Showing all posts tagged Canada

In Culture, Environment, Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Politics, Relationships

A Renewable Human Future

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

I dream of a future that uses renewable energy and focuses on the needs of human beings. For a long time now, I’ve been searching for a way to state this dream in a simple, straightforward sentence. Finally, at long last, I think I’ve found it in this phrase: A renewable human future.

My heart pounds with excitement to realise that loads of other people are coming to the same dream, at the same time. For decades, so many of us have been disheartened and then outright enraged by the technofascist push toward generative AI with no regard for the cost to humanity through lost jobs and the deliberate destruction of the environment.

It’s easy to be pissed and hard to know where to start to fight back with something like this. Climate change is the key existential threat of our lifetime, as our planet is heating up and the oceans are boiling, but the elected leaders in charge of these regulations have caved to billionaire pressure and rolled back so many environmental protections.

So we despair and recycle and do what we can in our small corners of influence, while the only planet we have to live on falls apart around us due to greed and stupid decisions. But then came the data centre construction, and now it seems we’ve got a physical enemy to focus on. I can feel the uniting hatred for the billions of dollars being spent on these abhorrent and destructive buildings around the world, and I think it’s finally bringing us together.

In Canada, where I live, our Prime Minister Mark Carney made a big announcement on June 4th called AI for All. The outcry on Bluesky was swift and immediate. Canadians like me who loathe AI and want zero investment in it. CBC followed up with a story about how public trust in Canada is among the lowest in the world for AI and the companies who provide it.

Trust should be low when the product fucking sucks. Canadians are smart in this area. It’s enraging that our elected leaders are so out of touch when it comes to announcing this strategy for AI as though Canadian citizens will embrace this awful tech with open arms. Data centres use a shitload of water and electricity. They are loud and damaging to the earth. No one wants a data centre built near them. I don’t want them built at all.

My response to Mark Carney’s excited announcement on Bluesky read “I dream of elected leaders who actually listen to what the people who elected them want. NO AI. Please, don’t think about money for just a moment. How about human jobs for human beings. Renewable energy. A future where we can breathe and drink water and grow food in our soil. Please. NO AI.“

I followed that post up with a longer letter to the Prime Minister, the AI Minister, my local MP, and the Premier of my province. I was going to write twice, once to express my disdain for the AI for All policy, and once to express my opposition to the way the Liberal Government is quietly dismantling our environmental laws and protections, but then I realised these two issues are really one issue.

The fight to stop any more data centres from being built is the fight to save our environment, and do away with this chokehold the tech oligarchs have placed on society with forced use of AI. This fight is one of the biggest issues of our time, and it’s happening right now. We cannot wait. Our planet is in peril, and it’s the only place we have to live. Please, join us in this fight.

Get loud. Write to the officials in charge to say NO AI DATA CENTRES. Sign every petition you can find, like this one to halt the proposed Vancouver data centres, and this one to pause AI in BC schools. Wherever you live, search for petitions on data centres and sign them to send a message to elected officials. In Vancouver, people are taking to the streets to protest loudly, and I plan to join them.

It’s healthy not to trust those who lie to us. The technofascists have lied, again and again and again, so I will not trust them when they promise that these new data centres will be different. We don’t need AI. What we need is renewable energy to heal our ravaged planet, and a future that centres human beings and not company profits or chatbots. We need to prioritise our human lives over money and computers.

To me, the environment matters more than anything else. If my kids and their future kids cannot breathe clean air or drink clean water or grow food to eat in the soil, and if they have no access to inspiring work that celebrates humanity instead of robots, then they have no liveable future. It’s up to us, right now, to imagine and then build a future that we can be excited about.

One that is renewable and human. The time is now, and this work is urgent.

In Culture, Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Politics, Relationships

What World Do You Want to Live In?

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

We have an election in Canada on April 28, 2025. I vote in every election, because our vote is our voice, but this election feels so much bigger and more important than any previous federal or provincial vote. This month, I’m asking myself and others, “What world do you want to live in?”

The answer really matters. It goes way beyond aligning with a particular political party because you want a perceived tax break, or because you’ve historically identified with one party over another. In 2025, we are observing in real time what happens to a country when you vote for a person who dismantles the checks and balances to exert authoritarian control over individuals and systems.

I find the situation developing to the south to be terrifying. It feels like the end of days, like the freedom I’ve previously taken for granted is perilous and in constant danger of disappearing altogether. Every day, reading the news headlines is like watching the water level rise, until very soon I’ll be taking my last breath and the sea will be over my head.

I’m posting this a few days ahead of my usual schedule, because I want it to come out before Canadians go to the polls. I beg any person reading this to ask yourself, “What world do you want to live in?” One that remains the Canada that we know and recognise, which is admittedly not perfect, but still values freedom of the press, gun safety laws, public health, social services, diverse human rights, public school funding, and more? Or something that could slide alarmingly into the power hungry surveillance state that started an unnecessary trade war with Canada and continues to threaten our sovereignty as a country?

I know what my answer is. I’m for freedom, in all areas, and for all people. I keep thinking of how many times I’ve gone down the thought exercise road of wondering what I would have done in Germany in the mid-1930s if I’d been alive then. It’s horrifying to recognise and acknowledge that this is no longer a theoretical thought process. It’s now. It’s real.

I don’t want to live in a Canada that aligns itself with authoritarian governments and economies. I want to know that my rights and freedoms are not worth more than anyone else who lives in my country because we might have different skin colours or backgrounds or belief systems. I want a social care network that holds every individual, for none of us know when we might need that help. Freedom is worthless unless it belongs to every citizen of the nation. Otherwise it’s not real freedom.

In every bone of my body I’m longing for a world where we learn to care for everyone around us once again. Where we don’t prioritise our own safety and personal economic success above what other people might need to survive and flourish. Wouldn’t it be lovely to live in a world that believed it was a good and healthy practice to care for everyone in the community instead of just caring about ourselves and our immediate families?

That’s the dream I put into my novel Post Civ. And it’s what I’m dreaming about this month, as Canadians go to the polls to elect a new government. I hope desperately that government is a Liberal one, that will continue to stand up to the authoritarian threats we are facing from our nearest geographical neighbour. We need to consider history with this vote, and veer sharply away from any possibility that brings us closer to losing our freedom of choice and not caring about those who need help and support.

We are all Canadians, more alike than we are different. When voting, please consider the world you want to live in. Don’t gamble with your freedom or mine. Let’s stay united as a country, as far away from authoritarian rule as possible. Let’s remain the true north, strong and free, forever.

In Culture, Identity, Politics, Relationships

Elbows Up

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

The world feels like a total shit show right now. Since January 2025, when leadership (I’m using that word generously here) changed hands in the US, neighbourly relations between our two countries have sharply deteriorated.

We are known the world over for being polite. But being nice has its limits, and most Canadians have reached those limits by now.

My initial reaction to the tariffs and the threats of annexation was dismay. Then deep sadness and frustration. Now I’ve moved through those stages and into pure rage. I’m angry in my very bones. I feel offended and enraged that we have been targeted and provoked. And I know I’m not alone in this reaction.

This is our country, and we take our sovereignty seriously. When we travel internationally, we wear Canadian flags because we never want to be mistaken for Americans. We love being Canadian, and I take the actions of the current US administration to be acts of war. To me, this is serious business.

I have a lot of friends who live in the US, and I’ve reached out to several of them to tell them how I’m feeling. It helped me to talk it through with them. To hear their dismay and sadness and then anger. To know that on a personal level, we are not enemies, even while their political landscape attempts to turn us into adversaries.

As Mike Meyers said so well on SNL, for Canadians it’s time for “Elbows Up.” We live and breathe hockey since the time we are born, and elbows up means to protect yourself and be ready to fight back when your opponent throws down their gloves and readies for a brawl.

As a nation, we are ready. We will fight. We are angry now. Canadians have a long history of courage on the battlefield. We show up, we don’t back down, and we will fight to keep what’s ours and to not be pushed around.

There’s no sense wishing this wasn’t happening. It’s already underway. Pretending it’s a joke isn’t helpful. Along with many other Canadians, we are buying local and refusing to support the US in any way through travel or commerce. We are committed to growing our economy and sending the message that we will not be bullied, bought, or threatened.

The sense of betrayal we feel from America right now cannot be understated. I find it impossible to understand a majority of the country voting for this chaos, stress, horror, and hatred toward individuals and nations. The long term damage of what is happening here will have ripple effects for generations. When trust is broken, it takes a long time to repair, and it will never be the same.

As a country, our elbows are firmly up. Picking a fight with polite people doesn’t get you kindness in return. In this case, it gets you a show of strength.

Canada didn’t initiate this fight, but it sure as hell plans to finish it.