• Economy

    We look at the commercial economy as a subset of the entire wealth creation process and differentiate between the commercial economy and human well-being. more >

  • Environment

    We make the case for the necessity of a healthy environment, illustrate the decline of various elements of the environment and discuss the consequences and possible forecasts of environmental decline more >

  • Population

    Aspects of the population issue. We look at aging vs the real trend of demographic transition. We look at the population as not just a measure of the size of the market but as individuals living in a complex and interdependent world. Like consumption, population growth forever is illustrated as impossible and suicidal. We illustrate the human population cycles of the past and try and pinpoint our place on the current cycle. more >

  • Social Welfare

    Social welfare is the ability of a society to offer all of its citizens social services and a stable income that is sufficient enough to provide an adequate level of well-being. The level of social welfare and equality will be reflected in the levels of health and happiness of its citizens. We present many aspects of these issues and promote more comprehensive methods of well-being. more >

Towards a
Sustainable Society 

 

Please join our efforts to make Canada a social and environmental leader.   

Canada is continuing to pursue a course of non-stop growth through reckless resource exploitation, rapid population growth and increasing consumption.  These actions are done in the name of growing the economy.   The real world results of this antiquated mandate are rising carbon emissions, increasing public and private debt, loss of prime farmland plus growing debt and inequality. 

The size of the commercial economy has been placed ahead of the common good.  This approach is not sustainable environmentally, socially or fiscally either nationally or globally.  Infinite

growth is impossible on a finite planet.

What is the sustainable alternative?  

  • A much broader based economy 
  • A large number of stable green energy jobs spread throughout local communities
  • Much lower levels of pollution
  • Higher quality of life

Our national policy focus should be on developing human potential and maintaining our environmental assets rather than using our people as consumers and cheap labour to exhaust our resources as quickly as possible. 

The fast growing Canadian economy has produced:

  • The worst record of any industrialized nation for urbanization of farmland and carbon emissions growth  
  • Growth of inequality and debt
  • Decline of the middle class
  • high youth unemployment

The quality and variety of productive jobs is much larger in a broad-based, sustainable economy. Growth-at-any-cost comes with booms and busts while a sustainable economy offers high quality, stable jobs in the long term. 

Canada needs to change its focus from the pursuit of continued growth to investing in our people.  We need to produce a more equal society with declining numbers of working poor and a more extensive social safety net underwritten by fiscal balance.  We need to be clear that the welfare of our citizens and the health of our environment, rather than the size of the commercial economy, are what constitute the common good.


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Articles

  • Because of Covid-19, Governments Get Real

    “Models”, “ranges” and “worst case” are terms previously absent from political speeches. Along with these new terms, the pandemic has brought a new type of advisor to daises of leaders worldwide.

     

    Politicians are now being publicly guided by scientists in developing pandemic strategies. “Following the science” and “data based” are phrases which have tumbled from the most unlikely of lips. But public policy has clearly benefitted as the chemistry of science and imminent has elevated national leadership to the standards necessary to directly serve the public good.

  • The Pandemic Drives the Dawn of a New Enlightenment

    In the1600s people prayed harder, self-flagellated and burned witches to appease an obviously very angry God.  It appeared to the religious populations of Europe that the supreme deity had unleased miserable weather, crop failures, pestilence, famines, endless wars and widespread death to punish an unworthy humanity.

    Or so the societies of Europe were taught to believe.  But these beliefs began to come into question as ever greater acts of piety were performed to assuage past sins and move back into the good graces of the Almighty yet relief was not forthcoming.  Despite their renewed reverence and extreme sacrifices, the climate worsened and social conditions continued to deteriorate for people not just in Europe but around the globe as so well documented in Geoffrey Parker’s book “Global Crisis”.

  • Planet of the Humans Hurts Almost as Much as It Helps

    The pandemic has shown that humans can manage to have an adult conversation about an immediate threat. But we now need to apply our new skill to the vastly greater threat of climate change. By bringing that subject to the fore with so much impact Michael Moore’s latest movie, “Planet of the Humans”, has become a very important film. But it does a great disservice to the quality of the debate by leaving behind any kind of biophysical math and perspective simply to slam a “capitalist” system.

     

    The film ignores the immense body of research on the net energy produced by renewable energy systems, which uses the ratio of Energy Return on Energy Invested to describe their lifecycle viability. EROI is the core metric that sums up how well a society can prosper with its resources at hand. In the glory days of virgin oil fields, EROIs might have approached 100:1 with one barrel of oil (or equivalent) invested returning 100.

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