Is Canada about to experience Rapid Unscheduled Degrowth?
This might be a good time to rebuild around a sufficiency economy.
I apologize to my readers outside of Canada for my continuing preoccupation with our local situation.
I attended an online meeting of the Sufficiency Action Hub on Friday. The meeting included a discussion about the differences between sufficiency and degrowth and how we want to encourage the desirable former but not necessarily the scary latter.
It occurred to me that we in Canada might not have to worry about semantics. Elon Musk has a euphemism for his rockets exploding: Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly. Courtesy of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, it is likely that, at least in Canada, we are about to have Rapid Unscheduled Degrowth (RUD) as our economy tanks in the face of the American threats of tariffs and uncertainty over annexation.
Many would say I am wrong to conflate an economic recession or crash with degrowth. Timothée Parrique has written:
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.
But whatever you call it, we are going to be lighter. The challenge is to ease the pain, plan for it, make it as equitable as possible, and make a virtue out of it. Even former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper surprised me by suggesting that we 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," Harper said to an invitation-only audience. “Now, because I do think that if Trump were determined, he could really do wide structural and economic damage, but I wouldn't accept that,” said Harper. “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.”
Few people in Canada actually believe we will become the 51st state. But many believe that the results could be even worse. Dan Gardner writes:
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. I think that is the worst-case scenario.
Gardner quotes an article from the Globe and Mail at length, written by a serious threesome of professors, colonels, and NATO advisors, which suggests we have three options:
Ingratiate ourselves 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 U.S.”
“But there is a third option: we can stand up and demonstrate an assertiveness toward the world and our own future.”
Building a Sufficiency Economy
I like that third option. That future might be one designed to consume less and produce fewer carbon emissions, with less reliance on others. In my recent book, The Story of Upfront Carbon, I called for what Australian philosopher Samuel Alexander described as a “sufficiency economy.” He wrote:
"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”
I quoted many writers and thinkers, including Vaclav Smil, who noted that meeting needs instead of wants took a lot less energy and produced a lot less carbon:
"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.”
And Geologist Simon Michaux:
"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, who calls for “mobilising society’s productive capacity, its labour 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 – at last – 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 – for all citizens – 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 savour the experience of watching our exhausted planet surge back to life: more clear water, more blue skies, more forests, more nightingales, more whales.”
Almost a hundred years ago, the Canadian historian Harold Innis used the biblical phrase, “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” to describe Canada’s dependence on natural resources. The American president, with his 51st state talk, would relegate us to that position again.
Nobody in Canada asked for this, 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.” We can address two crises for the price of one.
More on the Sufficiency Economy to follow.
As a person from the guilty nation to your south, I think you have no need to apologize for a period of self-centered reflection before action toward a degrowth future. Canada, and a majority of Americans (women, native peoples, people of color, people of different nations of origin, people who identify as non-binary, people with disabilities, and perhaps a few supportive white males) are victimized by a pair of narcissistic, sociopaths with Machiavellian political ideas, backed by heavy handed corporate benefactors. (The last part of the sentence is not mine, but I cannot remember who said it.) All of us need to follow a degrowth path, or as David Holmgren of Permaculture fame said it, "find a prosperous way down." (This comment tweaks a couple of readers of yours, but so be it.) That way down must include social justice for the above list of peoples. It must include recognition of planetary boundaries, some of which we have already crossed. This implies regenerative work, improving soils, prairies, forests, and allowing all polluted waters to heal. (Canada's biggest sin is the extraction of tar sands in Alberta and shipping it to us to burn. You have a few mining issues to clean up as well.) It rejects violence as a means to the end sought. This will not be easy for you, or us, but requires us to act before the semi-incoherent actions of the present US leadership makes near-term collapse inevitable. Keep pushing on this and recognize that there are a lot of Americans, not in power now, who are supportive.
Many years ago, I was having dinner with neighbors in a little fishing town in Nova Scotia when the news broke that an American fishing trawler has "accidentally" wandered across the international boundary line that divides the Georges Banks into US and Canadian zones. The trawler was being chased by a ship from the Canadian Navy as it scurried back to safety in New Bedford. My neighbors were quietly cheering for the Canadian Navy while I was quietly cheering for the American trawler. It made for interesting dinner table conversation!
The most significant result of Trump II is making it plain for all to see that America cannot be trusted -- not as a friend, not as a neighbor, not as a business partner, and not as a political ally. The damage done by President Musk and Mini-Musk Donald will alter the relationship between the US and Canada for decades. As you correctly point out, the breach may actually make Canada stronger as it turns aside from the easy economic ties with the US and engages economically with other international trading partners.
Many in America are embarrassed and horrified at the actions of the putative president and who might be open to a new political alignment with Canada. We are seeing the echoes of the Civil War playing out all over again. America has been infected with the cancer of a plantation economy, which very well end up consuming the host.