The Parkdale Liberation Front: Retirement Planning for the New Age

If you have just graduated from university and you are looking for a job you’re probably not thinking about retirement. You’ve got a whopping great loan to pay off. You’re looking at an unemployment rate almost three times the national average. Besides a lot of things can happen in forty years, there’s plenty of time. Right on the first one. We’re not so sure about the second one. We do know that it’s not just about the money.

Florida has been a traditional vacation spot and retirement location for Canadians. The highest point of land in Florida is Britton Hill, in Walton County at about 100 m above sea level. Miami is between zero and 12m. Forget Florida.

You could try central Florida or Georgia or the Carolinas, except there’s that analogy of rats off a sinking ship. The population of Dade County FLA is about 2.5 million people. You can’t expect them all to drown.

Two important new elements of retirement planning: the effects of climate change on sea levels and the effects of climate change on human migration patterns. You could also throw in the effects of climate change on world wide food production.

But let’s not worry about that for now. Maybe find a copy of Soylent Green on DVD. It was Edward G. Robinson’s final movie. There an irony there somewhere. For the more literary minded there’s Jonathan Swift’s, a Modest Proposal.

Back to your retirement. We at The Parkdale Liberation Front are thinking: wait a minute what about Parkdale? Well we’re about 75m above sea level so we’re safe there and we’re pretty much right in the middle of the continent. Not bad. Not bad. We put the barricades up in Mississauga, Vaughan and Ajax. Good, good.

What about Charlottetown in Prince Edward Island? Nice climate. Friendly people. Good housing at reasonable prices. Close to Boston. Like Miami it is at sea level. Yikes. The highest point on the island is no more than 50 m above sea level.

Now in the future we can expect more extreme weather events like Hurricane Sandy. As we said forget Florida. What does sea level to 50m give you if you’re about to get bashed over the head by a massively truculent hurricane? New York City is sea level to about 135m.

We told you that to tell you 50m means you don’t want to be retiring next to Anne of Green Gables. She’s already drowned.

While admittedly these numbers are projections the real fear amongst scientists is that climate change is accelerating. What were suggesting at the PLF is pretty basic. Save money and look north but not too near any shoreline. Be grateful the Tories dumped the long gun registry. Start lobbying them for assault rifles. Look to higher ground, maybe stock up on SPAM and buy a trenching tool, maybe one for the significant other.

It’s entirely possible technology will come to your rescue. The PLF’s International Intelligence Bureau has uncovered evidence that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California is working on a giant vacuum tube. The idea is to suck all the excess CO₂ out of the atmosphere and point it in the direction of a black hole, a sort of cosmic inverse fart.

There, feel better?

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