Good evening everyone welcome to the Richard B. Splane lecture in social policy. We are happy to have Seth Klein speaking on mobilizing Canada for the climate My name is Tim Stainton
emergency. I'm going to be the moderator for tonight. , Professor at the UBC social work of Vancouver. Am speaking to you today from the traditional unceded territory of the Tsawwassen people where I have the privilege of living as a guest on their land. UBC is located on the unceded territory of the Musqueam people and we are grateful that we have the pleasure of working on their beautiful territory. I would invite you all to reflect on the territory you are on currently closed captioning live transcript service for this. If you're wanting to make use of that.
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using the Q&A function If you would like to write your questions in there, I anticipate with the number of participants we have there will be for more questions and we have time so I hope you will forgive me if I moderate those questions and I will be posing the questions to Seth to respond to. Without further ado , I am very pleased to introduce Patsy George. Patsy is the former chair of the UN Association of British Columbia and one of the originators and founders of display in lectures that I have had the pleasure of cochairing the committee of the lectures with her I can you remember how many years but it is a lot. She is going to give us some background on Professor Splane in our partners in this great endeavour. Patsy, welcome to the women are. PATSY GEORGE: Thank you, Tim. I am Patsy George and I'm representing United Nations Association in Canada Vancouver branch. One of the three partners sponsoring this event. I am speaking from downtown Vancouver and acknowledge that it is the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples namely Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh. The other two partners in this annual Memorial event to Dr. Richard B Splane are the new Institute for global issues at UBC, in the school of public and global affairs school of social work.
and UBC Your programme notes provide additional information about the sponsoring organizations. For those of you who are new to this lecture, it is important that we share a bit of history with you. Again, in your programme notes you will see a short bio of Dr. Splane who was known to most of us as Dick. As a social policy expert and social reformer, Dick chose the route of public service and academic work to make Canada a better place for ordinary people, the poor, young families with children, people with special needs, seniors, the unemployed and the newcomers. He believed in engaging the public, particularly the students in social policy debates where issues of social justice, human rights, and peace issues are discussed. He truly believed that we can and we must influence the public policy development in this country. In 2006 when Dick turned 90 years old, the UN Association in Vancouver of which he had served as the President, wanted to do something special. Together with our partners the idea of an annual lecture in social policy came into being. Dick with his wife Verna, equally influential in her own right, attended all the lectures until they passed away. Dick passed away after entering his 100th year in the fall of 2015. During the last few years we have been able to focus on a number of policy areas, close to Dick's heart, namely immigration, poverty eradication, human rights, pension reform, indigenous peoples of Canada and the need for reconciliation, homelessness, policies to protect children and advocate for them locally and globally, hunger and food security issues, and guaranteed annual income. Those of us who were privileged to know him personally or were his students know that he truly promoted the idea of public policy. It must include both economic and social policy. Economic development without social development will not bring equality and justice. No doubt in my mind that Dick would be thrilled to read the book by Seth Klein, our guest today and the approach he promotes to bring about social and economic development and the role of government when we are faced with the climate crisis. Dick's legacy will remain the way he was instrumental in shaping the Canadian social policy. Welcome everyone to the 14th annual Richard Beverly Splane lecture in social policy and discussions. Thank you. TIM STAINTON: Thank you, Patsy. We all remember Dick and Verna attended these lectures right up till I think his 99th year. They always had insightful questions to ask. We always honour their memory when we convene for this annual lecture. I would now like to introduce Professor Donna Baines who is the director of the UBC Vancouver school of social work. This is her first Splane lecture because the last one was scheduled to start three days after they declared the pandemic. We are very pleased to finally welcome Donna to the Splane lecture. DONNA BAINES: Thank you very much, Tim. I would like to echo a very warm welcome to everyone joining us here this evening for the annual Dick's Splane lecture. I am very glad to be here if only virtually. It is my very real pleasure to introduce our speaker for tonight, Mr. Seth Klein. Though I could use up all of my five-minute introduction listing all of his outstanding contributions to public, social and economic policy debates. I want to do something a little different. Seth has many accomplishments to his name and it can start to sound a bit like a very admirable but detached technical list 11 just reels them off one after another. I want to take the huge macro issues that sent links on and link them to the level of building an equitable and fair life and strong social movements that Seth always takes on. In other words, I want to do a thematic introduction. I only have time to focus on two themes , but I think there are many more in his work. Theme number one. Seth is a big thinker. In a world where issues can seem so overwhelming that we frequently focus on small-scale changes in micro-interventions, Seth reminds us that the local is inextricably linked to the global. And that the suffering we see among our fellow human beings today is shared by the planet and that we need to focus on both in order to achieve social justice for either. Set may not remember this , but I first met him in the 1980s when he was touring Canada as part of SAGE or students against global extinction. The youth peace movement of which we were both apart with caps SAGE is a very important segment of it was taking on the huge and overwhelming task of global nuclear disarmament. We took this on as committed young people so we could ensure we had the chance to live our lives and others had the chance to live their lives on this planet rather than sharing mutually assured nuclear I emphasize this early example
destruction. in his life because this big thinking about sharing the planet in creating the conditions under which we might all have a better and more secure future continued throughout Seth's career. And in many ways culminates in this lecture he will give tonight on how to build a marshal like plan to halt climate change and build a socially just and sustainable future for all. This overlaps with theme number two. We are now onto theme two of two . Seth is a joiner in builder. He helped found and build the very successful BC chapter of the Canadian centre for policy One of children -- Canada's strongest voices
alternatives. for fair and equitable public policy. He helped found in share -- serve as cochair of the BC public coalition. He helped found the next up a leadership program for young people committed to social and environmental .
justice And he has participated in numerous research studies, media and social activist events. Seth also publishes extensively in his writing invites us to think about how we can join and build a better, kinder, more inclusive and environmentally sustainable world. Seth forgets no one in these plans and provides us with a very real and achievable strategies and goals. On that thematic note, I would like to invite Seth Klein to share his very important current work on building a government land mass participation movement to mobilize Canada for climate and social justice. Thank you, Seth. SETH KLEIN: Good evening everyone. Thank you, Donna for that lovely introduction. Thank you Tim and Patsy. I am thrilled so many of you have joined us tonight on the Zoom. It looks like there is 150 of you , Zoom 50 notwithstanding. Thank you all for your interest. I am also joining you with gratitude from the unceded territories of Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations. . .. My thanks to the school of social work in public policy and global affairs and to the Vancouver branch of the United Nations Association. Just put a teaser out there , there are a couple of unexpected connections between Richard Splane and the story I want to share with you tonight but you will have to stick around for that. I will leave you in suspense on that score. Drawing upon my recent book, I'm going to give a 30-40 minute talk on how to mobilize Canada for the climate emergency. Given this invite emanates from the school of social work I went to particularly draw connections I see between the climate imperative and inequality in social justice and and I'm looking forward to a spirited discussion and Q&A. This is my book A Good War Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. It is my first book. It is my hope and believe that the book calls on us to adopt an entirely new and different approach to the climate crisis than the one we pursued to date. While I have endeavoured to tell the truth about the severity of the crisis we face, since releasing the book in September and the feedback that I have had people are also telling me they are The book's original twist, as the title suggests, is that the book is structured around lessons from the second world war. I was actually briefly a high school socialist teacher and one of the spinoff benefits for my book is that it has this potential to take the study of World War II relevant to people today linking as it does to our to today's
wartime experience existential challenge. That is what the climate crisis represents. If we fail to act quickly, then for the course of the rest of the century, things start to get grim. A world that is unlivable, catastrophic or many, uncomfortable for all others , and quite possibly, ungovernable. It is an ecological crisis but it is just as equally a human and social crisis. To put it in another way, and the lifespan of UBC's students, the claimant's emergency will be the defining issues of their lives. There is no small RNA to this framework that I am I too, wrestle with this war analogy.
invoking. As Donna alluded to, my own political activism started as a teacher in the peace and disarmament movement of the 1980s. I am the child of Vietnam War resistors. That is how I am Canadian. But now I'm strongly in the view, that climate breakdown requires a new mindset. It is to mobilize all of society and galvanize politics and remake our economy. Here is why. I am forever a CCPA person so there has got to be a chart here. I think we need a new approach because what we have been doing in response to the climate crisis thus far simply is not working. The chart shows Canada's greenhouse emissions going back 20 years. You can see it is plateaued line. Emissions are no longer climbing, but no longer they are also not in decline. Our missions are not in a path to save off a horrific future for our children, and we have run out of the clock and debates of incremental changes. Where it matters most, actual GHD omissions, we have a compass little. -- Accomplished little. Politics as they say, is all about compromise and art of the possible. But, there is no bargaining with the laws of nature. Nature is telling us something fierce. Here we all are, confronting this harrowing gap and what the sign says we must do and what our politics seems prepared to entertain. I did not
Interestingly, start off writing a war story. My book project started as an expiration story of how we can align politics and economy with Canada. The book is that. But, initially, I planted have a single chapter from the lessons from the second world war. I was intrigued by the second world war as a rapid economic chance termination.= nsof
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ma . I wanted to structure the entire book around wartime lessons. It is because that I see in this history, helpful, and hopeful reminder that we have done this before We have mobilized, cross
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mon e in society, and we have retooled our economy twice. Once it was to wrap up military, and it was all in a shoot few short years. In each chapter, it comes back and forth between time between what we did in the war and what we now face. In these comparisons, it answers questions. For example, how might it be galvanized again he mac what was the role of the government? How is social solidarity security across class, and race? What is the connection to inequality? How is national unity established? Can we successfully achieve that again? as we move off of fossil fuels? How did we marshal all of our resources to produce what was needed, and how it might we do that again? How do we pay for the transformation? Can we mobilize funds again? What supports were offered for returning soldiers and was there a model there furred fossil fuel workers today? What was the role of use and social movements then and now? Importantly, what most of the chapters look at is that a couple of the chapters look at the wars cautionary tales. It is the things that card that brought shame. Such as the poisoning of digital indigenous land. What were those things that we do not wish to repeat. Running through the book,
? is a question of what political leadership we require to see through challenges like this. There is a person that I make in the beginning. Despite Canada's war declaration in it is worth recalling, that as winter wore gather in the 1980s, the leaders and the public were reluctant to recognize what was ultimately necessary. Canada was on the cusp of being completely transformed by its second world war expense, yet right up to the 11th hour, our government and the rest of the public wanted to avoid being dragged into that fight. That is where we find ourselves today in the similar, awkward period. The summer before last, the federal government passes a law in the House of Commons one day, and re approves the pipeline expansion the next day. That is the dynamic that I call the new climate to nihilism. denialism. As from the second world war, the phony period is not going to last. This is one of the books important lessons. Emergencies, once recognized, transform society , transform social relations in the economy, and our leaders themselves. I find that when I published the book and I've centre for the final copy, and three days before the final lockdown. It was written before the pandemic. Now that we have had the year that we had, I found myself thinking about all of the comparisons between wartime normalization -- mobilization and epidemic that we now face. What is the alchemy of these moments. ? The combination of events and leadership that shifts leadership into emergency mode. If you set the Canadians in 1938 that this gang and Mackenzie King's government do they have it in them to completely transform Canadian society and economy as it was about to happen? I think many canes would not think this guy. Similarly, are there people that financed Canada and the Bank with the audacity to quickly pivot and create these
of Canada programs that we have seen? I probably would've not said would have said no. There was no unity in Canada in 1939. But, it came. It makes for an interesting contrast when we think of the Supreme Court decision on carbon pricing and temper tantrums from conservative premiums . Mackenzie King had to contend with some equally troublesome premiers. Many did not like him. But, something extraordinaire happens. In the war, all of those premiers chose to forfeit authority over individual corporate taxation for the federal grow government for the duration of the war. It is fascinating to see what is possible in an emergency. I think after 40 years , where the most insidious legacy is the sapping of our sense of possibility and imagination and our collective faith , and our capacity to undertake great tasks The pandemic has showed us
together. how quickly we can change our ways and how swiftly we can throughout the rulebook. In our sense of imagination it is restored. I want to share a story from the second world where war veteran in the book. Those who served overseas came back forever changed. Some of them drew lessons from there were extremes that motivated them to fight for peace and survival for the rest of their lives. They never stopped doing what they could to secure our collective future. When I was a teenage peace activist when I first met Donna in the 1980s, I had the great fortune of meeting some of those veterans. Including, some of this man this man. Gifford was raised in a passive household but as he watched fascism, he can be was convinced that Hitler had to be stopped. He became a navigator and flew 49 bombing raids. Gifford, and a handful of vets landed in Halifax when the Cold War nuclear arms race was in full swing. US President Ronald Reagan was talking about fighting and illuminating nuclear war. It was fearing for our future. It was not long until (unknown term) sprang up in Canada and grew up to 180 members. They attended member and stay ceremonies wearing white parades parades. He eventually became a university professor and became a director at Dalhousie University. He died in 1993. Those current events are not with us anymore. But, if they were, I have no doubt that they would be in this fight and marching with the student climate strikers. They really lead the way. They took lessons from the second world war and isn't it an odd coincidence that another RCF pilot with the name of Richard Splane, who like Gifford flew bombers in 19 and also became a Professor of Social Work and head of universityty of social work. He also devoted himself to the world Federalist and made nations United Nations. We must all mobilize and unite across borders in the face of civilizational threats. Since releasing my book in September, I've given a lot of talks I really get asked
. how I know if a government gets an emergency. I call this my four markers of when you note that the government has shifted into emergency mode. Here our is my four markers. In the Q&A, author in the chat as well. One, it spends what it takes to win. Two, it creates new economic institutions to get the job done. Three, it ships shifts from voluntary to mandatory measures as needed. Fourth, it tells the truth about the severity of the crisis and communicates a sense of urgency about the measures nurse necessary to combat it. The pandemic, the governments have mostly passed for markers. But for the climate emergency, neither our federal or provincial government or hitting any of those for markers. I want to export each of these indicators with you. As well as other things that I got from the extreme. In the book, I call this the battle plan for climate mobilization. It is a plan that outlines what it looks like to adopt an emergency mindset and what it takes to win. I won't go through all 14 points. So that first marker, spend what it takes to win. A benefit of an emergency mentality is that it forces governments out of a mindset. This year, a response of the COVD19 were emergency. GDP will raise from 30 to 50%. As a huge jump. At the end of the second world war, it was well over CD how
100%. was the minister and he oversaw the Canada military production and he saw this tenfold increase in government. He replied, if we lose the war, nothing will matter. To finance the war, the public had victory bonds . There was a cap on profits that the kind of profiteering that we've seen this pandemic was illegal in the second world war. finding it an unusually hopeful book notwithstanding the subject matter. I believe as we confront the climate emergency we are going to need to finance the transformation before us employing similar tools. Right now the federal government and provincial government on climate action, the spending on climate action and green infrastructure pales in comparison to both the war and the pandemic response. Let me give you one illustration. Since the first lockdown a year ago , the Bank of Canada has been buying up government securities, federal government securities in order to finance the emergency response to the tune of $5 billion a week. In contrast the Trudeau government is spending on climate about $5 billion a year. So the true do Trudeau and Horgan governments aren't spending a little less the nation and the base of the climate emergency. They are spending less by about a tenfold magnitude. Marker number two, create the economic institutions needed to get the job done. During the second world war starting from a base of virtually nothing, the Canadian economy in its labour force from data volume of military equipment that is simply jaw-dropping. During those six years Canada, with a population less than 1/3 of what it is today, produced 800,000 military vehicles, more than Germany, Italy and Japan combined. 6000 military aircraft ultimately billing building the fourth-largest militant Air Force in the world. Here in our province, we produced over 300 ships Again from a base of virtually nothing.
. I want to see if I can screen share one little picture for you. Hopefully you can see it. That is see CB how e checking in to see the 500,000 tj j
h military vehicle leave the assembly line just to give you a little taste. Remarkably, the Canadian government under his leadership established 28 Crown corporations in order to meet the supplying to support the war effort.
munitions He was seized with the task. He was no lefty, he was on the right wing of the Mackenzie King government. Made a lot of money in the private sector. He was in a hurry. Anytime the private sector quickly could not do what needed doing he would create another crown enterprise. He also undertook detailed economic planning to ensure wartime production was prioritized. For every key input, machine, tools, rubber, fuel, coal, steel you name it, they were carefully controlling and coordinating the supply chains in order to ensure that wartime prioritized.
production was Similarly, during this pandemic, I think we have witnessed the federal government create these audacious new programs like that emergency response benefit and the emergency wage subsidy with the speed few of us would've predicted. With response to the climate emergency, we have seen nothing of the sort. So in contrast to Howe s'swartime creations the tree to compliment Trudeau government has created ... And you know what the other one is, I hate to tell you but it's the trans Mountain pipeline Corporation. It is the one that makes us all the shared owners of a 60-year-old oil pipeline from Alberta to this province. If our government really saw the climate emergency as an emergency it would, like CD how did quickly conduct an inventory of all of our conversion needs and determine how many heat pumps, solar arrays, windfarms and electric buses we are going to need to electrify everything and and our reliance on fossil fuels and then it would establish a new generation of public corporations to ensure those items are manufactured and deployed at the requisite scale. Marc number three. Shipped from voluntary incentive-based policies to mandatory measures. I showed you that chart earlier. Why is it the best we have done is flatline? I think the major reason for that is if you survey all of our federal and provincial climate actions to date, you know what they almost all have in common? They are voluntary. We encourage change. We incentivize change. We offer rebates. We send price signals. What we have decidedly not done is required change. If we are going to meet the GHD targets we must now urgently need to hit we need to send clear new term dates which certain things will be required. For example, we would declare you would no longer be allowed to buy or sell a new fossil fuel burning vehicle as of 2025. We would mandate that all new buildings will not be permitted to use natural gas or fossil fuels for heating as of next year. We would ban advertising by fossil fuel vehicles and gas stations. That is how we would make clear this is serious. Marc number four, tell the truth and rally the public at every turn. As I said earlier, many assume at the outbreak of the second world war everyone understood the threat and was ready to rally. That is not true. Took leadership to mobilize the public. In frequency, tone, words and action, emergencies need to look, sound and feel like emergencies. The leaders we best remember from the second world war were the us outstanding communicators who were forthright with the public about the gravity of the crisis and still manage to impart hope and their messages were amplified by news media that no what set of history and wanted to be on buy-in arts and entertainment sector keen to rally the public. Similarly, we have all just lived through that this year. Where governments have modelled emergency communications through the pandemic. The messages are ubiquitous. We receive daily press briefings. We are regularly for public health officials. The media has taken seriously its duty to provide necessary information on a daily basis. Government leaders in the media have listened to science and health experts. None of that consistency and coherence, however, is present with respect to the climate emergency. When our governments don't act as if the situation was an emergency or worse when they sing contradictory messages by approving new fossil fuel infrastructure, they are effectively communicating to the public that it is not emergency. If our current leaders believe we face a climate emergency, we need to act and speak like to dam emergency. Name it, speak constantly about it and rally us at every turn. That's what you do in a crisis. Those are the four markers. Before a highlight mildness of discussion I want to highlight three other lessons. The fifth lesson is a thread that runs through my book. It is that inequality itself is taught to social mallet solidarity and socialization. There climate peers out there that say don't link the need for climate action to equality and social justice. Don't make it more complicated than it already is. It's hard enough to wait down. I think they are wrong. I think they're wrong for a few reasons. First because these issues are connected in many ways. The richer you are the higher your emissions. The poor you are the more vulnerable you are to climate change and more impacted you are by The second reason we need to link these issues of
climate policies. tackling climate with confronting inequality is because that is how we win. A successful mobilization requires that people make common cause across class, race and gender in that the public have confidence that sacrifices are being made by the rich as well as modest income people. Interesting, during the first will world war to go further back in history inequality... That some people sacrificing their lives what other people were making a killing with this grotesque profiteering. And so consequently at the outset of the second world war the king was aware of this and live through it. So he took bold steps to lessen inequality and limit excess profits. We saw do progressive taxes introduced during the war. The corporate tax rate went from 18 to 40% during the war. It did not stop there. They also brought in and excess profits tax. They went back to the four years, the depression years before the war 1936-39. For every industry they figured out the average profit during those four years and they sent every business in the land large and small that your annual limit until the war is over. So once people that limit, if the company hit that limit, their marginal tax rate went to 100%. Four saw the introduction on the flipside of Canada's first major income support programs. Unemployment insurance 1940. The family allowance 1944. That was not. The king government keen by the way to defend itself against rising threat through the CCF meet social welfare reform and a promise of a more equal and caring society a foundation of its postwar promise. Even as the early years of the war effort were underway, planning was already happening for postwar reconstruction. It was during the war that one of the country's most transformative social welfare plans was written. The report on Social Security and can no more commonly known as the Marsh Report. It was named for its lead author, economist Leonard Marsh with studied at the London School of economics under Sir William Beveridge. They wrote these landmark wartime reports that set out a new progressive social welfare vision for the respective countries. Marsh who was connected to the league for social reconstruction in some ways early incarnation of the CCPA proposed in his report that Canada adopt a comprehensive program of social security with enhanced unemployment benefits, transition support for returning soldiers, major public work projects to provide employment, child benefits, old age benefits, maternity leave benefits, health insurance. The whole architecture of the postwar welfare state during the war by Marsh
was written . The experience of collective mobilization we transform our society for generations even if the actual establishment of some of those programs did not materialize into a few years after the war. Here's what I want to return to my earlier There are two funny connections
teaser. to you folks, my hosts. Because after the war in 1947, Leonard Marsh came here to UBC School of Social Work where he remained until his retirement helping to educate a generation of postwar social workers in a province. Here is an additional connection, friends, it has to do once again for the man of whom this lecture is named. As I told you Richard Splane flew Lancaster bombers in World War II. After the war and completing his academic training he spent two decades in Ottawa as a senior civil servant implementing the many ideas in the March report not least the current creation of the Canada assistance plan before coming to UBC in 1973 the year after Marsh retired. The King government as soon as they got the Marsh report the integrated many of the ideas into the next speech from the throne understanding that to sustain a society wide mobilization it isn't enough to tell people to confront the threat across the sea. You have to make a pledge that the society people will come back to will look different and more just than the one they are leaving behind. The point in recalling all of this as we face today's threat and the need for mobilization is twofold. First, to appreciate how inequality serves as a barrier to cross society mobilization but second, to understand that effective mobilization isn't nearly about building more planes, tanks or today winter reminds her solar panels, requires policies that that we will better
Villa promise look after one another and offer good jobs and income supports and that people will be treated with dignity and fairness. When you are asking people to share in a great undertaking, that is how you keep everyone on the bus. I think those kinds of measures are going to be needed today and in fact they find a historic echo in the appeal of the green new deal and pulling that I conducted with abacus researchers as part of my researchers for the book drives home this point that when ambitious climate action is linked to tackling inequality, support for that bold climate action doesn't go down. It goes dramatically up. Lesson number seven. in any war, leaving no one behind. For this -- me it comes back down to the issue of jobs. In Canada today there are somewhere around 300,000 Canadians were directly employed in the fossil fuel industry. That is a lot of people. In the second world war, we were 1/3 of the population. Over 1 million population enlisted in military service. Even more were in ammunition production. Far more, then are employed in the fossil fuel industry today. After the war, all those people had to be recruited and trained up, and after the war, they had to be reintegrated into an economy. That required careful planning full stop the development of new programs … nearly doubling enrolment numbers and change the lives of thousands of people. The ambitions of those initiatives is a model for what a just transition should look like today for all those workers whose economic future is tied economic to fossil fuels. If we could do something that big in the second world war, this task today is difficult, but it is not nearly as hard. One of the solutions that I put in the book is a new federal transfer program called the climate transfer,. Something about $20-$40 billion a year. Unlike most transfers that transfer it based on population, we would transfer money based on a formula on greenhouse gas emissions. Alberta produces 30% of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. They get 38% of the money. But, we would not send it to Jason because he is not to be trusted on this. He would have all levels of government and first Nations in those provinces and put labour and business people on the board. We could have confidence that the money is being used for the transition for us and for retraining and apprenticeships and so on. We can create more jobs than we will be losing full stop . The final lesson, indigenous leadership , rights and title, are essential to winning. I want to tell you a story and never another road World War II veteran. There was the death of Louis Levi Oakes the last of the (unknown term) . I want this are you a screenshot here and a picture of him. It is interesting that the era Kwok confederacy of which the Mohawk remembers, also declared war on Germany. Oakes died a couple of years ago in the 1984.
eight Indigenous soldiers were tasked of communicating with their own language to have munication with military . Astonishingly, Oakes has not told his family what he has done in the war for seven decades. Only in his late 80s did he finally reveal what he had done. Then, Oakes was awarded with a metal t d al
e al
d . He was one of 17 code talkers and there were hundreds of others with. The secret codes employed with the Allies Medicaid plans Being broken Nazi and Japanese forces. The US Marines discovered that enemy forces were unable to crack (unknown term) full stop . .
. Like Mohawk and Cree and Ojibway. As I learned this, it struck me that there is a tragic irony in which our two countries have spent decades trying to raise indigenous language such as beating them out of It was the unbreakable
residential schools. code. pivot
It was If we fast forward to today, the same can be said about indigenous rights and titles. Our two countries were systematically abusing and violating it. In mainstream politics, dodges climate action over and over again. It is the assertion of indigenous rights and title. Buying us time to until larger politics comes into compliance with the signs. c nce.
ie Couple more thoughts until we open this up into discussion. As we rebuild from this pandemic, and ambitions o yu y
u s
u climate plan will be vital. We will use this experience and this opening it creates to catapult our societies into the post-carbon economy. It is to ensure that this pandemic is used as a portal or a gateway between one world and the next. Not to return to yesterday's normal with all of its unique equities and fossil fuels I want to note
reliance. difference between
the the pandemic and the crossroads moment. People talk about COVD19 fatigue and it is real. Some people have responded to my thesis and said I look how tired we are of emergency and now you are asking people to spend multiple years in emergency mode to target the climate crisis. Here's the distinction. The things we are called upon to do in terms of the pandemic, are about our social instincts. We are told to isolate, stay home, and that is hard. Good news about the climate mobilization, is that it calls us to do the opposite. It is to get out there and do something grand together. Like many of you, as we I read the scientific warnings, I am afraid. I am afraid of the state of the world that we are leaving our kids in. All of us that we take seriously these scientific realities wrestle with despair. We should be more honest about that. This is the ambiguous time in which we live. The truth is, we do not know if we are going to rise this challenge and win this fight and do what we have to do in time. Consider this, in the second world war, as I said earlier, in the population of the time of a million 11 million people, 1 million Canadians enlisted. Talk about mobilization. It is worth appreciating that those who rallied in Fascism likewise, did not know if they would win. We often forget that the war early years we do not know what the outcome was. We know how the outcome was, they did not. They surprised themselves what they were capable of achieving, not only on the battlefront, but the complete transformation on the home front too. That is the spirit that we need today. I will stop there. I look forward to your questions and some good discussion. PROFESSOR TIM STAINTON: Thank you Seth. There is a lot to discuss there. I am glad that we got to a decent amount of time. I really appreciated some of your stories and links . I found myself strangely thinking about my family. Maybe that is what we need to do. As luck would have it, my father was a navigator and Lancaster bomber during the second world war. I'm not sure how many else, but there were a lot of them. He came back to Canada that was hopeful, with exciting , and my father was a rare socialist in the Toronto suburb. Growing up in the latter part , was very exciting and there was an optimism generally that grew out of those changes that you talked about. I was also thinking about as I shared with the other panelists, as I had my first grandson today. It really brought this lecture home to me. I started to think what is the world going to be like when he is my age. Is there going to be a world? What legacy are we leaving for him. ? I kept feeling the lecture as much as hearing it, so thank you. SETH KLEIN: I'm so glad. I am glad that you felt it the way that you did. I am sure that you can appreciate this. As somebody who has spent 22 years in the seat CPA CP
C A writing reports, it was fun to write a book structured around a story that could try to speak to people's hearts. When I landed on the structure, I knew it was framed around the war, and I knew it was a good narrative device. I knew that it would jolted jolted my thinking of emergencies, and it has only been seven months and giving talks with the book that I have just been stunned at how remarkably resonant this 80 year old story remains. How many people and institutions continue to have this connection to that story and that the story lets me make mischief with fun ways with different audiences. You get to say to people that these are the people that you admired and what they did are important to your sense of legacy and purpose and here we are again my friends. Who do you want to be? PROFESSOR TIM STAINTON: One of the things that I love about the book is that it is helpful. It reminds us of what we can do as a nation. It makes you feel good about trying to do that. I think it has to happen because I don't think the science is going to get us there. Let me switch the head for a bit here. Then, I will move to some of the questions from our I am just wondering
audience. that we are in a very different world than postwar in terms of the globalization and the globalization capital and corporatism's. The sort of supernatural nature of corporate elites , inequality is now at a level that is just staggering. So, how do we deal with that and the issues of globalization in terms of … did you say governments have less power now than they did 50 years ago. SETH KLEIN: is a very good question. You're asking about the different world and about globalization and the economy. It is true in some way that governments have less power, and that is as I said earlier, in some ways it is less about concrete power and more about prevailing ideology. This was the point I was trying to make near the beginning about the most insidious legacy of neoliberalism. It is the sapping of our faith and capacity to do great things together through our public institution. On this question of whether or not of how we are such a different world now compared to then and with inequality and make social solidarity that much Yes and no Tim.
harder. Globalization makes some of this harder , and some of this easier. In some ways, what computers and data make possible today, boy, those were not time planners. This would have blown their mind. Our capacity to do economic planning given the technology we have today. In some ways, the technological challenge today is actually less. We need to mass-produce heat pumps and solar panels and wind turbines, those are all less complicated than military warships and airplanes. So, yes and no. Interestingly, the point I want to make and challenge you on, is the inequality thing. In fact, I might even show you a chart to make my point. Hang on one second. Let me see if I can find it. Can you see the start? We need to do something for all of those people. I want to put that number in perspective. This is the share of income going to the top 1% in the United Kingdom, US and Canada going back 100 years. We actually had the highest levels of inequality in the decades just before World War II. In fact, if you zero in on the Canadian line on that chart the year where we hit our peak of inequality measured as the share of income going to the top 1% was in 1938, the year before the war. So it is not true that we were more cohesive and united as we entered World War II. We were divided and unequal. But then, you see how the war jolts this of income for the next 30 years on those charts.
redistribution That is the point but the thing to appreciate out of this is we did not enter that mobilization with no social solidarity and more cohesiveness. That was forged in the doing of that great task TIM STAINTON:
together. Alright. That is very informative, thank you Seth. I'm going to try the best I can to curate the questions here. Scrolling through lips us … I read one earlier for Michael so I will paraphrase it. 's question was that the plan sounds very top-down. So what is the role of the bottom up , the activists and that thing. SETH KLEIN: There is a role in the book on the question of civil society. It remains my view that we are going to have to press our elected leaders to get into emergency mode. They are not going to do it. All evidence from the last number of years is that they will not do until we force them their. Begin the chapter with the famous line from FDR in the 30s when he met with a bunch of labour and social movement leaders who were telling them what had to happen and he ends the meeting by saying you convince me that go out there and make me do it. I think we will have to make them do it. I interviewed many politicians and political insiders for the book as part of the research. I was not interested in interviewing climate deniers. I only wanted to interview political leaders who I thought actually get it, understand the science and yet whose governments or political parties are not pursuing an agenda that aligns with what the science says we have to do. I wanted to press them on why. In one form or another they all fell back on some variant of the rejoinder. Well, you have to meet the public with her at and the public is not there at. That line I kept getting because I commissioned this well, poll from Abacus. It wasn't true. I found a Canadian public that was ahead of our politics both in terms of seeing and understanding the crisis and their willingness to accept both -- bold climate private lessees. -- Policies. I do think on the climate policies we are somewhat different than we were back then and less differential to authority to a certain extent so it is going have to be different. Here is where wrestle in the book. It is my view that to achieve what we now must achieve this decade at the speed and scale that we now have to achieve it, it has to be state led. I also think it's possible to do this in a different way. Interestingly, extension two extinction rebellion has as one of their key demands the use of citizen assemblies. I think they are right. I would love to see the widespread use of citizen assemblies how we as we figure out how to achieve our target. Canada needs to reduce its emissions by 60% in 2030. But how we achieve that in achieving that an adjustment their way is an open question. I was would love to CSU citizen assemblies as one form of creative public engagement to figure out the best path forward and the one with the most by and one people would more willingly accept . TIM STAINTON: I have another question from an anonymous attendee. I will just read it. With governments hoping COVID is receding, the talks increasingly turn to balancing the budget in spite of the evidence that job creation and economic growth from climate emergency action. This seems to vote poorly for the massive climate effort that is required, how do you see the situation? SETH KLEIN: Another good question. There is some who worry having spent as much as we have in this pandemic, now we have no money. That is why I made my earlier point which is debt to GDP maybe 50% this year with all the COVID spending , it is still less than half of what it was at the end of the second world War. And may I remind you that we finish the second world war with the debt to GDP ratio well over 100%. That did not spell economic ruin. It presaged 30 year period of the strongest economic performance we have ever known. I actually think the lesson out of the pandemic and the one all of us need to make sure rises to the fore is what the government and the Bank of Canada has shown us this year is what was possible all along. If and when we see emergencies. All these years when we were told there wasn't the money there for the climate emergency or poverty or homelessness, it was there all along and the Bank of Canada, in particular, and this extraordinary capacity chose not to employ until this year to finance a huge amount of that themselves. They are doing that to the tune of 300 billion this year. I don't think we need to do that every year for What I say in the book is if we really want to finance a green new deal climate emergency plan we should be spending about 100 billion a year for the next 10 years. Can we afford that? Absolutely we can through a combination of the Bank of Canada and buying securities and selling green Victory bonds and new forms of progressive taxation and wealth taxation. Many of which , I outline a whole bunch of them in one chapter in the book. It is absolutely affordable. TIM STAINTON: Thanks, Seth. We have a question – like many audience members here this evening, I am wondering what can be done to change the Canadian government's mindset so that politicians treat the climate crisis is an actual or like that, how can we do this? Some ways I feel like the COVID experience helps a
SETH KLEIN: little bit because it shows what is possible in the speed by which we can change. This is the challenge that is being posed in this question, right? The curse of climate relative to COVID in the war is that it moves in slow motion. And, therefore, governments are able to kick the can down the road and leave it to the next gang. And all governments of all political stripes are still suffering through the legacy of neoliberalism. That serves as a kind of straitjacket onto our thinking and our ability to do what we need to do. There is also the influence of the fossil fuel industry itself and government efforts to appease them. This is a political project now to mobilize. The good news is , I think, I want to remind us all what kind of momentum was building right up until the pandemic hit A year and half ago
. we had a student led climate strike day with 1 million people on the streets in Canada. The largest single day of protests in Canadian history. A few months after that we had across the country these remarkable solidarity actions in support of the land defenders. None of us had seen anything like that in her lifetime. That was the momentum that was building in that momentum found will .
expression The clearly one majority and minority Parliament and were climate was, I would say one if not the dominant issues in that debate. The challenge now to recapture that momentum that was building and we were close. There are these social scientists who have this , they have done this survey of successful peaceful social mobilizations around the world and across history and they find this metric number that if a social mobilization sees 3.5% of the population actively engaged its success becomes virtually assured. We have not hit 3 1/2% again but we are getting close. We all have to figure out how to get that shape whether it's protests, for some people it's peaceful , disobedience or divestment or what have you but we have to make it a defining issue. TIM STAINTON: And maybe just to paraphrase another question to follow up on that. Do you think COVID is going to help in that endeavour that this albeit tenuous solidarity that we have seen through COVID do you think that can be leveraged in the climate struggle? SETH KLEIN: Like I was saying, they are both helpful and unhelpful lessons people may draw from this experience. I believe that on balance the lessons we will draw and the changes that have occurred through this pandemic are helpful. We emerge from it with more social solidarity than I think we have seen in a generation. More cooperation politically across parties and across the country. No respect for science and scientists and some new appreciation for the role and value of the role of government and public services. And the pressing need for government led investment to restore employment. These are all key ingredients as we now turn our attention to the climate emergency. TIM STAINTON: We have a question from Craig. I wonder if you have been following the new Bidens administration messaging and proposed infrastructure. Do you think the US may be poised to take the emergency of the climate seriously? SETH KLEIN: First of all, I love that you're using my four For me they become markers by which to assess any
markers. political parties plan on climate are no federal or provincial plan or municipal plan or institutional plan by the way. could use the four markers to assess its
UBC climate emergency plan. To your question, when I heard of Biden's executive orders after he took office the first thing I did was apply the four markers. It is remarkable, I would say. The US has gone from being this laggard under trumpet and made us look great to catapulting way over our head. Is the Biden administration proposing to spend what it takes to win? They are actually. Biden's election platform he talked about spending $2 trillion over four years. Were half a trillion a year. Convert that to Canada by dividing by 10, our economy is about the 10th of the size. Its 50 billion a year. I told you earlier Trudeau is spending 5 billion a year. Biden is spending way more. Are they creating new institutions to get the job done? Yes, they are. Most exciting, I thought, was a proposal right out of the pages of my book for a citizen climate core kind of modelled under this green new deal plan. Are they moving from voluntary to mandatory measures? They are. The dates are still off but Biden is talking about 100% electrification of the grid or renewal – renewable energy by 2035. That is pretty good. And most importantly perhaps he is telling the truth. He is actually saying that these industries are going to have to be wound down over the next 20-30 years and we have not had a prime minister or a Premier who is been forthright that way in our country. TIM STAINTON: Just switching back and forth from the chat to the questions and Charles, another navigator that. They are everywhere. We have the entire squadron here. I did not see your question because we would like to see your question and have it on here. It is one of the best friends a gift Gifford as well. SETH KLEIN: it is about moving forward from involuntary to voluntary action. I think that is quite right. Here's why I think it is important. One of the challenges that we face … we have all experienced this to a certain extent in the pandemic, and people want to do the right thing. But they do not want to be a chump, and it irks them that if they do the right thing, what is the point of me doing the right thing if my neighbour is not. That is the thing about making things mandatory, you do not have to worry about your neighbour. Your neighbour will have no choice, he has to do it too. That is why we say we need these things with a combination of policy, care and,nd sticks/ . The carrots are income supports, targeted to martyrs income family es
i where they need assistance and where we need to provide It is a bit of both, but there is
that assistance. no getting around the need for mandatory. The reason I harp on the need for these new corporations , if you are not creating new Crown corporations, the best we can do is try to incentivize somebody else to do what is needed instead of just doing the job ourselves. There is a lot of good that the government has done in the pandemic, but what are the real mess ups in the part of Trudeau is that unlike the UK and Australia, he did not re-create a Crown corporation to mass-produce vaccines. In the absence of that, we are forever dependent on somebody else to to meet our needs. Is the same that would for climate. PROFESSOR TIM STAINTON: Thank you. There is a question from Gordon that I thought was interesting. What is your views on the growth as a vehicle to tackle climate crisis. ? I wonder what you think and how far we have to move away from a growth-based economic and can we continue growing population wise , let alone sustain a growth-based economic system? SETH KLEIN: we definitely need to be using fewer resources. My take on this is a bit more nuanced. I am much more interested in the question of distribution then de-growth overall. I think we definitely need a lot less useless consumerism , and there are some people in our society and some people in our world who do more of that. There are some people who consume far too much , and some people who do not consume as much as they need. The richest 1% of the world have about the same omissions as the bottom half I am much more
of humanity. just in the question of redistribution in terms of nationally and internationally than I am in population or a growth per se. I also think that when we mention what is economic growth in terms of economic activity, I think that the task ahead of us the next 10 to 20 years as we retool our economy and so on, is so great and the investment that is going to be needed in private sector that it is probably going to be on net positive in terms of GDP. I want to say this as well, . Part of the idea of the new green deal is that it is about a rebalancing. It is a rebalancing of what we pay for our on our own and what we do together. I think some people feel so much pleasure to make money because we are worried about our kids and paying for their daycare and post secondary education and our parent eldercare and retirement and all of the stuff. Underlying all of the social infrastructure in the green new deal, is saying to people, all that anxiety you feel about making enough money to pay for childcare, do not where we are going to get To pay for your kids post secondary, chill out, we're
together. going to do that together. For your own retirement, relax, we're going to that together. It is rebalancing of what we do together and in that rebalancing, we will all feel the need to make less , have less disposable income , and a little more time , and to shift our priorities. That was true by the way in the war in terms of rationing . People in some ways had to spend less and yet, remember that some of the best years of their lives. They engaged in a collective endeavour. PROFESSOR TIM STAINTON: I think that is a great point in terms of how do you shift that balance and of course, diverge and marsh you don't have to worry about retirement . Once Fascism and the other liberals took effect, all of a sudden all of these folks never worried about it because they had been told it had been taken care of. All of a sudden, this or to worry about it. I think this created a lot of distress with the government. To get back to Dick, the Canada systems plan it allowed us to develop through the 70s . It was not perfect, but it was a pretty reasonable safety net that allowed us to live our lives instead of just obsessing over finances. SETH KLEIN: you see in the chart that I showed you earlier. In the question of jobs that we were talking about earlier, I am convinced that when we get serious about this and spend what we have to take and create an instant we will produce more jobs in the fossil fuel industry.
, Will all those new jobs pay six-figure salaries or wages that people in the oil patch they have expect? Probably not. But nor do they need to, not when we have rebalanced this way. PROFESSOR TIM STAINTON: The last question will go to Victoria. Then we will go back to the ground. Aside from typical things such as using reusable bags, recycling, and similar things, what can I as a university student due to bring about powerful change? SETH KLEIN: that is a great question. Reasonable bag and those things are important. They are in devise a mobilizing for the climate emergency in the war, is that they are both inherently collective enterprises. They need to be state lead. What we need to those individual things and change how we get around and fuel swap our homes, the most urgent task is the political task. Victoria, who is a student, you are already leading it. I feel such gratitude for the student led climate mobilizations that we have seen in the last two years. The global student led climate strikes have shifted the terrain of political opinion and culture and possibility. It is played out locally to. For example, I am a little biased in this story, but we do not have a federal or federal government with a real climate emergency plan. My wife introduced the climate motion a few years ago and it was not just symbolic. Vancouver, unlike the province and the country said that no new buildings will be able to use natural gas for space and water heating as a next year. It is driving 50% of the Vancouver emissions over the next decade. That is real. Here's about the politics. These passed unanimously. Even though some of us who lived in mac over know that we have some weird political split and no local party has It is not like the old days, it is real politics.
a majority. They passed unanimously, how is that possible? I would say that my wife is really good at her job, but she would say, that they are unanimous because of people like Victoria. Each time those. And, a whole bunch of students, particularly high school students, skip school and rally outside to speak before a council and filled the galleries . They watched each vote and basically made it politically impossible for even the conservative counsellors to vote no. You did that. That is a great model for the rest of the country. I can see that we are out of time. Let me just say one final thing. I am going to spend the next few years like all of you trying to animate these ideas and move them forward. I actually have a new initiative that I'm going to lunch called the climate emergency unit with the David Suzuki Institute. We are going to try to build mobilization for these ideas and we have our not gotten our website up and running. Hopefully when I have that you can share with the registrant's time. .
im
T Let me bring up the point of your family and his I suspect unless there is somebody very old,
connections. none of us here were alive in World War II. I think the people who stuck out and talked with this have an appreciation for history about this and a lot of us have watched films about the war. That is what the Netflix dreams are telling us. I suspect that there is a question in your head and it is this. What would I have done if I have lived then and there? Maybe a lot of UBC students have thought of these kinds of things. Today, as the future of our children thrown into doubt and another civilizational problem arrives at our dough step orstep. The answer the question is whenever we are ready to do that now. KRISTA: PROFESSOR TIM STAINTON: Thank you Seth it has been very informative Like you said in the beginning,
. it is night c ce
i to hear an optimistic mission. that we can do this without the world ending. Some of the questions and then the comments, one of the things that gives me hope, is that I grew up in a generation where it was University since protesting in the love that. The high school kids are incredible now. That is one of the more hopeful signs as well. Somehow, in this neoliberal aroma madness madness, we are raising a great generation of kids who are going to leave this. ad this. Your intellectual leadership is appreciated by me, and by all our guest tonight. Most have hung in for an hour and 1/2 . That speaks volumes . I would like to thank our partners . Patsy George, who is always tireless and always working on this lecture. and numerous others social justice issues. Lindsay Marsh and Joelle , we could not have done this without you this year, the technology is gone remarkably smoothly for someone who is technically challenge. A big shout out to the school of public policy and global affairs. I would just remind everyone that if you want more, we will be posting the talk the link is in the chat function. But also in your registration there should have been information around how you can go out and purchase The Good War . Encourage you all to do that. I really look forward to welcoming you all back hopefully live and in person for next year's Splane lecture. Once again , virtually everyone can do the clap thing on the – we do not have our reactions buttons. Seth, imagine 102 clapping things on the thing. That was fabulous. Thank you again for your time, thoughts and leadership on this. Look forward to The Good War .
