Post-Peak Oil and Maritime Secession (First union, then secession.)

The iconic painting "Horse and Train" (1954), by Canadian artist Alex Colville, can be viewed as a meta-statement about our unfolding, post-Peak Oil epoch. Will industrial civilization clash with nature or will it not? Is there an alternative to the seemingly pre-ordained collision? What does one do when confronted with the terrible incentive to see clearly? Or do we apprehensively enter an era for the NAmerican secessionist wherein, The bravest horse is the one that is blind, to quote a Greek proverb?

Mr. Colville's inspiration for the painting came from two lines of poetry by Roy Campbell:

The Novacadia Alliance has morphed into existence via the meeting of two separate and seemingly autonomous initiatives: the flawed and abandoned independent candidacy of Sebastian Ronin in the Canadian federal riding of Central Nova in Nova Scotia, and the secessionist political foundation for the New England region laid out by The Second Vermont Republic. In tandem with SVR, philosophical encouragement and support has come from The Middlebury Institute. The Situation, Opportunity and Action Pages, May 2007 - March 2008, for Mr. Ronin's independent candidacy can be found under Archives in the Resources Page.

The founding of this political organization is dedicated to Michael C. Ruppert. Thank you for your courage and for the map, but the map is not the territory and now it is time to step into and onto the territory. We all have our own personal Rubicons to cross, assess the information and evidence at hand, and assume responsibility accordingly. Once having crossed the point of no return, it is then necessary to smash the boats and cooking utensils, leaving us only to fight where we stand. For this organization, the stance is taken in Novacadia.

May God's speed (however one understands that) be with us all. We will need it. To loop back into the metaphor of the blind horse and the responsibilities that must be taken on, if faith isn't blind, then it isn't faith.

How to Get In Touch

Feel free to visit the dedicated blog for this initiative. The blog posts are listed in chronological order dating back to May 2007 and dealing mostly with Sebastian Ronin's now-abandoned independent candidacy. If nothing else, the posts offer the reader a partial snapshot of the Novacadia Alliance's birth pangs. There is also a Facebook group called Novacadia Network. To find out how to get involved, please jump over to the Action Page. Anyone wishing to contact us by email may do so here.

Radio Interview with Sebastian Ronin

One-hour radio interview with Sebastian Ronin conducted by former New Hampshire Senator, Burt Cohen, on Post-Peak Oil and Regional Secession. It was broadcast on March 27, 2008 on Portsmouth Community Radio and re-broadcast on April 3, 2008 on the Progressive Radio Network. Note that the interview took place prior to the politically necessary identity transition for this organization from the Atlantica Alliance to the Novacadia Alliance. Click to listen: Track 1 Track 2 (Requires Windows Media Player)

Mark your calendars!!! The Third North American Secessionist Convention hosted by The Middlebury Institute,  Manchester, New Hampshire (home of the State motto "Live Free or Die"), November 14-16, 2008. Sebastian Ronin will be the Guest Speaker at the convention, speaking on: "Post-Peak Oil and Regional Secession: Historical Crisis Opens a Twenty Year Window of Opportunity."

Map of Novacadia, 1702

Novacadia Alliance Mission Statement

(Map of Novacadia, 2008-2030)

"As you grow older you will find that day follows day and

there does not seem much change in you, till suddenly you

hear people talking of you as an old man. It is the same

with an age in history; day follows day, and there does not

seem to be much change, till all of a sudden it turns out that

the age has become old. It is finished; it is passé." - Leo Tolstoy

Peak Oil, global warming, climate chaos and global overpopulation are inter-related givens. These are our times. In spite of what is claimed by befuddled flat-earthers, the Maritime and Canadian publics are of one opinion that the environment is the number one concern. In short time, the public will also come to the realization that concern over the economy is not secondary to concern over the environment, but primary. The pending political slogan, “It’s the ecology, stupid,” is tantamount.

The mainstream political parties have followed suit to the public’s concerns. Over the last several years, these parties have fallen over themselves to develop Green policies, ranging from the banal to the ludicrous. Wisdom, courage and leadership have been betrayed by electoral spin for political favour and self-preservation. The Kyoto Protocol was too late by at least 25 years.

What all parties, the Green Party inclusive, hold in common re their differing environmental policies is a common philosophical premise. It is the premise that an ecological catastrophe and related social hardships can be averted by endorsing their particular environmental platform. This position is a misperception. It is a political falsehood. It is a lie.

All political parties, except one, can be relatively forgiven for not being more forthright with the public and charting a courageous and realistic course to tackle the challenges and dimensions of true eco-politics for the coming century. The governing Conservatives can be forgiven for a philosophical and moral blindness bordering on the insane. The Liberals can be forgiven for attaching themselves onto anything that might possibly translate into power and privilege. The NDP can be forgiven for being historically irrelevant. The party that cannot be forgiven for its timid and narrow political stance is the Green Party.

Global warming is now firmly rooted in the public consciousness, but it is merely one of three factors constituting the socio-political triad of industrial civilization’s collapse. The other two points of this triad are Peak Oil and global overpopulation. To deny this interrelated triad of global transition relegates mainstream politicians as pre-Copernican monks mumbling into their beards the empty platitudes of an earth-centered and false heliocentricity. It is a simple fact that Peak Oil and global overpopulation have never been brought into public discourse by our political parties.

The one party that may have been in a position to take a definitive stance, the Green Party, has betrayed and abandoned its core principles and responsibility by pandering to short-sighted, politically-correct and opportunistic drool. The comfort of being a taxpayer-subsidized lobby group with well-intentioned hand-wringing and save-the-world philosophical myopia serves no concrete political utility. By virtue of gutting the core principles of political decentralization and recognition of continental bioregions for purposes of secession, Green policies beg to be thwarted and co-opted by parliamentary shell games and bureaucratic self-interests. In a severe and paradoxical twist, this leaves the Green Party as the most irresponsible, least trustworthy and most deceptive of all for addressing the political challenges of a Post-Peak Oil world.

Being situated at the historic turning point of Peak Oil, The Novacadia Alliance recognizes that industrial civilization is not merely in decline, but that it has entered the end-game. It is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that a civilization has outstripped its energy foundations, outlived its institutional purposes, and collapsed.

As such, The Novacadia Alliance acknowledges the following:

• Burdened with non-sustainable energy carrying capacities and gargantuan institutional complexities, the United States and Canada will implode upon themselves and dissolve as nation states during the current century;

• Regional jurisdictional survival and societal re-invention trump vacant political posturing, and that the political vacuum spawned by the latter states-of-affair begs to be filled;

• In the American New England and Canadian Maritime regions, the optimum size for undertaking the latter post-industrial political, economic and cultural re-invention encompasses the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island and the American states of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Recognizing the historical primacy and necessity of decentralization and secession, as forces inherent in the age of Post-Peak Oil, The Novacadia Alliance proposes the creation of a new Maritime political party to embark on such mandate called The Novacadia Independence Party. Optional party membership for American citizens has been written into the party's draft bylaws, taking the legal entity of a North American political party with dual-nationality membership to exciting and uncharted legal territory. The Draft Constitution and Bylaws are put forward in good faith for consideration, discussion, modification and eventual ratification.

North American regional secessions are the natural political counterpart to the "powerdown" era of Post-Peak Oil. The fusion of two seemingly divergent historical events delivers the necessary conditions and opportunity to spawn a truly unique political hybrid for our age. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed founding of The Novacadia Independence Party would make it the first political party in North America to be founded strictly upon the recognition of the ecological, economic, social and political premises, and related institutional devolutions, of the Post-Peak Oil era.

For comments and feedback, the Mission Statement has been published in two parts at the complimentary blog for this site.

To see how to become involved in the ratification of the Draft Constitution and Bylaws of the Novacadia Independence Party, please go to the Action Page.

Novacadia Alliance Support Organizations

Second Vermont Republic

The Middlebury Institute

Support Us. Receive a "complimentary" Eagle or Wolf, hand-crafted walking stick/cane with a minimum donation of $150. A great compliment for the secessionist personality type to strut his/her stuff. See details here.