Sunday, July 1, 2007
Traveling down this road, I’m encountering some amazing people. It’s fascinating to watch as reality brings people together out of a series of small serendipities. You find yourself in unknown places that seem familiar, places that somehow seem like home.

I just returned from a brief encounter with Canadian journalist Andrew Nikiforuk. As with hauntingly familiar places, Andrew is the kind of person you somehow expect to meet, a person who in their awareness of what's occurring around them, give you hope.

I think that’s what it’s all about. Awareness. Building awareness, both in ourselves and in those around us. Removing the ubiquitous distraction from our lives, so that we may truly see.

There’s a lot going on in Canada and the world that most of us remain unaware of, or perhaps we're simply choosing not to see. It’s hard to see sometimes, our gaze held captive by the day-to-day grind, but the fact still remains, it will always be up to us to open our eyes and question the larger movements of our society.

Personally, I believe in my bones we’re headed for disaster as a result of simple flaws inherent in the capitalist paradigm, flaws worked into our nature, perhaps even flaws of humanity. These are the flaws that resulted in the collapse of countless civilizations before us, the safeguards installed to ensure an ebb and flow within nature. The insatiable human appetite for material wealth and a lust for economic expansion is sending us headlong towards environmental crisis, economic depression, and a loss of democracy. These are hard statements to make, but it’s how I feel based on an increasing awareness of my reality, based on the writing on the wall. As always, perhaps there are things I’m not seeing, and if that’s the case, my doors lay open in waiting.

Andrew his wife Doreen and I covered a lot of conversational ground in our short time together, and I’m very grateful for the exchange. One very relevant subject of conversation was the concept of the First Law of Petropolitics, coined by Thomas Friedman.

The First Law of Petropolitics posits the following: The price of oil and the pace of freedom always move in opposite directions in oil-rich petrolist states. According to the First Law of Petropolitics, the higher the average global crude oil price rises, the more free speech, free press, free and fair elections, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, and independent political parties are eroded. And these negative trends are reinforced by the fact that the higher the price goes, the less petrolist leaders are sensitive to what the world thinks or says about them. Conversely, according to the First Law of Petropolitics, the lower the price of oil, the more petrolist countries are forced to move toward a political system and a society that is more transparent, more sensitive to opposition voices, and more focused on building the legal and educational structures that will maximize their people’s ability, both men’s and women’s, to compete, start new companies, and attract investments from abroad. The lower the price of crude oil falls, the more petrolist leaders are sensitive to what outside forces think of them.
- Thomas Friedman
(You can read the entire article posted by Thomas Friedman by clicking the quote)

In light of The First Law of Petropolitics the question becomes, what does this mean for Canada? I think it’s a very important question to be asking, especially when you consider Alberta tar sands have become the largest capital project in the world, and when you become aware that the driving force behind this unbridled development and the heart of Canada’s new oil economy all rests in the cost of a barrel of oil. There are important questions we should be asking, regarding not only the future of our environment in the wake of rising emissions and failed Kyoto targets, but we should also be concerned about our democratic institutions in the wake of big oil. In the end these are two sides to the same coin, our environmental predicament and our entire future all tied into big business/government and an overly complex system built upon fossil fuels.

I believe if we do look up and take stock of our world, we will clearly see where we’re headed, but I think the question is, will we continue to dig deep attempting to grasp a hard truth that may inspire us to investigate alternatives, or will we return our focus to a softer denial, to a softer comfort, or a softer and easier sense of entitlement? After all, ignorance is bliss.

You can learn more about Andrew Nikiforuk by clicking HERE! There’s a good chance I’ll post some video content from our conversation sometime soon.

peace,
d