And Now, A Word From Kermit

H/t Greg Perry

Still not convinced? Perhaps these letter-writers can help:

Local governments all over the world are declaring a climate emergency, so stop using the neutral term “climate change” in your coverage. There’s nothing neutral about the looming disaster for our “life support system” (aka the environment). Let’s call it “climate breakdown” or “climate chaos.”

It’s not balmy “global warming,” it’s “critical planet overheating.” The oil and gas industry once successfully lobbied the media to call their nasty tarsands project the cleaner-sounding “oilsands.” Clearly, words matter. The emotional urgency of these words matter. Our future is at stake.

Pike Krpan, Hamilton

There are so many ways in which we need to fight the environmental injustice of climate change, but at every turn, governments in Canada are moving backward on the existential issue of our time.

Bill C-69 is one way to counteract the wave of retreats in the battle against climate change and other potential environmental damage. The fossil fuel industry is well aware that it stands to lose economically from this bill and they have mounted a misinformation campaign aimed at convincing the Senate to water it down or delay it until the federal election.

Canadians expect our governments to act to protect our rights, including Indigenous rights, and to act in the best interests of citizens and residents, not multinational corporations. The Senate needs to do their job and pass this bill, which has already been three years in the making.

Amy Scott, Toronto

Tom Scanlan, Toronto

Rob Strang, Orangeville

We Have The Technology

Outside of politics, my other passion is the environment, something we continue to degrade at unprecedented rates. The biggest threat to humanity's future, of course, is climate change. While the vested interests would have us all believe that there are no practical or large-scale alternatives to our fossil fuel addiction, incrementally we are reaching the stage where it is possible to drastically reduce our carbon emissions if we have the will. Here is one such story:

Normally, landfill sites and paper mills are targets for environmental groups but things are different, in Thorold.
“We really got into it because of odour control. Obviously don’t want to annoy our neighbours any more than we need to” says Mike Watt from Walker Environmental Group. And so what they got into instead was green energy. The huge landfill site generates hundreds of thousands of tons of natural methane gas each year, from decomposing garbage. Almost half of that methane is carbon dioxide – greenhouse gas, that used to go into the environment. Now, a large portion of it, goes into a pipeline instead. “If you eliminated 79 -80 thousand cars that would have the same impact as this project has, so it’s a pretty big impact.” says Mr. Watt

You can watch the video by clicking here.

A Friday Evening Thought

I came upon this excerpt of a much longer poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Owen's blog this morning in his Daily Literary Quote section.

... Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
...

Imagine the world if we treated it with the reverence it deserves.

Perhaps Its Time To Stop Talking And Start Acting?

For obvious reasons.

Guest Commentary From The Salamander On Pierre Poilievre And The Company He Keeps

Because he doesn't maintain his own blog yet offers blistering commentary that lacerates the pretensions of his subjects, I am once more placing as a guest post the searing analysis The Salmander offered in response to my post on the hypocrisy of that old young man, Pierre Poilievre, currently one of Harper's favorite poodles.

Enjoy:

.. hypocrite .. yes .. that captures the shallow ethics of this preening vain and glib political insectivore that hatched in Calgary, and who deserves careful examination under bright light and a magnifying glass.. by honest and objective political scientists.. or forensic anthropologists.

His pasty white cretin pedigreed shell may have evolved or metastasized from radiation/toxin poisoning that leached from Tom Flanagan, Stephen Harper & the rest of those flawed supremacist trogs that tend to lurch from the tailings ponds and the Calgary School for young Harper wannabe's.

Look who is right behind primped up poutine Pierre in the image from the video !... Why there is Michelle Rempel ! Cut from the very same cloth .. tho she is the staunch defender of Peter Kent.. our great boreal forest slayer along with Joe Oliver.. and Queen Stephen from Toronto.

Ah yes, oily Pierre .. former amour of political operative Jenni Byrne.. who of course worked hand in hand as deputy campaign manager on the 'in-out' 2006 election fraud and plea deal with the late immigrant and 'Reformer' Senator Finley.. Byrne was the lead hand campaign manager of the 2011 election fraud, live & robo calling, shadow MP's, data mining - and later data base and call record erasures & sanitizing etc.. denials and defender against baseless smears.

The tete a tete's of Pierre & Jenni would likely be delightful to those who enjoy the hissing of serpents and garbled maudlin moralistic pontifications.. vote moving & suppression strategies and pretending to be Canadian.

Let's be clear .. this Poilievre specimen is seen as potential cream of the Harper Party fungus crop. A soon to be Minister. Lesser lights have withered, flailed, retired or landed on the Harper dung heap a la Helen Guergis, Del Mastro, Sona etc.. or suddenly migrated to Abu Dhabi. Or gone to suddenly spend more time with their family .. or altruistically feel compelled to assist the BC Liberal Party, or the Alberta Wild Rose tea party..

The ascendant evangelists though.. like Poilievre, Kelly Leitch, Van Loan and Michelle Rempel.. screech the Harper Message, massage or lie to the mainstream media and communicate with or receive PMO marching orders and talking points via private email, smoke signals or agreed upon secret hissing and handshakes.. all outside, offside, out of sight of legal & required procedure.

At times I wonder how thrilling it must be to be paid by the people of Canada to screw them over, lie through your teeth to them.. and kiss Harper Party ass, suck & blow simultaneously, obstruct truth & justice, litigate against military veterans, First Nations, senior citizens, unions, women.. conspire to trash the environment & Charter of Rights and Freedoms on behalf of foreign energy consortiums and bow towards Israel and Calgary .. all at the same time.

It must be possible, but only if you're are a smug, forked tongue, entitled, two faced, purely unadulterated sanctimonious, and ethically bankrupt, ambitious paid public servant ..

Tim Speaketh Again

The only trouble is, everytime he does, he affirms his incompetence. Yes, young Tim Hudak, the leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, has weighed in on yet another 'obstruction' that he believes can be remediated through his simplistic prism. This time it is that pesky perennial problem of those darned endangered species, or more specifically, [g]overnment regulations protecting endangered species [which] are throttling business:

In a speech Tuesday to the Rural Ontario Municipalities’ Association (ROMA) conference at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel, ... Hudak told 700 rural municipal politicians he would slash “the more than 300,000 regulations, outdated rules, and runaround that you have to cope with just to get something done.”

To drive home his point for those listeners whose thoughts might have wandered away from the prattling stripling in their midst, the lad who would be Ontario premier pronounced:

“The problem is that these rules are ... not allowing our agriculture and business sectors to grow.”

As an illustration of the evil obstructionism of government, Hudak tartly observed: In 2003, there were exactly 19 species listed — today, well over 121” - clearly a sign of government regulation run amok, and surely not an indication of a deteriorating ecosystem, a concept I doubt that young Tim subscribes to.

Unaware of his irony, he vowed to use “verifiable science not political science” to determine what animals to protect. This, despite the fact that, as pointed out by Natural Resources Minister David Orazietti, the assessment and classification of endangered species is conducted by experts on the arms-length Committee on the Status of Species at Risk in Ontario.

But then again, I doubt that the hapless Hudak ever lets facts get in the way of a good ideological rant, and would seem to prefer this as the only sign of real progress:

What Purpose Do We Serve?

Although I have written on this topic before, I think it merits a return visit, given the environmental disasters currently engulfing the world.

Were it within my power, I would legislate that all people in both elementary and high school, and in the world's corporate boardrooms, be required to watch nature documentaries on a regular basis. That way, they would quickly become disabused of the notion that we are somehow outside of or above nature, rather than simply a part of it.

Last night I watched one entitled, Big Sur: Wild California, featuring stunning images of the flora and fauna that area of the West Coast is famous for. And I was once more reminded, as I always am when watching such documentaries, of the interconnectedness of nature, and the delicate balance that exists when left unmolested.

For example, sharks are vital to our survival because of the role they play in protecting the oxygen-producing capacities of the oceans, and while last night's film did not deal with such dramatic realities, there was a very vivid if implicit reminder of how dangerous human activity can be to the earth's ecosystems. The sea otter, once almost wiped out thanks to trade in their furs, are quite fond of sea urchins. Sea urchins have a rather voracious capacity for kelp, underwater forests of which grow in the Pacific off of Big Sur. Were it not for the otters' presence, the urchins would have full reign, and the kelp would be no more. Just one small example of a truth that permeates the natural world.

This morning at breakfast, I was telling my wife about some of the nature arcana I gleaned from the video, stressing the delicate balance I have just referred to. I said that everything has a role to play, after which she asked rhetorically, "Then what role do humans play in this scheme of things?"

Sadly, the answer is all too clear. With our 'superior intelligence,' the destruction we have wrought in nature we are being reminded of on an almost daily basis.

And, as the meteorologists are fond of saying, "There is no relief in sight."

It is Sunday, and the sermon is now ended.

Tempering My 'Enthusiasm'

Despite postings I have made on both critical thinking and avoiding fallacies of reasoning, I am well-aware that my own thinking and writing sometimes fall far short of the standards they demand. In my deep and abiding contempt for the neoconservative agenda and the simplistic, uni-dimensional thinking of its adherents, I realize that I at times resort to the same kind of demagogic tactics they employ, and while finding it hard to apologize for those lapses, I realize that little is accomplished by such outbursts other than a measure of ephemeral personal satisfaction.

I started thinking about this topic today after reading an article in this morning's Star entitled Connecting with nature is the key, activist learns. Unfortunately, the article is not on the Star's website at this time, so I will briefly summarize the salient points.

The piece, written by Stephen Bede Scharper, revolves around environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill who, in the 1990's, spent more than two years on a platform atop a thousand-year-old redwood tree in an effort to save it and some of the surrounding area from a clear-cutting operation. She ultimately succeeded in reaching a deal with the Pacific Lumber Co. that achieved her goal, but the journey to that achievement was both an arduous and instructive one.

Enduring the worst from both Mother Nature and human nature during her two-year battle atop the redwood, she went from being regarded as a kook by the workers to someone they developed a respect for. How did this happen? The turning point seems to have occurred shortly after a hail of gunfire whizzed around her platform, and Hill asked the workers if they felt better for venting their anger. This led to a discussion about how she ate and how she secured her food, after which the workers apologized for the fusillade and left.

Three weeks later they returned, this time with gifts of organic fruits and vegetables which they loaded into her rope-lifted basket. The lesson learned here? It was a seminal one for Hill: constructive engagement. Instead of being self-righteously strident, she began to see there was more value in being 'effective', i.e., learning to connect with those who opposed her.

Is this approach possible in the political battles we face in Canada against the forces of neo-conservatism? I don't know. My gut tells me there is little chance of success with that tact, but on the other hand, what are we accomplishing right now with simple denunciation and denigration, both of which, I readily admit, feel very good to practise?

Are there, indeed, better ways to try to achieve our goals?

Should this story later be posted on the Star website, I will provide a link.

The World We Are Willfully Destroying

Last year, I wrote a post on the power of the documentary. In it, I discussed how a good nature documentary can very powerfully help us to see both the wonders of the world and how we are destroying that world.

Last night I watched the show Nature on PBS. The particular episode, called Ocean Giants: Deep Thinkers, focused on the extraordinary inner lives of dolphins and whales, positing that both not only display both curiosity and high intelligence, but also the kind of self-awareness that we have traditionally assigned only to ourselves. In addition, it is clear that they have a complex language through which they communicate.

The implications of this are staggering, and once more reinforce the magnitude of the crimes that we are committing against nature, propelled by a short-shortsightedness and greed that will probably condemn us as a species. I firmly believe that only by immersing ourselves in the amazing world around us do we have any hope of salvation.

I would urge you to watch this video to understand that despite our bedazzlement by our technological achievements, they really are shallow and insignificant in the larger scheme of things; we really have no reason to feel the hubris we do that gives us an absurd sense of entitlement and the right to do as we please as we exploit and despoil earth's resources. Ironically, however, that technology is crucial in watching this show online, not only because of its use of the Internet, but also due to the fact that copyright restrictions do not permit access to Canadians. The only way to obviate that restriction is to employ i.p. masking software, such as the free Hotspot Shield.

Gwynne Dyer on Our Future

I have been writing lately about environmental degradation and the bleak future that seems to await us. On that theme, (and because I have a busy morning ahead of me) I am providing a link to an article by Gwynne Dyer, who argues that because of our huge global population and our interconnectedness, there is only one way to stave off total collapse: using our technological and scientific abilities to radically reduce the pressure we are putting on the earth's natural systems.

Words, Words, Words

And, I suspect empty ones at that as energy giant Enbridge Inc. denies any role in the Harper government's cancellation of a grant from the Gordon and Betty Foundation to help fund public-private consultations into the economic use of the waters off British Columbia’s north coast.

This cancellation occurred, by the way, after vigorous lobbying by Enbridge against the grant, administered by Tides Canada, which the energy entity characterized as opposed [to] the Northern Gateway project and a potential 'hijacker' of the consultation process.

The Harper regime influenced by corporate interests? Surely not.