The Big Why?

Author’s Note: This article was drafted in preparation for a podcast interview with the Calgary Climate Hub on Tuesday, November 12. The intent of the podcast was to hear from people who work for Calgary-based environmental or climate organizations, and discuss what inspires us in our work? This piece of writing was my attempt at answering this question for myself.

What makes me do what I do?

It’s not about me really. I do this work because I want to support the people around the world who suffer most from the impacts of colonialism, capitalism, and the environmental destruction those forces have brought with them across the globe.

I’m motivated to try and help those who live in the over-exploited regions of the global south, or Indigenous communities across the world including here in so-called Canada, the future generations who will inherit the world we are shaping today, and out of respect for the natural world which we are dependent on for our survival. I find meaning through devoting myself to others, non-human nature included. I see myself as playing a small role in the larger global struggle to protect nature and all of us who depend on it.

I’m a relatively privileged, able-bodied, cis-hetero white man living in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. But as a descendent of European settlers in a country that stole its wealth from Indigenous Peoples and the land they depend on, I feel that I have a responsibility to at least try and atone for the mistakes and intentional harm of my ancestors.

We don’t get to choose our history, but we do have the choice of how to respond to the history we have inherited from the past. While I didn’t create the world I was born into, I have certainly benefited from the exploitation of others and the environment. But it doesn’t have to be this way forever. This exploitation is a product of a system we are forced to participate in, which is why systemic change is the only way forward. I want to help fix things, but we can’t resolve the problem if we aren’t committed to fighting for systemic change — together.

Another reason why I do this work is because I want to protect the land that I call home and the people in my community who live here. I often get the feeling that people think that they’re not going to live their entire lives in Alberta and will eventually retire someplace else (or someplace “better”), but I love it here and I want to leave it in a better state than when I arrived.

I don’t see this landscape as disposable. Alberta isn’t just some “work camp” for extractive industries, and the idea that we can just make money in one place and retire elsewhere is an option that’s quickly disappearing for most people — partly due to affordability issues, but also because the impacts of climate change aren’t bound to man-made borders. Environmental destruction impacts all of us even if it’s mostly hidden from our day-to-day lives, and healthy communities depend on a healthy environment.

But environmental destruction doesn’t just appear out of nowhere, it’s the product of an economic system that sees nature only as a source of profit. Corporations need to profit to survive, and the endless pursuit of profit at all costs means that a forest is seen only as monetary value for shareholders rather than an ecosystem of living things that sustain us. When profits are society’s primary goal, then there will be no end to the continued robbery of the Earth.

It’s important to recognize that human society will always interact with nature in some way to meet our needs. Like we always have. But that relationship with nature can be more or less sustainable depending on the economic system at any given time. Right now, all our economic activities are geared towards turning nature into money for a privileged few — rather than meeting our needs — and we are running out of nature.

That’s why real sustainability is only possible if we, as a society, can acknowledge and respect that the Earth has ecological limits (also known as “planetary boundaries”) and that all human activities need to be planned and coordinated in a way that equitably meets our needs without stepping beyond those boundaries. But as things stand, most of our economic planning is done by CEOs in the privacy of boardrooms to boost their quarterly earnings, regardless of the impact on working people and the planet.

Recent findings show that we have already surpassed at least six of Earth’s nine planetary boundaries,[1] and even the United Nations recently expressed that we need to shift away from using profit as the primary measure of human progress, stating: “Sustainable wellbeing for all cannot be achieved by an economic system that focuses solely on economic growth as measured by gross domestic product (GDP).”[2]

But capitalism doesn’t tolerate limits — at least not for very long. Either the money moves elsewhere to where regulations are less stringent, or corporate lobbying weakens existing regulations, or the economy shrinks, which is called a recession, and millions of people are thrown out of work. This is why we can’t resolve environmental issues under capitalism. When the economy grows, the environment suffers. When the economy shrinks, people suffer. We need another way.

I think that the overall goal of my work and my life more broadly is to help us move towards a world where human society has rediscovered a sustainable relationship with the non-human world. It’s a matter of necessity that we move beyond this predatory stage in our history and build a world where human needs are put above corporate profits. I’m just trying to help us move in that direction.

A recent study published by Jason Hickel and Dylan Sullivan in September 2024 found that we could provide decent living standards for 8.5 billion people (more than Earth’s current population) using only 30 percent of our current resource and energy consumption,[3] but this would require shifting away from the pursuit of growth and towards a needs-based economy, with universal access to key goods and services like food, housing, education, and healthcare.

This research helps demonstrate that the problem here isn’t a lack of resources. We have more than enough to meet everyone’s needs, the problem is how those resources are distributed and whether people have access to the things they need to survive. Meeting human needs and protecting the environment can, and I would argue must, go hand-in-hand, but it will mean using all our available tools (i.e., science, technology, traditional knowledge etc.) for our own sake, rather than for corporate profits.

In the Dialectics of Nature, Friedrich Engels wrote:

“… we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over some foreign people, like someone standing outside of nature — but that we, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.”[4]

What Engels is saying here is that we have the ability to understand the world around us and correct our behaviour accordingly. Unfortunately, as things stand, the main roadblock to applying our knowledge correctly (i.e., to meet our needs in an equitable and sustainable way) is an economy that prioritizes profits over people. We see this all the time, from the abandonment of Covid-19 health and safety measures to keep businesses afloat, regardless of the impact on workers. Or when climate science shows that we have to rapidly phase out fossil fuels to avoid catastrophic global warming, yet companies like Suncor are still setting all-time production records in 2024.

Life is a struggle for many people these days, including myself. And because of that, it’s become very easy for people to just focus on themselves and tune out the rest of the world. Income inequality in Canada is greater than it’s ever been,[5] and Food Banks Canada reported that there has been a 90 percent increase in monthly food bank visits since 2019.[6] I don’t shame people for not thinking about environmental issues when they’re struggling to feed themselves and their families or pay rent every month. But I also know that nothing will ever change if people aren’t committed to making change happen. Part of this work is showing people we need their help.

I’m almost certain that the solution will be found somewhere between decolonization, degrowth, and/or eco-socialism. But whichever path we pursue, social change has always come from below — from organized groups of everyday working people fighting for a better world together. I feel a responsibility to help show people that this is the way forward today, just as it was in the past. It’s time we take things into our own hands and get organized. This is the common horizon we share. Who is with me?

References:

“Distributions of Household Economic Accounts for Income, Consumption, Saving and Wealth of Canadian Households, Second Quarter 2024.” Statistics Canada, October 10, 2024. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/daily-quotidien/241010/dq241010a-eng.pdf?st=_pb_agaT.

Engels, Friedrich. Dialectics of Nature, 1896. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/dialectics-nature.pdf.

Hickel, Jason, and Dylan Sullivan. “How Much Growth Is Required to Achieve Good Lives for All? Insights from Needs-Based Analysis.” World Development Perspectives 35 (September 1, 2024): 100612. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wdp.2024.100612.

“HungerCount 2024.” Food Banks Canada. Accessed November 12, 2024. https://fbcblobstorage.blob.core.windows.net/wordpress/2024/10/hungercount-2024-en.pdf.

Jansen, Annegeke, Ranran Wang, Paul Behrens, and Rutger Hoekstra. “Beyond GDP: A Review and Conceptual Framework for Measuring Sustainable and Inclusive Wellbeing.” The Lancet Planetary Health 8, no. 9 (September 1, 2024): e695–705. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(24)00147-5.

Richardson, Katherine, Will Steffen, Wolfgang Lucht, Jørgen Bendtsen, Sarah E. Cornell, Jonathan F. Donges, Markus Drüke, et al. “Earth beyond Six of Nine Planetary Boundaries.” Science Advances 9, no. 37 (September 13, 2023): eadh2458. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458.

[1] Katherine Richardson et al., “Earth beyond Six of Nine Planetary Boundaries,” Science Advances 9, no. 37 (September 13, 2023): eadh2458, https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458.

[2] Annegeke Jansen et al., “Beyond GDP: A Review and Conceptual Framework for Measuring Sustainable and Inclusive Wellbeing,” The Lancet Planetary Health 8, no. 9 (September 1, 2024): e695–705, https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(24)00147-5.

[3] Jason Hickel and Dylan Sullivan, “How Much Growth Is Required to Achieve Good Lives for All? Insights from Needs-Based Analysis,” World Development Perspectives 35 (September 1, 2024): 100612, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wdp.2024.100612.

[4] Friedrich Engels, Dialectics of Nature, 1896, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/dialectics-nature.pdf.

[5] “Distributions of Household Economic Accounts for Income, Consumption, Saving and Wealth of Canadian Households, Second Quarter 2024” (Statistics Canada, October 10, 2024), https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/daily-quotidien/241010/dq241010a-eng.pdf?st=_pb_agaT.

[6] “HungerCount 2024” (Food Banks Canada), accessed November 12, 2024, https://fbcblobstorage.blob.core.windows.net/wordpress/2024/10/hungercount-2024-en.pdf.