I Have Three Passports; What About You?
by Lowell Bliss, Director of Eden Vigil Institute for Environmental Leadership
A new Canadian citizen offers a fool-proof way to prevent Trump from pulling YOU out of the Paris Climate Agreement.
Last Wednesday, I participated in the ceremony whereby I became a Canadian citizen. Despite the headline above, I still need to download my citizenship certificate and then apply for my new passport. In the end though, I will possess not just a second passport to join my American one--I’m a dual citizen—but I actually have a third passport as well. On this day, the day after Trump announced the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, it’s the perfect time to unveil it. I have three passports. You too can get this additional one. You’ll want to get it before November 10, 2025—the start of COP30 climate summit when right-wing autocrats, possibly even in Canada depending on our elections, refuse to show up, or do show up but without love.
I wish my Canadian citizenship ceremony had been held in person, but it was on Zoom. When we gathered on-line, we had to type in our “seat number.” I was #084. We were told that there were 120 people in the ceremony, and that they had come from 40 countries. You could see other faces—some of them in families—and you could playfully try to guess their interactions, the way you do before a meeting begins and all the microphones are muted. Like me, all the names were just seat numbers, and just as everyone had a hidden name, so everyone had a hidden immigration story. I wish I could have heard every one of their stories. How many of them were fleeing cruel and authoritarian governments? How many were climate refugees? How many were “freedom-lovers” like myself, as I described in my previous Substack: “I Am Now a Canadian Citizen”?
My story is of a US citizen immigrating to Canada, but neither was I moving to Nunavut. The Peace Bridge border crossing to Buffalo is less than 30 minutes away. I can see the hills of New York State from our local beach on the north shore of Lake Erie. I work remotely for a university based in California. Mostly though, I’m aware that, as a dual citizen, I am adding a new citizenship; I’m not relinquishing an old one nor otherwise rejecting one. My new fellows in Canada were quick to congratulate me, and to ask how it now feels. Honestly, I do feel different as a Canadian citizen, but in a surprising way: I feel more expansive. I feel like my heart has grown.
Of course, I fell in love with a Canadian and married Robynn in 1994. After a brief honeymoon in Banff—I love the Rockies!—we then proceeded to live in India and in Kansas. We never really lived in Canada for any length of time until 2018 when we moved up here. Nonetheless, ever since our wedding, I have felt richer, like I have added all the glories of another country and culture to my life, discovering them one-by-one over the last 30 years. The difference with my new citizenship might be similar to as if Robynn had been a single mom when I married her, and I was finally adopting her child, my step-child. The love would have been there all along but now there was loyalty and commitment. Now it was “till death do we part” conferred on a larger group of others.
Here was another realization: if you can add one additional citizenship without shedding the other one, you may as well add 194 more. There would certainly be legal restrictions, and physical ones, and financial ones—but there are not any emotional restrictions. Love is not a zero-sum game. Just because I love Canada, doesn’t mean that I love the U.S. any less. Heck, I love India and Pakistan where there are restrictions on applying for legal citizenship. If the U.S., Canada, India, and Pakistan, then why not the Maldives, or Chad, or Azerbaijan (countries I have visited) or the Philippines, or Burundi, or Tuvalu (countries that I have never stepped foot in)? Love has no residency requirement.
That’s when I remembered: I already have a third passport. I have a passport for Antarctica. Really, it’s true. At COP21 in Paris—the climate summit that produced the Paris Agreement—there was a small booth in one of the exhibit areas. You could stand in line, shuffle forward to the exhibitor, and she would issue you a passport and stamp it for you: welcome to love and loyalty for Antarctica. “The Antarctica World Passport” project is the brainchild of artists Lucy and Jorge Orta. Its premise is that no one country has sovereign jurisdiction over Antarctica, and as they write, “Through the Antarctica project, the artists explore the underlying principles of the Antarctic peace treaty as a symbol of the unification of world citizens.” The Ortas travelled to the icy continent in 2007 and built an art installation complete with a global village and a unity flag. The first passports were handed out a year later at an event in Milan, Italy. “Through the worldwide distribution of Antarctica World Passport, the artists have created a major socially engaging and participative art project.”
The 24-page passport is beautiful, with plenty of photographs and lithographs to capture your heart. Translated from French (the language of diplomacy ever since the 17th Century), the charter reads: “I am applying for my passport for the purpose of:
Taking action towards sustainable development through simple everyday actions.
Defending threatened environments as global public goods.
Combatting climate change generated by human activities.
Supporting humanitarian actions for displaced peoples.
Sharing the values of peace and equality.
Passing this charter on to future generations.
You can still apply for a virtual passport through the website. The format will look different, but the spirit is the same: having been made a citizen of your first country simply by being born there, now you can make an adult decision to expand your own heart and choose to love and be loyal to Antarctica and to all citizens of Planet Earth, human and non-human.
On Friday, I went to my first funeral of a fellow Canadian citizen. Our family friend was originally from Northern Ireland and had immigrated to Canada shortly after his marriage. Charles loved Canada without ever losing his love and pride for Ireland. During the eulogy, his oldest son said, “Now Dad is a citizen of heaven.”
I get it; he was referencing Philippians 3:20, “For our citizenship is in heaven,” but his exegesis got the tenses wrong. Charles didn’t need to wait to die to become a citizen of heaven. He’s been a citizen of heaven even before he became a citizen of Canada. The Apostle Paul was cognizant of earthly citizenships. Earlier in Philippians 3, he references the privileges he enjoyed as a member of the nation of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, or the sect of the Pharisees. He used his Roman citizenship once to get out of a jam after his arrest (Acts 22). But what did Paul mean by having a heavenly citizenship right here and now, on this side of the grave, except that one might act like a citizen right here and now, which for any Christian means one thing above all else: to love.