The very same message that was imparted to the working class during the Great Depression by pontificating politicians and fat cat moralizers in three-piece suits ---“tighten your belts”, “you have been living beyond your means”, “it is your fault for the jam we are in”, is now given by yuppie environmentalists and rich celebrity Green icons. “We” are consuming too much. “We” must cut back our consumption, “We” in Canada consume a zillion times more energy than Cambodia. Neglecting to mention that it is minus 25 in Sudbury and plus 25 in Phnom Penh, and that the person making the comment has two waterfront homes, a six figure income, five children who emit over 100 metric tonnes of green house gasses annually and whose air travel miles alone leave a carbon footprint many times in excess of the average five working class families.
The war on climate change is like any other war, historically it is always somebody else who the ruling class reaches out to use as cannon fodder to fight it. The English used the Irish, the Scots , the Sikhs and other colonials. White America drew heavily on African Americans to fight in Vietnam and in the Middle East. Stephane Dion’s Liberals , Elizabeth May’s Greens and David Suzuki want to use a carbon tax to punish the working poor for not having the cash or the moxy to drive hybrid cars, install solar panels or retro fit houses like a tenured professor could afford to do. Is it any wonder then that the working class are still not prepared to love the Greens? Greens 7% NDP 18%. Meanwhile….
Must go. Someone’s giving my beater a jump start so I can get to the bank to meet my mortgage payment ---what we blue collar types call “sustainable living”-- aka keeping a fucking roof over your head, something not apparently taught in those “ecological studies” courses at UBC that Suzuki and Dr. William Rees reign over. Still, I believe in miracles and maybe, just maybe, the federal government will court the pet owner vote, and decide to send out dog benefit allowances. If they can make Suzuki pay for his rampant fecundity –siring five children from two marriages—that indeed would be an authentic “Green shifting” tax and the Conservatives would have my enthusiastic vote. There is no reason that Suzuki shouldn’t through his taxes pay for a whole dog litter of mine. Especially when dogs don’t rack up air mile points and have the nerve to tell other dogs to clean up their act.
Hell, I had to pay taxes for that $500 cheque he got every month for his kids, so why shouldn’t he reciprocate by paying $50 a month for my dog’s upkeep?
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