Earlier this month, I ripped into the B.C. government’s TV advertising blitz. Since the ads continue to run during prime time – gobbling up taxpayers’ money to boost the image of an unpopular premier on the eve of the election campaign – I figure it’s fair game for me to return to the theme.

Watching the main TV ad again – you know, the one with the line of black dominoes falling all across the world but getting stopped in its tracks by a tall and immovable white domino – I was reminded that it wasn’t just the deceit and cynicism of the ads that bothered me. It’s also their, well, provincialism. Their myopia.

Snapshot of a government of British Columbia ad currently making the rounds on T.V.

Here’s the thing – the idea that B.C. could or should stand apart from a world in crisis is deeply immoral. In the year 2013 there is no more time for a sauve qui peut mentality in politics. The reason the world has reached this point of economic and ecological crisis is because this attitude of every man for himself, every economy for itself, every province for itself has been elevated to a sacrosanct principle for too long.

The only hope for the long term survival of our species and millions of other species already threatened with extinction due to our degradation of the planet’s ecosystems is the reassertion of collective, cooperative values against this rampant cult of selfishness. In our world today, there is no avoiding what happens in our global line of dominoes.

Under Christy Clark and the BC Liberals’s tenure, B.C. has effectively ditched, or at least ignored, the greenhouse gas reductions commitments the previous Liberal premier Gordon Campbell passed into law. Clark has shifted her rhetorical and policy focus to opening up more mining projects, more gas plays (areas targeted for exploration by oil and gas companies), more pipeline and tanker infrastructure – all to open up export markets.

In this, Clark is merely carrying forward the interests of wealth and economic power in this province. The scramble to dig up, extract and sell B.C. natural abundance is part of a global phenomenon which Michael T. Klare documents in his new book The Race for What’s Left. It’s a very sobering read. Klare describes an irrational yet relentless worldwide process and convincingly argues that the only solution is a rapid reorganization of our priorities as a global society.

“As the race for what’s left gains momentum, it will intrude with greater force into world affairs, threatening the survival of animal species, local communities, giant corporations, and entire nations… Only if we abandon the race altogether, focusing instead on developing renewable resources and maximizing efficiency, can we hope to avoid calamity on a global scale,” writes Klare.

What Klare is advocating makes perfect sense, but among other things it will require a 180 degree turn in the dominant political ethics; it will require the extension of empathy to the entire global community.

The opposition BC NDP has made a very deliberate point of taking the moral high ground when it comes to personal attacks in politics. This is well enough. It highlights the absurdity of a premier who makes much of stopping bullying in our schools, while attempting to cling to power by resorting to personal insults and negative ad campaigns against her opponent.

The risk of treating political opponents with more personal empathy is that the principle of avoiding ad hominem gets confused with avoiding sharp political criticism – too often in politics everything gets toned down into mushy, centrist platitudes.

The solution is to actually name the systems at work behind the platitudinous politicians, and to insult, attack and belittle the systemic sources of injustice – unchecked corporate power, neo-liberalism and neo-colonialism. More empathy for our fellow humans, less empathy for the inhuman, heartless prerogatives of money and its accumulation.

The challenge of our times is to take this greater level of empathy for other people and expand it to a planetary level. It’s not just about our family, it’s not just about our province – it’s about our planet.

Like anti-bullying, global awareness is something we all understand we have to teach our kids in school. As adults, even during election campaigns, we need to think globally and act locally.

This might sound utopian, but it’s the only realistic hope we have for a livable and decent future. Humanity’s dominoes will stand or fall together.