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February 11, 2008 Relying on the "Security and Prosperity Partnership" google news alert for updates is kind of like fishing. Sometimes you hook a prize-winner, like this article on the recent Mexican anti-NAFTA protests by Katie Kohlstedt, or a recent news hit on the NDP's anti-SPP tour out of the University of Calgary's Gauntlet magazine. More often than not you end up reading some American libertarian's blog about the mythical "Amero" -- a thus far fictional common currency proposed by right-wing think tanks like the Fraser Institute and Council on Foreign Relations -- that you can safely toss back into the ocean of less useful information. But every now and then an SPP hit pulls up something you weren't expecting but that is nonetheless rewarding. A Walrus magazine article this month, for instance, briefly references the SPP at the beginning but only as a way to introduce what author and Walrus editor Ken Alexander feels is a bigger failing of current Canadian environmental policy in a post-9/11 world. "Whereas a short decade ago the past propelled many to act in a coordinated fashion, in North America today we exist in a fearful, greedy present, and broad consensual agreements are less and less likely," he writes in his essay. "Here, it is all about growth and homeland security, about Osama bin Laden poling a gondola up Ottawa’s Rideau Canal or down Washington’s Potomac. And judging by the surge of venture capital investments in surveillance and emergency response companies, it is about private security against global warming. Rather than deal with the issue, our new modus operandi is to build safe havens, fortresses against the gathering storms. Like terrorism, if the environment is hostile to our interests it must be defended against, if not subdued." Linking Baird's recent trip to the international climate conference in Bali with a few oil executives from the tar sands, Alexander writes that: "Canada has made a decision: to rebuff those pesky Europeans, and to provide energy security to the U.S. Continentalism, finally, under the US umbrella, where Canada will thrive — the UN and its attempts at world government be damned." To read the full Walrus article, click here.
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