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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

I came across this tweet from Chris Turner who spoke at the Spirit of the Land conference in November.

“It’s time we started selling sustainability rather than treating the threat of climate change as some kind of punishment for capitalism.”

— Chris Turner (@theturner) April 2, 2014

This prompted me to look further at his feed and saw this article he had been reading in the Ottawa Citizen.  It’s short and worth it, so go ahead and click.

It’s a valid argument that our response to moral imperatives in the Western world is quite often resistance.  In the post-modern milieu, I will do what you tell me not to do just because you told me not to!  We mistrust authority (sometimes for good reason) and many times act like defiant teens.  Even in exploring such life-giving activities as having pot lucks, growing food, and fostering community, we are afraid of what others will think.  I’m overjoyed when people come by and think it’s “cool” that I recycle, that I have a vermiculture in my house, and that I want to join the community garden.

Thankfully, we’re not just here to share the scary story of climate change with each other.  I deeply feel that Caring for Creation and Spirit of the Land are about showing the belonging, the joy, the self-esteem that can come from engaging with the natural world.  After all, our mother Earth is the greatest source of love and belonging there is!

This week the internet had a cold – strep throat or something nasty – and it just didn’t work.  Carmelle, Greg and I worked so hard to get the broadcast up and running, and it just didn’t want to play nice(cast).  I felt the cold hard edge of resistance rise against my will.  I was defeated, upset, and spent.

So when I got home after a long day of defeat, I did something different.  I skirted my computer, that whole digital world, and I went for a walk.  Now walking at the end of March for you folks out on the coast is a glorious thing!  Lennor wrote about the sweet ocean spray on her face in this post, but out here on the prairies I contend with the still biting winter wind, the ice on the walkway, the layer upon layer that prepares me to enter the cold.  Winter is like one of those marginal acquaintances that I have to prepare myself to reluctantly spend time with.  So why would I get out there after such a hard day?

Well, my frustrations with the digital world quickly wound into my head – repeating a mantra of negativity that never fails to leave me breathless.  I have recently been working with my body as a way to escape that merry-go-round of defeatist thinking.  I get down into my body.  I feel, I work, I use my muscles and suddenly that circular thought works its way into my circular bloodstream.  It churns its way through my sinews and finally escapes through my pores.  I literally sweat it out. (Though I don’t get too sweaty…. I’m a gentle walker!)

When I came home, I was still a bit upset that I couldn’t achieve what I had aimed for, but it was suddenly a manageable thing.  I thought how tomorrow the internet may be over its cold and that maybe I was just pushing it a little too much for its own good.

Just like the weather, this too will pass.

When I got back in, I tuned into #ds106radio – a large part of my frustration – and I found @bryanjack broadcasting from Port Moody.  He was singing some of his original tunes along with favourite covers.  Others gathered from the #ds106radio world. @DrGarcia @rowan_peters @cogdog all tuned in to share a little digital campfire time.  I was reminded how this space is one for friends to gather and I was reminded how blessed I am to be part of sharing that space with new friends.

So thank you all for participating.  Thank you for your patience.  And when your frustrations present, I hope you have many worlds to give you perspective.

Lennor / Reply March 28, 2014 at 12:57 pm

Hi everyone, I just wanted to say that those who do come to the gatherings and those who listen in with intentionally planning to add something new to a weekly experience are benefiting themselves and their communities.
The first week we had a chance to listen to some awesome poetry and music in connections with nature..trees to seas to sky. We also had a fine small group discussion about raising awareness about growing your own food . This week I had a chance to walk near the ocean and observe the various water birds in their habitats. It is a wonderful experience to feel the ocean spray on your face, to watch birds interact and to feel the Spirit move.
During our Lenten practice at church this year we focus on various themes. this week it had to do with eating and drinking and last night at our soup gathering we had a great crowd, followed by a service of music where one person shared her love for cooking and nurturing others by doing that. So go ahead and think about your various experiences.

I have recently joined this group and I just wanted to post a message thanking the participants and speakers in Victoria’s latest gathering. I was so encouraged to see the turn out and the discussions really helped drive home the point that these issues are cross-generational.

I am also looking to get some feedback on a policital/social action I am engaged in and wondering if it would be ‘bad form’ or improper for me to post some information about the event in hope of getting some of the participants to join in it.

What do you think?

Thermal coal, used in energy production, is the single greatest contributor to climate change (http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/co2.html) and to trans-ocean pollution. BC banned the use of thermal coal for power production in 2007. The International Energy Agency says that if we are to have any chance of avoiding a climate disaster, 80 percent of remaining thermal coal reserves needs to stay in the ground.

For those wanting to take action on climate change from an ethical and spiritual place, the Canadian Memorial United Church Sustainability Circle presents this evening featuring discussions, presentations and ritual at the Centre for Peace with guest Kevin Washbrook, Director of Voters Taking Action on Climate Change. Contact: Rosemary Cornell, cornell@sfu.ca

March 17th, 2014 7-9pm in the Great Hall at the Centre for Peace 1825 West 16th Avenue (cross street is Burrard)

Free admission – Donations gratefully accepted

Caring for the Earth. Chester Ronning Series March 4 on-line session. Positive experience!  Thanks to Rev. Dr. Dittmar Mündel and Carmelle Javney and Tiff McNaughton and the ds106 folks and Leslie Lindballe for an inclusive, thought provoking evening.   My first on-line and blogging experience – so I have a learning curve to master, but due to time constraints I thought I would try to participate this way.

And the Vancouver group even said ‘hello’!    To answer the closing Q…‘the song that sung to me most’ was the contention that:

1.  the extractive companies have become the imperial power and
2. A different discourse is possible – one that sustains life.

For some reason, this was not self-evident to me. Thanks everybody.

 

“Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” These were the softly spoken words of the female priest as she lightly drew the simple dark cross of ash on my forehead. This was the first time I had ever participated in an Ash Wednesday service, and I smiled at the floor as I walked back to my seat. The words of the priest echoed through my heart like the sound of singing in a cement stairwell. I did not feel anything overwhelming, but the words, like the sermon before it began to seep down through my soul to my feet, and made my them feel heavy. I could feel the pull of imaginary rootlets digging through the wood floor into the foundation of the church, the earth, the dust from which my body is made. I do not know about the resurrection of my body in some future paradise, about heaven; but I do know that my body resurrects, daily, minute by minute through the air, water and food that flows through me. Observing Lent, is not about giving up a marginally addictive substance or vice, it is the deep waiting before the blessed sacrament of spring, where the liturgy of Earth will perform itself again as it has over 4.5 billion years. Lent is the no-thing before the Great Flaring Forth of the universe 13.8 billion years ago. It is feeling speechless at the fact that ten thousand stars lived and died to forge the atoms that form my body so that I could watch a sunset, fall in love, or step into a church and sing praises back to the Process that meandered over eons before it said “Jason Brown.” Perhaps this is the purpose of ritual, to write our stories into our bodies and to knit those bodies into a blessed community.

As ‘Babylonians’ in captivity it can be really hard to see there is another way than the way of Babylon.  So I have appreciated the work of the Story of Stuff organization that shows us another way.  They suggest that we are tied into ‘more’ as the goal of our society.  They suggest that we look at ‘better’, better healthcare, better education, better quality of life as the goal.

In a similar vein tonight, the idea I really appreciated was the notion that what our head thinks is our God is not necessarily who it is.  What we rely upon is our real God.  Our society today relys on ‘progress’.  We measure life as good by whether we are progressing or not and we accept the cost of progress without examining it too closely.

Can we build a better life for all if instead of progress we all relied upon compassion?  What if we measured how good life was by how much compassion we gave and received?  Compassion not only for human but non-human creation as it nurtures us.

Thanks for having the evening telecast.

We don’t ask systemic questions enough. A child dies of tetanus poisoning because of poverty issues – subsistence farmers can’t afford shoes. Or costs of pharmaceuticals are out of reach of the countries that produce them for the global economy. I have heard it said that the first right of entitlement is the right not to know.