The paradox of growth and the promise of unsettled times: Canadian politics of the economy and the environment 1867-2017
Why this work is in the frame
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Why does economic growth persist as a primary policy objective of nation states that is pursued and overwhelmingly supported?Accumulating evidence indicates that after a certain point economic growth does not contribute to social wellbeing, and undermines global ecological integrity.The persistence of economic growth as a primary policy objective is a paradox.This paradox is an important research gap that demands explanation.Explaining this paradox is important because, unless we are able to explain why growth persists, policies cannot enable humanity to live in harmony with this finite Earth.The overarching purpose of this thesis is to explain the paradox of growth in Canadian federal politics.The study has four specific objectives: (1) to map the dominant belief system in Canadian federal politics 1867-2017, and show how the persistence of economic growth as part of that system is a paradox; (2) to develop a conceptual framework to understand how society and nature coevolve, and the role of belief systems in that coevolving relationship; (3) to use this framework to explain the persistence of economic growth in Canadian federal politics; and (4) to identify barriers and opportunities for how Canada can move towards an ecologically sustainable economy and ways of life.First, I use Canadian political manifestos (party platforms) to map the dominant belief system in Canadian federal politics 1867-2017, and to show how the evolution of ideas about economic growth and the environment is a paradox.This part reveals a surprising result: that Canadian political leaders have questioned growth much more than was previously thought, especially under the tenure of P.E.Trudeau during the 1970s.Second, I propose and develop a coevolutionary explanation for the paradox of growth in Canadian politics.I propose the novel Emergent Coevolutionary Framework, an integrative way to understand society-nature relationships that is grounded in critical realism.Next, I demonstrate in detail how this conceptual framework explains the story of growth in Canadian politics as a coevolutionary sequence of settled and unsettled times.Third, I provide a deeper analysis of settled and unsettled times to identify how Canada can move towards an ecologically sustainable economy and ways of life.Using extensive archival sources, I analyze Canadian politics of the environment and the economy during the critical period 1970-1982 as an example of an unsettled time.I show how Canada was at the forefront of environmental thinking and action in the 1970s, and identify the barriers and I would like to express my deep gratitude to Professor Peter G. Brown who introduced me to new ways of understanding the world and who supported me throughout this journey.His ideas, insight, and example provided much inspiration.I am indebted to Professor Jim Fyles, without whose supervision and support this research would not have been possible.He often surprised me with a question or comment that brought clarity or
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it