Monday, October 6, 2008
http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/ A pro-environment website to help Canadians make their votes count...
People have to make choices, and making good choices takes courage – sometimes a lot of courage. There's an argument being pushed by Conservatives in North America that we can't afford to go green, subscribe to Kyoto, etc., because it would upset the economy, deprive people of jobs, alter our quality of life, etc. etc.. (I'm tempted to go into the implications of the current economic situation in the US for that argument, but I won't right now.) In Canada, Stéphane Dion has tried hard to reassure people that this is a false argument, that there are thousands of jobs to be created if we do go green, and that the economy will benefit when we change our dependence on increasingly expensive fossil fuels. What we need to understand, however, is that this isn't a Liberal Party matter. It has to do with all of us, every Canadian who wants Canada to be a healthy place for its citizens – now, and for the next generation, and the one after that. The great news is that there's a website where people who care about the environment can make their votes count, whether they vote Liberal, Green Party or NDP. The url: http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/ I won't try to explain how it works here, but the idea is to garner votes to defeat Conservative candidates in close ridings and at the same time enable NDP, Liberal and Green candidates to vote their party by arranging a switching of votes. A note for Bible believers like myself. There's a lot of talk about the don't care attitude of Evangelical Christians who believe these are the last days. I think the Bible makes it clear that Christians continue to have a responsibility to take care of the Earth, right up until Jesus comes, whenever that is. The New Testament is full of parables that talk about good stewardship. I don't see anywhere that we're excused from doing this. It bothers me that Stephen Harper can claim to espouse family values and not see that if he loves his children, he needs to choose well for them. That sacrifice may have to include having less now so that they can have much more later, like clean water and clean air, and food that they can safely eat when they are grown up and when they have children themselves. I've been saying again and again that it's important for voters here and in the US to make their votes count. Here's a really good way to do it. Go to http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/ Tell your friends about it. Vote for your children and your grandchildren. Vote wisely. Above all, vote! Selah.
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4 comments:
Well, if the last days are imminent there are those who want to make them immanent by hurrying them up so that Jesus will arrive to separate the self-righteous sheep from the sinful goats.
What you're describing is what's called 'tactical voting' -- that is, voting for the most likely candidate/party to beat the least desirable candidate/party. I first saw it described in British politics in the eighties, when Labour voters were urged to vote either SDP (when that existed or Liberal rather than for Thatcherite Tories in marginal constituencies. It's a viable strategy in ridings in which there's a chance to beat the Tory candidate if the anti-Tory vote comes together.
fsjl: I don't know what the last days are in fact going to be like or when they will come, but, as I think I may have said up here before, people (1) in the midst of Katrina, (2) watching the ocean retreat and return in the tsunami (3) seeing the earth tremble in China may well have though they had arrived. And can you imagine what it would be like if suddenly there were no oil supplies available? An end days scenario if ever there was one! It's the old "Does the tree fall in the forest if no one hears it?" question, isn't it? Did the dinosaurs think of the times in which they slipped or fell into extinction as their "last days"? I have a poem about this that maybe I'll post on the blog. As for the current state of things in the US, politically and economically, that smacks to me of last days in ways that make me tremble. Re the voting: Are you saying that the proper term is "tactical voting" rather than "strategic voting"? I think it's a great idea, whatever the label.
Pam: Any major disaster is going to look like the end of the world to those caught up in it, true.
I don't know about 'last days' with regard to the current situation in the US. What they smack of, to me, is something a little more familiar, though admittedly frightening enough, the late 1920s/early 1930s. An upper class that sees great wealth and privilege as a right (consider the executives at AIG who -- after the bailout -- went to a spa for pampering at the taxpayers' expense and don't understand why the plebs are upset). A middle class that has been alienated from the working class for years and is now looking for any nostrum it can find (and there are some, ahem, fascinating nostrums out there, such as blaming the Mexicans). A working class that has been demoralised for years.
The dinosaurs were extinguished by a sudden catastrophic event -- the K/T Event -- involving a large object crashing into the earth in what is now southern Mexico 65 million years ago, btw.
I don't think we can actually grasp a disaster of worldwide proportions, which I think that this one may well be! We probably need a video game of World War Two to help us out here, or something about a virus rapidly running wild. I am happy to accept your analysis of the US situation. Whatever the configurations, there's a lot of volatility in the mix. Consider, God forbid, something violent happening in the course of the presidential campaign... The place would explode, and be ungovernable, the market would really do a double take and who knows what would follow? And I do know about the dinosaurs and the K/T event, though I don't know if I believe that they all vanished in one fell swoop. (I wait for science to catch up with imagination... It takes a while sometimes.) The reference was mostly to help make the point. They are famous for their tiny brains anyhow, so I'm not sure one could reasonably expect any great awareness from them. Their vanishing was just a handy example of a really-truly last days event.
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