Oh, Canada! Rapid Unscheduled Degrowth & A Sufficiency Economy – CleanTechnica

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Canada, America’s neighbor to the North, is in turmoil. The cruel, stupid, and senseless tariffs announced by the new US administration have shaken Canadians to the core. We all know those tariffs are just a negotiating tactic by the self proclaimed “greatest deal maker” of all time. They are designed to deliver a strong dose of shock and awe so that concessions can be wrung from other countries in exchange for not carrying through with these proposed levies. It’s like the Navy pounding the shoreline with a barrage to soften up the defenders before the Army begins an amphibious assault. Or another way to look at it is like a threat from a playground bully — either part with your lunch money or suffer a beating.

Several observers have suggested the latter is the reality. America is determined to extract a short term advantage that will result in significant long term damage. Lloyd Alter, who lives in Toronto, published his thoughts on the situation recently on his Carbon Upfront Substack blog. He references the recent explosion of a SpaceX rocket, which Elon Musk called a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” It is likely that Canada is about to experience Rapid Unscheduled Degrowth as its economy suffers as a result of American threats of tariffs and uncertainty over annexation.

Alter quotes Timothée Parrique, a researcher in the school of business and economics at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Clermont Auvergne and Stockholm University. Parrique explains, “A recession is a reduction in GDP, one that happens accidentally, often with undesirable social outcomes like unemployment, austerity, and poverty. Degrowth, on the other hand, is a planned, selective and equitable downscaling of economic activities. Recession: unplanned and unwanted. Degrowth: designed and desired. Associating degrowth with a recession just because the two involve a reduction of GDP is absurd; it would be like arguing that an amputation and a diet are the very same thing just because they both lead to weight loss.”

Whatever you call it, Canadians are going to be lighter in wallet, Alter says. The challenge for Canada is to ease the pain, plan for it, make it as equitable as possible, and make a virtue out of it. Former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper surprised Alter by suggesting Canada will have to absorb some pain in the face of Trump’s threats. “If I was still prime minister, I would be prepared to impoverish the country and not be annexed, if that was the option we’re facing. Because I do think that if Trump were determined, he could really do wide structural and economic damage, but I wouldn’t accept that. I would accept any level of damage to preserve the independence of the country. Important in that is to have a plan of how we would reorient our economy, so we would recover that prosperity again, and not just solve the damage.”

Canada & The Politics Of Fear

Few people in Canada actually believe the country will become the 51st US state, but many believe the results could be even worse. On his own Substack blog, Dan Gardner, author of Risk — The Science And Politics Of Fear, writes:

“For most of the past century, America was powerful not simply thanks to its economic and military heft but because American culture and American principles and American commitment to the rules-based international order attracted friends and allies. But the bullying and gangsterism of “America First” will reverse America’s polarity. As the United States once attracted, so it will now repel — and those who for so long sought to draw closer to the United States will now pull away. New trading relationships will be crafted. New alliances forged. And American will be diminished.

“This is what belligerent tyrannies — from Thucydides’ Athens to Napoleon’s France to Hitler’s Germany — have never understood: No empire can have enough hard power to bring everyone to heel, and when you try, you start the clock on your own decline. Donald Trump has only been back in the White House for less than a month but the worldwide reactions are already underway. Whatever America’s technological and economic future may hold, the long-term geopolitical decline of the United States is accelerating rapidly.”

Gardner quotes an article from the Globe and Mail at length, written by a serious authors — a professor, a colonel, and a NATO advisor, who suggest Canadians have three options:

• Ingratiate themselves with the new America — a slow road to capitulations.
• Fight back. This approach could also eventually result in a hollowed-out country, as businesses relocate to the US.
• Stand up and demonstrate an assertiveness toward the world and our own future.

“The shakedowns would be relentless and we would have no choice but to hand over whatever was demanded. There would be no other option. Oil, critical minerals, Arctic shipping, fresh water. Whatever they want. Picture pipelines siphoning Lake Superior and Lake Ontario to fill swimming pools in Las Vegas and Phoenix and irrigate crops in central California. We would have no choice but to say yes. We could become, in reality if not law, a resource colony of the United States. A land of nothing more than extraction and American military bases. A land with modest control of its domestic affairs, little control over foreign policy, and little or no voice in the Washington halls of power where the most important decisions determining Canada’s fate are made. Think Guam but bigger and colder.”

Creating A Sufficiency Economy

Lloyd Alter says he prefers the third option in which the Canadian economy is designed to consume less and produce fewer carbon emissions with less reliance on others. He cities Australian philosopher Samuel Alexander’s notion of a “sufficiency economy.” Alexander says, “This would be a way of life based on modest material and energy needs but nevertheless rich in other dimensions — a life of frugal abundance. It is about creating an economy based on sufficiency, knowing how much is enough to live well, and discovering that enough is plenty.”

Vaclav Smil has suggested that meeting needs instead of wants takes a lot less energy and produces a lot less carbon dioxide. “Satisfying basic human needs obviously requires a moderate level of energy inputs, but international comparisons clearly show that further quality-of-life gains level off with rising energy consumption. Societies focusing more on human welfare than on frivolous consumption can achieve a higher quality of life while consuming a fraction of the fuels and electricity used by more wasteful nations.” As geologist Simon Michaux has written, “The logistical challenges to replace fossil fuels are enormous. It may be so much simpler to reduce demand for energy and raw materials in general. This will require a restructuring of society and its expectations, resulting in a new social contract. Is it time to restructure society and the industrial ecosystem to consume less.”

Professor Kevin Anderson calls for “mobilizing society’s productive capacity, its labor and resources, to deliver a public good for all — a stable climate with minimum detrimental impacts. The majority of people will be better off in virtually all aspects of their lives. Not only the elimination of fuel poverty but improved and warmer homes, reduced bills and much better indoor and outdoor air quality leading to healthier children more able to participate fully in school. Clean, efficient and reliable public transport, less noise, more usable urban space for parks, cafés, playing fields ,and the many other facilities that make a thriving community.”

J.B. MacKinnon, author of The Day the World Stops Shopping thought we would end up in a nicer place. “The evidence suggests that life in a lower-consuming society really can be better, with less stress, less work or more meaningful work, and more time for the people and things that matter most. The objects that surround us can be well made or beautiful or both, and stay with us long enough to become vessels for our memories and stories. Perhaps best of all, we can savor the experience of watching our exhausted planet surge back to life — more clear water, more blue skies, more forests, more nightingales, more whales.”

Nobody in Canada asked for this, Alter says, but if we have to reorient our economy to deal with politics, why not make it a low carbon sufficiency economy, defined by Samuel Alexander as one that provides “enough, for everyone, forever.” Why not, indeed? MAGAlomaniacs will instantly spot the problem with the sufficiency notion. It is obviously commie pinko “woke” socialist crap. It might also be very close to the notions an individual born 2025 years ago was trying to tell us about. To quote a Don McLean song, “They were not listening; they’re not listening still. Perhaps they never will?”