by Kiegan Irish
Published in March 2021
In June of 2019 Canada officially declared the climate crisis an emergency. But are we acting as if this were really an emergency situation? Author Seth Klein contends the Canadian government is not stepping up to the urgency of the moment. He argues for a wartime level of mobilization to respond to the climate crisis, modelled after Canada’s response to the Second World War.
This notion stands in contrast to the prevailing ideology he aptly names the “new climate denialism”: the incrementalism and voluntarist policymaking on the part of governments who claim to understand the warnings of climate scientists. Seth Klein states the current Liberal government claims to be a global leader but their actions glaringly contradict their rhetoric. The purchase of the TMX pipeline project or the insufficient carbon tax underline this contradiction.
Klein is careful to point out his opposition to wars and violence. Rather, the Canadian response to the emergence of European fascism in the 1930s and 40s provides a useful model for the scale of mobilization and transformation that is necessary to confront the contemporary climate crisis. We need to reconstruct Canadian society and its economy into something more sustainable and more just. In order to get the Canadian public on board, Klein argues, it is necessary to put forward a vision of the good life that will appeal to all.
Klein firmly ties together economic justice with greening the economy. In order to quickly transform our material footprint and build an ecologically sustainable economy necessary to avert the worst climate outcomes, we will need mass public buy-in. In order to achieve this, the government needs to offer a vision of the good life that will draw people in and motivate them to participate.
For Klein, improved living standards as a goal of the mobilization is a major lesson from Canada’s WWII experience. Grassroots campaigning aimed to pressure officials to improve quality of life in the wake of the war. They offered expanded education, housing, full employment and involved the public in developing a shared social vision. Economic inequality decreased significantly in the post-war years. With the goal of social transformation in mind, the people were capable of transforming the economy, re-tooling factories, increasing production by orders of magnitude, organizing logistical systems etc. Klein goes into detail drawing out the analogies between what was accomplished then and what needs to happen now. This hard work of transformation depends upon a shared vision and a willingness to engage in collective action.
Polling data demonstrates that the Canadian public is ready for bold climate action. But our vision is impoverished by a compromised leadership class that has colluded with oil and gas industrialists to maintain the flow of fossil fuels and the inflated profits they bring. Even those in leadership motivated by environmental concerns are bound to be influenced by the culture of deferral to oil industry narratives. Klein demonstrates that a dramatic break from this status quo is necessary to achieve the vision of sustainability that millions of people already seek.
Klein’s core vision of reconstructing the economy with the promise of a good life and a commitment to justice resonates deeply with Working Centre values. We aspire to model a social world in which it is not so very difficult to be good. Any plan for the future requires the element of desirability. People need to understand why this transformation is worth fighting for, that after the work is done they will have homes to go back to, that they will have safety for their families, that they will have meaning in their lives and relationships with their neighbours that are deeper and richer than before. If we are to transform the economy to be more sustainable, we cannot reinscribe the same hierarchies and injustices into the new. If that is the only vision on offer then it will be impossible to overcome the apathy of the public and the inertia of industry.
Klein’s book outlines an existential threat to our society and to the continuation of our very lives. It is difficult to overstate the seriousness and urgency of the moment. If we want to continue to exist, then we need to take these warnings with the soberness they deserve and seize the life-ring Klein throws us. While the possibilities of failure are very real, the strength of Klein’s book lies in its fine-grained analysis of how change could be accomplished. It outlines a detailed policy plan hinging on emergency mobilization, state economic intervention, building widespread public support through education, and the development of new crown corporations. Klein demonstrates that new crown corporations are needed to make sure we have enough heat pumps, to get solar panels on roofs, to install large scale renewable energy projects, to produce electric vehicles and charging stations, to start retrofitting homes to be energy efficient. We need new government energy to establish goals and to either produce or help produce the necessary equipment to get Canada off fossil fuels.
Klein dedicates a chapter of his book to Indigenous climate leadership. In this chapter, he argues for the integration of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into Canadian law, and a true partnership with Indigenous nations to integrate holistically into decision-making at the federal level, while preserving their autonomy and their independent plans for their lands. Klein argues that Indigenous people are already buying everyone time through their opposition to ecologically damaging development projects. Canadian settler society needs to get itself organized and come alongside Indigenous nations in the goal of protecting the lands and waters of this continent. Whether Canada can break from its colonialist past, remains an open question.
Klein offers a necessary corrective to the politics around the climate crisis that prevail in Canada today. Incremental changes and voluntary market based policies have been woefully inadequate to the severity of the moment. They are not solutions, rather they are an insidious form of climate denial. We need courageous collective action and a genuine attempt to attain to a good and sustainable form of life. Klein not only helps us imagine what this might look like, he provides a detailed roadmap showing how we get there. We invite you to read this book and work to take the actions it outlines. In every sphere of our lives change is happening. It is up to us to determine whether we can come together and act or whether change will happen to us while we remain powerless and divided.
