11 International Consequences
Resistance
to "saving the Peace" from the rest of Canada seems understandable. We all swim in the capitalist whirlpool. We value
competition. We fight for limited resources. We are nostalgic for
past ages of huge manufactories and mega construction projects. We
still believe in the Myth of Progress. We believe our civilization is
superior, no matter how limited our experience of other cultures and
other civilizations.
But we
have to wake up to the fact that our backwardness, our failure to
embrace international laws about human rights, indigenous rights,
environmental protection will make us pariahs. We will become targets
in an international community which
will use tried techniques including trade boycotts to remind us of
our duty to fellow humans and to our shared environment. You may have
heard, how a large section of America is resisting further pipelines
across American territory? Or how Indian nations in the Dakotas are
resisting a pipeline across their reservation lands? Or how large
rich countries like China refuse to take our lectures on human rights
without shining the mirror back at us? We are behind the times,
behind much of the rest of the world in our attitudes towards
industry, resource extraction, pollution, renewable energy, indigenous and human
rights.
The world is a web of interconnections. All of us will
experience negative consequences because of our failure to learn and
to adapt.
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