The Greed North

A 75-word story in Time magazine last week that the world will be unlivable in 2100.  No biggie. Just a spot item, between something about Donald Trump and the new phone.

And according to yesterday's LA Times http://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-arctic/ Exxon and Imperial Oil knew man-made climate change was real in 1991, and factored it in, when they thought about Arctic drilling.  How ice would affect shipping, and melting permafrost would twist the pipe.

Who will buy the oil in 2101, if all the drivers are dead?

When it turns out that what was imperative about the arctic was leaving it the fuck alone.

"I did, and he did."

In the summer of 1972, at a meeting with Jack McClelland (after the Royal Commission on Book Publishing was finished), I told him that I had a book I wanted to write on the Arctic. I gave him the basics. He said, "You write the book, and I'll publish it," I did, and he did. McClelland & Stewart published The Arctic Imperative in quality paperback in the spring of 1973.

— Richard Rohmer, Generally Speaking, p. 526 

Arctic Imperative is a chore. You start feeling like you'll know less at the end than you did at the beginning. The submarines and giant planes are the easy part. The eight identical chapters about who wants to lay pipe might as well be a baby slapping a keyboard with its hands.

— Chris Kelly, email to Stanley Whyte and Brian Busby, 6 June 2015

The Arctic Imperative is unlike any other book I’ve read. It repeats itself and it contradicts itself. It has no structure, yet moves forward with purpose. A failure, true, but it does intrigue. Just how did Rohmer do it?

Here’s my theory:

The Arctic Imperative is composed of information gleaned from press releases, newspaper clippings and the occasional note to self. This goes some way in explaining the curious formality. Richard Nixon is “Mr. Nixon”, Jean Chrétien is “Mr. Chretien [sic]” and the “Vancouver firm of F.F. Stanley and Co. Ltd.” work with “Tremblay, Heroux and Associates of Montreal, consulting engineers.”

See: The Globe and Mail Style Guide.

The reason that there’s no order is because clippings have no real order. Categorization is in the brain of the beholder and chronology becomes skewed because news isn’t always breaking. Consider how long “J.M. Douglas of Parry Sound, H.J. Kliener of Hamilton, and E.J. Smith of Burlington” worked on the X-Mac before it made the paper. Consider too the amusing Dennis the Menace strip that appeared in that same edition.

Dennis the Menace is set aside, but the clippings used as reference are given equal weight. Nothing is irrelevant and no detail is too small, which is how we learn of “a diplomatic note to the United States in 1971 on the instigation of David Anderson, member [sic] of Parliament for Esqumalt-Saanich. That note was delivered on August 18. 1971, and tabled in the House of Commons in April, 1972.”

How else do we explain The Arctic Imperative?

After his pitch, Rohmer had mere months to write the book.

It was imperative.

Three closing notes:

Where politicians are mentioned by name – “the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Stanfield”, for example – Pierre Trudeau is referred to only as “the Prime Minister”. His name never appears. I suggest this is no accident.

Rohmer’s “Canadian beaver” and ever-present “American eagle” appear here as the “Canadian mouse” and the “American elephant”. Republicans take note.

I was astonished – no exaggeration – to discover that my copy is a second printing.

The Arctic. Imperative!

So now that I've confronted and defeated the monster that is The Arctic Imperative, I am at a loss as to how to approach writing about it.  Some ideas:

1. Consider the vagueness of the argument.  Chris has done a great job on this and there is nothing I can add other than this book is a log line ("The Arctic and its resources present challenges for Canada as the country moves ahead considering how to balance the development and extraction of those resources in relation to the environment, the economy, the Native Peoples and its international obligations") turned into a manifesto/screed/impassioned plea for action whose point is sometimes so elusive it's hard to figure out what he's trying to say.

2. Consider the title.  Brian addresses this well in a comment - it's a great ersatz Ludlum title (or do I mean Don Pendleton?), but he never convinces you it's something even he has a grasp on.  Is it a monster?  Is it urgent?  Is it a call to arms?  On one page he speaks of getting control "of"  and "over"  it.  Maybe I'll let him define it like so:  "...bring the Arctic Imperative under the firm guidance and control of Canada.  It is imperative.".   So it's imperative to bring the imperative under control.  Got it.

3. Consider it in the context of when it was written.  I think it'd be somewhat mean to pull a lot of the projections about the future to show how wrong they were.  I was tempted, for example, when he spoke about how scarce oil would be by the 1990s. But hey - I'm a nice guy.  He was just using data and predictions that everyone else was at the time.

4. Consider the alternatives.  Now I love a good new idea for the use of nuclear subs as much as the next guy (as long as the next guy is Chris),  but beyond that lovely fantasy, it seems rather glaring that never once does the idea arise that maybe, just maybe, we should be looking at alternatives to oil?  When the supply of oil is seen to be dwindling in the early 1970s, all the energy and thought goes into how we can find more.  The solution is never finding an alternative, but rather how to deal with getting more oil out of the Arctic and down to market.  Really - did it not occur to at least include a sentence or two on relieving our dependence on it?

5. Consider his style.  Okay, so I direct you back to Chris's great post about the use of the monster metaphor, and it's nice to see these fictional style flourishes start to appear (pointing towards the fiction he will soon write that will one day lead to the existence of this blog), but by and large, he writes far too much like a lawyer.  Too many words are spent telling us endless details about business dealings, the technical side of the oil industry, the workings of government policy.  Not that it's not necessary, but there should have been a kindly editor telling him to summarize more and cut down on the specifics.  An example: in one sentence we get references to "Imperial Oil Limited", "Panarctic Oil Limited" and "Gulf Petroleum Limited".  Lose the "Limited" - everyone assumes the companies are properly incorporated and the colloquial always reads better.

6. Consider this as an act of self-justification.  In the middle of the book, we get a "told you so" interlude wherein we hear that the Mid-Canada Development report submitted to the Government fell on deaf ears.  Rohmer seems to get himself into a lather about this, and has to drive home the point that if only they'd listened then he wouldn't have to be telling you this now. I could be wrong - perhaps he's in a snit about it.  I do have the hardest time distinguishing between someone in a lather about something and someone in a snit over the same thing.

7. Consider pulling quotes out of context and attributing totally false non-sequitur descriptions to them: "But what is clear is that with a relatively short span of time there can emerge an enormous demand for "big-inch" pipe"- from his review of Boogie Nights.

Three Things Learned Through The Arctic Imperative

The Arctic Imperative, p. 65

1) If ever in the market for a polar icebreaker do not hire Oy Wartsila Ab. The firm has no concept of client confidentiality.

2) Richard Rohmer would've made a crummy spy.

3) There is no end to his self-plagiarism.

Generally Speaking, p. 360

Subs. Arctic.

Do you think Rohmer saw himself as a one-man think tank? A sort of lone wolf version of the Heritage Foundation or the American Petroleum Institute? Maybe the purpose of books like The Arctic Imperative and The Green North was to create some kind of intellectual foundation for "drill here/drill now... put the oil on blimps... make a law that only Canadians can buy stock in the companies"?

What I'm not getting is what's in it for Rohmer or the reader.

It feels like the book exists to be waved around by an MP.  "I have in my hands an exhaustive study by one of Canada's foremost experts that says we have to take action now!" And that's why it's so repetitive... to achieve waving girth.

Giant nuclear submarine oil tankers, though.

I want to give it a D-, because I think it's a prop for a political con game, like a report that says climate change needs more study, but just for the giant nuclear submarine oil tankers I'm upping it to a D.

Canada is at a crossroads just as the United States is

Okay, so, The Arctic Imperative is a book I’ve finished.  Stan? Brian?

I don’t really remember the Energy Crisis in the ‘70s.  We were already living in the cabin and heating with wood.  (And by heating, I mean “hardly heating at all.”) We were already in the habit of buying $2 worth of gas instead of filling the tank.  But I guess the crisis was a big deal to other people.  I remember a TV special called “WE WILL FREEZE IN THE DARK” and I remember that sounded like a bad thing.

I tried reading The Arctic Imperative in that context.

Nope.  The “imperative” part of The Arctic Imperative could be “It’s imperative that we kill the monster from The Thing” and this would still be a dry, repetitive, pedantic book.

Actually, wait.  A “monster” is one of the metaphorical things that Richard Rohmer actually says the Arctic Imperative is. 

… the Arctic Imperative is truly a monster out-of-hand.

The Arctic Imperative is very much alive, it is very much a monster, and it is very much out of Canada’s control.

A slumbering, frozen giant… capable of either gripping Canada by its economic throat or, if controlled, of giving Canada a guiding hand into a prosperous future.

… the slumbering Arctic resource giant was ready to leave its womb of ice and rock.

The great resource giant of the Canadian Arctic sleeps no longer.  It is wide-awake, growing rapidly.  It is undisciplined, uncontrolled, and uncoordinated.  It must be taken in hand and moulded by clearly defined national policies and goals designed to benefit all Canadians. (Last Lines)

And that’s not the only powerful action language in The Arctic Imperative:

The United States is just entering the foothills of a mountainous range of energy shortages.

Canada is at a crossroads just as the United States is.

The eyes of Canada gradually turned north to watch with growing alarm the passage of this juggernaut that the American elephant was shoving through the remote Arctic waters of the Canadian North.

Both the US and Canadian governments then began to withdraw to their respective lairs to wait for the next Arctic event to bring them forth in a nose-to-nose confrontation.

… the United States and Canada were locking horns…

… the local people were starting to flex their muscles and fight back the great steamroller.

The game of oil pipeline chess is still on and all bets should be left open.

… has Canada as a nation once again been just too stupid to be able to foresee what it is allowing to be done to it? It can’t be called rape because rape does not exist when consent is present.

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s when a clumsy monster rapes a sleepy giant at the mountainous crossroads.  That’s when all chess bets are off, and I start pushing elephants around with a steamroller.

And what's it all about, in the end?  What's Rohmer's point? Canada needs an energy policy, and the policy should be good for Canadian business.  

Why didn't he just say that?

Read Arctic

Report to follow. But I don't want to spoil it for anyone. What about you guys?

It's imperative!

The Arctic Imperative

40 pages in, let me report the following:

Number of chapters in the book:  18

Number of chapters that end with the line "It is imperative":  8

Housekeeping

Brian, we/you have E.P. Taylor under 1978 in "the read" and 1982 in "the collection."  What will future scholars think?  And speaking of the collection, does Arctic Imperative feature the most haphazard paperback cover ever published? Did someone in the art department at M&S hate Richard Rohmer? And speaking of paperbacks and skulduggery, how come your old friends didn't know that the best of the Dusty Bookcase will soon be available in book form? We have to find out from the internet?