Reflections on a rail/road trip

Recently my wife Fran and I made a trip out west to see our family – Dan and his family in Edmonton, Alberta and Suzanne and her family in Comox, BC. We went by train from Ottawa to Edmonton and then by car (yes, one of those fossil fuel dinosaurs) and a ferry to Comox.

The two sites visited could not have been more different. In Alberta we were in the fossil-fuelled heartland of Canada. In Comox BC we were in the agricultural, free-wheeling experimental zone of Canada. During our visit a growing climate crisis was raging in North America. Five hundred wildfires were burning in Canada sending waves of smoke everywhere, including down to the USA. A heat dome of up to 48 degrees Centigrade was occurring in Texas. The fossil fuel industry was charging ahead by plastifying everything they could.

The death knell of Evangelicalism

When president Trump was elected, he had the support of the majority of evangelical Christians in the USA. President Trump was the most unchristian president the USA had ever seen.

In Brazil, Bolsonaro has the support of most of the evangelical Christians. He is the ‘Trump of the tropics’. He is on his way to destroying the environment and has the support of the ruling class of Brazil’s billionaires.

What is happening here? I believe that this is what is happens when one worships Jesus and then does not pay attention to what he said.

Changes that are needed

You can feel it in the air. Change is coming whether we heed it or not. We cannot continue to trash the planet as we are doing. Social and income inequality cannot continue to reach record heights.

So, what might change look like? It will either be planned and rational, or violently forced upon is by relentless nature. The future will be multi-faceted and complicated. We will need to make personal changes and system changes. Here is a list of the actions needed.

Radical hope in a doomsday scenario

Our human species has had a remarkable ride over the last 10,000 years. We have gone from a group of scattered hunter gatherers, we have discovered agriculture, moved from a religious, mystical phase to an age of reason and science to industrialization and technology to our present era of a new and evolving digital world.

There are two sides to every story

Recently 43 Ukrainian women arrived in Ottawa to be trained in parliamentary procedures. On May 9 (Victory day in Russia) they staged a demonstration at the Russian embassy. At the same time a smaller group of Russians arrived to remember the Nazi German invasion into Russia. So interestingly, two invasions were being commemorated – the German  invasion into Russia in 1941, and Russia’s invasion into Ukraine now. Things did get somewhat turbulent at times, but all that occurred were several heated shouting matches.

Who caused this war, and what to do about it?

One of the main causes of the WWII was the Versailles Treaty which closed WWI. It treated Germany poorly and Germans felt aggrieved. However, as the Wehrmacht rolled across Europe, the memory of the Versailles Treaty was lost in the ensuing carnage. Hitler’s military rampage destroyed any sympathetic alliances that he may have had.

Eventually the original causes of that war got smothered by the atrocities committed during the war and the accompanying genocidal actions. In the case of WWII that meant the Nazi holocaust.

A Short Tale of Two Wars

WWII

The Versailles peace treaty after WWI treated Germany badly.

Hitler appealed to this sense of grievance and rose to power.

One could have been sympathetic with him at the beginning, but after he began

his military rampage (in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland...) sympathy for him dropped.

For more details see How Hitler Invaded Half of Europe (7 mins.)

Ukraine

The creation of NATO and its expansion eastward treated Russia badly.

Putin has risen to power and has appealed to Russia’s concerns about NATO.

One could have been sympathetic with him at the beginning, but after his military rampages (in Syria and Ukraine) sympathy for him has dropped.

For more details see Why Russia Wants Ukraine ( 8 mins.)

Lessons from history

Destructive foreign wars do not achieve their objectives:

Hitler in Germany
Putin in Ukraine
And USA in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.