A Poet at City Hall

Did you catch Jim Flaherty’s cheap shots at municipal politicians? The Federal Finance Minister called them “whiners.” And as far as his surplus helping out the locals the Honourable Minister notes that he is not in the “pothole business.” We’ll assume that this statement reflects Flaherty’s interest in bigger issues such as denying global warming and ignoring the alarming levels of child poverty in Canada.

Perhaps the former Harrisite should read URBAN MELTDOWN - Cities, Climate Change and Politics as Usual by City of Ottawa politician and poet Clive Doucet.

Disconnections

Doucet talks a lot about “disconnections” in the book. Flaherty, I suppose, could be the poster boy to illustrate the disconnect between city governments and national politics and the gap between government and the people. We can’t continue sailing when there is a fundamental disconnection between “those on the bridge and those in the engine room.”

The Problem

That disconnection has a lot to do with what Doucet perceives the public wants - which isn’t what they are getting from governments. Governments have created global warming by “treating the planet’s biosphere like a vast sewer.”

Doucet argues that we have the knowledge to address the issues. The problem is our politics.

For example, the trend to “just in time delivery” has lead us to building warehouse districts rather than cities. Road construction and maintenance needed to accommodate cars and the kind of new development that gets approved now takes up one quarter to one half of municipal budgets. Municipal candidates get financial support from the development community. See the connections?

We are in big trouble.

“The Rise of Cities and Decline of the Planet”

Eighty percent (80%) of greenhouse gases that are “cooking the planet” are created by cities.

Doucet goes back to ancient Rome to draw a parallel of the collapse of that advanced civilization to what could face us today. Rome came down not by military defeat or economic problems but political problems “like rotten stitching coming out of an old baseball.”

We’ll suffer the same fate unless we develop the political capacity to respond to our environmental and social challenges.

Solutions

In a general way Doucet sees the reclamation of our citizenship as a key. We have to begin to see ourselves as a “sharer” of our planet rather than an occupier.

He advances some fairly specific ideas that assume political reform is a priority. Local government “by default” will be “the key to braking global warming.

We need more Clive Doucets on municipal councils before that happens. And we’ll need to reform campaign funding to keep development money out of city halls.

Go to http://capitalward.typepad.com/urban_meltdown/ for more on Doucet's ideas.