Just Imagine

Just imagine what could be accomplished if people drank tap water, not bottled water. It is, unfortunately, all too symptomatic of the egocentric and selfish lives we lead that few are willing to give up even something as minor as this. The pleasure principle surely prevails, eh?

Oh, and cutting back on soft drinks would help reduce not only plastic pollution but also runaway obesity.

Reports The Guardian:

A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and the number will jump another 20% by 2021, creating an environmental crisis some campaigners predict will be as serious as climate change.

More than 480bn plastic drinking bottles were sold in 2016 across the world, up from about 300bn a decade ago. If placed end to end, they would extend more than halfway to the sun. By 2021 this will increase to 583.3bn, according to the most up-to-date estimates from Euromonitor International’s global packaging trends report.

But what about recycling?

Fewer than half of the bottles bought in 2016 were collected for recycling and just 7% of those collected were turned into new bottles. Instead most plastic bottles produced end up in landfill or in the ocean.

Between 5m and 13m tonnes of plastic leaks into the world’s oceans each year to be ingested by sea birds, fish and other organisms, and by 2050 the ocean will contain more plastic by weight than fish, according to research by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

Humans are not immune to the effects of this environmental degradation:

Scientists at Ghent University in Belgium recently calculated people who eat seafood ingest up to 11,000 tiny pieces of plastic every year. Last August, the results of a study by Plymouth University reported plastic was found in a third of UK-caught fish, including cod, haddock, mackerel and shellfish. Last year, the European Food Safety Authority called for urgent research, citing increasing concern for human health and food safety “given the potential for microplastic pollution in edible tissues of commercial fish”.

As always, the fate of the world and all of its creatures is largely in our hands. And as always, warnings like The Guardian's will likely be ignored by the bulk of humanity whose personal preferences and comforts command such an unforgivably high premium.

Things Are Bad

But they are going to get much, much worse.

The first study to integrate all prior scientific research in order to project approximately when climate change will produce permanent catastrophic consequences has been accepted and will soon be published in the scientific journal Nature, and it finds that things will start going haywire in the tropics at around the year 2020, and in our part of the world at around 2047.

Nature shares with Science and PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) the distinction of being tied as the world’s three most prestigious scientific journals, and an article is not published in these journals unless it has undergone extremely rigorous scientific peer-revue; so, climate-change deniers will have no professional credibility in attacking this study, as the Koch brothers and their friends can reasonably be expected to do, since they profit so much from what causes global warming - the burning of carbon-based fuels.

According to this study, the tropics, which are the near-equatorial region of this planet that’s almost 100% impoverished, and that has thus contributed virtually nothing to global warming, will begin the period of permanent catastrophe starting in approximately 2020; but the (cooler) moderate-latitude countries, such as in North America and Europe, will begin this catastrophic period in or around 2047.

As if things weren't already bad enough. Consider the plight of the Great Barrier Reef:

Corals, which are animals, have a symbiotic relationship with algae that give them their colour and help provide them with food. During stressful conditions such as heat waves, the algae disappear from the corals, leading to coral bleaching. If the stressful conditions last more than eight weeks, the corals can die of starvation.

Meanwhile, on our own continent, scenes like the following are becoming increasingly, distressingly common:



Clearly, the days of willful ignorance, selfishness and heedlessness are now exacting a massive price.

A Unity Of Purpose

In these polarized times, it seems that two age groups are often looked upon by the media in almost absolutist terms. We are told, for example, that people over the age of 65 are the most likely to vote (about 75 per cent did so in the 2011 election), and that their support predominantly goes to the Conservative Party. The youth vote is discouragingly low (about 38 per cent voted in the last election), and young people are portrayed a politically disengaged, losing themselves in social media and their various electronic devices. Such pigeonholing, of course, overlooks the wide variations that exist within all demographic groupings.

The two letters that follow challenge such narrow categorizations. The first was sent to me by A.J. Recana, whose Star letter I featured a while ago in my blog. As you will see, his commentary reveals someone very much concerned about the pressing issues of our time:

SETI, otherwise known as the Search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a collective name for scientific endeavors executed to look for life outside our world. Accounts such as NASA and their Keplar spacecraft discovering a planet characterized as “Earth’s bigger, older cousin” and the most recent confirmation of water and ancient lakes on Mars by NASA, are all great discoveries indeed. The potential for these discoveries and future ones are substantial catalysts for advancing the existence of the human race and it is unfathomable.

Here is the problem: We look for life on other planets yet we continue to abolish and harm life on our own. We look for suitable environments out in outer space yet we continue to destroy our primary home.

Let us take a step back and look at ourselves, figure out our troubles before advancing onto other regions in the universe and coming into contact with other life forms. If we cannot find resolutions to the conflicts and issues that have been going on within the history of humanity, how can we expect ourselves to sustain life outside this world? If we cannot improve our living conditions and take great care of our beautiful earth, how can we expect to do the same on planets that is not of our own?

The change starts with us; let’s make it happen.

The next piece, published in yesterday's Star, again challenges conventional perceptions.

Conservatives betting on rhetoric of fear, Oct. 5

I am 79 years old and have endeavoured all my life to vote with thoughtful consideration of the facts. In all those years, I have never seen such a patently racist campaign run by any party, as that of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. I did not think this could happen in Canada, and I feel both angry and ashamed.

After receiving the most disturbing flyer from the campaign office of Dianne Watts regarding the “Jihadist Terrorists, which only the Conservative party could protect us from,” I thought that our Muslim Canadians must be feeling dreadful over this relentless, ugly propaganda. I felt the need to find even one Muslim to apologize for this injustice and the hurt it caused. I found a lady at the mall, and after enquiring if she was Muslim, delivered my apology.

I said, “This is not the Canadian way.” Smiling at me with tears in her eyes, she agreed. I gave her a hug, and departed.

What are we doing to our country? One thing thing is clear, the new Conservative party bears little resemblance to the old Progressive Conservative Party that I voted for over a 50-year span.

Harper’s relentless attacks on our Muslim citizens, including references to “Barbaric cultural practices,” “Jihad threat,” and this endless hulabaloo about the niqab, clearly demonstrates a man who is exploiting that unworthy side of our nature, the racist the lurks in all of us. His propaganda is superb.

John Diefenbaker coined the phrase, “Unhyphenated Canadian.” A worthy goal. How I miss him and all the other prime ministers who truly valued our Canadian democracy.

Sybil Rowe, Surrey, B.C.

UPDATE: Why Isn't This Getting Wider Coverage?

While this story seems most timely and relevant, given the ongoing Council of the Federation meeting discussing pipeline growth, I couldn't even find a reference to it in this morning's Toronto Star. It should be front-page news.







UPDATE: Here is a live update from Nexen. One of the most interesting revelations is that the pipeline responsible for the spill is brand new, set up in 2014.

The Earth's Future Is Our Future

While I have deeply-held spiritual beliefs, I do not for a moment think that transcendent agency was involved in humanity's appearance on the earth. In my view, we just happened to arise owing to the potential inherent in the universe for development toward greater and greater complexity. To assume otherwise is to embrace a hubris that is largely responsible for the degradation, despoliation and perhaps ultimate destruction of our habitat.

In today's paper, a Star reader Kevin Farmer effectively expresses the situation that we find ourselves in today:

Re: Cooler planet, better health, Editorial June 29

In his recent column, (“Was Rachel Dolezal on to something?”), Rick Salutin poetically captured a basic truth: “Each individual is hewn organically from material reality and returns there eventually.”

Without wanting to co-opt Salutin’s discussion of race and group identity, I wonder why we do not identify more with that “material reality” from which we are so clearly hewn; namely living Earth. In fact, I would argue we are not “hewn” from living Earth at all; rather we are expressions of it. Only our fleeting sense of self makes us feel separate.

To paraphrase Alan Watts: Life did not appear on Earth like a flock of birds alighting on a barren tree; rather life came out of that tree as its flowers. In the same way that some trees are simply flowering trees, Earth is simply a life-ing and, at least for now, a people-ing “rock.”

This claim might seem like new age fluff, but it is supported by hard science. Life simply might have been inevitable on a planet such as Earth. And while it might be fluffy to think of human life as an act of self-expression by living Earth – to think that living Earth currently “identifies” as mostly human – it is entirely reasonable to wonder why human self-expression is increasingly devoid of identification with living Earth.

So, I am perplexed by the prevailing norm to timidly frame calls for environmental action in terms of furthering our self-interest; as though there were ever any such distinction. It is true that “healing the planet will make us healthier.” But the real issue is that destroying living Earth is making us sick – more than just physically.

We do not have a clear definition of “life,” but, whatever it is, Earth is bursting with it. We are all temporary patterns in the incomprehensible flow of matter and energy that is the ecosphere of living Earth. As we disrupt and destroy this flow on a planetary scale, it should come as no surprise that what we are doing to living Earth, we are doing to ourselves.

Life on Earth might have been inevitable. But that does not mean that human life was, or is, inevitable. And, unlike birds on a tree, we cannot fly away after fouling our nest.
Ironically, as we struggle with the concepts of identity and self, it is our selfishness as “individuals” that is destroying the very wellspring of our selves: living Earth.
Who are we, really, if we knowingly continue to do this?

Kevin Farmer, Toronto

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Plenty.

When construction crews begin digging a new canal this month across Nicaragua, connecting the Pacific and Atlantic, it’ll be a boon to global shipping and, the government says, to the economy of the second-poorest nation in the Americas. But activists, scientists and others are increasingly alarmed by the environmental impact of a 173-mile artificial waterway—wider, deeper and three and a half times the length of the Panama Canal

The grim facts include:

-The new canal and its infrastructure, from roads to pipelines to power plants, will destroy or alter nearly one million acres of rainforest and wetlands.

-The canal route lies in the middle of a hurricane belt. A storm like Hurricane Mitch, which killed 3,800 people in Nicaragua in 1998, would probably cause the canal to flood,
triggering mudslides that would breach locks and dams. Communities, homes, roads and power lines would be swamped.

Add to that the fact that the route canal will cut across Lake Nicaragua, which is the source of most of the country's fresh drinking water. As a consequence,

critics say ship traffic will pollute the water with industrial chemicals and introduce destructive invasive plants and animals.

All in all, this sounds like yet another of the many recipes for disaster that the world is currently contending with or awaiting.

Kinder Morgan: Message From Ralphie

This is my mad face:



Kinder Morgan wants him charged with assault.

Possibly The Most Important 60-Minutes You've Spent In A Good, Long While

Guardian enviro-scribe, George Monbiot, delivers a stark warning and a call to arms in this year’s Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute address. Monbiot warns that we’re about to feed the environment into the gaping maw of the financial sector so responsible for its current degradation.

Monbiot says that neo-liberalism will complete the devastation of our already reeling environment. He points out, in words that ring true for Canada also, that we lack the political leadership we need so desperately to protect our environment.

“This is the horrendous mistake that New Labour here and the Democratic Party in the United States have made. ‘We’ve got to win the next election so we’ve got to appease people who don’t share our values, so we’re going to become like them. Instead of trying to assert our own values, we are going to go over to them and say, “Look, we’re not really red; we’re not scary at all. We are actually conservatives.” That was Tony Blair’s message. That was Bill Clinton’s message. That, I’m afraid, is Barack Obama’s message. ...We’ve ended up with a situation where there are effectively no political alternatives to neoliberalism being advanced by the ...government. In which the opposition is, in almost every case, failing to oppose. It is in this position because it has progressively neutralised itself by trying to appease people who do not share its values.”


Does that sound familiar? It does to me. Monbiot captures the abandonment of the Left and centre-left in Canada by New Democrats and Liberals alike. They’re all neoliberal petro-pols and, as such, richly deserving of our contempt and loathing. Monbiot warns of the darker side of neoliberal politics – the inability to support anything but neoliberal solutions to our environmental threats. Foremost of these, he warns, is the madness of “natural capital” – monetizing the environment, component by component.

“You are effectively pushing the natural world even further into the system that is eating it alive. Dieter Helm, the Chairman of the Natural Capital Committee, said, ‘The environment is part of the economy and needs to be properly integrated into it so that growth opportunities will not be missed.’

“There, ladies and gentlemen, you have what seems to me the government’s real agenda. This is not to protect the natural world from the depredations of the economy. It is to harness the world to the economic growth that has been destroying it. All the things which have been so damaging to the living planet are now being sold to us as its salvation: commodification, economic growth, financialization, abstraction. Now, we are told, these devastating processes will protect it.”

“It gets worse still when you look at the way in which this is being done. Look at the government’s Ecosystems Market Task Force, which was another of these exotic vehicles for chopping up nature and turning it into money. From the beginning it was pushing nature towards financialization. It talked of ‘harnessing City financial expertise to assess the ways that these blended revenue streams and securitizations enhance the return of investment of an environmental bond.’ This gives you an idea of what the agenda is...

“What we are talking about is giving the natural world to the City of London, the financial centre, to look after. What could possibly go wrong? Here we have a sector whose wealth is built on the creation of debt. That’s how it works, on stacking up future liabilities. Shafting the future in order to serve the present, that is the model. And then that debt is sliced up into collateralized debt obligations and all other marvellous devices that worked so well last time round.

“Now nature is to be captured and placed in the care of the financial sector, as that quote suggests. In order for the City to extract any value from it, the same Task Force says we need to ‘unbundle’ ecosystem services so that can be individually traded.

“That’s the only way in which it can work – this financialization and securitization and bond issuing and everything else they are talking about. Nature has to be unbundled. If there is one thing we know about ecosystems, and we know it more the more we discover about them, is that you cannot safgely disaggregate their functions without destroying the whole thing. Ecosystems function as coherent holistic systems, in which the different elements depend upon each other. The moment you start to unbundle them and to trade them separately you create a formula for disaster.”

Monbiot concludes that the only way to save our planet is to utterly reject neoliberalism, no matter the name of the party that embraces it. What he’s saying is that we have to reject not just the Conservatives but also the Liberals and the New Democrats. He says the message from these parties is “follow us and we’ll give you a slightly less worse government.” He’s right and that’s just what the Liberals and the New Democrats have on offer. They’ve already gone to the Dark Side, you just need to be honest with yourself and admit it.

MoS, the Disaffected Lib

The Right Wing Instructs Us On Our Errors In Thinking

Benighted soul that I am, I did not realize the myriad errors of thinking I have fallen prey to. Happily, University of Toronto geography professor Pierre Desrochers has set me straight on a few things:

Nature And The Heavy Hand Of Humanity

As difficult as this is to watch, we all have a responsibility to bear witness to our collective folly:

Post by HelaNada.com - A Brand New Experience.

A Tale of Intimidation At TransCanada Corporation

Despite the best efforts of the Harper government to make its own addiction to the fossil fuel agenda the Canadian people's as well, increasing numbers are voicing their concern and opposition to the expansion of the Alberta tarsands through new pipelines. And evidence is mounting that those concern are wholly justified and not simply the hysterical reaction of 'lefties, eco-terrorists and the enemies of growth' that the Harper cabal would have us believe.

The 1,047 pipeline incidents in Canada between 2000 and 2011, although only a small part of the tale, provide ample reason for that wariness and suspicion.

Now there is even more reason to worry. As reported in the Toronto Star, there has been an ongoing and concerted effort by TransCanada Corporation, the country's preeminent pipeline company, to silence employees raising safety concerns about the company’s existing and brand new North American pipeline infrastructure:

They include warnings on the original Keystone pipeline, plagued by at least 35 incidents in the U.S. and Canada since it launched commercial operations in June 2010, and they also raise questions about the company’s testing and welding procedures on its infrastructure in Ontario as well as other lines that have reported at least four separate ruptures and four separate leaks to the federal regulator, the National Energy Board, in recent months.

Records released by the Senate energy and environment committee show cases where engineers were told in internal emails to stop searching for potential pipeline defects.

Reminiscent of the O-ring alerts ignored prior to the doomed Challenger shuttle mission, the records tell a sordid but hardly surprising tale of corporate intimidation, suppression and termination. Only one target, engineer Evan Vokes, responded to Star requests for comment:

“Please stop the investigation you seem to be doing on your own,” wrote David Taylor, a TransCanada manager of materials and engineering, in a June 27, 2011, email to Vokes. “This discussion has been going on for over a month, you need to accept where we are and become aligned with where we are going as a company.”

Vokes, a man of obvious integrity, refused to heed the increasingly threatening tone of the emails, and he was ultimately fired in 2012 without cause after he informed the company he would complain to authorities. Before his termination, however, he did what any man of deep conscience would do. He persisted:

... a few months before he lost his job, Vokes sent out a written warning to managers about the dangers of allowing the installation of a pressure vessel — a pipeline component generally used in compressor stations — on a natural gas line serving the oilsands industry near Fort McMurray.

A few weeks earlier, his manager, David Taylor, warned Vokes that there could be consequences if he continued to critique safety oversight weaknesses of TransCanada operations.

Taylor had issued other warnings previously:

“Also there is no need to comment about other projects and infer that they did something wrong,” said Taylor in an email to Vokes on Aug. 10, 2009. “As we chatted on Friday those things can and generally do come back to haunt you down the road!”

You can read the full story of TranCanada's corporate malfeasance and how it thwarted the efforts of some of its other employees to promote greater safety by clicking on the Toronto Star link provided at the start of this post.

Think This Couldn't Happen Here?

It already has, many, many times. Given the Harper cabal's abysmal record on the environment, this is surely a timely cautionary reminder for Canadians:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Police Intimidation Tactics: The Knock At The Door And The Telephone Call

The other day I wrote a post based on Thomas Walkom's column detailing the intimidation tactics being utilized by the Ontario Province Police againt those in the Kincardine area opposed to their land being the site of a proposed nuclear waste dump. Many of those planning to make their opposition known at hearings into the matter received knocks on the door from the police asking if they were planning any demonstrations. No groups in favour of the site received such visits.

In today's edition of The Star, Thomas Walkom reports that the OPP is now exporting its tactics to the United States, but instead of the knock on the door they are using the jarring ring of the telephone:

Toledo, Ohio resident Michael Leonardi says he received a phone call at home from the OPP’s provincial liaison team asking about his scheduled appearance before the federal review panel looking into plans to bury low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste along Ontario’s Lake Huron shoreline.

In particular, police wanted to know if any protests were planned, he said.

“The officer was very nice,” Leonardi, a member of the Toledo Coalition for Safe Energy, told me Sunday. “He said there was some possibility that organizations like Greenpeace might demonstrate and that police didn’t want any fatalities.”

And yes, Leonardi insists that the word used was “fatalities.”

As Walkom notes, it is not unusual for the police to be proactive when large groups are planning demonstrations, working with them to coordinate traffic stoppages, etc. What appears to be unprecedented is their contact of people merely planning to attend a federal hearing to express their opposition.

Says American Michael Leonardi:

... he has testified at Ontario nuclear hearings before. But this is the first time he’s been vetted by police ahead of time.

“I was just kind of surprised,” he said. “The guy was nice enough on his own. But I couldn’t help but think the call was meant to deter me from testifying.”

But of course, that is surely a mistaken impression. Our police trying to interfere with our Charter Rights? That could never happen in this country. Of course not.

"I Am The One Who Knocks"

For the past several years, my attention has been riveted on a show called Breaking Bad, without doubt one of the greatest television series ever produced, ranking right up there with The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and The Wire. The tale of a chemistry teacher (played by the incredibly talented Bryan Cranston) who becomes a high-level meth producer and distributor after being diagnosed with lung cancer, the show has become increasingly dark over its five-year run, which is about to end with just two episodes remaining.

In a famous scene, shown below, the protagonist, Walter White, talks to his wife about the knock on the door, something we very frequently associate with either bad news or something deeply unsettling. Well, as reported by Thomas Walkom in today's Star, that knock on the door has come to Kincardine residents opposed to the plan to dump nuclear waste nearby. Who was knocking? The OPP "Provincial Liaison Team":

When Beverley Fernandez came to her front door one day last week, she found two Ontario Provincial Police constables patiently waiting.

Fernandez, who opposes plans to bury nuclear waste on the Lake Huron shoreline near her Kincardine-area home, was scheduled to testify at an environmental assessment hearing into the scheme.

The officers had tracked her down. Now, they told her, they were there to help. In particular, they wanted to help by knowing if her advocacy group, Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump, was planning any demonstrations.

They told her that plenty of plainclothed officers would be present at the hearings. They said they weren’t trying to stifle anyone’s free speech. And then, very politely, they left.

This performance was repeated with several dump-site critics but, curiously, none of the advocates of the plan except for Kincardine Mayor Larry Kraemer received such 'courtesy calls.'

Former provincial deputy environment minister Rod McLeod, who lives in the area, said he knows of at least six dump critics who were approached by police for a quiet chat.

The subliminal message, he said, is patently obvious: Behave yourself; we’ll be watching.

Who instigated these obvious attempts at intimidation? According to OPP Sgt. David Rektor, the liaison team took it upon themselves, as the OPP likes to have a “proactive approach” in situations where there might be “two ideas opposed to each other.”

Unfortunately, this version of 'the truth' does not square with that of the spokesman for Ontario Power Generation, Neal Kelly's. In an email, he said that the OPP’s “engagement” came at the request of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and “local municipalities.”

Perhaps the question of who instigated the 'visits' is ultimately of secondary importance. What is of paramount significance is the fact that the Ontario Provincial Police are attempting to intimidate and stifle the expression of an opinion that some do not like, clearly evidenced by the fact that none of the groups advocating for the nuclear dump site were visited.

Obviously, that Saturday knock on the door by Jehovah's Witnesses is not the only thing citizens of Ontario have to worry about.

The Price Of Our Heedlessness - A Sobering Saturday Morning Video

Although brief, this video shows the terrible cost of our 'disposable' lifestyles:

A Reminder Of Our Place

As our Cuban friends' visit continues, we are trying to give them a sampling of life in Canada. Yesterday we went to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto; the first exhibition hall we entered there was the one devoted to Canada's aboriginal peoples, where we came upon a work by Norval Morriseau entitled Migration, depicted above.

As the human race continues its ruthless and relentless exploitation of earth's resources to the point of exhaustion, as our heedless behaviour warms the earth to the point of profound and probably irreversible, disastrous change, Migration offers us a succinct reminder of how everyone and everything is interconnected and interdependent.

It is a simple and profound truth, the implications of which far too many choose to be willfully ignorant.

The Commercial NBC Refused To Air

According to Salon.com, this anti-Keystone pipeline ad was pulled at the last minute by NBC. I guess the CBC isn't the only network that has grown sheepish of late.

Pensée Du La Jour

Perhaps Its Time To Stop Talking And Start Acting?

For obvious reasons.

A Grim Reminder Of Who Is Leading Our Country

It's a dreary rainy morning in my part of the country, so this rather grim reminder of present political realities seems appropriate if one is familiar with the notion of pathetic fallacy.



H/t Scott Monette