LETTITOR

 

 

The Other Press is now on Twitter!

Follow us to stay up-to-date with what's happening at the paper, Douglas College, and around town!

twitter.com/TheOtherPress

 

 

 

 

=

 

Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand

Liam Britten

editor in chief

espite Barack Obama’s best

efforts, front-runner Chi City will

not be hosting the 2016 Summer
Olympics. Instead, it will be headed to
South America for the first time ever when
Rio de Janeiro hosts the XX XI Olympiad
in Brazil’s second city.

And for clarity’s sake, by “best
efforts,” I mean he touched down in
Copenhagen, gave the IOC the whole
“hope, etc.” spiel and then bailed. Do
something half-assed? Yes, he can!

But I digress.

It’s remarkable that a country like
Brazil is hosting the Games considering
the history these games have with the
developed world. China has already hosted
the Games, Russia will host them in 2014
(although the U.S.S.R. hosted the games
in 1980) and Brazil is just two years after
them.

What this proves is something we
already know: the world is changing, and
it’s changing nowhere faster than in the
BRIC countries: Brazil, Russia, India
and China. These are the countries that
are most likely to sit at the big kid’s table
within our lifetimes and become leaders
and superpowers.

That is, if they aren’t superpowers
already; with room only to grow, the BRIC
countries already hold 40 per cent of the
world’s population, 25 per cent of its dry
land and the size of their economies are all
within the top 12 on the planet. Leading
investment company Goldman Sachs has
predicted that by 2050, the BRICs will
have the four largest economies on the
planet.

Although, if Goldman Sachs could
predict this 2050 world economic shakeup
with such bloody clarity, you’d think
they could manage to predict the world
economic shakeup that happened last year.
Way to go, “leading” investment company.

Again, I digress.

The point is, these are the countries
we need to make peace with and become
chummy with. That doesn’t sound too
hard since we’ve always been on fairly
good terms with the BRICs here in Canada
(except for that whole “Cold War” snafu
with Russia). The real problem isn’t
going to be the BRICs, it’s going to be a
weakened United States.

The US is a massive consumer society,
and that consumption on their end has
allowed Canada to thrive. They’re still
our best customer, buying around 85
per cent of what we produce. But if the
real action isn’t in the US anymore, if
they lose the ability to purchase that 90
per cent long term, that means Canada
has to start shipping the exports that
power our economy somewhere else; and
unfortunately, the places where the action
will be are either across an ocean or in a
different hemisphere or both.

And that means the costs of doing
business go way beyond fuelling up a
semi truck and hauling a bunch of logs to
Washington State. It means the resources
we ship are going to be a hell of a lot more
expensive to the buyers in Asia or South
America than what could be gained locally.
I really doubt that Brazilian developers
are going to give a damn about cutting
down the entire rainforest if they can
avoid spending money on high-priced
Canadian lumber when they build the cities
of tomorrow. The resources are there in
Asia and South America, so we need to
think about how Canada can survive in the
economic long term if the US suddenly
goes on a decades-long cold streak against
the emerging BRICs.

But you have a paper to read; once
again, I digress.

Your friend in high fidelity,
Liam Britten

Editor in chief

The Other Press