“Atlantica” (an international trade corridor that would stretch from Buffalo, New York across the northeastern United States to Atlantic Canada) spinners were out in full force this week after conferencing in Saint John.

According to one of them “we are about to become a major doorway for trade between Asia and the North American heartland”.

He claims that west coast ports are “choked with goods from China, India and the Asian Tigers” and the Panama Canal is no longer capable of handling the newest in super-ship cargos. They could be diverted through the Suez Canal to the deep water ports of Atlantic Canada for distribution to the northeastern and mid-western United States.

Others see the Atlantica concept as an opportunity to integrate the Atlantic Canadian economy with the U.S. northeast and ultimately to integrate all of Canada with the United States “inside one big continental economic and security zone”.

Opponents of the Atlantica concept claim that a more open border would lead to a loss of Canadian sovereignty, lower wages for our workers and the disappearance of treasured social programs. They also argue that a boost in energy production would increase greenhouse gas emissions and increase “our children’s radioactive waste legacy”.

On this matter, the New York Times reported last week that American satellites have tracked vast clouds of sulphur dioxide pollution and desert dust from China as it passed over the U.S. According to the Times, every ten days or so, a new coal-fired power plant opens in China and begins to spit out sulphur dioxide.

It’s estimated that sulphur dioxide causes up to 400,000 premature deaths in China each year. It also causes acidic rain harmful to plants and animals. According to U.S. scientists, Chinese pollution already accounts for 10 to 15% of allowable federal particle levels over the west coast states.

The promoters of Atlantica lean on the premise that future economic development will be based on the continued globalization of trade and the realization of economies of scale where bigger is considered better in terms of production and distribution. International trade currently represents about a third of global production and continues to grow.

In the last thirty years, it’s estimated that global shipping volumes have tripled. In concert with shipping volumes, air-polluting road transport has grown exponentially.

The question is will the world be able to live with continued growth in global production, global trading and the costs of global transportation. It’s unlikely given that global energy consumption is expected to increase by 65% by the year 2025 (most notably in China and India) and the price of oil could triple as reserves are depleted.

The combination of major increases in the cost of energy (as a component of transport) and concerns about global warming (linked to CO² emissions) could force the world to take a new look at the flow of merchandise in the next decade or two.

• What if a survivalist world demanded a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that reduced the availability of affordable transportation?

• What if the combination of higher energy prices and more expensive transportation forced the world to switch from globalized production to a mix of intellectual globalization and localized micro production, where proximity to markets becomes more important than the production economies of scale and size?

• What if the future favoured a circumstance where product research and development was done in one country and mini-production units were set up in consumer countries to serve local markets?

Michelin Tire is already doing this in test form.

The Globe & Mail comes together in Toronto but is printed in Halifax, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver. McCain Foods has operated for years with growing operations and processing plants in more than fifty countries around the world.

New Brunswick lost its way economically nearly a hundred years ago when a combination of cheap transportation and large scale production economies (in Ontario and Quebec) undercut the prices of local manufactures and forced them out of business.

Wouldn’t it be neat if the cycle reversed itself and small scale production should become the poster boy for global production?

It may be that rising transportation costs and tighter border security could actually work in our economic favour. Wouldn’t it be better if New Brunswick and/or the Atlantic Provinces could become a world leader in short run production by developing technologies that would make mini-production units more competitive than low wage, centralized global production units in China and India?

Our friends at Atlantica would have us believe that great wealth awaits us if we can remove the borders between Atlantic Canada and New England, prepare the Halifax harbour for an Asian trade missile and build a new four lane highway to Bangor. All this, as their story goes, will permit the export of more energy, attract more tourists and trumpet our supposed transportation advantages.

Nothing prevents us from exporting more energy today except environmental considerations and distribution bottlenecks. Tourism growth might come with a four lane highway but tourism will continue to be vulnerable to the vagaries of weather, border security and rising gasoline prices.

The notion that land-based transportation holds the key to our future in a world beginning to suffocate from greenhouse gas emissions and rising energy prices seems a little far-fetched to me.

Instead of begging for an increase in equalization payments from the feds, maybe our provincial governments should be rounding up funds for a multi-billion dollar investment fund that would flow exclusively to Atlantic-based businesses with the potential to develop and grow by combining their intellectual property with mini-production technologies that would give them competitive advantages over larger scale global producers.

Success might lead to the wealth we need to remove ourselves from the dependence inherent in equalization payments.

Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com