Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea and Human Life by George Monbiot. Penguin Canada 2013.
I recently started reading Feral by respected British writer and Guardian journalist George Monbiot. His opening Introduction left me stunned. It is right on the money, but I was taken aback to encounter his comments in this book. Here’s an excerpt from his opening pages:
It is an extraordinary thing for a foreigner to witness: one of the world’s most sophisticated and beautiful nations being ransacked by barbarians. It is more extraordinary still to consider that these barbarians are not members of a foreign army, but of that nation’s own elected government. The world has watched in astonishment as your liberal, cultured, decent country has been transformed into a thuggish petro-state. The oil curse which has blighted so many weaker nations has now struck in a place which seemed to epitomise solidity and sense.
This is not to say that there were no warnings in Canada’s recent past. The nation has furnished the world with two of its most powerful environmental parables: one wholly bad, the other mostly good. The story of the collapse of the North Atlantic cod fishery reads like a biography of the two horsemen of ecological destruction: greed and denial. The basis on which the stocks were managed was the opposite of the Precautionary Principle: the Providential Principle. This means that if there’s even a one percent chance that our policy will not cause catastrophe, we’ll take it. Foreigners and seals were blamed for the depletion of the fish, while the obvious contribution of the Canadian fleet and the Canadian government was overlooked. The fisheries science was rigged and, when it still produced the wrong answers, disregarded or denounced. The government continued to sponsor bigger boats and new fish plants even as the stocks were crashing. A moratorium was imposed only after the fishery became commercially extinct: government and industry, after due consideration and debate, agreed that the non-existent fish should no longer be caught.
Even today, the best means of ensuring that stocks can recover and breed freely – declaring a large part (perhaps the majority) of the Grand Banks a permanent marine reserve in which no fishing takes place – has not happened. All over the world the evidence shows that such no-take zones greatly enhance the overall catch, even though less of the sea is available for fishing. But the Canadian government continues stoutly to defend the nation from the dark forces of science and reason.
The other great parable which still resonates with the rest of the world – the battle over Clayoquot Sound – began the same way: private companies were given the key to a magnificent ecosystem and told they could treat it as they wished. The forests would have followed the fishery to oblivion had it not been for a coalition of remarkable activists from the First Nations and beyond, who were prepared to lose their freedom – and possibly their lives – to prevent a great wound from being inflicted on the natural world. In 1994 they won, for a few years at least. Their courage in the face of police brutality and judicial repression inspired peaceful direct action movements all over the world.
So here are the two Canadas: one insatiable, blindly destructive, unmoved by beauty; the other brave, unselfish and far-sighted. There is no doubt about which of the two is now dominant. For Canada today is providing the world with a third parable: the remarkable, perhaps unprecedented story of a complex, diverse economy slipping down the development ladder towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man.
The tar sands poisoned the politics first of Alberta then of the entire nation. Their story recapitulates that of the Grand Banks. To accommodate rapacious greed, science has been both co-opted and ignored, the Providential Principle has been widely deployed, laws have been redrafted and public life corrupted. The government’s assault on behalf of the tar sands corporation on the common interests of all Canadians has licensed and empowered destructive tendencies throughout the nation.
Well. That’s not the end, there is more in this vein. Monbiot clearly sets out the state of Canada today. He does note: For those who appreciate natural beauty and understand ecosystem processes, it must feel like living in a country under enemy occupation. It must also be intensely embarrassing. Canada is becoming a pariah state, whose name now invokes images formerly associated with countries like Nigeria and Congo. Canadian friends joke that they stitch U.S. flags onto their rucksacks when they go abroad.
Indeed, I have felt more than embarrassment at the disassembling of my beautiful country. I have felt great anger and despair. About the only defense I could call upon is the fact that the current majority Conservative government was elected under our Kooky, anti-democratic election system by a minority of Canadians amongst a flurry of sick, vicious attack ads, robocalls and election fraud such as one associates with a third world country. It is impossible to explain, however, the know-nothing care-nothing attitude of Canadians across the country. Canadians pride themselves on being ‘polite’, but the manner in which citizens have sat back and turned a blind eye to the gutting of environmental legislation, to the targeting of charitable environmental organizations as ‘terrorists’, even the crushing of democratic processes, suggests Canadians are lazily complaisant, selfish and self-absorbed, unable to care about anything beyond the latest hockey scores, maybe their latest electronic gadget. We are entertaining ourselves to death with make-believe stories of hobbits and dragons and super heroes even as our own real world crumbles around us.
Oh Canada. Who stands on guard for thee now?
Willow House Chronicles 
I am sharing this as much as I can. Well expressed, both you and the author of this book. Is there any hope? That last image is how I feel a lot of the time….
I feel a little less loneliness after reading your acknowledgement of what it means to be Canadian, but no farther from despair.
The trick will be turning that horrible sense of disappointment and despair into something useful- mustering up the ability to effect change…
Yes, your generation will most live with the consequences.
I don’t think it is necessarily true that Canadians don’t act because they are lazy and selfish; in some cases, they are not aware, and in some cases, efforts to make them aware have left them overwhelmed. Environmental marketers now are finding that when you hit people with a barrage of “everything is terrible, it’s a crisis, it’s a massive global catastrophe, the world is going to end” messaging, people feel powerless and despairing, and like they couldn’t possibly do anything that could make a difference, so they just block it out and continue on their way. Further, if you approach someone who has environmentally unfriendly habits (or who voted conservative) with this attitude and thus foist anger and moral judgment upon them, it causes them to be defensive, to justify their beliefs, become entrenched in how they’re doing things and turn even farther away from what you’re trying to get across. It turns out a much more effective approach is to bring positivity and hope and start with small pieces rather than global crisis; inspire people with possibilities rather then crushing them into doom and despair.
Also, I don’t think you need to immerse yourself in the horrors of the world 24/7 in order to make a difference. In fact that will probably ensure that you don’t. There is still room in the world for arts and literature and entertainment, even if it is about superheroes, AND for positive environmental action. 😉 I really like the Transition Town movement that is cropping up across Canada for that. There’s one in Brockville you may want to check out or get involved in. 🙂
Fiddlegirl, It’s terrific that you feel so positive about the future of the world, since your generation and the next will be more directly impacted by global warming than I am likely to be over the next two decades, should I be blessed with that long a life.
I think the idea of Earth Day from the beginning was to raise awareness and help people make better choices. It’s been celebrated for more than 4 decades, since 1970. (Earth Hour is another simple idea to raise awareness without harping.) Over those years, hyperconsumerism and megadevelopment has accelerated. The whole notion of economic well-being based on growth, an obvious deadend, has even been promoted by a president: Get out there and shop! Save America! Now that’s direct action that people can embrace.
Important figures like David Suzuki are very aware that too much gloom doesn’t prompt action. His Nature of Things shows are very low key compared to what could be said. He gently nudges the public and his Foundation offers a webpage with ideas on being ‘greener’. He has even written books such as ‘Good News For a Change”. I don’t think this is a new and startling idea you’ve come up with.
But the fact is, we have not changed course. Only a few people are involved with things like Transition Town, although it is great that they exist at all. Shop local, buy organic, all great ideas. But there are about 35 million people in Canada. The percentage that are involved in such movements is infinitesimal. Lessons such as the collapse of the cod fishery have not been learned. And every day that passes, more species are lost forever and catastrophic climate change creeps closer. Changing light bulbs just doesn’t cut it as a Canadian Action Plan for limiting climate change.
I should add that the book Feral is actually about creating and maintaining wild, life-affirming places and offers an alternative view of what our future could look like. Monbiot acknowledges the state of the planet with clear eyes and looks beyond that to how things might be made better.
So besides leaving messages on my blog, what are you doing to get out there, spread the word and change things?
I hadn’t intended to present my point as a new and startling idea that I had just come up with. 😉 As I mentioned, it’s the prevailing understanding among those who are responsible for trying to market environmental change to the public, which comes up a lot in my line of work.
I recognize that the shift in values has been slow and inadequate (but it is happening!). But that doesn’t mean that our warnings were not dire enough before, or that there wasn’t enough anger in our messages. It means our marketing has been inadequate, that people don’t understand the message, that the message doesn’t resonate with Canadians, or that people don’t find the alternatives any more appealing.
So it’s not that I believe the future is cheerful and rosy – but we need to choose effective actions to bring about change. I believe change is up to individuals, not just governments and corporations. After all, it’s individuals who drive the market and determine what corporations produce. It’s public opinion that drives governments and it’s individuals that make up that opinion. Therefore, what we need to do to drive large-scale change is influence public opinion and individual lifestyle habits. To do that we need a message that is clear and understandable and resonates with the average Joe, we need good alternatives to the current practice, and we need to broadcast both of those things however we can.
For my part, I’ve designed my lifestyle and career path around sustainability, as you know, and try to spread the message of non-consumerism where I can (while trying not to offend people, at which I don’t always succeed. ;)).
I don’t think Monbiot sounds particularly angry. He’s just stating the facts. I’m angry that the facts are pretty obvious but people prefer to ignore them.
People voted for Harper and continue to support him in the full knowledge that the tar sands are his number one priority, aside perhaps from assuring his reelection by stacking the deck. Harper never made any secret of that. So yes, Conservatives must take responsibility for the government they voted for. Everything he does is to promote the corporatocracy. Or increasingly, an oligarchy of the rich who influence government.
You’ve still not saying how you are going to step up the campaign from what people like David Suzuki, the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and countless others have been saying politely for the last 50 years. You’re still not addressing the urgency that the failures of the past 50 years has resulted in. In fact, you don’t seem to be grasping the urgency at all. Another 50 years of politeness isn’t going to work. There’s just not time for that. It’s nice that your lifestyle is sustainable, but really, so what? You still live in a country that needs action,and you are young and well-educated and capable but continue not to act. The accident of your birth in a comfortable, well-to-do nation offers you many benefits and opportunities. What about noblesse oblige?
Well, Mom, we all have our different ways of going about enacting change. Mine is to become involved in my community and learn and teach how to live a lifestyle that does as little harm as possible. I believe this is the number one priority for all of us, and if we all did it, we would no longer have any problems, regardless of what the government or corporations did. It has nothing to do with urgency; just effectiveness. Increased urgency does not call for a more angry but less effective approach. I believe that there are urgent problems facing us, but I believe equally strongly that shouting about the urgency of those problems to people who already agree with me, and deriding and insulting those who do not, will do nothing whatsoever to alleviate the issues, and will further alienate the environmental movement from the general populace. That’s not productive. Speaking of the past 50 years, I also don’t believe the path to change is vandalizing, burning, occupying and destroying people’s property in the name of environmentalism, like Greenpeace has done. I believe that this approach has done a huge amount of damage to the environmental movement and set back its credibility immensely. If Greenpeace had stuck with “politeness”, aka science, education and policy and bringing the public onside, the whole movement would have been much better off. Sure, they brought about change: they made things worse. So while you may believe that it’s fruitless, I’m going to stick with influencing public opinion in my own way.
Anyway, I can see we’re not going to come to agreement on this. My point is that I don’t think everything is quite as obvious to people as you think it should be, so perhaps education rather than criticism would be more productive.
Gee, you sound…angry. Which is a good thing. You’re going to need passion to change the world.
Sorry Fiddlegirl, you’ve had your say. Now start your own blog. Maybe you could inform people about sustainable living.
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2014 02:25:40 +0000 To: sheridanleckie@hotmail.com
I had to smile at the above back and forth- (sounds like my mom and I)- and Have to say that I agree with Fiddlegirl that we need to find some way to reach people- because so many of these earth-day/ sustainable workshops/ seedy Saturday/ climate change report events are preaching to the choir- or if it’s a well attended thing- the message is sort of lost and the direness is played down.
We are the people who already KNOW things have got to change- we’re just surrounded by people who automatically shut off when they hear it. I don’t know how (just yet anyhow- I’m still working on it mentally 😉 to get the message through to the ordinary folks- but I do know that every time I post anything political on my facebook page I get no comments, and every time I post cute photos of my kids I get lots of response- (so maybe my cute kids holding posters with messages on them would work????)
This is the challenge of our generation- to find a way to bridge this gap between those who know and those who don’t seem to take notice- or who maybe honestly don’t know how to start- Or think that if they do anything it must be extreme and end with them brushing their teeth with sand and a twig.
Or those who (myself sometimes included) post about crappy things on facebook- and are aware of what’s going on- but don’t actually take action that matters- like sending letters to their MP, or voting even for god’s sake.
Angela, Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I appreciate your input.
I thought twice before writing this post. Who wants to alienate their readers? But if you can’t express your feelings on behalf of Mother Earth on Earth Day, why bother blogging?
Over the years, I have participated with local environmental groups, helped deliver environmental programs in schools, written to my MP, attended rallies, read extensively to become better informed, blogged about green issues and tried to live ‘greenly’, and of course, voted.
I continue to send what financial support I can to groups like the Nature Conservancy, the Suzuki Foundation, Nature Canada, and yes, even those wags at Greenpeace. They all help to spread the word and take action on my behalf.
I think that bottom-up grassroots action is important, but we also need better government. I believe that proportional representation would result in a spectrum of voices being heard as Canadians of all political stripes are represented and a stronger Canada would result; a Canada that would better respect individual views and not bulldoze through ideological priorities. I think proportional representation is attainable and support Fair Vote Canada (www.fairvote.ca).
Perhaps it was a mistake for environmental groups to try to influence government action from the sidelines. The idea that presenting facts and truths will result in appropriate action has simply not held up. Maybe this is why Elizabeth May left her position as the executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada (from 1989 to 2006) to take up the Green Party leadership, and she has shown that one strong voice can be heard in Parliament, with even the right-leaning Maclean’s magazine naming her Parliamentarian of the Year. Imagine if she had a bevy of allies standing along beside her!