For Vancouver city council candidate Chris Shaw, the enormous tumble of the TSX spells good news for the planet.

Shaw, who is running with the Work Less Party, is not a stupid man. In fact, he’s a UBC neuroscientist who is studying suspected origins of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.

“The sooner people realize they need to start changing things, the better,” Shaw told the Straight. “It’s [the recession] obviously bad news for a lot of people....We’re sensitive to that. On the other hand, we believe the economy needs to shrink, and we need to get out of a consumer economy and into a more sustainable economy that doesn’t depend on endless consuming. So, in some ways, it’s an educational device, as painful as it is.”

Shaw called B.C.’s economy a “monoculture” that’s based on a pre-Olympic real-estate boom. Now that the boom is over, he said, the province is waking up to the idea that there’s little sustainable industry left. Forestry and fishing are both dead due to a lack of government investment and there’s also been little investment in alternative energy or biotechnology, Shaw explained.

As for individuals, Shaw gives them credit for biking more and changing to reusable bags. However, he said, the recession demonstrates it’s time for bigger changes.

“We need to, in a much more deliberate manner, begin to move towards localization,” he said.

So the recession, coincidentally, acts as a beacon pointing to the Work Less Party’s civic election platform, which starts with the fundamental idea that people need to “work less, consume and waste less, and live more”. Greater localization of consumables and decision-making, zero waste, and investment in public transportation over cars are a few key Work Less platform points.

In other words, the Work Less Party is calling for Vancouverites to voluntarily make some of the changes that a full-blown economic calamity could ultimately force on us.