When is the Best time to plant a tree? 30 years ago. When is the next best time to plant a tree? Today. When is the Best time to switch to a sustainable economy? 30 years ago. When is the next best time? Today.
We have a Corporate, Consumerist, Cancerous economy that is destroying our environment, devouring the middle class and celebrating growth and greed in a manner that threatens our survival as local communities and a global civilization. It would have been a good idea to begin the transition to a sustainable economy back in the ‘70’s when the Science Council of Canada came out with their study “Canada as a Conserver Society”. We did not. Surely we should start today.
Instead, when the greedy cancer cells in the stock market over reach themselves, our current leaders and our central banks rush to pour our money by the billions into their gaping mouths and bottomless stomachs. More growth for the rich, more public debt for the people. And our current leaders threaten the disappearing middle class, the employed workers with economic disaster if they don’t feed Wall Street and Bay Street.
Now is the time to make the transition to a sustainable economy. How about a fund to support workers and their families who lose jobs as the Corporate, consumerist, Cancerous economy collapses. How about a fund to invest in sustainable technologies. How about a fund to invest in training workers for the green collar jobs in our communities.
Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done.
Overnight our current leaders can find $180,000,000,000.00 (count the zeros - one hundred and eighty BILLION dollars) to bail out their buddies on Bay Street and Wall Street. They tell us this will save us. They are wrong. It wastes our current resource removing a small obstacle from the tracks of a train racing off a cliff. Today’s obstacle is a warning to stop the train and turn it around. To understand why our current leaders will be shoveling in coal (or bundles of taxpayers dollars) forever read “A Short History of Civilization” by Ronald Wright. The elites in society never get it. Their elite position depends on propping up the past not embracing the future. They’ll keep driving the train long after it has left the tracks.
I want a future I can be proud to pass on to our children. Let’s get off this train and start building a path to a sustainable, equitable and community based future. We may have to walk that path and share rides to get there. But I’d rather get there on my own two feet than go over a cliff in the padded seats of this train.
Tony McQuail
