News of the climate strike has swamped almost everything else, but it’s worth recalling that this weekend is the Journées de la culture, which has a lot of stuff going on. It’s also Puces Pop this weekend.
Updates from September, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The body of a construction entrepreneur was found in the trunk of his own car in 2015. The lurid background is told here as the convicted killer was sentenced to 11 years this week, although he’ll be out again in 5½.
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Kate
CBC has some signs from the climate march. My favourite, which is not shown here, read “Keep the Earth clean, it’s not Uranus.” The Journal has a speeded-up video from a point above Park Avenue near Milton, showing the endless march coming down from the gathering point at the Cartier monument. Greta Thunberg’s speech is on CBC.
One man was arrested for chucking an egg at Justin Trudeau.
An anti-capitalist demonstration was held Friday night around Square Victoria. This was rather more vigorous than the climate march, and had better attendance by police as well. La Presse describes the demo as on the margins of the climate march, which strikes me as one of those moments where journalists like to suggest a link that may not actually exist.
Mark Côté
The environment has been one of many anti-capitalist issues; it wouldn’t surprise me if that is now more heavily emphasized. There were anti-capitalist signs in the march yesterday. Although it wouldn’t be right to say it’s primarily climate-oriented or some sort of offshoot of that movement.
Uatu
Greta T. implies the link when she mentioned the myth of eternal economic growth in her speech as one of the lies told by politicians that hampers climate change policy. Bill Mahr mentioned on his show that the march reminded him of Anti Vietnam war protests in it’s youth vs establishment vibe so maybe anti capitalism is riding that wave of youth enthusiasm and engagement
Ant6n
Yet the establishment is walking along partying, demonstrating left and governing right. And even the egg missed him.
Chris
‘Capitalism’ is too broad a term, there are many varieties of capitalism. People can thus argue that capitalism is either the cause or solution to the problem, and actually agree quite a lot, depending what exactly they mean by capitalism.
But eternal economic growth can’t continue forever on a finite planet.
qatzelok
I think what people mean by “capitalism” is private wealth accumulation and the profit motive – whatever tinkering it gets. And it is easy to see that a nation run by profit-seeking corporations might just be impossible to save from environmental collapse. Individuals can’t understand something that might lower their personal income level. (this human trait is a lot scarier than it might seem)
As a socielty – we are driving larger, more dangerous automobiles (SUVs) that use more gasoline than we did ten years ago. This makes adults in our societies look callously suicidal.
And the cynical newspaper comments regarding the protests (ex. “Look at all those plastic containers and unrecycled protest signs! tsk tsk”) make me embarassed to live in this culture as an adult.. The adults in our societies are mainly spoiled children who are mentally incapable of making wise decisions because they spend so much time in front of commercial media that commercial memes become “their lived reality” which is what leads to opinion-formation.
This socialized ignorance – highly-profitable for advertisers – might be harder to cure than any disease in our midst.
Dhomas
On an aside, we now have an answer to Brett’s very important question from September 9th: https://mtlcityweblog.com/2019/09/08/greta-thunberg-plans-to-join-us-september-27/.
Ms Thunberg did in fact drive an electric vehicle to get to Montreal from New York: “Thunberg arrived in our city on Thursday after driving up with her father from New York in an electric car lent to her by Arnold Schwarzenegger.” From the Gazette’s story here: https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/the-day-with-greta-thunberg-at-montreal-climate
I’m not sure if Brett’s question was sincere or if it was some kind of veiled criticism, but we now have an answer.ant6n
“Growth” can continue indefinitely on a finite(ly sized) planet. One just has to redefine what growth is. GDP is measured in some obscure number, not actual physical products. There’s some evidence gdb growth is decoupling from energy growth at higher levels (but not mobility yet), so in theory numbers could continue going up while staying within the constrained resource budget available.
Chris
ant6n, well, you can’t really just redefine commonly understood terms like that. 🙂 Greta, Uatu, and I all said “economic growth” which has a commonly understood meaning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_growth
That said, I agree GDP is a crap measurement and crap goal.
ant6n
“Money” is virtual, “services” are virtual. You can produce more virtual services, producing in turn more virtual money, in turn raising the GDP without producing any physical goods.
Meezly
Expanding on Uatu’s reply: it’s no small task to make an emotional impact in your speech while driving home the urgency in an elocutionary manner without bogging it down with too much data. GT knows what she’s talking about when she brings up the myth of eternal economic growth, but this may seem vague and conceptual to many.
Scientists have been defining how we are part of and completely reliant on our global economic system. I found this article helped me frame the Thomas Malthus concept in 21st century terms:
http://theconversation.com/climate-change-weve-created-a-civilisation-hell-bent-on-destroying-itself-im-terrified-writes-earth-scientist-113055
And a Quebec scientist arguing for a degrowth economy, a far-reaching solution which he tries to frame realistically. My take is that the politicians aren’t exactly pushing lies – humanity’s ultimate addiction is to a growth economy and it would require a massive paradigm shift to even start conceiving of degrowth.Meezly
Forgot to include link to Philippe Gauthier’s article: https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-limits-of-renewable-energy-and-the-case-for-degrowth?fbclid=IwAR29XVP0zEOsy_0V-c7gd-JYQtB_QNZQk_jjioqHPGhCBMdBrxEI9Xt3yrU
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