based on leaked documents that the government is literally “giving away the farm.” It is eviscerating the Agricultural Land Reserve and handing over to its oil and gas section the responsibility to make farm land available for fracking. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/sacrosanct-agricultural-land-commission-eyed-for-breakup/article15306864/#dashboard/alerts Ask your friends and acquaintances to join you in protest. And when they ask you why they should get involved, say to them, “Because… IT’S THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

Folks, in a couple of weeks I will turn 75. I’m getting a little long in the tooth and like many of you grey-haired folks out there I have a shaky health history. It is inevitable that people our age start thinking about how we wish to be remembered.

I hope that if someone erects a tombstone over me it will contain the words, “He did what he did BECAUSE IT WAS THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

Mike Bell
Comox , B.C.

In the early 1980s I worked for the Government of the Northwest Territories and served as the Superintendent of Social Services on Baffin Island. We ran a complete range of services: social assistance, child welfare services, correctional services including a correctional center and various other services. The delivery of all of these services was guided by laws, regulations and policies.

I would often travel to the thirteen small communities scattered across the High Arctic to explain our services and get feedback. Often, during the community meetings, one or several Inuit elders would get up and say,” Learn from the land.” This happened time and time again. I respected their comments as a cultural statement but considered them irrelevant. The elders simply didn’t understand the rules and regulations we operated under. Besides, I was a “Kadluna” (a white man), was a city boy, and had no experience on the land—especially their land.

And I was also a slow learner. However, as I heard this mantra repeated time and time again I gradually realized that they were not talking about learning from experience on the land—though this was important. They were trying to tell me that the land was living, it was a teacher, it had a law, and we must be guided by this law.

In the days leading up to the creation of Nunavut there were constant discussions in communities about law. At one community meeting an elder got up and said, “You Kadluna think that we Inuit don’t have laws. You’re wrong. We do have laws. But they are different from your laws. Your laws are written down in a book and can be thrown in the fire and burned up. Our laws are here,” and he placed his hand over his heart.

Long before there was written law—Roman Law, Church Law, The Magna Carta and English Common Law, the Napoleonic Code—there was only one law—the law of nature. And it has not ceased to exist just because folks decided to write things down in books.

The law of the land (also referred to as Wild Law, the Law of Nature and Earth Jurisprudence) recognizes honours and protects the rights of planet earth as a living reality and the rights of all its species, including the human species, to fulfill mutual self-supporting destinies.
As Thomas Berry has noted, every component of the Earth community has three rights: 1) the right to exist, 2) the right to habitat, and 3) the right to fulfill its role in the ever-renewing process of the earth community.

Rivers have river rights, birds have bird rights, insects have insect rights. These are not human rights. They are analogous to human rights and must be seen within the laws of nature which includes such things as predator-prey relationships. Just because they are analogous doesn’t mean they are not real.

A fundamental principle of the law of the land is what we might describe as nature’s Hypocratic Oath: DO NO HARM—TO THE ECOSYSTEMS THAT YOU DEPEND UPON FOR YOUR EXISTENCE.

So how can we rediscover and implement Law of the Land?

We can’t do it by trying to extend human laws to include nature. By its very definition, jurisprudence is the study and practice of human law. And, because human laws depend upon the government in power, they can be removed for political expediency—as we are now experiencing in the area of resource developments on both a federal and provincial level.

We have to learn to step outside our traditional approach of trying to extend human laws and realize that the Law of the Land is the primordial law. It is the first law which must guide the development of human laws. Fortunately in some parts of the world this is beginning to happen.

Ecuador and Bolivia have enshrined the rights of nature in their constitutions. Some local governments, particularly in the United States, have adopted this approach regardless of whether state and local governments consider it “legal.” And there is a growing body of literature in science and even in law that is exploring this option.

Meanwhile, for those of us dealing with local development, we might “Learn from the Land” and adopt Aldo Leopold’s principle: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, the stability, and beauty of the land. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

Mike Bell
Comox B.C.

If you think we environmentalists should learn from nature, the chrysalis experience would be a good place to start.

Towards the end of its life the caterpillar disintegrates into a pool of gooey protoplasm. Eventually a few different cells emerge. They are called imaginal cells because they contain the “image” of the butterfly. Then comes the battle for survival. The cells of the caterpillar’s immune system attack the imaginal cells trying to destroy them. Eventually, however, the imaginal cells overwhelm the caterpillar cells and bring forth a new and different life-form that can fly.

Environmental groups are experiencing a chrysalis experience. In the past they have worked to improve the inadequate environmental laws. But many of those laws no longer exist.

The federal and provincial governments have been dismantling environmental laws that have taken thirty years to develop. They have silenced their own scientists and reduce staff who have monitoring responsibilities. They have given corporations the right to design requirements for environmental impact reviews. They have silenced the voice of citizens in public meetings.

Then there is the attack on environmentalists and their organizations.

Prime Minister Harper has indicated that his government will be investigating the tax exempt status of non-profit advocacy groups who get too involved in politics. This silencing of environmental groups is the reason why David Suzuki had to leave his own foundation

Joe Oliver, federal minister of natural resources, has jumped in to protect the federal government’s resource extraction immune system. When he declared last year that environmental groups were radicals and un-Canadian for opposing the Enbridge pipeline I thought of Helder Camera. He was the Archbishop of Recife in Brazil, famous for his programs to feed and house the poor.

At the end of his life he asked. “Why is it that when I feed the poor they call me a saint? But when I ask how come the poor are poor they call me a communist?” And I thought…”Why is it that when we get folks together to clean up a stream they call us good citizens. But when we ask who polluted this stream and who allowed them to do it they call us radicals.”

We environmentalists must recognize that we are in transition. We are peering into this gooey political, economic, democracy disintegrating mess for the imaginal cells that will lead us into the future. And some of them are coming into focus.

We’ve got to stop being against things and start talking about what we are for. What does sane development look like at the local, provincial and federal level?

We’ve got to become more holistic. We must shed the “tree-hugger” reputation and work with coalitions to create a common ground that links environment, the economy, health and social programs.

We have to get political, recruiting and supporting good candidates. We must work cooperatively with governments when we can but always hold their feet to the fire.

We’ve got to strop preaching to the choir and broaden our base. We need young people, folks from the middle class, folks that are unaware of what is happening around them but are susceptible to change.

Finally, as individuals, we’ve got to recognize our personal and creative chrysalis. We have to reach deep within our souls to discover the moral, ethical and spiritual imaginal cells for our activism that will lead us into the future. We are fighting the good fight for one reason: because it is the right thing to do.

Mike Bell
Comox B.C.

As we come to realize that the environment is not something “out there” but is, rather part of us—that we are earthlings—we begin to rethink many other things we have taken for granted. One of them is the meaning of “community.”

Our Western culture tends to think of a community as a place—a neighbourhood, a town, a city. But many indigenous peoples who have lived most of their history as nomads think of a community not in terms of place but in terms of relationship.

One of the traditional indigenous definitions of community is this one. “A community is an intimate relationship with all living things both animate and inanimate”. I smile when I think of it. It seems that it was developed specifically for white guys like me. They knew we would jump on the definition and point out that something cannot be “living” and “inanimate” at the same time. But it would make sense if we adopted their concept that other species and even the rocks and mountains are part of a living land.

This awareness is not something new or even an exclusively indigenous concept. More than two centuries ago Plato, in his Timaeus, spoke of the anima mundi—the soul of the world. He said: “Therefore, we consequently state that this world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence…a single, visible entity containing all other living entities which by their nature are all related.” This concept of the anima mundi has come down and been refined through the ages.

This new awareness does not mean that we can’t cut down trees or till the soil or fish and hunt or use and enjoy the fruits of the earth we need for our existence. It does mean, to quote Thomas Berry, that we must use these things in a way that develops a mutually enhancing relationship between our species and Earth.

As for me personally, the lights went on when I was struggling with the aboriginal sense of community in the Arctic and came across the words of Thomas Berry: “We are not a collection of objects. We are a community of subjects.”

Mike Bell
Comox, B.C.

For much of my adult life I lived in the Arctic and worked as a consultant in Inuit and Dene communities. I had a close friend and mentor, Thomas Berry, (not to be confused with Wendell Berry) who was a monk, Roman Catholic priest and a geologian. He was one of the great seminal thinkers of the environmental movement in the last century.

Thomas lived in North Carolina. Twice a year, for a number of years before his death, I would travel down from the Arctic to spend some time with him.

On one these visits I said to him, “Tom, in the Arctic many people are interested in an earth-based spirituality. Have you ever written anything on an earth-based spirituality?” He said to me, “No I haven’t.” But then he said, “I’ve written something on The Spirituality of Earth that you might find interesting.”

An important lesson. For Thomas, Earth was not something outside of us that we just use for spiritual reflection and meditation. We are earthlings. We are part of the living Earth. Our human spirituality is the extension and internal manifestation of Earth spirituality.

Thomas taught that there were two great books: Book One and Book Two—and the Bible was Book Two. Book One—Earth—with its wondrous beauty, bounty, gifts and creativity is the primary revelation of the divine presence. He would say that if we lived on the moon with its harsh and barren landscape we would have no awareness of a divine presence. On several occasions, to make the Christian churches more aware of this reality, he suggested that they might put the Bible on the shelf for about twenty years.

Thomas was strongly influenced by Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest and palentologist. Teilhard taught that the Universe, and by extension the Earth, was not just a physical reality. It was a psychic-spiritual reality from the very beginning.

At the start of each New Year I write a reminder from Teilhard on the front page of my Daytimer. “We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.”

Mike Bell
Comox B.C.

REFRAMING THE ETHICS OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

Every time I turn on the T.V these days I’m hearing about civil disobedience. The Tar Sands, the Keystone and Enbridge Pipelines, omnibus bills C35 and C48, the Idle No More movement—they all mention civil disobedience—usually as a last, but looming resort.

Here in the beautiful Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, large multinational corporations, with the full support of government, are promoting coal projects. They want us to become Appalachia North. We are training people in civil disobedience.

But getting our minds around the justification for civil disobedience is not easy. It takes some serious reframing.

As a child my mother told us kids, “If you get lost or someone is bothering you go and find a policeman and tell him what’s wrong.” That was my first awareness of something that I eventually recognized as respect for authority and the rule of law. If we didn’t have it our society would sink into chaos and lawlessness. And that viewpoint stayed with me for most of my life, even when the people in power did not share my political views. So for me, respect for duly elected authority was almost part of my DNA. Committing acts of civil disobedience went against the grain.

But, as I grew older I began to reframe and rethink the whole nature of civil disobedience. It occurred to me that my family and I have a right to clean water, clear air, good food, a suitable home, and a safe place to live. We didn’t get these rights from the Canadian Constitution nor the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We didn’t get them from the Prime Minster of Canada or the premier of a province. My rights, my neighbour’s rights, and the rights of all living things come from our very existence. They are gifts of nature or, as many First Nations often put it, gifts of The Creator.

Thus there is a rule of law based not on human laws but upon the laws of nature. The prime directive of all human laws should be to protect natural laws. If we don’t protect the laws of nature and its ecosystems which ensure our survival, we are doomed.

So, when we engage in peaceful direct action as a last resort, we are not the ones breaking the law. We are trying to protect natural laws that ensure our survival as a species. It is those who have introduced laws that violate our natural rights that are breaking the law.

Reframing civil disobedience this way removes the guilt feelings and motivates action. It works for me. It might work for others.
Mike Bell
Comox, B.C.

A Fish Out of Water
Marshal McLuhan, the great Canadian communications guru once said, “I don’t know who it was that first discovered water but I’m sure it wasn’t a fish.” His point of course: we don’t notice the environment that surrounds us. We simply take it for granted. The fish will only notice the water when it is flopping around on the dock and saying to itself, “Hey, isn’t there supposed to be water or something around here?”
Since the first Earth Day in 1970, many more of us have started noticing our environment and stopped taking it or granted. We have seen ourselves as stewards with an ethical obligation to care for our environment because it is our home. And this is all to the good. Unfortunately, despite the many benefits from this perspective, over the last 43 years things have gotten much worse, not better.
This suggests we must redefine our relationship with our environment. Perhaps we must step outside the traditional concept of stewardship. The major drawback with stewardship is that we see it—earth, the land, our environment—as something outside of us. But there is another perspective coming from science and making a come-back from indigenous peoples.
Modern science has pointed out that our earth came into existence some 4 billion years ago when a giant star went supernova and gave birth to our sun and eight planets including our earth. The minerals on the crust of earth came from the stars. And, through the process of evolution they are the same minerals in our bodies. In a real sense we are earthlings and the stars are our ancestors.
From time immemorial indigenous peoples have grasped this concept. They see earth, the land, as living and the source of their own life, often as a gift of the Creator. The Tlicho (Dogrib) people in the NWT say: “We have come from the land and we will return to the land.”
I discovered the simplest and most eloquent statement of this relationship in a film I saw a few years go. It was about the work of the Coastal Guardian Watchmen, a group of First Nation men and women protecting the Great Bear Rain Forest. In the film an interviewer asks one of the young watchmen why he is doing this kind of work. The man doesn’t talk about protecting “the environment,” or about their land claim, or about liking the work. He said quite simply, as if the answer were self-evident: “We are doing this work because we have made a promise to the Bears and the land to protect them.”
Mike Bell
Comox B.C.