NAmerican secessionists are agreed that the NAmerican secessionist movement is a consequence of, and response to, the collapse of the American Empire. This view is only a partial, though important, analysis of the secessionist phenomenon. A wider perspective incorporates the collapse of industrial civilization, which is global in scope and, of which the United States is but one player, albeit the central player.
We live in an age that encompasses a colossal contradiction. On the one hand, there is the corporatist and technocratic thrust for globalization and a purported New World Order. On the other hand, there is the interrelated dynamic of empire collapse. Both tendencies stem from a diminishing supply of and access to cheap energy resources as evidenced by the imminent arrival of Peak Oil.
Both of these historical events, although diametrically opposed as political templates, are one and the same of a greater whole. The latent collapse of industrial civilization is the mirror image of the seemingly desperate and brutal grasp at the creation of a technocratic fascist state. It does not require a degree in rocket science to conclude that not both of these global tendencies can succeed. A clash of perceptions, of values and of political wills is inevitable. It is proposed that the balance of the 21st century will be the timeline for this clash.
In Canada, the mainstream political parties, relative to their own philosophies, have taken up the call for environmental concerns only while neglecting the other elements of the historical mix, in particular, the imminent arrival of Peak Oil. Over the last several years, these parties have fallen over themselves to develop Green policies, ranging from the banal to the ludicrous. Wisdom, courage and leadership have been betrayed by electoral spin for political favour and self-preservation. The Bilderberg orchestrated Kyoto Protocol was too late by at least 25 years.
What all parties, the Green Party inclusive, hold in common re their differing environmental policies is a common philosophical premise. It is the premise that an ecological catastrophe and related social hardships can be averted by endorsing their particular environmental platform. This position is a misperception. It is a political falsehood. It is a smoke screen. It is a lie.
All political parties, except one, can be relatively forgiven for not being more forthright with the public and charting a courageous and realistic course to tackle the challenges and dimensions of true eco-politics for the coming century. The governing Conservatives can be forgiven for a philosophical and moral blindness bordering on the insane. The Liberals can be forgiven for attaching themselves onto anything that might possibly translate into power and privilege. The NDP can be forgiven for being historically irrelevant. The party that cannot be forgiven for its timid and narrow political stance is the Green Party.
Global warming is now firmly rooted in the public consciousness, but it is merely one of three factors constituting the socio-political triad of industrial civilization’s collapse. The other two points of this triad are Peak Oil and global overpopulation. To deny this interrelated triad of global transition relegates mainstream politicians as pre-Copernican monks mumbling into their beards the empty platitudes of an earth-centered and false heliocentricity. It is a simple fact that Peak Oil and global overpopulation have never been brought into public discourse by our political parties.
The one party that may have been in a position to take a definitive stance, the Green Party, has betrayed and abandoned its core principles and responsibility by pandering to short-sighted, politically-correct and opportunistic drool. The comfort of being a taxpayer-subsidized lobby group with well-intentioned hand-wringing and save-the-world philosophical myopia serves no concrete political utility. By virtue of gutting the core principles of political decentralization and recognition of continental bioregions for purposes of secession, Green policies beg to be thwarted and co-opted by parliamentary shell games and bureaucratic self-interests. In a severe and paradoxical twist, this leaves the Green Party as the most irresponsible, least trustworthy and most deceptive of all for addressing the political challenges of a Post-Peak Oil world.
Being situated at the historic turning point of Peak Oil, The Novacadia Alliance recognizes that industrial civilization is not merely in decline, but that it has entered the end-game. It is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that a civilization has outstripped its energy foundations, outlived its institutional purposes, and collapsed.
As such, The Novacadia Alliance acknowledges the following:
- Burdened with non-sustainable energy carrying capacities and gargantuan institutional complexities, the United States and Canada will implode upon themselves and dissolve as nation states during the current century;
- Regional jurisdictional survival and societal re-invention trump vacant political posturing, and that the political vacuum spawned by the latter states-of-affair begs to be filled;
- In the American New England and Canadian Maritime regions, the optimum size for undertaking the latter post-industrial political, economic and cultural re-invention encompasses the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island and the American states of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.
Recognizing the historical primacy and necessity of decentralization and secession, as forces inherent in the age of Post-Peak Oil, The Novacadia Alliance proposes the creation of a new Maritime political party to embark on such mandate called The Novacadia Independence Party. Optional party membership for American citizens has been written into the party's draft bylaws, taking the legal entity of a North American political party with dual-nationality membership to exciting and uncharted legal territory. The Draft Constitution and Bylaws are put forward in good faith for consideration, discussion, modification and eventual ratification.
North American regional secessions are the natural political counterpart to the "powerdown" era of Post-Peak Oil. The fusion of two seemingly divergent historical events delivers the necessary conditions and opportunity to spawn a truly unique political hybrid for our age. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed founding of The Novacadia Independence Party would make it the first political party in North America to be founded strictly upon the recognition of the ecological, economic, social and political premises, and related institutional devolutions, of the Post-Peak Oil era.