No, I am not one of those who begrudge rich people their pleasures and pursuits. Content in my own life, I harbour no ill-will toward those who are better off than me.
I do become bothered, however, when those pursuits both distract us from, and add to, the existential crises our world faces. In that, the billionaires have much to answer for.
Take the recent 'groundbreaking' flights of Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos into near-space and the breathless reporting that followed it.
Start at the 9:40 mark of the following to catch Stephanie Ruhle's breathless, (star struck?) interview with the Bezos boys:
Similar gushing interlocutions can be found online following Branson's Virgin Galactic foray, but I hope the above serves to illustrate that this kind of gushing, lionizing coverage serves merely as a bread-and-circuses diversion away from the many problems we face in our terrestrial sphere.
Now, were you to watch earlier in this broadcast, you would hear how Bezos also talks about seeing our planet from above and how fragile it really is. He opines we must do everything we can to protect our world, as if his space trip offered a transcendent experience.
And Branson, after his trip, said he wants to spend the rest of his life helping to solve our many problems here.
Apparently, those problems do not include our biggest threat, climate change.
Despite these intrepid innovators' claim that the greenhouse gas emissions from their excursions are no different from those from a jet flight, the truth is otherwise. First of all, both of their business models call for more and more of these inner-space trips, and as they scale up, the price will come down, making them more accessible to more people. Hence, more trips, more greenhouse gas emissions.
Secondly, the nature of these emissions is different from jet trips. Katherine Gammon explains:
Eloise Marais, an associate professor of physical geography at University College London... studies the impact of fuels and industries on the atmosphere.
The carbon emissions from rockets are small compared with the aircraft industry, she says. But they are increasing at nearly 5.6% a year, and Marais has been running a simulation for a decade, to figure out at what point will they compete with traditional sources we are familiar with.
“For one long-haul plane flight it’s one to three tons of carbon dioxide [per passenger],” says Marais. For one rocket launch it’s 200-300 tonnes of carbon dioxide carrying 4 or so passengers – close on two orders of magnitude more, according to Marais. “So it doesn’t need to grow that much more to compete with other sources.”
But the problem is more than simply the amount of carbon spewed, because
emissions from rockets are emitted right into the upper atmosphere, which means they stay there for a long time: two to three years. Even water injected into the upper atmosphere – where it can form clouds – can have warming impacts, says Marais. “Even something as seemingly innocuous as water can have an impact.”
Closer to the ground, all fuels emit huge amounts of heat, which can add ozone to the troposphere, where it acts like a greenhouse gas and retains heat. In addition to carbon dioxide, fuels like kerosene and methane also produce soot. And in the upper atmosphere, the ozone layer can be destroyed by the combination of elements from burning fuels.
When I was a boy, I imagined a future of endless possibilities. Each liftoff of the Mercury and Apollo missions served only to whet that imagination. But I grew up and saw an increasingly fractured world with no simple remedies.
Perhaps it is now time for these 'boys of space' to do a bit of growing up as well.
As a long-time visitor to Cuba, I have an ongoing interest in what happens in the island nation, as well as a deep respect for the resilience of its people. Despite having been exploited for centuries by outside powers, they have always found a way to work with the limited resources they have.
Cases in point: for years they have had a vaccine to treat lung cancer. They have also developed what seem to be effective vaccines against COVID-19. They provide free health care for all of their citizens, along with free education, up to and including university.
All of these feats, and many more, have been accomplished despite the crippling U.S.-imposed embargo that has been ongoing since 1962.
Despite that, U.S. news coverage has been focusing upon the large-scale demonstrations currently taking place in Cuba, protests prompted by food and medicine shortages. Most coverage is framed as an uprising against the government. The real culprit? The United States' intractable animus toward the Communist island.
The following demonstrates the bias in reporting:
I'm afraid Mr. Biden's expressions of solidarity with the Cuban people ring both hollow and hypocritical. The United States has the power to relieve their suffering but clings to the long-cherished fever dream of an overthrow of the government, one that would be replaced by a government just like theirs. (After all, who wouldn't want to be like the greatest nation the world has ever known?)
There is much more to be said on this topic, but I will leave you with the thoughts of a Star letter-writer from today's print edition who puts the blame squarely where it belongs:
Use of Miami Herald piece misrepresents reality in Cuba
Toronto Star
Re Thousands demand end of dictatorship in Cuba, July 12 With its source being the Miami Herald, the Star reports that “thousands demand end of dictatorship in Cuba,” although some sources put the number of protesters as “hundreds.”
Cuba’s population is estimated at 11,320,000 and I am certain that 99 per cent of Cubans see the U.S. stranglehold on them as more concerning than any other aspect of their difficult lives.
This past June 23, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution titled “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.”
This same resolution has passed the General Assembly every year from 1992 to 2021, that is for 29 years. This year, the vote was 184 in favour, two against (the U.S. and Israel).
A comprehensive economic embargo against Cuba was put in place way back in 1962 by the U.S. after its embarrassing defeat at the Bay of Pigs. It has remained in place. That followed the 1960 cancellation by the U.S. of the annual purchase of six million tons of sugar from Cuba.
It is not “chronic inefficiencies and paralyzing bureaucracy” that have eroded the country’s production capacity. Any country in the world, such as Canada, subject to an economic blockade by the United States for 59 years would be “in the throes of its worst economic contraction in over three decades” and suffering a plunge in foreign investment.
Why can the Toronto Star and Canada in general not recognize a huge bully gone berserk as he endlessly beats up the little kid who bested him in a game a long time ago in front of the other kids? This is no game. Millions of Cuban children and seniors are the victims as the U.S. collapses their world out of spite, while insisting it is acting on their behalf.
This letter-writer in today's print edition of The Toronto Star states what is ultimately a sad truth about us.
Canadians unwilling to make sacrifices for climate change
Toronto Star
Re Western Canada’s heat dome may be Ontario bound.
A climate expert explains what’s next, June 29
The sad fact is that Canadians, like most of the world, will not take any responsibility for climate change if it infringes upon their daily life.
How many Canadians are willing to give up their gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks or pressure their government to ban the building of large, single-detached homes and outlet malls that contribute to global warming and eat up our precious resources?
We may moan and groan about billions of baked clams, but that’s about it. We are a consumerist society and we aren’t willing to change. The world will get hotter and we’ll shrug our shoulders. In the end, our children and grandchildren will be left holding the bag.
When I was a young lad on the receiving end of a Catholic education, we had two regularly-recurring rituals. Once a month we would be led over to the parish church to go to Confession. While sitting in the pews awaiting our turn, we would pore over a booklet called The Examination of Conscience.
Designed to help Catholics make a 'good Confession', the booklet went over various types and classifications of sins (some of which were a bit beyond youngsters, e.g., Have you ever been a member of a secret society? Have you had impure thoughts about your neigbour's wife?).
After thinking long and hard about our misdeeds, we went into the confessional, where we told our tales of iniquity and were granted absolution by the priest, contingent upon our doing the penance he meted out. (Some priests were more severe than others, requiring part of the rosary instead of the more lenient five Hail Marys. It was always the luck of the draw for us.)
I dredge up these memories because penance has been lately on my mind, as I am sure it has been on the minds of many Canadians these days following the grim discovery, with more surely to come, of unmarked graves at former residential schools, powerful symbols of the racism perpetrated in all of our names.
Some might ask why collectively we should atone for past misdeeds that we had nothing to do with. In my mind, the answer is simple: the fallout of the abuse, neglect and deaths experienced by Indigenous peoples continues to reverberate today, a legacy of ruined lives that is reflected in the poverty, unemployment, alcoholism and fractured psyches experienced by far too many today. Generational pain is not self-limiting.
Where do we go from here? While there is obviously no simple answer, part of the solution has to be increased opportunities for Indigenous people to pursue higher education. And in that pursuit, all of us can play a part.
For the past few years I have been contributing to an organization called Inspire. Here is their mission statement:
Charity Intelligence Canada recognized Indspire with their four-star rating and named us a Top 10 Canadian Impact Charity for 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 and Maclean’s also selected Indspire as a 2019 and 2020 Top Rated Charity.
Vision, Mission, North Star and Core Values
Vision: Enriching Canada through Indigenous education and by inspiring achievement.
Mission: In partnership with Indigenous, private and public sector stakeholders, Indspire educates, connects and invests in Indigenous people so they will achieve their highest potential.
North Star: Within a generation, every Indigenous student will graduate.
Wringing our hands and expressing sorrow and outrage about the past are normal reactions to recent revelations, But the cliched 'thoughts and prayers' must be accompanied by concrete actions if any of us is ever to achieve any measure of penance for the past and hope for the future.
