borderland: ukraine or canada

The moment he got elected, it felt like the polar ice caps melted, shipping opened up in the Northwest Passage and drilling commenced. Climate change accelerated, done by intention, and what Canada has in its large land mass, fresh water and mineral deposits relative to the world, became relatively more. We straddled the line between resource blessing and resource curse. And what we had for others to take, to steal, to break international norms and laws to get, became more.

Russia has pushed in the past to claim more of the Arctic, dropping off flags so it can make some stupid arguments. And to our south became way less friendly and way more exploitative.

The age of Empire had ended. The age of Empire that finally was killed off in the wake of WWII, a whole lot of work and a whole lot of tragedy, threatens its return. It is what made the invasion of Ukraine both in Crimea and later the whole of the country, so consequential for the rest of us. I have long wondered if letting Putin take Crimea will be the biggest mistake of Barack’s presidency. Putin kept moving the goalposts and Barack kept being reasonable. Not reasonable based on what was before, but reasonable based on what new, incorrectly framed place Putin pushed.

Ukraine means borderland. On the day of the election it felt like we became a borderland, with Russia to the north and the US to the south.

It would have been better if we could have make the world more secure by fighting climate change. It is ridiculous that humanity is now going to push climate change so that some rich people can get richer. It is horrifying that disaster capitalism may just grow and grow and grow,

Although the point seems unclear. Although I have never understood money for money’s sake. So what do they expect long-term? Do a few men simply plan to pass on power to their kids of a much diminished earth? I can never understand what legacy they think they will leave behind.

I grew up with shame in the wake of the Holocaust just knowing we were in some way German. Do these men not expect their descendants to be ashamed of them and the destruction they wrought?

I see what we are doing with the climate and environment now and see links to slavery, to the industrial revolution in Britain (kids being forced to work in mines fourteen hours a day and being beaten when they didn’t produce enough), to the King of Belgium ‘owning’ Congo (separating families and cutting off limbs for not producing).

I see the past and I see the present. I see camps in China controlling the most basic things to make more desirable economic citizens.

I see the removal of consent. Consent gets placed in the context of sexual assault, but really it is so much broader. It is about the basics of being human and being allowed to be human and to be able to embrace and succeed at being human. It is what we have tried to move this world towards and what people keep yelling about: freedom. So I’ll yell to: FREEDOM!

That a person should not be ownable, that they should be able chose their role in the world (job), that they should have the opportunity to succeed instead of being suck or uninspired. That humans get to make choices. I keep seeing this in terms of slavery because slavery was and is the removal of choices. Of the removal of the ability to consent or not consent over the most basic parts of life. And if we destroy things now, knowingly, we do so without the consent of those who will inherit from us. We make choices for them, some of which can’t be undone. Some of which we just don’t know if they can come up with a way to mitigate.

When we change the climate for the worse in ways we don’t know how to fix, then our legacy is taking away so many of those choices. And all those arguments about jobs, as real as they are, in the passing of time, will feel ludicrous. And we remove so much beauty.

It is a sad statement about humans that we can’t seem to succeed over the problem of the commons. That when it comes to world wide issues, enough of us can’t get over being exploitative to get somewhere better and deal with the real world.

But that is not the point of this. The point is now we have to take our security more seriously. And not because NATO says so, but because our neighbourhood has changed.

There were and are many good reasons to deal with climate change all on its own.

And then there were the security reasons. Because the world is full of people and we are making the places they live less livable. And if you want to stop the flow of migrants long term, making the rest of the world more livable is really the only effective way to do that.

There is the more complete way of attaining long-term security and I am pissed that we are now stuck in the short term, shoring up our defences way. But we are fools if we don’t. That day, what was implausible, became imaginable. And it may be pushing the economic more than the scenarios in my head but it is still a critical moment for us.

There is Chamberlain, and the story of appeasing in Hitler in 1938 not working. And there is another story told, that it was a play for time to build up for war. There is the story of WWI flowing from wanting the fight, men wanting to prove they were men and no one understanding it won’t just be a fun little romp. And WWII flowing from the opposite, “Never Again” and the pacifism that make Britain look like it would be unwilling to fight. The war-mongering and the pacifism. How I wish this moment was one where we could actually move on from history.

Hopefully this is a hiccup. Hopefully will move back to believing exploiting people is a bad thing. And for the life of me, I don’t understand how so many people with power can stand for nothing. But for the moment, our neighbourhood has become less friendly, And instead of focusing on all the bigger, long-term issues we want to solve and are super important, we need to focus on the short-term one. That for the moment, we are a borderland too.