What will the folk songs be about circa 2080?

Some of you might know that I sing an a group called the Greater Moncton Chorale. I have no formal training but as the son of a Baptist minister was raised singing in church choirs and I also took piano lessons for a couple of years and taught myself how to play an old clarinet when I was 10 or so.

The choir director loves to select old folksy songs from this region and beyond. They include songs about the perils of fishing, mining, living in Cape Breton, being forced to move from your home because of a lack of work, etc. This spring we are singing a medley of songs adapted from old folk tunes from western Pennsylvania. One talks about the dangers of building the railroad - a guy dies of exhaustion. Another of an immigrant who was so poor he couldn’t find a wife as the women wanted a ‘freeholder’. “Down in a coalmine” is a lament on the challenges of being a coal miner likening it to being a sailor. And another is variation on that old spiritual “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” about the hardness of life but that a better worlds lies beyond the Jordan River.

I was thinking recently about what the folk singers in 2080 will be lamenting about our time. Will they lament the carpal tunnel syndrome from working at our keyboards? Will they decry the wind turbines for as far as the eye can see? Will the young women lament men’s preoccupation with video games?

My wife uses the phrase “First World problems” a lot these days.

One thing is for sure. The tolerance for heavy and dangerous industrial activity is essentially over, unless you consider the visual pollution from wind turbines dangerous industrial activity.

I have some concern that people are growing even less willing to accept industrial activities that are seen by them to be a nuance. I am following the growing outcry against the green hydrogen industry in Newfoundland very closely. A hundred years ago a forestry company would come into a small Newfoundland town and promise a couple of hundred jobs or so if they were able to cut down all the surrounding trees and put a factory that belched effluent in the town. These factories were welcome with open arms.

Now, as the population in these communities has a median age of 50+ and nearly half the adult population is retired or close to retirement, along with 20%+ of income coming directly from government, the attitude has changed.

Now a firm comes in and wants to put up 100-200 wind turbines - no tree cutting, almost no environmental footprint other than the obvious visual one - and some (many?) are pushing back. One guy put a realistic visual showing a tiny town with wind turbines in everyone’s backyard.

Newfoundland has some of the best ‘wind’ in the world. It is a true natural and renewable resource. It could be harnessed to bring in millions of dollars in tax revenue every year and support hundreds of high paying jobs in this rural areas, but - watch out- the anti-develop machine is grinding full out.

We have come a long way from women worrying every day their man might not come up from that coal mine to I don’t want to look over the horizon and see wind turbines.

As my wife might say “First World problem”.

But I’ll say this. For those that believe their communities will continue to chug along without any economic development other than rising government spending (OAS, CPP, EI, etc.), there could be a reckoning at some point soon.

It is possible that other parts of Canada will attract the economic activity - copper mines, mills, turbines, SMRs, green hydrogen plants, etc. and allow a share of the proceeds of their effort to be shipped to rural Atlantic Canada to pay for doctors, teachers, road maintenance, etc.

It’s possible.

But I would say another alternative outcome is not so rosy. For those who “just want to be left alone” and are pushing back against just about any kind of development, there could be a different future coming.

In 2080, what will the folk songs say?