The Effluence of Affluence
That's mine. "The Effluence of Affluence". I made it up on the weekend in response to the sudden media deluge of climate change articles.
Wow. One minute climate change isn't really happening, the next - it's ALL that is happening.
David Warren wrote a whole column about it, even:
At first, I thought the "sekken" he was talking about was when everybody - even the New York Times - bought the Bush Incorporated line that America the Good was invading Iraq the Bad to find Weapons of Mass Destruction before they destroyed the world.
Alas, no.
He was talking about how everybody is suddenly buying the scientific claim that man-made greenhouse gases are warming up the planet and that this is what is leading to climate change. You know, the climate change we are suddenly all aware of because it's been going on for like, 50 years or something.
Now, don't get me wrong. I don't want to believe in climate change. I don't even want to believe in pollution. I'm from Northern Ontario. A steel town. A one industry steel town. And I'm well aware that our wealth as a nation is built on our exploitation (and by exploitation, I mean "use") of our natural resources. I have no particular beef with industry, either. Although I think people who talk about a free market are the same people who iron their underwear and pee sitting down and stand to inherit great gobs of wealth when mommy passes on to the great tea party in the sky.
My beef is with our governments. Western governments that have done nothing, really, to ensure that some of the wealth derived from industry's exploitation of our natural resources has been used to mitigate the environmental damage (and by damage, I mean "devastation") it has wrought.
There is, Dear Reader, no point in blaming the oil industry or any other industry for climate change. If, indeed, climate change is even happening - which many people, all of them either rightwing pundits or oil industry hired guns, say - is not. This, of course, leads to the frightening possibility that David Warren is right and not just rightwing and that we are experiencing not climate change, but "sekken".
OR, that perhaps we are simply the victims of a vast scientific conspiracy. For what purpose, I'm not sure. But scientists are just nerds who've memorized the Periodic Tables, so, it is quite possible that the small hit of vindication they got when the Catholic Church admitted Galileo wasn't as bad as it had previously thought went straight to their heads and the next thing you know, they're claiming CO2 or somesuch made up series of random letters and numbers is blowing holes in the sky and it is only a matter of time before the moon falls through one of those holes and takes out Manhattan.
I dunno. I'd prefer "sekken". But then, "sekken" would be "sekken". So, as usual, the Japanese are just talking nonsense and David Warren has "sekkened" it.
But seriously, what good is government if it doesn't look out for great big things like climate change before we're in the middle of it. Isn't that really what government is for? To look at the big picture? To say, every once in a while: "You know, citizens, all this affluence is creating a lot of effluence. So some of our affluence, and we're going to have to create a fair affluence penalty scale here, is going to have to be put aside to deal with all this effluence."
The government could even have called it, "The Affluence Effluent Tax", so that Canadians would have understood, right from the get-go: "Oh... affluence comes at a price..."
Because, Dear Reader, there is no such thing as a free market. Nowhere, nohow, noway. You can have a civilized country with a democratic government and a regulated marketplace - OR - you can have a pretend fairyland in your head ruled by a free market elf.
Of course, maybe, instead of going along with scientists and calling the man-made greenhouse gases that are warming up the globe leading to climate change "climate change", the government should go back to just calling it "pollution" and tax it on an "as produced basis".
It's just an idea. Because something tells me that pointing the finger of blame at Oil Companies, or whatever, isn't going to result in anything other than hired guns putting out counter unscientific studies claiming that climate change isn't real. Studies that will fill our newspapers and clog our airwaves until the leader of the Liberals calls the leader of the Conservatives "fat".
So, instead of a finger of blame, how about we point a finger of change. And elect a government that promises to tax the producers of any and all pollution and re-direct that revenue to cleaning it up. Companies could bid on clean-up contracts, even the producing company, the government would be responsible for ensuring only that the clean-up work was actually being done, and - Voila!
Affluence with effluence that is then cleaned up as best we can do it so we don't end up surrounded by our own shit in our one and only nest until it gets so full we have to start tossing fatty fatfats over the side to make room for our bling.
Stuff made in other countries with iffy human rights records and questionable industry regulations? Ask our government, come election time, why we are trading with them at all and then re-direct your focus back home and ignore whatever bullshit diversionary answer they come up with that denies we are simply scum-sucking-bottom-feeders importing cheap goods to satisfy the rapacious wants of a consumer culture dead of soul and conscience.
Where there's a will, there's a way.
