Tarred by oil sands

Canada is the only country on earth with oil economically extractable from tar sands.  Is this a blessing or a curse?

  Venezuela also has large amounts of tar sands but they also have immense quantities of conventional oil so they can keep their tar sands in their back pocket for when their conventional oil dries up.

If the same Albertan tar sand in Canada was located in some other country then the Canadian government, like other countries, would have been quick to climb on a high moral horse and demand it be shut down while the other government would be left defending their tar sands.

At COP15, the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit now underway, Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government are in the spotlight.  Canada is defending its tar sands to the dismay of the rest of the world.

Stephen Harper and his government were elected to look after canadians and canadian interests.  They were not elected to represent the people or interests of Bangladesh, Palau, Nauru, Maldives or Africa - countries that will be decimated or at least mauled by climate change. In his role as Canada's Prime Minister Harper is doing nothing wrong.  That does not make what he is doing right.

On this small planet exist many governments all of them dedicated to serve their own people without any legal obligation to the people of other countries.  In this lies the problem.  It sets governments  with a common agenda forming groups like the G8, G20, G77 + China, working against other governments with different agendas.  It is very difficult if not impossible for this hodgepodge of governments to come to agreements that make sense globally.  From a global perspective for instance would it not make sense for us regardless where we are around the world  to first use the cleanest forms of energy available, progressively moving to less clean forms?  By the time we come to the tar sands we may have other alternative forms of energy or at least better technologies for processing these sands with lesser impact to the environment.

The only way we will have sound, sensible and globally effective policies is if we have another, higher level of government above all existing governments.  A top level government elected directly by people of earth much the same as people of different democratic countries elect their national governments.  The existing national governments would then continue to govern working with this new top level government rather like states and provinces currently do with their national governments.

It may seem an impossible task to create this government.  It may not be.  During this current Copenhagen Climate Summit millions of people are organizing marches, vigils all over the world.  Technology makes this possible.  There is no reason why this same technology and people power cannot work to create this new government.  For more thoughts on how to create this government see:

http://www.weonepeople.com/oneworld/2009/09/one-world-one-people-one-government.html

 

Comments

[Nick Matyas]

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[Monist]

Happy you liked this post Nick. There is clearly a disconnect across nations and a clear need to build bonds between people: people of diverse race, colour, caste and creed.

"United we stand, divided we fall" is true for all of us, whether we are an individual family or a global community.