Ape Rifle

Is North America’s love affair with large, gas-guzzling vehicles finally fizzling out? GM suddenly seems to think so, much to the detriment of workers at one of its truck-producing Canadian plants. The story has dominated Canadian airwaves over the past week, rich in the intrigue of corporate betrayal and linked as it is to the media darling of the moment: high oil prices. Old vs. New Economy, Jobs vs. the Environment, Labour vs. Capital- no familiar framing of the issue has been left dormant. 

Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of this whole affair is the perception that the North American collapse in truck sales came out of nowhere. You would figure that a major global corporation such as GM would have at least a few strategists looking beyond the next quarter. Sure, trucks are much more profitable to sell than small cars, but even your average layman would be hard pressed not to notice the economic and geo-political storms gathering over the industry. GM should have been all over this years ago, not days ago.

But then again, blaming GM is the easy way out. In recent years, the national governments of North America have been notoriously unwilling to put any real pressure on the automobile industry to clean up its act or reduce the size and fuel consumption of its vehicles. Freedom has meant twenty miles per gallon, and forward-looking energy policy reduced to developing the oil sands in Alberta, and developing them quickly at all cost. It’s not hard to see how car manufacturers could get so complacent in such a permissive and supportive environment. Gaz-guzzling had protection from the very top.

With governments and manufacturers mired in their do-nothing myopia, it’s refreshing to see change come from those so often labelled as least willing to alter their behaviour: the consumer (or as known outside of government and academic circles, ‘normal people’). The consumer, in fact, has been a convenient straw man for interests opposed to any real progress on environmental and energy issues: environmentalism is too expensive, the average consumer isn’t willing to pay for it, the reasoning went. Well, this ‘consumer’ in North America has apparently turned the tables: wasting energy is now expensive, and people are no longer willing (or even able) to pay for it.  

North America is built around the automobile, its societies and economies dependent on the gas pump to get anything done. Perhaps this, alongside government complicity, gave GM comfort that its trucks and the like could rule the roads for a while yet. But the error in this logic is that while North Americans can’t go ten minutes without driving, they can easily do so in a vehicle other than a souped-up pickup truck or a Cadillac Escalade. How many SUVs and pickup trucks in your average urban area are necessities to the driver? Probably not many. How many of those drivers could get the exact same utility out of a smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicle? Probably quite a few. It’s strange that ‘utility’ is one of components of the SUV acronym, since to a large proportion of their current owners they are effectively useless. Unlike oil, demand for large vehicles is rather more elastic. The era of the Soccer Mom Monster Truck is likely in its welcome twilight.

At least in North America, that is. 

China is many things to many pundits.

An ancient civilization. A huge population. A powerhouse. A communist state. A rising superpower. A faltering basketcase. A construction boom. An insatiable market. A military threat. A vision of the future. A major polluter. An opportunity. A development model. A theory. An idea. Sometimes, deep in the scrum of geopolitical debate, economic analysis and media generalizations, it is all too easy to forget that China is also, to so many, quite simply a home.

And in Sichuan, millions of people have seen their homes and livelihoods collapse into rubble, many loved ones lost beneath it. At the outset, Western media channels tried to funnel the story through the usual China coverage paradigms: will this cause social instability? Will people’s anger turn towards their (un)elected officials? How was the cherished economy affected? Was a certain infamous dam to blame? But as the scale of the disaster emerged, it became apparent that no repressive government or global economic forces could really be held responsible, as shoddy as building standards might have been (perhaps the worst kept secret in modern China). The people of Sichuan had been betrayed by the very ground beneath their feet.

With this realization all the posturing, back-and-forth propaganda and righteousness that have been such staples of discourse on China seemingly dissolved. Bickering over Olympic torch movements went from being ‘a defining moment of our time’ to nonsense of the most intense triviality, a category in which it should have landed to begin with. The rigid, media-shy mandarins in Beijing let the mask fall enough to reveal a genuine concern for the devastation wreaked on its people. Chinese people mobilized in a truly endearing way. Those who had not too long ago supported a punitive Olympics boycott were now thinking of ways to donate or help. Tragedies have a way of shocking people out of their usual preconceptions, of reminding many of us that underneath all the squabbling and petty games lies a common humanity.

This is a humanity which, despite all our hubris and infrastructure and habitat management, still exists at the mercy of an environment we don’t really understand. The indifferent shifting of tectonic plates, a mundane blip in the geological grand scheme of things, is enough to wipe out swathes of our built environment and ruin many thousands, if not millions, of hard-earned lives. This is as humbling as it is horrifying, and perhaps unites us all in the fear that sometimes these things happen for no particular reason to people who don’t deserve them.

It is tempting to try and blame someone, to pretend that human agency one way or another has control over planetary destiny. But the truth is that the human condition is still hostage to the weather and the mountains, no matter how much our industrialized selves try to pretend otherwise. But it is heartening to see, as in the response to the Sichuan earthquake, that the human condition also contains compassion deeper than the imaginary lines we draw between ourselves on maps. It is unfortunate that it invariably takes the brute force of nature to highlight this aspect of ourselves.

There is no getting around it: Montreal in early spring is a messy place. The thick blanket of white that smothers the city during the dark winter months pulls back to reveal a wide variety of discarded trash, soaking on wet sidewalks and covered in the residual rock salt of de-icing efforts. The roadways are battered and cracked, the mud of construction sites and vacant lots leaking out onto them and into cavernous potholes. Many street corners remain lakes over which pedestrians must jump, and snowbanks decay into an attractive shade of brown or exhaust black. The temperature rises, to be sure, but people remain weary and slightly on edge, not yet convinced that blinding snowfalls are a things of the past. In this part of the world, winter often says goodbye with a massive spring blizzard. How considerate.

Needless to say, at this time of year the city does not look its best. A massive proportion of Montreal’s built environment now dates from the mid-20th century, when concrete was king and grey and brown were de rigueur. Soggy weather brings out the worst aspects of this discarded architectural style, sucking the colour out of the landscape and leaving a residue of marred roads and brutal buildings. Thankfully, the passage of time brings forth a blast of sunlight and a return to the world of colour.

Passing by the street corner pictured above, I couldn’t help but read a scene full of meaning. On a superficial level, the billboard is typical in that it reflects the impossible fantasies of salvation through real estate, in which gorgeous conceptual renditions never quite match the resulting physical structure. Reality has that annoying habit of being slightly messier.

On a more symbolic level, this image spoke to me as a declaration of springtime and renewal, not only in terms of weather but for this particular corner of the city. It has long been populated by concrete, decay and idles spaces devoid of activity outside of the summer Jazz Festival onslaught. As neighbourhoods go, this one around Place-des-Arts (a major performing arts complex) has excelled as a void, a complete hole between busier and more lively parts of the city’s core. Urban change at its scarring worst, one could say.

Montreal is trying to change all this. Having re-baptized the area as the Quartier des Spectacles, the city has revved up some ambitious renewal plans of the usual kind, in which North American cities have nowhere else to turn but permanent spectacle, tourism and nebulous ‘cultural’ industries. A long neglected urban splace has thus sprouted colourful fencing and construction sites, including the condominium tower above. With a minimal amount of fanfare, chunks of the city are changing drastically. Like winter begrudgingly giving way to spring, this bleak landscape of empty lots and bunker bank towers could regain both colour and, more importantly, some vitality.

But as with spring, there is always the possibility of that massive blizzard rolling in to spoil the fun. A prolonged economic mess in North America, a political flare-up at the provincial level of the kind that ravages Montreal’s optimism, a development approach that transforms all space into playgrounds for the wealthy- the sources of weariness are many. But as it is with the arrival of every spring, hope springs forth; amidst the dirty snow and mangled infrastructure, people sense the sun is truly and finally coming. Hopefully, the same can be said for the fortunes of this fair city.

Parking on rue Roy, Plateau-Mont-Royal, Montreal

If Bali were a glass house, the stone-throwing at the UN climate change conference would already have reduced it to a heap of shards. A few days ago, China said the West should take the lead on fighting climate change by reducing its extravagant lifestyle. Then, Brazil and the US took the opportunity to bicker publicly over trade issues. While there are certainly substantive issues underlying these pronouncements, I’m nevertheless left disheartened that the conference is devolving into the usual global warming blame game rather than acting as a space for constructive dialogue. The story is now a tired one and many are weary of hearing it. ‘Developing’ countries blame large industrialized states for producing the historical lion’s share of emissions, and dump the onus on them to spearhead change. Major ‘developed’ countries refuse to move ahead unless their less industrialized counterparts commit themselves to action. And of course, neither side dares question the sacred mantra of economic growth for its own sake.  It is hard to imagine a more potent recipe for inaction. 

In these disputes, all sides involved have recourse to some long-standing myths to defend the stubbornness of their positions. These myths run deep throughout the global economic, political and cultural consciousness, and are quick to emerge in any context where transnational issues are at stake, be they environmental or trade-related. They are at the core of how people order the world and understand their place in it. Unfortunately, these myths are also increasingly mismatched to realities on the ground and impediments to constructive change. The difficulty in addressing climate change, for example, rests as much on the persistence of these myths as it does on the technical feasibility of limiting emissions.

The most persistent of these myths is perhaps the conceptual division of the world into ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries, or ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ nations if you will. China, for example, is quick to decry its poor, wretched state as a ‘developing’ country whenever its development path is called into question. “How can we worry about the environment?”, the argument goes, “we are a poor country just trying to provide for our people”. While few would argue that many hundred of millions of Chinese are still struggling for basic survival, I nevertheless find it increasingly difficult to stomach this argument. While most Chinese people might indeed be ‘poor’, Chinese society in the aggregate certainly is not- in fact, it is completely awash in money. If a government can spend untold billions on a sporting event lasting only two weeks, or pack its urban avenues with more Audis per square mile than any other place on earth, it can hardly claim to lack wealth or resources.

It is thus quite rich that China is pointing a finger at the West for its excess and extravagance. Many Chinese cities, I would argue, have utterly usurped their Western counterparts in the departments of glitz, glamour and luxurious waste for its own sake. Of course, this is not to say that vast swathes of the country and its people are not lacking in basic resources and services- in fact, that is exactly the point. There is a difference between a lack of resources and a misallocation of resources. I would argue that, increasingly, countries such as China which are labelled ‘poor’ are in fact nothing of the sort- rather, its wealth is just so tremendously misspent or misallocated that the large majority of its people remain wanting.China certainly has enough funds and wherewithal to address its environmental concerns- it is just unable (or unwilling) to do since so much of its wealth gets sucked into a corrupt vortex of neon lights, redundant vanity mega-projects and official extravagance.

This environmentally devastating development-on-the-cheap benefits a minority of well-connected urbanites, often to the direct detriment of China’s much more unfortunate masses. And that is why I find it twisted that the plight of these masses be invoked by these same elites in defense of polluting business as usual. The persistence of whole countries being labelled ‘rich’ or ‘poor’ does little but provide an excuse for self-serving elites not to get serious about issues such as climate change- and then allow them to blame their inaction on their fellow citizens whose conditions are much more unfortunate. This will have to change. 

Lest you think only China is in for a drubbing in this post, I will let you know that I am an equal opportunist and will not leave other deserving targets unscathed. Governments in countries such as the United States and my beloved home, Canada, are also particularly attached to self-serving and increasingly counterproductive myths. One of these myths is the conception of the world as a collection of clearly defined nation-states with corresponding economies. Sure there is all that talk about globalization and economic integration, but these are still largely portrayed as actions by states and between states.

Why does this matter? Because when it comes to issues like climate change, this simplification of utterly complex transnational realities only serves to obfuscate responsibility- or in other words, let some major industrialized nations off the hook for the consequences of our consumption habits. For example, it’s very convenient for us to blame China for all its emissions, as if it were some self-contained economy devilishly intent on flooding North American markets with a sea of cheap junk. The reality, however, paints the West in somewhat less of an innocent light- our politicians consistently fail to mention that it is our very own corporations that have essentially built the Chinese economy as a manufacturing backlot. It has been estimated that fully 25% of Chinese emissions result from its exports to the Wal-Marts, dollar stores and Best Buys of the world. 

Pretending the world is an orderly place of neatly divided nation-states might make for some colourful maps, but it doesn’t help us realize the transnational consequences of our own actions. It allows for countries like the US and Canada to claim that China “needs to do more” while conveniently papering over our own fundamental complicity in its mess. It is quite sobering to realize that a major portion of China’s devastating ecological footprint in fact belongs to us North Americans, swelling our already immense impact on the planet. We fight tooth and nail to get our corporate fingers into every global nook and cranny, to hellishly industrialize other places for our own benefit- and then get to blame other governments for everything because there are supposedly in complete control. That’s a pretty good deal. It’s no shock, then, that there is little incentive for Western governments to truly address the massively inefficient wealth allocation in ‘poor’ countries like China- the right people are too busy getting rich, and us peon consumers just simply don’t know or don’t care. This will have to change.

These myths will need to give way if constructive action is to be taken against climate change. We live in a world that is no longer neatly divided between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ nation-states, and these outdated labels should be shelved so that those who would hide their greed and complacency behind them can no longer do so. Increasingly, people must expose the usual excuses for what they are: self-serving farces. China a ‘poor’ country? Please. The resources are there for action- they are just being grossly misspent. Industrialized Western countries at an economic disadvantage if ‘developing’ countries are not subjected to emissions caps? Please. In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve already moved our manufacturing industries offshore in a wholesale swoop of cost-cutting glory. How much more is there even left to lose?

It would be wonderful if our politicians and government officials in Bali exhibited the seriousness and maturity that climate change deserves. We all have a part to play in affecting positive change, such as examining our own consumption habits, but what is truly needed now is leadership from someone- anyone ! -as opposed to smug, self-serving bickering and empty soundbites based on tired economic ideologies. Unfortunately, all the usual myths remain entangled in the process to mire the proceedings, as they are just too profitable for those interests holding such a death grip on the politics of our globe that I fear our elite classes can no longer even distinguish a difference between corporate profit and societal good. Now if only they would stop treating the global public, be they Chinese or Canadian, as consumption-bloated idiots with no understanding of the issues as stake, our leaders might be shocked at the number of us ready to sacrifice and compromise for a common good. Yes, even in extravagant dens of luxury like Canada.