Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - October 3, 2020, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A9 THINK TANK PERSPECTIVES EDITOR: BRAD OSWALD 204-697-7269 ● BRAD.OSWALD@FREEPRESS.MB.CA ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM A9 SATURDAY OCTOBER 3, 2020 Ideas, Issues, Insights JOHANNA GERON, POOL VIA AP In 15 years as Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel has steered the country into an era of ‘unflustered competence.’ Germany thriving 30 years later I HAVE just spent two weeks driving around Germany interviewing people (mostly climate scientists, since you ask), and I have come to the conclusion it is the best-run, and quite possibly just the best, major country in the world right now. Some small countries are absolute jewels, of course, but it’s easier if you’re small. Big powers fight more wars, contain more divisions, suffer nastier and more ridiculous delusions of grandeur. But if you only consider countries with more than 50 million people, then Germany today is the fair- est, the least conflicted, the most peaceful, actu- ally the nicest major country on the planet. That wasn’t true 30 years ago, and it may not be true 30 years hence, but it’s worth noting because Oct. 3 marks the 30th anniversary of the unification of Germany in 1990, just one year af- ter the Berlin Wall came down. Compared to what happened after the first time it was unified, it has all worked out rather well. The first unification of Germany, in 1871, was achieved by war, and led to more and much bigger wars — not entirely Germany’s fault, of course, but certainly the consequence of the sudden appearance of a highly nationalistic new great power in the heart of Europe. After the Second World War, Germany was divided into three. The eastern third was emptied of Germans and given to Poland (in compensation for the eastern third of pre-war Poland, which was kept by the Soviet Union). The middle part, also under Soviet occupation, became Commu- nist-ruled “East Germany,” while the rest, with most of the population, became “West Germany.” The “two Germanys” became the cockpit of the Cold War, with huge armies of tanks ready to roll and nuclear weapons not far behind them. Many people understood that this could not go on forever, that some day the country would have to be reunited — but they were terrified by the prospect. They feared the process of reunifica- tion might trigger a war, and they also feared a reunited Germany. Lord Ismay, the British general who became the first secretary-general of the NATO alliance (which included West Germany), put it bluntly: “NATO exists to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” French journalist and poet François Mauriac said it more elegantly: “I love Germany so much that I’m glad there are two of them.” If the trigger to end the East German Commu- nist regime had been in British, French and Ameri- can hands, it might never have been pulled. But it was actually in the hands of the East Germans themselves, and in 1989 they brought down their oppressors without a shot being fired. All the other Communist states of eastern Europe followed suit. There was great joy in both parts of Germany — the street party after the Berlin Wall came down was probably the best and certainly the longest I have ever attended — but there was considerable trepidation elsewhere. However, Mikhail Gorbachev, the reformist Soviet leader, reassured everybody by declaring that Moscow had no objection to German reunification, and the deed was done 30 years ago this week. It has worked out very well. There are sad people and even wicked people in Germany, like everywhere else, but as a society it radiates contentment. Unflustered competence lubricated by a general tone of good-will make minor daily transactions less of an ordeal, and the strident nationalism that now disfigures so many other countries is conspicuous by its absence. In the place of that, the Germans have a dedica- tion to the European project: like “Amens” in a church, invocations of “Europe” punctuate politi- cal conversations. And if you say this is a defen- sive reaction against Germany’s terrible history in the two generations before 1945, I would prob- ably agree — but what’s wrong with that? Even the economic contrast between the for- merly Communist-ruled east and the rest of the country, to the great disadvantage of the former, is gradually eroding: average incomes among “Ossis” (easterners) are now up to almost 90 per cent of “Wessi” earnings. All the “coolest” cities, the magnets that attract the young, are in the former east: Berlin, Dresden and now Leipzig. It’s not paradise, but when you compare it with the incompetent, belligerent populism that prevails in formally democratic countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil and In- dia, it looks pretty good. “Wir schaffen das””(We can manage this), said Chancellor Angela Merkel when over a million mostly Muslim refugees ar- rived in Germany in 2016, and four years later it looks like she was right. “Mutti” (Mommy), as Germans call her, has been chancellor for half of the past 30 years, so there will be a collective holding of breath when she retires next year. But the world would be a better and safer place if there were more coun- tries like Germany. Plus, there’s no speed limit at all on the auto- bahns. Where else can you drive at 160 kph and have cars whooshing past you all the time? Gwynne Dyer’s latest book is Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy (and Work). New theory induces re-examination of traffic flow WINNIPEG administrators are preparing a re- port on a controversial transportation theory that, if put into practice, would likely have environ- mentalists pumping their fi sts with jubilation. It’s called induced transportation demand, which is planner-speak for the counterintuitive idea that when a city adds more lanes or builds more roads, it actually worsens traffic congestion. How can that be? Common sense suggests the opposite — that adding lanes and roads relieves congestion by increasing capacity. That’s why Winnipeg aims to widen Kenaston Boulevard and build the 10-kilometre long Chief Peguis Trail extension, among other expensive road projects. But the theory of induced demand, which has been backed by data in several reputable studies, is that increasing roadway capacity encourages people to drive more. Build more kilo- metres of lanes, more kilometres will be driven. In the unlikely event that this theory would ever be allowed to fully dictate Winnipeg’s trans- portation priorities, it would do nothing less than revamp the city’s notion of how Winnipeggers will move around in the future. One reason for the suprising conclusion of in- duced demand is that better roads attract people who previously found transportation alternatives because they didn’t like congested traffic. Once the routes were enlarged, these people drove their own vehicles instead of taking transit, cy- cling, carpooling or working from home. A second reason expanding roadways actually adds congestion is that people feel more free to move a longer distance away from their work and commute, which lessens the demand for infill housing in cities like Winnipeg. Coun. Matt Allard, chairman of the public works committee, successfully steered a motion through a Sept. 16 meeting calling for the city to analyze the concept of induced demand and recommend how it could be added to Winnipeg’s master transportation plan. Administrators have six months to report back. Induced demand has been accepted by many city planners, but it has also been debunked by skeptics. Elon Musk, the U.S. billionaire behind Tesla, tweeted in December about induced demand: “It is one of the most irrational theories I’ve ever heard. Correlation is not causation.” Not that it would bother a self-confident pon- tificator like Musk, but his views are not shared by an advocacy group called Transportation for America, which last March issued a report called The Congestion Con, which suggested: “We have added 30,511 new freeway lane-miles of road in the largest 100 urbanized areas in the U.S. be- tween 1993 and 2017, an increase of 42 per cent... yet ‘congestion has grown by a staggering 144 per cent’ due to ‘induced demand.’” The report recommends the U.S. should stop building new roads and instead “bring jobs, hous- ing, and other destinations closer together.” You need not be a soothsayer to predict that, in a city with a strong car culture like Winnipeg’s, any suggestion to “stop building new roads” would not be universally cheered. “If recognized, induced transportation does flip everything on its head,” said Allard, the council- lor who gets the credit — or the blame, depending on your view — for pushing the city to rethink its master transportation plan through the lens of induced demand. His argument is partly financial. There are better places to spend the money it would take Winnipeg to continue to widen roads, build under- passes and spread out as a city. It’s hard to dis- agree with him, considering Winnipeg currently lacks full funding for its sewage treatment plan, improvements to its transit system, long-overdue maintenance of infrastructure — including roads that already exist — and growing financial obli- gations due to COVID-19. Another part of his argument is the green fac- tor. When we drive less, it’s good for the environ- ment. Allard is lobbying council to permanently add seasonal active-transportation routes to 15 streets. If the city committed fully to the implications of induced demand, a fraction of the money not spent on roadway expansion could be spent on a first-class network of walkways, cycling paths and public transit. As well, infill development would benefit if the city was disinclined to build and expand roads to new housing developments on the city outskirts. Allard doesn’t expect an immediate, ardent con- version to the induced-demand doctrine. Rather, he says he’s chosen the “softer approach” of get- ting the concept recognized in the city’s traffic master plan. And then, let the discussion begin. He recognizes that to change Winnipeg’s entrenched thinking about transportation, he has a long road ahead of him. Or, perhaps it’s more fitting to say he has a long walking and cycling path ahead of him. — with files from Sarah Lawrynuik carl.degurse@freepress.mb.ca Carl DeGurse is a member of the Free Press editorial board. By sharing tragedy, Teigen helps others navigate grief THE pictures are simultaneously mundane and intimate. A pregnant woman, crying, leans forward in a hospital bed as she’s prepped for an epidural. A mother and father hold a baby nestled in the candy-stripe Kuddle-Up receiving blanket recognizable to legions of new parents. The black-and-white images posted Wednes- day by celebrities Chrissy Teigen and John Legend document not just familiar birth scenes but also death: Teigen, who had been on bed rest, lost her pregnancy. This trag- edy — what writer Elizabeth McCracken has described as “the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending” — is deeply personal. Yet in grieving for their son as openly as they share other experiences, Teigen and Leg- end are doing a public service for families who have suffered similar losses — and outsiders trying to understand this sort of mourning. Teigen is a model, television star and cookbook author who became a social-media superstar partly through her unusually frank approach to her fertility issues and postpartum experiences. She documented this pregnancy in her usual no-filter style: discussing her “poopy placenta,” agonizing headaches and needing “bags and bags of blood transfusions.” To the son that she and Legend planned to name Jack, she wrote: “I’m so sorry that the first few moments of your life were met with so many complications, that we couldn’t give you the home you needed to survive. We will always love you.” Critics have previously accused Teigen of oversharing intimacies, a complaint that often means “I don’t want to see that.” Some revived that charge this week. There is an un- derstandable inclination to look away from a loss of this magnitude. After McCracken’s son died, she wrote that she was afraid to spend time with a friend’s young daughter, fearing that if the girl “said anything to me about my stomach, I’d punch her in the face, and I did not want to be a woman who punched four- year-olds in the face.” In an essay about her son’s death after she suffered a placental abruption, writer Ariel Levy described herself as “a wounded witch, wailing in the forest, undone.” Averting our collective gaze from such grief — or ignoring that about 26,000 children are stillborn in the United States each year or that 21,000 U.S. infants died in 2018, the latest year for which data are available — can make it harder to develop appropriate policy responses and social rituals around miscar- riages, stillbirths and infant death. Would acknowledging these numbers help to improve them? Would more doctors perhaps start doing routine pre-conception testing for blood-clotting conditions, such as Factor V Leiden? Would it lead to actions that could severely reduce, or end, the health disparities among races that contribute to higher rates of pre-term birth and infant mortality among Black Americans? The desire to look away from the risks to babies in the womb and during their first year of life has consequences for both society and individuals. “I heard myself tell a horrified saleswoman, ‘I don’t know what size I am, because I just had a baby. He died, but the good news is, now I’m fat,’” Levy wrote about trying to navigate life after her loss. “Well-meaning women would tell me, ‘I had a miscarriage, too,’ and I would reply, with unnerving intensity, ‘He was alive.’ I had given birth, however briefly, to another human being, and it seemed crucial that people understand this. Often, after I told them, I tried to get them to look at the picture of the baby on my phone.” In sharing pictures taken during and after her labour and delivery, Teigen encouraged the world to look at her baby — and to see her and Legend as Jack’s parents. These images are not oversharing but, actu- ally, a kind of self-sacrifice. In laying bare this moment, Teigen and Legend may help families who have lost children under similar circumstances see that they are not alone or even unusual. And by letting the public in on their grief, all of Teigen and Legend’s fans now know, however distantly, someone whose child has died. “When a baby dies, other dead children sud- denly become visible,” McCracken wrote in her book about stillbirth. After her son’s death, she began to learn about families who shared her experience. “I want to hear about every dead baby, everywhere in the world. I want to know their names. . . . The dead don’t need anything. The rest of us could use some company.” Teigen and Legend have turned their great- est sorrow into a communal strength. They’ve given those who haven’t directly shared such pain an opportunity to practise kindness and bravery — to look at what may be hard to face and summon the best of ourselves to comfort those who are grieving. It’s also an opening to fight for a world in which fewer people grieve such losses. — The Washington Post GWYNNE DYER CARL DEGURSE ALYSSA ROSENBERG A_09_Oct-03-20_FP_01.indd A9 2020-10-02 4:17 PM ;