Progress

(Vor le blogue, Progrès, pour la version française.)

Thursday night, 12th February, the members of the Green Party in the Pontiac riding chose Colin Griffiths, me, as their candidate.  This is both an honour and humbling.  It is also enormously satisfying to be chosen.  It is something I have worked towards for the last several years, and finally it is realized!

It is an honour because the Green banner needs to be carried, loud and tall.  There are just too few years left for the world, as well as in me, to ensure a continued, sustainable existence for the planet.  I only hope that I can cogently succeed in representing the Party in this campaign.

It is humbling, because of the challenge it means to me.  I have not run for parliament before.  There are things to be done, places to go, and people to be met.  It will be tiring and exhausting for a younger man, let alone someone of my years.  We will put our nose to the grindstone and trust that it will stay in place.

I cannot do this alone.  Help from the greens in the Pontiac and further afield will be essential.  I am going into this not expecting to win, but planning to run a campaign as though we will.  I see no reason to be a "poteau" running just to have a green candidate on the ballot.  The green party platform will be, if I can do anything about it, forcefully and stridently presented to the voting public.  I feel very strongly that the GPC platform is the only platform of all the federal parties that has any chance of ensuring a sustainable future.

In particular, we need to ensure that the word sustainable is correctly understood.  Given that we live in finite world, the idea that sustainable means continual, ever increasing growth in our economy is an idiocy.

No, sustainable, has to mean doing tomorrow what we did yesterday.  Any resources we use must be 100% recyclable and reusable, else we cannot do today what we did yesterday, nor be able to do again tomorrow what we did today.  That is sustainability.  Absolutely no long term waste.

A key corollary of this, is that we cannot afford to mine much more out of the earth.  Basically because we will run out and then what?  Unless we are ready for the limit, we will hit it so hard that society will collapse.  Our civilization will cease to exist.  Rather than planning for that eventuality, let us plan for a sustainable future, in which our civilization will continue to flourish.  The green party message is not therefore one of armageddon, but of hope.  Any other solution, particularly those of the PCs Liberals and NDPs will lead to disaster, unless this fundamental finite limit is made integral too their policies.  Right now it isn.  So if you really value the future for your grandchildren, the only vote you can place is for the greens.

I guess I may also have to learn how not to ramble on...