Renewable energy co-ops can revitalize Northern communities.(BIOMASS)

After three decades of deregulation, tax cuts, and privatization (the "free trade" policies originally touted by Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Brian Mulroney as the economic model for lasting prosperity and jobs), the chickens have come home to roost. These Wild West policies of unfettered trade actively encouraged the greed and rampant speculation in the financial, commodity and real estate markets that in turn caused the recent collapse of the global economic system.

Now, the very governments that supported these free trade policies are scrambling to bail out their CEO friends and industries that lobbied to remove the yoke of government from their necks. The injustice is not lost on taxpayers and the unemployed.

Like the opening line in the classic Dickens' novel, A Tale of Two Cities, it is the best of times and the worst of times. The bad news is obvious.

We are not only facing the most severe economic challenge since the Great Depression, but the clock is also ticking on two other simmering crises - peak oil and climate chaos.

The good news is not in the newspaper headlines or on the television news. While global corporations were living high on the hog, millions of people all over the world were quietly working away at co-operative solutions to these challenges.

As the globalized economy leaves more and more people behind, communities all over the world have identified opportunities to meet their needs by working together.

There are thousands of examples of local co-operative initiatives, from credit unions in India, fair trade coffee growers in Nicaragua, industrial worker co-ops in Argentina, renewable energy co-ops in Denmark, and forestry co-ops in Canada.

When you add all of these local projects together, the worldwide impact of the co-operative model is impressive:

* In 1994, the United Nations estimated that the livelihood of nearly 3 billion people, or half of the world's population, was made secure through co-operative enterprises.

* Over 800 million people in over 100 countries worldwide are members of co-operatives.

* Co-operatives provide over 100 million jobs around the world, 20% more than multinational enterprises.

* There are 132,000 co-operative enterprises in the European Union, with 100 million members and 2.3 million employees.

* Canada has over 9,500 co-operatives and credit unions, with combined assets of approximately $300 billion, employing over 155,000 people.

* Quebec, a province that has had co-operative friendly policies for decades, accounts for almost 40 percent of all co-operatives in Canada, and nearly 50 percent of co-op jobs.

The principles and values of co-operatives provide a positive, democratic alternative to the winner-take-all business ethos favoured by mainstream economists. The table below provides a comparison between the values of the competitive "free market", and the co-operative "fair market".

These co-operative values are driving a renewable energy revolution that holds the promise to dig ourselves out of the mess we're in.

And, across Northern Ontario, people are realizing that the solutions required for the survival of their communities lay in their own creative collaboration.

For a number of years, small groups of people across Ontario have been working together to bring renewable energy projects to their communities.

And, by joining together through organizations like the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association and the Ontario Co-operative Association, they have been lobbying the provincial government to introduce legislation that will encourage local, co-operative, community-owned renewable energy businesses.

With the recent introduction of the The Green Energy Act, it looks like their efforts are about to pay off.

If the Ontario Power Authority gets it right, the new "Feed-in Tariffs" (based on the German and Danish models that encouraged exponential growth in local, community-owned renewable energy projects) will unleash hundreds of wind, biomass, small scale hydro, and solar energy projects across Ontario.

It is an exciting time for local communities to take control over their futures by using the co-operative structure.

And generating electricity and heat from renewable energy sources is an idea whose time has come.

By RUSS CHRISTIANSON

For Northern Ontario Business

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