There’s an interesting word that is helpful to keep in mind in these troubled times: zeitgeist.
It’s no being hauled out in sympathy or support of the German people, who probably need it after Vice President Vance last week gave them (and the EU) a verbal pummelling, to their face, in a startlingly frank manner. But hey maybe any admiration of a Germanic word – no easy feat when everyday words sound like death threats – will be balm to the Teutonic wound.
The word zeitgeist means “the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.”
If any unifying statement can be made about this point in time, it is that zeitgeists are flying around like trailers in a tornado. We are trying to ascertain which are ‘good’ and which not; that is, what is our defining spirit in a time of possibly unprecedented rapid realignments? And this goes for almost everyone.
People are searching and struggling to place current events in new structures, and the challenge multiplies because they aren’t just new economic structures, they are value structures.
From Canada’s perspective, is it good or bad that Trump is forcing a re-evaluation of many facets of life that we’ve grown accustomed to? The way we deal with things – if it wasn’t effective, then what change should we pursue? Can we admit that Trump is the catalyst, or will neighbours hate us?
Take for example the drug problem in major Canadian cities. Let’s go with the most cartoonish example because the challenge is stark: cleaning up legendarily bad East Hastings/Downtown Eastside area of Vancouver. Last week, Vancouver’s mayor and Police Chief held a press conference to announce a new $5 million project to “dismantle organized crime networks and target criminals in the Downtown Eastside.”
The Chief acknowledged that these schemes have been tried before, but he feels really good about this one, because of a new sense of alignment: “I’ve been around a long time, and I will say that things ebb and flow with different levels of coordination and cooperation between the city and the police department…we’re probably the best I’ve ever seen it.”
Well, that’s excellent news, but: Past efforts like this have, as community organizers point out, simply driven the unwanted activity to other neighbourhoods such as Chinatown, Strathcona, and Gastown (the latter being a ten minute walk from the East Hastings epipen-epicentre).
And then there’s the budget…Five million bucks??? The city’s budget is $2.16 billion. In 2024, the city devoted $63 million alone to the ‘climate emergency’ – not to deal with handling bad weather (storm walls, drainage, etc), but for retrofitting old buildings with heat pumps, adding EV charging stations and other (2019) fashion accessories.
Therein lies an example of zeitgeist in transition: Vancouver’s poor Police Chief is celebrating this joyous harmonization of efforts between the city and the police department, energized by a lump of cash that is probably a fraction of the cash changing hands in the drug trade in that city zone in a week.
That triumphant zeitgeist breakthrough fades into utter insignificance in light of not just the problem of Vancouver’s drug trade, but what the US expects us to do about it. And, frankly, a lot of Canadians. We’ve just grown too accustomed to this rocket-fuelled dereliction nonsense as being ‘normal’. And that zeitgeist is dying rapidly. Replaced by…?
Mentioned above is another area of flux. Vancouver in 2024 budged $63 million for the ‘climate emergency’. Those funds were probably first proposed a few years prior, when that phrase was common.
These days, ‘climate emergency’ does not show up on any polling of Canadians’ pressing concerns, and the environment itself hardly breaks into the top 10..
Argus Media recently released a poll showing changing attitudes towards energy. In 2023, 44 percent of poll respondents felt reducing carbon emissions was the most important part of energy policy; in 2025 that number has fallen to 31 percent. Another shift.
But here’s the really, really big one that we need to wrap our heads around, because it is and will be the cornerstone of this country’s future success.
Trump has recognized that cheap and reliable energy is the bedrock of our standard of living, and of our ability to keep 8 billion people alive and thriving. People that work in the industry know that providing sufficient energy for humanity, when and where needed, is as daunting a task as there is.
Beyond just where energy comes from, there are multiple ways to ensure that energy is affordable and reliable, and for example that Canada maximizes the value of its energy resources (another vibe shift – all of a sudden Canadians love energy and pipelines!). Multiple zeitgeists.
Of course there is an entire ground-level debate about energy sources, but those debates are relatively insignificant depending on the vector of the macro zeitgeist (and vector is exactly the right word – both magnitude and direction).
Mark Carney could be Canada’s next prime minister. At a recent campaign stop, he said this about buttressing our energy/industrial situation: “(Something) my government is going to do is use all of the powers of the federal government, including the emergency powers of the federal government, to accelerate the major projects that we need in order to build this economy and take on the Americans.” [emphasis added]
A few alarming things pop up. One is that he views it as a central planner’s mandate to unleash the most potent of government powers to build something that private enterprise will not. He steps around the obvious embedded and underlying question: Why won’t business do it themselves?
The answer is because of the anti-business zeitgeist that has for a decade smothered investment enthusiasm like a mile-thick layer of mud, and it is the very idea of using something like emergency powers to build things that alarms the business community and most sensible citizens. Now, emergency powers could be of the sort to remove any impediment to business and attract capital, but we know that Carney isn’t talking about any such thing; we know that because his first policy steps are to make Canada less investment-friendly, by for example shifting his carbon taxation scheme from citizens (i.e., voters) to businesses, because as he famously also said, in effect, “hey, you don’t really buy steel every day so what do you care if we pile the tax on steel manufacturers. And ramp it up.”
So that mentality will build a certain type of zeitgeist, which we’ve seen before, in what was once called the Soviet Union.
Whether you hate him or not, consider the power and enthusiasm that will be unleashed by one of Trump’s most recent proclamations, “Establishing the National Energy Dominance Council”. An excerpt: “We must expand all forms of reliable and affordable energy production to drive down inflation, grow our economy, create good-paying jobs, reestablish American leadership in manufacturing, lead the world in artificial intelligence, and restore peace through strength by wielding our commercial and diplomatic levers to end wars across the world. By utilizing our amazing national assets, including our crude oil, natural gas, lease condensates, natural gas liquids, refined petroleum products, uranium, coal, biofuels, geothermal heat, the kinetic movement of flowing water, and critical minerals, we will preserve and protect our most beautiful places, reduce our dependency on foreign imports, and grow our economy — thereby enabling the reduction of our deficits and our debt.”
They even mention lease condensates! WTH. But anyway, from the document again, the purpose of the council will be to “advise the President on how best to exercise his authority to produce more energy to make America energy dominant” and “advise the President on improving the processes for permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, transportation, and export of all forms of American energy, including critical minerals.”
Let’s say you are in investor, looking to put money into energy investments, or a worker, looking for an energizing career, or even a by-standing consumer interested in seeing your nation move ahead.
Which sounds more appealing to you: The threat of the invocation of federal emergency response measures, normally reserved for political instability, to force-build whatever the government deems is necessary (and this being UN climate Carney, oil, gags and “lease condensates” won’t be high on his agenda (can you imagine hm even uttering the phrase lease condensates), or, a pledge by a leader to maximize every energy asset at his disposal, and to force his entire government (the council’s membership is huge and sweeping) to remove obstacles to energy development?
There is an innate spirit in people that wants to build, wants to create, wants to contribute, wants to be part of a positive force. Canada has shown a propensity to want to stifle that force. The US is now feeding it steroids.
Two different zeitgeists.
And now Canadians are, in effect, being forced to choose. No one wants to be forced to choose. We want our country, and we want that positive energy, the one we all know exists and if lucky have felt.
Whether you love or loathe Trump is beside the point. Look beyond that. Look beyond the metamorphosis of the world. It’s too much to all take in, but see it where the fog has lifted and the pathway choices are clearly visible.
There is great opportunity here on the energy front, and yes even with the US. Note that Trump’s document includes a desire to ‘increase exports of all forms of American energy’, including and foremost LNG. Trump wants huge LNG exports. He also wants to be the AI capital of the world, and in the fast moving AI world, that means things must happen in the next year or two.
Higher LNG and AI will require higher natural gas production, which will require higher prices, which is the opposite of what Trump wants. That is either a gross failure of logic, or an implicit acknowledgement that the US does indeed need Canadian energy, both natural gas to enable LNG and AI, and oil of the right quality to feed the refineries.
But well beyond Canadian energy, this whole new story has many chapters yet to be written before a new zeitgeist settles. As but one example, US expense slashing is creating an army of unemployed people that may well struggle – what is the market for a few million 15-year government employees? – who will dump their homes (happening already in DC), who will not be spending…and at the same time the rest of the world will come up with a very painful response to the US onslaught. You can only attack so many countries before things get nasty.
And this changes by the day. Later in the same conference that Vance slapped around Europe, China took to the very same stage to say Hey Europe, let’s start working together again…
Stay calm everybody. Stop booing anthems, stop throwing babies out with bathwater…let’s work on getting our house in order, and things will work out.
Turns out an energy transition isn’t quite so simple. Read why in The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity – the energy story for those that don’t live it, and want to find out. And laugh. Available at Amazon.ca, Indigo.ca, or Amazon.com.
Read more insightful analysis from Terry Etam here, or email Terry here.