A Reading Recommendation

Heading off to Word on the Street this morning, so I only have enough time to strongly recommend that you read Marie's post at A Puff of Absurdity on protecting our water sources.

It is an issue of vital importance and one that we should all be very, very concerned about.

Guest Post: Putting Ourselves Under The Microscope

In response to my post yesterday, The Mound of Sound offered the following observations, which I am featuring as a guest post. The Mound has made an intensive study of the environmental and climatic perils we have created, and his insights are ones none of us can afford to ignore:

I fear, Lorne, that we have devolved into a culture of collapse. We plainly cannot keep going as we have since the Reagan/Thatcher/Mulroney era ushered in the scourge of neoliberalism. Yet, having been drawn in, there's no sign of the vision much less the popular critical mass to change and, when time is running out and our options are being steadily foreclosed, that can be fatal.

Jared Diamond contends that when past societies have collapsed it was usually the result of a choice and, in many cases, the disastrous outcome was foreseen. We can choose to conduct ourselves in ways today that we know or ought to know will spell disaster a generation or two from now. Our bacchanal of consumption is premised on "because we can" with scant regard to whether we should. We are just lucky our own grandparents were never empowered to wreak this sort of devastation on us.

Science tells us that mankind first exceeded Earth's resource carrying capacity when our population passed 3+ billion in the 70s. We're now at 7+ billion heading to 9 and beyond. To compound this, our per capita consumption footprint has swelled and continues to grow. Yet our overpopulation and over-consumption has come at a direct, although somewhat deferred (for the moment), cost.

The signs are tangible, palpable, measurable and, in some critical instances, visible to the naked eye from the International Space Station cupola. Rivers that no longer run to the sea. Red tides and blue green algae blooms in our lakes and along our sea coasts. Once fertile soil that now lies exhausted, creating spreading desertification. The blight of deforestation. The collapse of global fisheries as our industrial fleets fish "down the food chain."

We know how this ends but not exactly when. James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia Hypothesis, predicts mankind will number in a few hundred million by the end of this century. That's a massive die-off. He has warned that the only way to blunt this result entails what he calls "sustainable retreat." He uses this term to describe a social transformation away from our excess consumerism into "living small." Small houses, shared transportation, living local, everything necessary to sharply pare our individual and collective ecological footprint.

I've seen no sign that we would entertain this prescription. Your soon to be neighbour confirms this view. Our leaders still quest for 3% annual growth in GDP. We live in a political/economic construct in which negative growth is worse than death. We cannot conceive of how to live other than in the mode that has brought us to this precipice.

The following video, discussing how 2016 is on track to be the hottest year on record, helps to reinforce the consequences of our heedless ways:



Finally, Marie over at A Puff of Absurdity says that despite our natural tendencies, we cannot afford a 'business-as-usual' reaction to the perils engulfing us.

The Panama Papers

Marie over at A Puff of Absurdity offers a very good overview of something that is certain to have long-lasting reverberations, The Panama Papers. Be sure to check out her post.

The Toronto Star reports the following:

In the largest media collaboration ever undertaken, more than 370 journalists working in 25 languages dug into 11.5 million documents that revealed Mossack Fonseca’s [a Panamanian law firm renowned internationally for establishing shell companies] inner workings and traced the secret dealings of the firm’s customers. The more than 100 news organizations involved shared information and hunted down leads generated by the leaked files using corporate filings, property records, financial disclosures, court documents and interviews with money laundering experts and law-enforcement officials.

Significantly, the only Canadian media organizations to participate in the consortium undertaking this massive investigation are The Toronto Star and the CBC/Radio Canada. At least someone in our country is concerned about the public good.

Why is this such an important investigation? First and foremost, it identifies a panoply of individuals and companies whose main motivation is tax avoidance. Their allegiance to themselves and, in the case of corporations, their shareholders, is paramount.

It should be stressed here that the vast majority of those involved in these schemes are doing nothing illegal, merely taking advantage of loose tax laws that permit such avoidance. But to me, this points to an incontrovertible truth about some wealthy individuals and many corporations: they feel no obligation to pay the country of their residence their fair share of taxes. In other words, they are putting their own financial security and profits above the land that nourishes and hosts them, the land that provides them with an educated workforce and the infrastructure that make their wealth possible.

And that should serve as a cautionary tale of great magnitude as we contemplate, for example, signing both the CETA and TPP free trade deals. The Investor-State Dispute Settlement provisions of such trade agreements give priority to corporations over state sovereignty so that should a country's laws impinge upon a company's profits, that company can sue the government. Given that The Panama Papers will confirm that loyalty and patriotism are concepts foreign, indeed, inimical, to those who pursue profit at almost any cost, there is surely reason for real caution.

The investigation is a wake-up call for governments to amend tax laws that in fact aid and abet theft from national treasuries. Here at home,

... Canadians have declared $199 billion in offshore tax haven investments around the world, according to Statistics Canada.But experts say that figure is a small fraction of the Canadian offshore wealth that goes undeclared.

The precise annual cost to Canadian tax coffers is unknowable. But credible estimates peg Canada’s tax losses to offshore havens at between $6 billion and $7.8 billion each year.

One need not have an especially rich imagination to consider how an increase in federal coffers of that size could be used for the benefit of all.

Every so often, thanks to circumstance and the indefatigable efforts of investigative journalists, the curtain is pulled aside and we are able to get a peek at an underlying and ugly reality. Ours is a world in which selfishness and evil often prevail, thanks to the complicity of far too many and the shield of darkness behind which much of this takes place.

Perhaps The Panama Papers can help to bring some much-needed light and eventual reform to this shameful and unjust state of affairs.