Avi Lewis delivered the opening keynote at the 9th annual Advocacy Conference of Public Interest Alberta, entitled “A Just and Fair Alberta: Making It Happen,” on April 9 in Edmonton. PIA “exists to foster an understanding of the importance of public spaces, services and institutions in Albertans’ lives, and to build a network of people and organizations committed to advancing the public interest.” Here’s the (lightly condensed) text of Avi’s rousing, wide-ranging speech.
I want to start by acknowledging the Treaty 6 First Nations, on whose land we gather tonight. In this historic period of resurgent and inspiring indigenous activism, I think it’s all the more important that we settlers remind ourselves constantly that we are guests here.
The utility of this humility is that it helps us remember that in fact, all humans are guests on this earth—and taking better care of the place is not just the polite thing to do: it’s a matter of our collective survival.
“Had we gotten serious about shifting away from a fossil-fuelled economy in the early 90s, we probably could have achieved it all through incremental change. We didn’t. And so now, only radical change will give us a chance of avoiding a dystopian future.”
Let me also say how delighted I am to be back in Alberta, and at what a time! To be here, at the epicenter of the country’s politics and economy, with a group of unapologetic progressives and public sector champions, in the first news cycle of an historic election campaign….it is nothing short of exhilarating.
I mean it when I say that Alberta is the epicenter of Canadian public life today. Since the ascent of Stephen Harper (a former denizen of the Imperial Oil mailroom) to the highest office in the land, the province has become the very heart of the New Conservative Canada. You are the richest province, that is well known. You still have no sales tax, and you still have the lowest personal and corporate taxes in the country. And some of the lowest royalty rates of any petro-state on earth. Not coincidentally—in fact, as you all know, precisely because of these business-pandering braggables—you have a whole slew of other Alberta superlatives. Shameful ones.
Just about the lowest childcare spending in Canada, the lowest participation rate in post-secondary education, the lowest minimum wage, the fastest-growing income inequality, and women still making 60 cents on the male dollar. In 2015. And then there is the small matter of greenhouse gas emissions, far and away the highest and fastest-growing in the country.
Now I may well be just the latest Easterner in a long line to descend on Alberta and denigrate your province’s accomplishments. But to be fair, I extracted that litany of factoids from PIA’s own election primer, “A Fair and Just Alberta For All: Priorities For Change.” It is an excellent document. Its recommendations amount to nothing less than a roadmap to restoring decency to Alberta’s public sphere. It presents a positive vision of public reinvestment, rather than just opposition to cuts.
I also believe that while necessary, the proposals contained in these pages are insufficient—they only scratch the surface of the transformation this province is capable of.
I think Alberta is ripe for massive change. A process that you can drive, if you can find the audacity and the ambition that matches the true turning point at which we find ourselves. Not the turning point that your premier Jim Prentice talks about. The one our planet is telling us about.
The odds are steep, and the window is short. But this province could be a leader in a grand transition that takes us so far from today’s unjust and unsustainable status quo that it is nothing less than revolutionary. Canadians—and particularly Albertans—are living through a once-in-a-generation political moment, where all the elements necessary for truly historic social change are already at hand. If we can recognize them, connect the dots among them, infuse them with passionate solidarity and incendiary organizing, I think we could have a game-changer on our hands.
An epic opportunity for progressive change
The project I’m working on has the very modest title of This Changes Everything. And it has certainly changed everything for me.
My partner Naomi Klein and I planned this from the outset as both a book and film project—though it is sobering that she has been able to complete one of her door-stopping blockbusters a full year earlier than I hope to finish the film.
Now the “this” in This Changes Everything is not the book, or the film, or anything that we do or say. What changes everything is climate change, and the faster we recognize that, the sooner we can break free of our everyday denial and avoidance and get to work building the world that this crisis demands.
A more just and stable world. A saner system.
As a species, we have been negotiating global greenhouse gas emissions reductions since the year NAFTA was signed, Bill Clinton was elected president, and “I’m Too Sexy” (for my shirt) was on the radio. And since global climate talks began in 1992, global emissions have increased more than 60%. We’re hurtling in the wrong direction.
In this same period, climate science has established a carbon budget for earth—a set amount of carbon that we can release into the atmosphere and still give ourselves a decent chance of avoiding catastrophic warming. That budget is incredibly small now, and if we are to get emissions under control, we are going to have to start reducing them in rich countries like Canada by something approaching 10% per year. Year after year. Starting yesterday.
Had we gotten serious about shifting away from a fossil-fuelled economy in the early 90s, we probably could have achieved it all through incremental change. We didn’t. And so now, only radical change will give us a chance of avoiding a dystopian future.
Since the industrial revolution, we have not yet created even 1 degree of warming, and we are already seeing historic flooding, drought, fire, storms, migration, and food emergencies around the world. Describing a 4 to 6 degree world, climate scientists resort to constructions like, “incompatible with any reasonable characterization of an organized, equitable and civilized global community.”
Getting off the roller coaster, kicking oil when it’s down
So: massive change is coming, one way or another. If we want to see what this terrifying future looks like, all we have to do is nothing. Take the kids to school. Canvass our poll in the provincial election. Take out the recycling. If we want to avoid that future, we will have to embrace radical change.
And that, I submit to you with all the passion I can muster, could be very good news indeed!
Who knows it better than Albertans? Here you are in the very heart of the carbon economy, watching raging torrents of wealth leave the province year after year, flooding into the coffers of the richest industry in history, leaving behind waiting lists for surgery, crumbling public infrastructure, 143,000 children living in poverty, more than 170 square kilometers of toxic lakes, and a 7 billion dollar budget hole!
People in this province know that the current system is broken. But nothing illuminates how unfair, short-sighted, and destructive that system is like climate change. And this is a huge opportunity for progressives who have already been working for decades to change our unequal and unjust status quo. A climate lens brings our struggles for social justice into sharp focus. It lends them existential urgency. It gives them a scientific basis. It puts us all on a very hard deadline.
Here’s the next piece—one that, on the surface, even the Alberta Progressive Conservatives understand. Your finance minister has said it repeatedly in recent days. Hell, Jim Prentice said it when he dropped the writ for this election. We’ve heard it from Conservatives in this province for years: “We have to get off the roller coaster. We have to get off oil.”
Finally something we agree on.
Of course, the PCs don’t mean what I mean when I say the same words. In fact, as we know, they don’t even mean it at all—they just say it because they know that the majority of people in this province know that a boom and bust economy leaves nothing behind but waste, pollution, and a ravaged public sphere. What I’m saying—what science is saying—is that our society needs to get off fossil fuels. Period. And this particular political moment gives us a golden opportunity to make their fake words mean the real thing.
When oil prices plunge 50 percent in a matter of months, it is indeed a shock. And throughout history, great shocks have led to great shifts. Usually for the worse. But not always. In the same way that the crash of 1929 and WWII opened the door to the regulation of banks and the building of the welfare state, this price shock can be harnessed to advance the vision of a new economy and energy system beyond fossil fuels.
“It’s time to truly kick oil…while it’s down.”
Let’s face it—the industry has temporarily lost its swagger. It’s a little more difficult to cast yourself as an engine of the global economy when you’re laying off tens of thousands of workers around the world. And in the harsh light of the price crash, the servants of industry—those Tory politicians in both Edmonton and Ottawa—stand exposed as the fossils that they are, mindlessly gambling not only our provincial and national finances, but our very future on the same old dirty and volatile forms of energy.
And it’s not just the industry and its political pawns that have been captured and compromised by the boom times. Let’s be honest. When 19 year olds can make $300,000 a year, it warps the culture of a whole society. I’ve spent time in the bars and camps of Fort Mac. I’ve met many perfectly decent young men whose extreme behaviour merely reflects the insanity of the boomtown culture around them.
Albertans know the collective delusion and decadence of the high times. It is very hard to get anyone to listen to sense in those periods. It’s a helluva lot easier right now at less than 50 bucks a barrel.
So I submit to you tonight that it’s time to truly kick oil…while it’s down.
And there’s more. Historic low interest rates mean that our economy is giving us two gifts at the same time. Public sector borrowing for infrastructure has never been cheaper. Even Jim Prentice knows this, which is why infrastructure is about the only thing he’s not cutting in this province. But let’s apply the climate test. What infrastructure should we invest in? Or more pointedly, why on earth would we build out the fossil fuel economy at this point in history?
I’m going to continue to challenge you here, and I do it with sincere respect for Public Interest Alberta and its excellent members. But I think the Alberta Federation of Labour should go back to the drawing board on calling for public money to build new oil refineries in this province. We absolutely cannot lock in more 50-year infrastructure for the industry that is imperiling the planet. It’s just suicide.
Does that mean I’m against public infrastructure spending? Hell no! We need repairs and new buildings for schools, hospitals, arts and community centres. We need 21st century electricity grids, energy-saving retrofits, and public transit investments on a scale that puts those vast capital investments in oil to shame. And we need unprecedented public spending to roll out renewable energy of all kinds in a breathtakingly rapid and ambitious fashion.
So: we have the implications of the climate crisis creating a clarion mandate for transformative change. We have a window of opportunity opened by low oil prices and low interest rates and a general recognition in Alberta that it’s time to get off oil…and really get off it, if we take the argument to its logical conclusion.
But there are other, even more profound opportunities in this political moment: this great transition can also build on a global weariness with austerity, and a simultaneous deep hunger for a positive direction for society.
A grand transition
First: the austerity trap. Since 2008, we have all been paying for the institutionalized insanity of financial speculation. When the banks were bailed out to the tune of trillions, without any requirement that they actually change their 1 percent ways, the jig was up for most people. The system stood naked in its shamelessness and inequality before the eyes of the world. And since then, the very same players have been rewarded—while the vast majority of hardworking people in every country have paid a terrible price.
Even in a privileged country like ours, the aftermath of 2008 has been deeply, darkly dramatic. It goes beyond the stealth austerity of the Harper government, with its relentless and effective campaign to shrink the role of government incrementally. The cynical sale of its shares in the auto industry it bailed out, with billions in losses absorbed by the public. It goes beyond the short-sighted squandering of the last oil boom the PCs presided over here in Alberta and the 7 billion dollar hole left in the richest piece of the Canadian fabric.
Our whole economy is on a deeply dangerous trajectory. Just consider this one juxtaposition, courtesy of Statistics Canada and CIBC World Markets. Canadian wages have not recovered since 2008, and job quality in Canada is at a record low. In January, the Canadian economy actually shrank. And at the exact same time, Canadian corporate profits are at a 27-year high, and according to a CIBC economist, and I quote, “by all measures, higher corporate profit margins are here to stay.”
You are not surprised. And that is precisely my point. After 35 years of privatization, de-regulation, austerity and corporate triumphalism, there is a wider and deeper recognition of the injustice of our economic system than we have seen since the 1930s.
The flipside of this deep weariness and discontent is hunger for something better. We can take advantage of this inspiration gap. A craving among people across the spectrum for a positive vision, a bold and ambitious plan to regain our sense of the collective, a common purpose, a shared feeling that we are going somewhere…other than slowly, or not so slowly, down the drain.
I’ve spent the last 25 years as a journalist, talking to people at every level of society in countries around the world. I have never seen such an appetite for radical and progressive solutions as I see today.
“A great economic and energy transition—away from fossil fuels, endless extraction, and consumption, and towards a restored public sphere, a sane and stable economy and environment—answers the political moment perfectly.”