Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, this is Cascadia.
More widely known as the Pacific Northwest, we’re known for… a lot of stereotypes;
left-wing values, organic food, trees, mountains, fair trade coffee, hipsters, bikes, hipsters
on bikes, a left-leaning hipster eating kale while riding his bike through a forest on
the side of a mountain… but what about the independence movement?
When we think of states breaking away from the US we usually think of California or Texas,
but if the US suddenly became an Oregon donor and these two states and one province went
off on their own, what would it look like?
[Intro]
Now first I should mention that an independent Cascadia will pretty much never happen.
Neither the United States nor Canada allow their states or provinces to leave (spoilers,
no country does) but what if-- through the magic of handwavium, it just… did?
Now this all depends on where you define Cascadia.
You could just count the US states of Oregon and Washington, and the Canadian province
of British Columbia, but there are other ways to place the borders.
Now, while this is what we think of as Oregon or Washington, so is this.
East of the Cascade Mountains, things get a lot drier, sparser, and the further right
you go geographically, the further right you often get politically.
But despite the desert, the borders of Deluxe Cascadia reflect the larger Cascadia bioregion.
And in the past, this rough area was actually all one territory, known as the Oregon Country,
administered jointly by the United States and the British from 1818 until it was formally
cleaved in half in 1846, although not a completely clean cut.
But which set of borders do we go with in the year 20-something-something?
Do we cut it off at the Cascade Mountains?
Do we go for the state and provincial boundaries?
Or do we make a grotesque Frankenstein’s Country by cutting up and mashing together
all these different states?
Sticking with the state and provincial boundaries would make things easier in the short term,
while going along the bioregional borders goes much more hand-in-hand with what this
is really about: a little term called bioregionalism.
Bioregionalism is essentially the belief that human systems would work better if they were
based on the boundaries of the local bioregions, taking into account everything from watershed
boundaries to soil characteristics.
If this were to *actually* happen though, I’d place my odds more on the state and
provincial borders rather than the ecological borders.
If we go by the state and provincial lines, Cascadia would be the 19th largest country
in the world, just ahead of Peru, and the 68th most populous, between the Netherlands
and Senegal.
With an overwhelmingly white-European population, the most common language by far would be English,
followed by Spanish, Punjabi, Cantonese and Mandarin, Vietnamese, and Tagalog.
In terms of religion the largest portion of the population would be Christian– mostly
some form of Protestant– followed closely by the irreligious population, followed way
behind by Judaism and Islam.
Now if we’re going to go with deluxe Cascadia, we could probably break it up along county
lines, just to at least have *a* way to calculate things.
Now let’s define Cascadia as… uh, these counties here, that sorta matches our borders
the best way we can.
With these borders, Cascadia would now have a population of 19,990,331… actually, is
Montana using Glacier County for anything?
Let’s just take that as well and say it’s 20 million.
With that, Cascadia would now be the 61st most populous country, between Chile and Mali,
and by area we would…
still be in 19th place, but now we would almost rival Mongolia.
The largest city and metro area in the region would be Seattle, followed by a near tie between
Portland and Vancouver.
Of the ten largest cities proper in the region, four would be in Washington, four in British
Columbia, and if we go with the bioregion, one in Oregon and one in Idaho, but with the
state borders it becomes two in Oregon and… well, Idaho isn’t included at all.
No one has really specified what would be the capital of this new country, however if
I were to pick I would say Olympia, the current capital of Washington, as it is already a
state capital and it’s more central than Salem or Victoria, and lies on the Amtrak
Cascades route connecting the biggest cities of the region, with the Vancouver-Eugene corridor
home to around 13 million people.
But could Cascadia succeed if it secedes?
Sticking strictly to the state and provincial boundaries, the combined GDPs of Oregon, Washington,
and British Columbia would amount to $1.1 trillion, with a GDP per capita of around
$69(giggity),153.
This would put the Cascadian economy on par with Malaysia, and the average Cascadian on
par with the average Dane, according to the IMF.
Whatever the borders, Cascadia will still contain the metro areas of Vancouver, Seattle,
and Portland, all commercial powerhouses in their own right, home to companies like Amazon,
Nike, Microsoft, Starbucks, Telus, and numerous others, with Washington having the highest
concentration of STEM workers in the US (stupid Washington always outshining us).
Seattle is often regarded as the Silicon Valley of the north, while Vancouver is often known
as “Hollywood North”, so if Cascadia and California became countries, we would quickly
become California’s Canada.
Now, I’ve already mentioned that an independent Cascadia will pretty much never happen, at
least unless something terrible happens outside the region.
Canada’s constitution doesn’t allow provinces to leave, and down south the US is also…
quite certain on its position on state secession.
Although the Cascadia movement might talk about independence, it is (generally speaking)
less hell-bent on gaining independence, and more about fostering a sense of that bioregionalism
I was talking about.
According to Alexander Baretich, the original creator of the doug flag, the whole Cascadia
movement is less about seceeding from the US and Canada, and more about ensuring survival
after peak oil and the full effects of climate change.
And I mean, it’s kinda hard to not care about the environment when you live near places
that look like this…