The economic challenges we are facing as we stagnate in a depressed economy in North America, Europe and around the world will not be solved until we face the reality of our energy choices. We must reduce our dependence on carbon fuels to slow down climate change for the sake of our grandchildren. A sustainable energy plan for the world is the key to a sustainable way of living on this planet.

Last fall at this time CUSJ had a big discussion about nuclear energy and submitted a brief to the Darlington Commission opposing the building of new nuclear power plants. It was a controversial decision because some people felt that ultimately it was less harmful than continuing to burn coal and the priority should be to close down coal-burning plants. Of course we must convert from burning coal, but we decided in our brief that if the world goes to nuclear, the damage to the environment and the greenhouse gases needed to mine, and refine uranium were too serious to ignore. In addition there is no acceptable solution for nuclear waste, nuclear is not as reliable or as cheap as promised, and the reactors produce plutonium which can then be used in nuclear weapons.

At the same time as we were doing this, Unitarians in Eastern Canada were actively opposing the process of fracking in order to produce natural gas. Unitarians in Western Canada were actively opposing the efforts to build pipelines so that Tar Sands production could be vastly expanded. We concluded that if we wanted to focus our energy on the positive we had to promote renewable energy whole-heartedly.

But even as we promote wind power, rural Ontario is fighting against it. When we turn to waterpower we find that there have been many negative effects from huge hydro projects and there is much opposition to new mega-dams. Solar power is still not as productive as we need. Renewable energy requires some kind of storage system to be truly useful and most of the battery systems require very rare minerals that must be found and mined.

We all want to know that when we flick the light switch or plug in our computers the power will be there, and yet we are against every source of power that might deliver that security to us. According to Jeff Rubin in “The End of Growth”, economic growth has been built on cheap oil. With oil becoming more expensive, we can no longer expect to expand our economies using debt and amortize the debt through economic growth. We are caught in an energy dilemma that will get worse as human populations expand.

My vision is as follows:

· We have to end subsidies to big oil and implement a carbon tax. Peter Victor (in Managing Without Growth) has demonstrated that cap and trade is not enough but a carbon tax will be effective in helping people reduce their oil and coal consumption.
Renewable energy has to be on an equal playing field or even be subsidized to promote innovation and renewable energy development.
Mega projects are out. Sensitive local energy projects (such as Childhaven’s biogas systems that use human waste to produce gas for cooking) are in. We need an energy revolution similar to the revolution that occurred when we went from mainframe to desktop computers. Every location will have a best-fit renewable energy approach suitable to its particular assets. Windy places will have wind. Sunny places will have sun. Smaller hydro projects will respect the rivers and creeks that support them. Some places are more suitable for geothermal or biogas. All cities will make gas from human waste.
We all have to take a page from India and China. Guaranteed supplies of power 24/7 will not be available. Industry will have priority. Base power supplies will be smaller. We will have to share what is available. The available power will be rotated among us.
The most effective way we have to postpone this future is to reduce our energy consumption. All incentives for energy should be to promote innovation and personal discipline to use less energy.

These things are not politically popular. We need leaders who will face the realities and tell us the truth. Rather than use all the oil and coal now, we can leave some in the ground. We must enter the transition toward a new type of economy that is not based on growth. We cannot make it through this major transition – which will be a societal change similar to the agricultural, industrial, and information revolutions – without real leadership and planning. Leaders in all areas – federal, provincial and municipal government, industry, and the not-for profit sector must all contribute to the solutions. Research shows that happiness does not come from more stuff and status. It is time for us to move towards simpler, more equal lifestyles using much less energy. We can do it. All we need is the awareness, and the political will. It is time that we stop indulging ourselves today and plan instead for the thriving of our children and our grandchildren.

Right Society

Who would have imagined that there would be so many people ready and willing to form Occupy Movements across Canada?. …ready to pitch their tents and live in the streets, threatening to stay out there all through the Canadian winter. ---Street people, unemployed, students, and working people are all there. How brave they were. Or foolhardy? I remember my student protest days. The bravest thing I ever did was walk in a peace march in the days when the police were relaxed and friendly.

I remember when we didn’t have street people. We didn’t have food banks. The welfare cheques provided enough for people to pay rent and buy food. People who had jobs didn’t need food banks and shelters. What changed? Why did we allow it? I know I’ve been out there on the streets often enough with my various banners. (Ron had no idea what he was signing up for when he decided to marry me.) I know many of you have been out there with me. Sometimes it feels like a lesson in impotence, but we keep on doing it because to say nothing would be worse.

There is no question in my mind that Occupy Wall Street is an outgrowth of the Arab Spring. The Maple Spring (Le Printemps d’Érable) may be motivated by the same energy. The spirit of a radically different, more participative democracy is stirring in Canada. It is the same energy that motivates the Greeks to fight cutbacks that will only put more people in the poor and destitute class while the upper classes get richer. The people of the world know what is wrong with our systems, and they know things must change.

On the 9^th of November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. It was reported as the great victory of capitalism over communism. Since then, most of the communist countries have begun a process of allowing market forces to come into play in their economies. But I would like to propose that the meaning of the fall of the Berlin wall is not the victory of capitalism over communism. Rather it was the fall of a particular, totalitarian system that didn’t work because it was not meeting the needs of its people.

Capitalism has many proud achievements. It’s greatest feature is its ability to unleash human ingenuity and creativity. Under this system we learned how to use the natural resources of the earth, to make tools and machines that increased our capacity to work many times. We learned how to grow food to feed billions, and to make even more clothing and manufactured goods than we could use.

We also learned how to make the greatest amount of junk that nobody either needs or wants. Once you have a factory in place you have to keep making stuff and selling it, the more the better. Capitalism depends on growth as the road to success. But what do we do when we use up all the land and resources? As Peter Victor (Economist at York University) puts it, will we learn to live without growth by design, or will we keep our heads in the sand until disaster strikes and chaos erupts.

The first year after the Berlin wall fell, the people starved while the potatoes rotted in the fields because nobody knew who was supposed to gather them. The next decade was a decade run by gangsters and thugs. Is our fall going to look just as ugly? Maybe that’s why the Harper government is equipping our police with state of the art riot gear and building jails to house double the current Canadian prison population when the crime rate is going down!

The Hopi Elder tells us we are in a time when the river will be flowing very fast, but we must hold on to our true selves, let go of the edge and keep our heads above water. The river knows its destination.

Louise McDiarmid (from the UU Fellowship of Ottawa) asks, “Is this the time of The Great Turning? She speaks of the work of David Korten. (The Great Turning and Agenda For A New Economy.) He sees the world as facing a perfect storm of three converging crises: climate change, peak oil, and a financial crisis caused by an unbalanced economy. These crises present significant threats, but also great opportunities for fundamental change.

Louise writes, “The “Earth Community” that Korten speaks of is a sustainable, just, and caring community, in which people are responsible for and accountable to one another. Three years ago, I thought that this was a Utopian dream, that those who held the reins of power would never budge from their domination of economics, politics and the media; that 90% of the 99% would never wake up and imagine that another way of life was possible. Now I wonder: is the Occupy Movement a sign that The Great Turning has begun?”

I think Occupy Wallstreet is a movement to challenge the moral underpinnings of society; to call us to change our moral focus. We ask them what they want. To make a list of demands. That’s not their job. They are like the Hebrew prophets, calling us to a change of heart.

Since 1970 we have been allowing right-wing conservatives and republicans to define the moral agenda. The result is Bill Gates, with all his and Warren Buffet’s money, trying to fix the world and in the process, make major policy decisions for developing countries. Private moguls amass wealth and put stability and security at risk all around the world through the arms trade. According to Rev. Fred Cappuccino, scientific studies have shown that if you have the courage to chase these arms purveyors out of town you will sleep 64.8% better at night. Instead, we continue to worry as our leaders refuse to address the challenges of our times and to plan for new ways.

Meanwhile the banks and corporations, hand-in-hand with unrepresentative governments, strip our jobs, strip our democracy, steal our resources, and pay their executives bonuses based on performance. The growth in inequality escalates. One would have to think that they actually want the world to fall into chaos.

An unmanaged market system has the following flaws:

· The only goal of private corporations is to maximize profit for shareholders. When they get so big they can usurp the power of government there is no one to speak for the people, the family, the community, or the earth

· It is hard hearted. There is no mechanism to support the poor. This generates descending cycles of misery, poverty, and violence.

· Whether you are wealthy or not is mostly the luck of the draw. It is a myth that those who work hard will have financial success. Most wealth is inherited and most on the lower end of the scale cannot escape the vicious cycle of poverty no matter how hard they work.

· Only things that have a price have value. Things that have no price are outside the system and therefore, not counted. Housework and childcare have little or no value. The filtration services of trees and swamps have no value.

· Adam Smith said that to truly have a free market you can’t have monopolies. The corporate world is in an orgy of mergers and acquisitions. A report I read suggested that perhaps as few as 114 families own the vast majority of the wealth of the world. We do not live in a world of free markets. We live in a world of unfettered corporate power.

Markets cannot be unfettered. They must be subservient to the larger goals of the society. There must be checks and balances that allow different interests to be in dialogue. The systems and structures of society must serve all people and not just the top one percent.

Between 1940 and 1970 the western world conducted a big experiment. We decided to give a larger role to government, using taxes to redistribute wealth and bring greater equality. To avoid another depression we put money in people’s pockets so they could spend it and buy things and the economy would thrive. Universal programs such as healthcare, education, child benefit programs, and old-aged pensions helped everyone equally – rich or poor. They were rights of citizenship so no one felt degraded to take them. No bureaucrat had the power to give or take away. Everyone had the basics and could live with dignity. A solid base for all Canadians made it possible, for the first time, for people to work to achieve their potential – and not just scratch to survive. Canada enjoyed a long period of peace and prosperity and shared its vision for peace with the world. Today, the Nordic countries continue to enjoy the benefits of this approach.

If the differences in wealth are small, people experience more inclusion, more trust, less stress, and more well-being. “Imagine living somewhere where 90 per cent of the population mistrusts one another! What would that mean for the quality of everyday life?—the interactions between people at work, on the street, in shops, in schools.” (Wilkinson and Pickett). Striving for status is a trap, leaving us stuck on the insatiable wheel of desire, suffering and cut-throat competition.

Equality brings better outcomes in health and well-being, education, mental health, reduced violence and incarceration, improved child welfare, improved status of women, improved social stability, reduced addiction problems and much more.

But since Regan’s presidency, our society has been shifting step by step, to a society based on individual responsibility with a few winners and many losers. The tools we had set up to redistribute wealth to the poor were removed. There has been a great transfer of wealth to the rich with no accountability to use that benefit for the welfare of all. Without regulation, capitalism leads unswervingly toward greater inequality.

But as inequality grows, do we see the truth? Sometimes I just want to tear my hair out I get so crazy. We close the factory or fire civil servants and then blame the worker for choosing unemployment. We pass mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug offences and then put kids in jail. We raise the interest rates and whole countries go bankrupt. We see countries in trouble so we bail out the banks. We’re running a deficit so we cut taxes and give juicy contracts to corporations for military production. Then we take the money out of the hides of the poor.

Social conservatives hate the poor. They ask, “If welfare is too sweet, why would people work? All you get from those people is dependency for generations.” “Who pays for that,”. “I don’t want to!” they cry out.

This assumes that given a choice, people would choose not to work. Young women, for example, will choose to freeload on society and have babies rather than work. Have they looked at the cost of diapers lately? Let alone the cost of rent and food? Have they checked out how it feels to ask for a 3-day emergency supply of food at a food bank?! Who would choose that if they didn’t have to? Our complex system of programs creates a tangle of rules and regulations to make sure nobody can collect and a bureaucracy to watch for cheating. Then when desperate, hungry people try to get around the rules, they are accused of moral depravity.

A system that knocks people out of work, forces them to use their assets before they can receive benefits, and then degrades them by refusing enough assistance to cover rent and food, -- such a system makes people bad. It pushes them to the point of desperation. This is not a recipe for a healthy, stable society. The vision of an unfettered market and everyone working to satisfy their own greed is not working.

We want the market to serve the community, not the community to serve the market. We want checks and balances between the state, the individual, and the marketplace. Each needs its own realm of power and influence. A right society will capture some of the strengths of socialism and of capitalism and will go beyond both.

We must begin by getting beyond our denial and our addictions to open our eyes and see the truth. We need spiritual healing. An important step in this healing process would be to address the bad relationships that fester in our society. We must commit ourselves to respectful relations with First Nations including honouring our treaties with them.

We must move from a growth-based to a sustainable economy. Where the problem was once how to produce enough to feed and clothe the world, now the problem is what to do with all the garbage. Andrew Nikiforuk, author of Tar Sands, says “growth is but an adolescent phase of life . . . continued growth in the period of maturity is called obesity or cancer. Prescribing growth as the cure for the energy crisis has all the logic of prescribing increasing quantities of food as a remedy for obesity.”

We need our best minds in economics, the social sciences, political science and law to create new social systems. We need larger goals than individual profit but we still need individual initiative and innovation. People need to work for a living, but they don’t need to work making weapons or destroying the environment. We need to re-imagine a banking system that will allow governments to finance the work that needs to be done – in food production, health care, education, municipal infrastructure, and protection of the environment. We need a social safety net that will share the work, and will give worth and dignity to those who can’t work or who are caught in transition with all the changes. Perhaps a universal, guaranteed annual income can be structured so that everyone has basic needs met. People would work to improve their lot above that level.

We need strong democratic processes based on full disclosure of information, the best knowledge science can give us, a well-educated public, and a fair system of representation of the full diversity of the population. We need proportional representation.

We need a big public discussion on how to approach food production and energy security in a post-peak-oil world. We need a national plan for energy security. Let it be based on common sense. Andrew Nikiforuk suggests “Using natural gas to develop oil sands is like using caviar as fertilizer to grow turnips!”

We need politicians who will tell us the truth about what is necessary to build this new society. People will need to prepare to simplify their lives and reduce their expectations. We need parties that value the principle of equality. We need to plan and build social structures to help us make the very hard transition ahead to a low-oil, slow or no growth economy. We have a lot to learn. G.A. Cohen says: “We know how to make an economic system work on the basis of selfishness. We do not know how to make it work on the basis of generosity.” (G.A.Cohen CH4, Democratic Equality)

But most of all we need a Canadian people who have not given up hope and are engaged in the public discussion. I have written three sermons in my time on the subject of Faith. I am obsessed with this topic because now, more than ever, we need faith that our actions matter and that what we do can make a difference.

We need new leaders with creative new vision who are prepared to experiment and develop the new directions we need. We must believe that the power of love can push away greed, and influence power. We must convince our politicians to work together to confront our challenges. We must practice dialogue and non-violent change. We need major, constructive discussions on the tar sands – not confrontative processes that will lead to a battle between government, First Nations, and environmentalists. If we want peace and prosperity around the world we must find the new Keynes who will show us the way. We have two jobs – First: to actively seek out and promote the ideas that will help us move forward. Join with transition town to plan our future. Second: we must stand against injustice. We must try to slow Harper down as he races to dismantle our democracy and our environmental protections.

Let reverence for life in all its forms be the foundation of our spiritual life. Let us embrace the opening offered to us by Occupy Wall Street and Maple Spring and get involved. Can we take back the reins of power and build a sustainable Earth Community for future generations to enjoy? I hope Louise is right. I hope we are witnessing the beginning of The Great Turning!

All Our Relations

Bibliography

Democratic Equality

What Went Wrong?

Edited by Ed Broadbent

University of Toronto Press

Agenda For a New Economy

From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth

(Why Wall Street Can’t be Fixed and How to Replace It.)

by David C. Korten

Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA

2009, by the People Centred Development Forum

The Great Turning

From Empire to Earth Community

By David C. Korten

Louise McDiarmid – UUFO Newsletter, November 201

Tar Sands,

Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent,

Revised edition

By Andrew Nikiforuk

Winner of the Rachel Carsen Environment Book Award

David Suzuki Foundation and Greystone Books

Managing Without Growth

Slower by Design, Not Disaster

By Peter A. Victor

Advances in Ecological Economics Series

(Series Editor: Jeroen C.JM. Van Den Bergh)

Edward Elgar Publishing Limited

The Lypiatts

15 Lansdown Road

Cheltenham

Glos GL50 2JA, UK

The Spirit Level

Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger

By Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett

Reflections on Life and Society

Friday, 14 September 2012

Energy Choices

Friday, 20 July 2012

Reading For Right Society

Right Society

The Great Turning

From Empire to Earth Community