Author: Peter Scott Cameron

Good News 2: Climate Change

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

Good news! No, sorry, it is not that Elon Musk has blasted off on a one-way rocket to Mars, or that Taylor Swift has laryngitis – even better news than that! We have made progress on the climate front.

     Good news cannot help but be most welcome after an anxiety-provoking year with record heat, Canadian fires, and a final COPS 28 document, that like Bob Dole in his last years, suffered from erectile dysfunction. The COPS document should have been no surprise, given that the conference president was Sultan al-Jaber of the United Arab Emirates, who was also chair of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. This (having an oil executive in charge of the world conference on climate change) was such a good idea that we have already decided to replicate it. Mukhtar Babayev, former executive of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan for twenty-six years, has been named as president of COPS 29.(1) Talk about foxes guarding the hen-house, or I would say, hiring wolves to tend the sheep. No wonder the COPS outcomes tend to be, as the wise-beyond-her-years Greta Thunberg would put it: “blah, blah, blah.”

     Sorry! Back to the good news:

     The price of renewable energy is coming down exponentially. This is affecting fossil fuel use to such a degree that we likely have reached a positive tipping point. That is, fossil fuel use may peak as early as 2030. All forms of renewable energy are surging and by 2027, solar is expected to become the cheapest source of energy, period. There are strong indications that we are at peak electric power emissions right now – such emissions are expected to decline in 2024.

     Our awareness of the poison of plastics is rising. With varying degrees of success, countries such as India, Canada, and the U.K. are fighting to ban single-use plastic, despite stiff opposition from the likes of DOW Chemical and Exxon. Canada developed a plan in 2023 for a plastics registry that includes manufacturers, which would gather and use evidence in the effort to reduce and even prevent plastic pollution. The goal is zero plastic waste by 2030. Meanwhile numerous lawsuits are underway in several countries against high plastic users such as Pepsi and Evian etc.

     In the past year, oil companies such as BP, Exxon and Saudi Aramco pledged to reduce methane emissions by at least 80% by 2030. This is completely achievable. Oil companies, of course, are notoriously unreliable partners in efforts to improve public well-being, but we can hold their feet to their methane flares, so to speak.

     COPS 28 did establish a fund provided by wealthy, high-emissions countries to help development of poorer countries without adding to fossil fuel emissions, as well as to address problems caused by climate change in these countries. This is a big deal; it will help huge swaths of the world to avoid following our path toward high fossil-fuel development.

    Deforestation in the Amazon in Brazil is plummeting under President Luiz Ignácio Lula da Silva, exactly as he promised, after the previous populist bad guy, Jair Bolsonaro, was turfed from office (good news all by itself, that).

     “Kids” are not waiting for their parents to get with it. Not only are they changing their consumption patterns, but they are filing lawsuits, making the claim that they deserve, of all things, a liveable world. Young people, for example, won a suit in Montana (Held vs. Montana). The state trial judge ruled that the Montana government violated the plaintiffs’ right to a “clean and healthful environment” by failing to consider the harms of fossil fuels.

     States and localities are taking the initiative ahead of national governments (although there is progress by nations there, too: Switzerland, for example, has made a legislative commitment to get to net-zero by 2050). But even small cities, where you might not think it would happen, are making efforts to go green: think Greensburg, Kansas (conservation rebuilding), Georgetown, Texas (wind and solar in the heart of oil country), and Juneau, Alaska (developing electric vehicles infrastructure). In Canada, cities like Vancouver, Edmonton, Halifax and Montreal are tackling the problem with retrofits, clean energy projects, road pricing and carbon accounting. And many Canadian indigenous communities are leading in fighting fossil fuel expansion as well as the development of renewable energy projects.

     A piece of great news and a tremendous victory for people and the planet: The Green Belt has been preserved in Ontario. It was intended to protect environmentally important land from unfettered urban sprawl in a large area around Toronto, from Oshawa to Hamilton, referred to as the “Golden Horseshoe.” The Horseshoe has been the fastest growing area in North America for years and is expected to approach twelve million people by around 2031. Within and around the Horseshoe, the Green Belt is a swath of two million acres of land, including agricultural, forest, and wetlands that was established in 2005 under the Liberal premier at the time: a brilliant idea.

     But alas, as Cameron’s Fifth Law states: “no idea is so great that some dunderhead will do all that can be done to take it down.” Enter Doug Ford. Americans might not know Doug Ford, but will remember his younger brother Rob Ford, the former crack-smoking mayor of Toronto, perhaps best known for showing up inebriated at Tim Horton Doughnut shops in the middle of the night, spouting gibberish in an ersatz Jamaican patois, and for his campaign promises to “tear up” the newly installed bike lanes in the city.(2) If Rob was a drunken Chewbacca figure, then his older brother is more like Darth Vader, only more devious but not that smart.(3)

     The election of Doug Ford in 2018 was not a happy moment for the climate movement. The former provincial premiere, Kathleen Wynne, a good climate warrior who introduced a cap-and-trade program, was thoroughly trounced at the polls. She was a highly intelligent woman who also happened to be a lesbian. She lost the election because she was: a) highly intelligent, b) a woman, and c) a lesbian. This hat-trick of threats was too much for the fragile male egos of the province, so they tossed her out on her green lesbian bum. Sad.

     Ford, on the other hand, touted prosperity through burning lots of fossil fuel, which is always a good selling point for a sizeable percentage of any electorate. One of his potential cabinet ministers promised to “tear out wind generators by the roots,” if elected. Not good, though a somewhat comical image: perhaps she was confusing wind mills with sunflowers. When Ontarians woke up the day after the election and realized what they had done, they were like black-out drunks in the morning, saying, “no, wait, I did what last night?” But then, brains addled by Long Covid, the good people of Ontario elected him again in 2022. Goes to show you.

A Digression.

If you want, you can skip this section – it is off topic. But if you do that, you will regret it. It will enrich your life, so I recommend you stay with me.

     Americans should know that – and it may come as a surprise to those who see Canada as a more civilized (true) and more peaceful nation (true) but similar to their own – Canada has a long tradition of tolerating and electing politicians…let’s say, without all their oars in the water. Canadians don’t seem to expect that their politicians to be any less or more bonkers (4) than the general population.(5) So leaders with quirks or issues are not unusual. None of this should come as a surprise, when you realize that among the greatest exports from Canada to the U. S. have been William Shatner, Norm MacDonald, John Candy, and Jim Carrey.

     One mayor (Mel Lastman) of Toronto who preceded Rob Ford by a decade or so, was an appliance hawker who went by the name of “Bad Boy” and who appeared in those goofy television commercials wearing a striped prison outfit – you know the kind of ad I am talking about. He was a Liberal Party member, but claimed that fact was a result of a “misunderstanding” although the nature of the misunderstanding was never explained. Bad Boy is remembered best for exclaiming, before a diplomatic trip to Africa, that he didn’t really want to go because, and I quote: “I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me.”

     Completely without charisma, the highly intelligent William Lyon Mackenzie King (fondly known as “Weird Willie” by the populace), was elected as prime minister three non-consecutive times and led Canada during WWII. By all accounts, he was an excellent prime minister. He was also a spiritualist and held seances while in office in order to consult with his dead mother, his deceased dogs, and Leonardo da Vinci, among others, about public policy. No doubt his full formal moniker was a big part of his problem. He was a bachelor, it probably goes without saying.

     W. A. C. “Wacky” Bennett was a leader of the Social Credit Party in Western Canada and served as the premiere of British Columbia for – count ’em – seven consecutive terms, beginning in the early nineteen-fifties and stretching until the end of the sixties. Wacky was…well, you figure it out. The Social Credit Party itself was founded in the nineteen-thirties by a radio evangelist, “Bible Bill” Aberhart who mixed fundamentalist Christianity and a dash of anti-Semitism with the dubious economic theories of an engineer by the name of C. H. Douglas. Douglas sought to apply engineering theories to rationalize economics. His theory was that…oh, well, never mind. In any case, in the first campaign for the Social Credit Party in the Great Depression in Alberta in 1935, I understand that the party promised to hand out $100 cash to every citizen if elected. Bible Bill and the Social Credit won, and the day after the election people are said to have lined up outside the legislature waiting for their money, but were surprised to find the doors locked.

     Even the (arguably) greatest Canadian prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, the cultured intellectual, told his fellow parliamentarians, right in session, to “fuddle duddle.”(6)

     So there, you see.

End of digression: Back to Doug Ford and Saving the Green Belt:

Ford had promised to develop housing on the beloved Green Belt, but Ontarians had elected him anyway. Sure enough, a few years later, he made crooked deals with developers and announced plans. The electorate was surprised and outraged, which begs the question…well, it is hard to think what the right question is in this situation. In any case, the population rose up in opposition and protest, which demonstrates that some of the time, people actually understand things. Not only that, but the dealings were entirely shady and have caught the attention of both ethics watchdogs and the Provincial Police. The plan was hastily withdrawn. Even though Ford has hinted that he has not given up, this is a victory of inestimable value in the climate fight.

     Plus everyone knows that the solution to twenty-first-century exploding-population housing crisis in urban areas is to build vertically, not horizontally – condos and apartments, not sprawling housing developments. Anyway, let’s hear it for the people of Ontario, who it appears, might have come to their senses!

     There is more good news, and it is possible I’ve saved the best for last:

     Joe Biden’s efforts and the so-called Inflation Reduction Act have had a profound effect already. The U.S. is pivoting away rapidly from gas, oil and coal toward wind, solar and other renewables. Progress resulting from the Act is happening faster than expected. Emissions from electricity in the U.S. is on track to be reduced by 83% by 2030. A bonus, but predicted and promised: job generation was been huge. At the same time, China has sped up also, and is expected to double its solar and wind energy in just the next two years. Further, in the face of the Russian war against Ukraine, European countries are weaning themselves off Russian oil and accelerating toward renewables. Overall, the momentum is tremendous.

     Notably, India’s emissions have dropped by thirty-three percent in the last fourteen years. This has been accomplished mainly by increasing both renewable energy and government-initiated reforestation. India is clearly on track to meet its commitment to reduce emissions from 2005 levels; the country is expected to show a reduction of 45% by 2030. This is a demonstrative case: given India’s overpopulated society and rather messy economy, it shows us that it can be done, no matter what the conditions.

     The U.S. and China agreement, from late 2023, to ramp up renewables and phase out of fossil fuels, even if modest, will have huge effects since these two countries are the biggest producers overall, and China is big producer of methane. It also portends well for further cooperation, despite the otherwise combative stance that these two countries take in relation to one another.

     U.S. emissions fell a tad – about two percent – in 2023, despite an apparent frenzy to fly in aeroplanes after the pandemic, as well as a neurotic compulsion to drive all over the damn place in gargantuan pickup trucks and gigantic SUVs. Overall American emissions have declined just over seventeen percent since 2005. Mostly this is due to an ongoing decline in coal burning resulting in the lowest level of coal emissions since the early 1970s.

     Clearly, given climate events of 2023, this latter is not enough, but – it is something. It is progress. And since we are fossil fuel addicts, I think it is appropriate to borrow a phrase I have heard from members of Alcoholics Anonymous, to the effect that they seek “progress, not perfection.” 2023 was not good, but there was progress, so let us not be disheartened.

     Let us instead, embrace this progress and promise to ourselves, to each other, and to the creatures of the planet, that we will do more in 2024.

 

Notes:

1. I am going to eschew my usual practice of providing bibliographic references this time. There would be no end to them. But you can DuckDuckGo the points and find supporting references easily if you wish. Also, in this piece, I am returning to my practice of preferring Canadian English spellings whenever I can remember to do them.

2. It is not my intention to speak poorly of the dead. Rob died of cancer a couple of years after leaving office and I am sorry about that. I am only making fun of him while he was alive, which is fair enough. And I would note that he had a heart and was personally generous to a fault; we can use more people with those qualities. If he met someone without money on the street, he would hand them $20 from his pocket. 

3. As executor of his brother Rob’s will, Doug Ford was accused of mishandling and possibly embezzling money intended for his brother’s widow.

4. As a long-time community mental health worker, I use these terms as in common vernacular, referring to defects of character and maladies of impoverished and distorted thinking – not in reference to actual serious mental illnesses. People who suffer from these real illnesses deserve our empathy, our help, and our respect. 

5. Americans elect just as many, if not more, politicians who are not firing on all cylinders, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene or Matt Gaetz. The difference seems to be that the news media and the American people appear feel compelled to pretend that these people represent normal and legitimate ideas, which makes them more dangerous and leads to some dissociated public discourse, to say the least. 

6. Pierre told them to “fuck off.” At first he said, when asked, that he was merely moving his lips, and challenged them, demanding to know whether they were lip readers. Asked about it later, he said it was “fuddle duddle.” This became the big Fuddle Duddle Incident of 1971, a landmark event in Canadian politics, challenging even the Mange de la Merde episode Trudeau had with union workers in Montréal a year earlier.

Good News 1: Gun Control

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

As we start 2024, given the rather dreary year just past (wars, a tough year for climate, and a record number of mass shootings in the U.S. etc.) I thought it would be helpful to start the new year with some good news.(1)

     On the issue of gun control in the U.S.: despite a Supreme Court crackpot majority that seems bent on ensuring continuing mayhem (2) – with a preponderance of members stuck in the eighteenth century, dreaming of the day that men’s breeches are fashionable once more (or in the case of one member, petticoats) – Blue and Blue-ish States have seized the initiative. These may be baby steps, and they will be challenged in lawsuits brought forth by gun boneheads and the big money that backs them, but still they show sanity, courage, humanity, and a willingness of Legislators to take on powerful, monied interests.

1. California, Oregon, and Illinois have passed new “red flag” laws, enabling risk protection orders that allow gun possession prohibitions for people who have already demonstrated a strong potential for violence. It can be difficult to predict violence, of course, but still it is common sense to strip a previously violent person of his (usually his) guns, or someone who is threatening to kill his ex – or anyone who is menacing, for that matter. Duh.

2. Governor Newsom in California signed legislation that prohibits carrying concealed guns in twenty-six public places, including churches (!), parks (!!), and playgrounds (!!!). Of course, why people are allowed to carry concealed weapons – or open carry, for that matter – anywhere, anytime in a civil society, boggles my mind. Call me crazy if you will, but I just think we are all better off without jokers walking around carrying guns in public. But maybe that is just me: too rational, I suppose, and I’ve done therapy so that my childhood developmental issues are minimal. Anyway, go Guv, good on ya!

3. A ban on the sale of many semiautomatic assault weapons, including AK-47s and AR-15s, went into effect on New Year’s day in Illinois. I know, I know, the banning of AR-15s etc. will cramp the style of lawful squirrel hunters in the State, but hey! We all have to give a little for the common good.

4. Colorado has also banned kit and ghost guns (home-made, with no serial numbers). This logically would include plastic guns made with 3-D printers. Pro-gun dunderheads have already brought a lawsuit claiming this infringes on personal liberty to…well, to do whatever the hell they want, I suppose. But I am hopeful that even this High Court will see the wisdom here, understanding the difference between a flood of untraceable, lethal-impact weapons in a predominantly urban, high-population Civitas, versus a society that was low-density and agrarian and in which the main weapons were muskets or single-shot muzzle-loaders, along with hay forks.

5. Just prior to 2023, our good New York Governor Hochul signed legislation that took several steps, some small to be sure, but with the main thrust restricting concealed carry in certain public locations – after the Supreme Court ludicrously struck down an effective one-hundred year old N.Y. law that restricted such carry outside the home. It never struck me as particularly good idea to allow the carrying, concealed or otherwise, of guns in bars, for example, although the Supreme Court apparently thinks this is an okay idea. Go, Guv!

     So! Small steps, to be sure, but significant nonetheless. Thank you to these States and their leaders. We mustn’t give up or give in, not for a moment. Our children and grandchildren depend on us. As good old Uncle Joe Biden might say: No More Malarkey!

Notes

1. Sadly, I would be remiss not to note the school shooting yesterday (January 4) in Iowa.

2. I understand “Originalism.” But this idea is Big Malarkey. The American Constitution and its amendments are not sacred texts that came down from the mountaintop on tablets. Rather, these constitute a powerful yet living, guiding document that must be interpreted and reinterpreted in light of both past and current social and historical contexts. 

Sources

Governor Hochul Announces New Concealed Carry Laws Passed in Response to Reckless Supreme Court Decision Take Effect September 1, 2022. August 31, 2022, https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-new-concealed-carry-laws-passed-response-reckless-supreme-court. Accessed January 4, 2024.

Marcos, Coral Murphy. New gun safety laws take effect around the U.S. after over 650 mass shootings in 2023. The Guardian, January 1, 2024.

Global Burning: It’s Personal

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

Climate change is personal. I have seen it first-hand. More than a decade ago I travelled up to my hometown in Northern Ontario, the land of lakes, rivers, and pine forests. It was as savage and beautiful as always. I had a small aluminum boat in tow, with a ten-horsepower outboard motor on it, and my one-man canoe on top. I drove the few miles out of town to Lake Kenogami, where I had spent idyllic summers on the lake, swimming, fishing, and wandering its miles of blue water, and exploring the river at both ends: The Blanche.

     As a boy, alone and with childhood chums, I boated along the river, especially at the west end, which was wilder: a land of beavers, muskrats, herons, and if you were lucky, a moose or a black bear on the shore. At points in the river you would have to drag your boat over the sturdy beaver dams, strong enough to hold you, your pal (if he was with you), and your boat as you pulled it over. For a boy, it was as close to heaven as you could get on this earth. When I bite the big one, this is where I want my ashes to be scattered.

     This day, I put my boat in near the bridge over Highway 11, at the two-story wooden Kenogami Hotel (renamed later in our more pretentious age, “The Kenogami Bridge Inn”), and before heading onto the lake I motored a half-mile east on that part of the Blanche. My outboard hit two rocks on route – this might otherwise mean nothing, but despite all the years that had gone by, I still knew the river and how to navigate it. It meant the river was much lower than it used to be: it least a foot lower, by my estimate.

     I returned to the lake and moved up its length, stopping by the shore of “our” bay to look at our small log cottage now apparently relegated to a sleep cabin or storage shed. Then I stopped for a while at “my” island, a small, pine and moss-covered rock island about fifty feet long, where I had camped as a boy. With the lowered water, my old landing slip was now a rocky outcrop. When young, I would stay a day or two, skinny-dipping in the cool water, and fishing for pickerel. From the island, there were no cottages and no people to see. I had enormous freedom, but there were rules: if camping overnight, we had to go in pairs, each boy with a boat in case of problems, and once a day we had to check in at home. We’d build a fire and cook the fish we caught, eating it with tea that we brewed. At night, in our tiny pup-tents, we would fall asleep to the hallucinatory calls of the loons.

     After visiting my island, I continued another mile or so, to the point were the Blanche joined the lake at its western end. But I could not find the river mouth. There was no obvious inlet for the river water flowing south and east from Sesekinika Lake. Instead, there was a reedy area, with numerous rivulets – a marshy shoreline; somewhere behind that had to be the river, assuming it still existed. I came back with my canoe the next day and still could not find a distinct inlet. I was unable to get to my beloved Blanche. (1) The reason is straightforward: changing climate had warmed the atmosphere, shortened the winter, and reduced the snow pack and the rainfall and the water level had fallen. What I had known was gone.

 

We all read about the fires in Canada last summer, and some of us saw it, albeit second-hand, at least in the form of an orange-brown haze over both Canadian and American cities – a haze that, where I live, in Northeastern New York, you could taste on some days. The haze made it all the way to Europe. The conflagration began in early spring, and since then there have been more than 6,500 fires. (2) As of November 9, there were still 412 fires, 119 of them out of control. (3) So far the fires have burned 18.5 million hectares (45.7 million acres). Many of the fires were large and fierce enough “to create their own weather via pyrocumulonimbus clouds, or ‘fire storm clouds,’ which can stretch 200 miles (320km) wide and carry ash and other debris upward and unleash lightning that can trigger multiple other fires that immolate more trees.” (4) This was in the vast boreal forest that makes up about a quarter of the world’s intact woodlands – the boreal forest of Canada is about the size of India.

     It is a disaster. The cause? Climate change. Forests have been weakened by the changes. Winters are shorter and not as cold. The snow-pack is not as deep and does not last as long and rainfall is less. Quite simply, the forest is entering a new age, an age of fire, because it is too dry.

     In August, I read a piece in the New York Times: it was heartfelt, a description by the writer of driving (presumably from New York, where he is a member of the Times editorial board) up though the Adirondacks, though the orange haze, past Montréal, where “the sun was reduced to a red spot,” and on to La Belle, Quebec where the author has a summer cottage. He goes on to describe the fire conditions and to lament the situation both in global terms, but also in terms of its affecting the serene beauty of the lake where he is observing and writing. (5)

     Yet, nowhere did he make a connection between his driving, for hundreds of miles, from his place of work to his cottage retreat. It – the fires, the haze, and all – appear to be just happening to the world and to him, giving him feelings like sorrow and wistfulness.

     But what about that drive? And how many times a season does he make it? How much carbon does he emit as a result?

     And what about me and my earlier trips to the hometown in Northern Ontario? Did I realize my contribution to climate change? I’d like to obfuscate and say “sort of,” but that would be a lie. I did realize. I – and we – have have been publicly aware of climate change since at least 1980. (6)  But I went anyway, just wanting to do what I wanted to do, including towing a boat behind my Jeep S.U.V. and carrying a wind-dragging canoe on top. So now: should I ever travel the five-hundred miles each way to go there again, even though I would like to? No, I think not.

 

Global burning is personal; yet, we continue to live as though it is not. We are observing effects and wringing our hands alright, but we continue to do whatever we do, while waiting for the technological and market fixes that will avert the disaster and avoid any personal inconvenience. But the simple truth is, even if we are marvellously ingenious, technical and market fixes will be too little, too late. These fixes will never be enough, in any case. In order to save the planet from the worst of climate change, we have to change our behaviour. We have to change how we live.

     But I see few signs that we are willing to change. Instead, I see us continuing to build gigantic McMansions, when much smaller houses would do. I see more and more huge pickups and sports utility vehicles barrelling along the road (Ford discontinued selling standard sedans and small hatchbacks in North America in 2020, in favour of trucks). (7) I see people flocking back to travel after the pandemic, flying all over the place and packing themselves onto cruise ships. (8) Consumption, from cheap fast fashion to over-priced iPhones, shows no sign of moderation.

      This summer I was alarmed to see, on numerous occasions, locked vehicles idling in the grocery store parking lot. People were going in to shop and leaving their cars running (for 15 minutes? A half-hour? An hour?) with the air-conditioner on so that the car would be cool when they came out. The hottest summer, caused by climate change, and that is the response? Unbelievable.

     We just don’t get it.

     Of course, governments and corporate rascals are backtracking, too. Oil companies like B.P. and Exxon are quietly stepping back from previously set climate goals. The U.K.’s Conservative Sunak government announced, in September, a rollback of established climate goals and actions. Incredibly, Daniel Smith, the Alberta Premier, has imposed a moratorium (!) on renewable energy projects in that dirty oil (tar sands) province. Even good old Uncle Joe Biden is persisting in developing the Willow oil-drilling project in Alaska, despite otherwise being a “green” president.

     The rascals certainly must be held accountable, but we also must be accountable to ourselves, to each other, to our children and to our grandchildren. We have to change our behaviour.

     I am someone who abhors telling others what to do and how to live, but this is an emergency: we know the drill.

     Live in smaller homes. If you have a second home, sell it or rent it to someone who needs a place to live. Get rid of the big trucks; drive a smaller, lighter, car, preferably a sedan. (9) If you need a truck or S.U.V., make it a smaller one like a Ranger or a Forester. Drive less; combine trips. Or just don’t go. Car pool to work, and work from home as much as you can. Don’t fly unless you have to. Take the train.  Don’t go on cruises; but if you absolutely must cruise, go every second year instead of yearly. Eat less meat. Reduce buying. Keep your clothes longer; repair items rather than replace wherever possible. Avoid buying and using plastic as much as you can. Substitute old lights with L.E.D bulbs. Replace an oil or gas furnace with a heat pump if you can afford it. Buy legitimate carbon offsets (research carefully). Give up NIMBY-ism and support wind and solar projects in your area. If you are in a market that permits it, purchase renewable electricity, even if it costs you more. Support your government to implement carbon pricing and taxes even when they affect you personally. The basic theme that is the foundation of all this? Individually, personally, reduce our consumption. Do what you can. If you need inspiration like I sometimes do, read Wendell Berry or Bill McKibben.

     I say all this because there is a simple reality. Yes, corporations and governments must change their ways – but they will not do so as long as demand for fossil fuel stays strong. Instead, they will merely posture, as Canada pretends, to pursue greenhouse gas reductions. (10) Put another way, countries and companies will not reduce their output of oil products until the demand diminishes. That is squarely in our hands. It is up to us.

     I know, I know, everybody hates a noodge and I understand my good readers are doing what they can. But we need to remind and refresh ourselves and each other and take action. This does create personal dilemmas; I get that. How often do I take the 800 mile round-trip to Toronto to see my grandchildren? Answer: less often. Otherwise the planet will burn up. It is that simple.

     The good news is that the list of what we can do personally is robust – it goes on and on. More good news also is that many young people are willing to make big changes like having fewer children and not owning a car to help salvage things. They are making smaller changes also, like cutting down meat and dairy, buying secondhand clothing, and riding a bike to work. (11) And some older people, even we, the high-consuming and greenhouse-gas emitting Baby Boomers, indicate that they care, at least.

     The climate situation is dire, but we must not allow ourselves to wallow in despair. There is still time. I am not without hope; nature, if not always human beings, inspires me.

 

Late yesterday afternoon I was standing in the middle of dirt road in front of our house (obviously the traffic is not too heavy here), gazing at the patterns of crystallizing ice in the little pond on the far side of the road, when I heard the bleating of Canada geese in the twilight sky. It took a while until I could see them, as their honking conversation grew louder and louder. When they came into sight – no kidding! I felt my heart swell and a lump in my throat at the sight of them. There were hundreds, just like the old days, in those disorganized flocks that you would see in the fall – some in masses and some in competing not-quite “V” shapes. They were yakking at each other, choosing leaders, talking it over, while practising for the big travel formations they will use to fly to the southerly states and to Mexico.

     I understand some geese no longer make the trip, as we continue to warm. But nevertheless I felt, then and there, that as long as some of these big, bleating, courageous birds are willing, then I, too, should be willing. I am obligated to do what I can do, to sacrifice a few things in gratitude for all that joy and well-being that I have been given, my whole life, ever since I wandered up the beautiful Blanche River as a boy. It is not too much to give back to our paradise. It is not too much to offer our sweet old Earth.

_________________________________________________

     Notes

1. See my poem, On the Blanche, written in the seventies, below this blog post. 

2. Milman, Oliver, and Andrew Witherspoon. After a year of record wildfires, will Canada ever be the same again? The Guardian, November 9, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/ 2023/nov/09/canada-wildfire-record-climate-crisis. 

3. CIFFC Home. Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre Inc., https://ciffc.net/. Accessed November 9, 2023.

4. Milman and Witherspoon, op. cit. 

5. Schmemann, Serge. It Is No Longer Possible to Escape What We Have Done to Ourselves. New York Times. August 23, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/23/opinion/ canada-wildfires-climate-change.htmlopinion/canada-wildfires-climate-change.html. 

6. The first scientific publication concerning climate change potential was in 1896. The Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius publicized calculations showing that industrial age carbon dioxide emissions would warm the planet. By 1950, the scientific community was openly discussing the problem; even economists were aware of the issue by 1970. (See The Worldly Philosophers, by Robert Heilbroner.) By the 1980’s scientists were insisting that action had to be taken. This, of course, as we all know, was countered by a massive disinformation campaign managed by so-called “think tanks,”  funded by oil interests, such as Exxon – which in its own documents, showed it knew exactly what was happening with climate change. This was entirely successful in creating the false “controversy” we live with, and in delaying any real action for forty crucial years.

7. Even with electric vehicles and increased efficiencies, North America reduced yearly vehicle emissions by only 1.6% since 2010; had both the percentage of SUVs and trucks sold not increased, and the size and weight of these vehicles not exploded, the reduction during the period would have been over 30%. Horton, Helena. Motor emissions could have fallen by over 30% without S.U.V. trend, report says. The Guardian, November 24, 2023, https://www.the guardian.com/environment/2023/nov/24/motor-emissions-could-have-fallen-without-suv-trend- report.

8. The Oasis of the Seas uses one U.S. gallon of diesel every twelve feet; or to put it another way, the comparable Freedom of the Seas uses 28 thousand (U.S.) gallons of fuel every hour. This results in 626,640 pounds of carbon dioxide per hour. 

9. Electric vehicles are touted as the panacea; I am reserving judgement for now. They may help per-vehicle life-time emissions, but come with their own serious environmental issues, particularly the massive levels of mining for battery materials. Also, E.V.s only save emissions if the grid is green or nuclear; hardly the situation at this point. Battery recycling needs to be perfected. In any case, even the automobile companies privately admit that electric conversion of all those large trucks and S.U.V.s is unsustainable. The required battery weights are just too much and minimize potential emissions gains. But still…they can be a big step forward if the mining and electric grid problems are addressed, batteries are recycled, and there is a concerted effort to reduce the size of vehicles.

10. Naishadham, Suman, and Victor Caivano. Canada says it can fight climate change and be a major oil nation. Huge fires may force a reckoning. Los Angeles Times, November 10, 2023. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-11-10/canada-says-it-can-fight-climate-change-and-be-major-oil-nation-massive-fires-may-force-a-reckoning. 

11. Henley, Jon, and Michael Goodier. Young Europeans more likely to quit driving and have fewer children to save planet. The Guardian, October 25, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2023/oct/25/young-europeans-quit-driving-fewer-children-save-planet-climate-crisis. 

 

 

 

 

On the Blanche (Posted Previously)

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

Time was…blue waters ran in and out of cool lakes
and the paddle made no sound
slipping by reeds
where the muskrat and pike lay suspended
dark trunks lurched toward the river
extending indifferent fingers
a ghostly scraping on the red canoe sides
as evening grew
somewhere the beaver sounded
though no one spoke
and the sun ceased dancing
and lay in an orange and yellow puddle on the water
time was no time
here and gone and yet to come.

Time was…blue waters licked the island shore
a curling dog tongue
on the wrinkled skin of ancient stones
the jack pine stood narrow and straight
tops lost in the void
and the earth untroubled
carried our impetuous weight
on her furrowed belly
limbs shrunken by cold
grew warm and heavy
in the amber touch of the wood fire
the ground stank of life and death
spongy under our sleeping bags
time was no time
here and gone and yet to come.

© Peter Scott Cameron, Northern Ontario Anthology, Highway Book Shop Publishers, Cobalt, Ont. 1977

Lewiston, Maine: U.S. Mass Shooting # 565 in 2023

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

18 Dead, plus the murderer. 13 Wounded. Weapon: AR 15.

565th mass shooting in the U.S. in 2023.  (Gun Violence Archive.)

Number of non-suicide gun murders to date in the U.S this year? 15,633. (Gun Violence Archive).

     Current State of Affairs:

Permit needed in Maine to carry a gun? Nah.

Assault weapons banned or even limited in that State? Nah.

Public conversation about American gun addiction? Nah.

Conversation about the fact that mass shooting has become a standard, culturally accepted channel to express male grief, despair and fury? Nah.

Hunters and so-called “sportsmen” leading a charge for rational, humane gun control? Nah.

Congress acting to implement basic, reasonable gun control? Nah.

Supreme Court applying twenty-first, rather than eighteenth century, thought and standards to interpret the 2nd Amendment? Nah.

Thoughts and prayers? What, again? I suppose so. What else are we left with?

          Stephen King: We Are Out of Things to Say.

          Nicholas Kristof: A Smarter Way to Reduce Gun Deaths.

 

                                            Well, FIGHT! Fight like hell. IT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE TO LET THIS HAPPEN.     

                                            6 Organizations You Can Support to Promote Gun Control.        

         

On Retirement: Part II, The End Game

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

          Be happy if there is something to be happy about!
          When the moment comes, do not lose it!
          Though they say life lasts a hundred years,
          Who has seen a full thirty thousand days!
          You are in this world but an instant,
          So don’t sit there grumbling about money.
          At the end of The Classic of Filial Piety
          It tells you all about what funerals are like.(1)

“Be here, now!”

     So Alan Watts charged us.(2) In my twenties, it sounded great. The problem was that I couldn’t do it. I observed that I was mostly running ahead, toward completion, toward the next thing. There was much to do: studying, jobs, money, marriage, a child, where and how to live – “caught between the longing for love and the struggle for the legal tender.”(3) Admittedly, there were times of Flow: becoming lost in a ego-less process, absorbed in the moment, losing track of time itself in the pure pleasure of being.(4) But mostly not: mostly, it was do this or that, and get on to the next thing.

     This goes on for years, with the cares of family and daily life and concerns of career. Then, with retirement, an opportunity opens up. Unless one is planning a new career as a winemaker, tractor-trailer driver, or TikToc fashion influencer, or you fill the void by chauffeuring grandchildren around to Sufi dancing or kettle drum practice, the present opens in a way it has not been open for a long time.

     In this openness there is a natural inclination to review the past and to assess how one has done.(5) You have run your career race and came in seventh. This can be okay and work out well enough, depending on attitude: “I was married more times than a radio talk-show host, but I never lost hope.” Or, “I didn’t end up writing The Great Novel, but that chapbook of racy limericks was a killer!”

     In my work, I made the world a better place.

     Or this can turn to rumination and recrimination, which is never a good thing for the emotions or disposition. My ship came in, but I failed to get on board. It can be depressing, because we all fail spectacularly, and at this point there is nothing you can do about it. But the latter is also the good news. There most definitely is nothing you can do about it, so you might as well give up on it and make a nice fried egg and tomato sandwich.

     Your thoughts also go forward toward The End Game, as a ninety-two-year-old friend calls it. Somewhere along the line, starting in late middle age, our mental calculation changes from time spent on the planet to time left. In older age, this is acute. There is no room for denial: time is limited and the outcome is fixed. It is just a matter of when and how.

     How this goes is naturally affected by one’s state of health. Even without major problems, aging issues can be vexing. Brown things and skin tags start growing on you like you are a compost pile. Your arm hurts for no reason. Legs get stiff and athletic activities like tying your shoelaces make you short of breath. Or like me, a hand starts to shake one day and doesn’t stop: “essential tremor,” Dr. Google calls it, which means they have no idea where it comes from and there is nothing that can be done about it. Why it is “essential” beats me. My fine doctor offered me neurological testing, which I appreciated, but declined. Why bother if there is no fix?

     After seventy, one can become afraid to go to the doctor for fear of discovering something that will kill you sooner or later, but of which, until that appointment, you were happily ignorant. That has been the case with me. I go to the doctor with no complaint and pow! Now I have a problem. That is one reason that the annual physical is terrifying. Adding to the horror, if you are of a certain age, they start asking you to remember three words and recall them later, or ask you to draw a picture of a clock showing twenty to ten. (My advice on this? Refuse. Don’t do it – don’t go down without a fight!) All this naturally leads one to think that the obvious solution is not to go to the doctor at all, which was the recommendation of a friend’s mother. She lived to 91 and died happy. However, such a course can lead to a surprise heart attack while imagining Shania Twain without any clothes on when you are country line dancing at the Senior Centre, or keeling over with a stroke while serving figgy pudding to that felonious band of in-laws at Christmas dinner. So not having checkups is not most advisable.

     Entirely too many people in retirement age are troubled, if not tormented, by illness and debilitation, and I am sorry for them. I do not yet have this. I only have to know where the washrooms will be if I go for an urban walk. I count myself very lucky. I feel much compassion for those who are afflicted, who feel so poorly and who are stuck in endless rounds of appointments, tests, and treatments, and those as well who suffer pain and impairment. I have friends among them and have lost friends to the diseases they have encountered. It is something that the Buddhists warn us about, and they suggest that we prepare; but still, it does not feel quite fair. You put in a lifetime of effort and good work, kindness and caring, and it comes to debilitation and discomfort. Then you die. Jarring, that.

     So you have to face your mortality: The End Game. Retiring does both make it plain that you have been to the mountaintop and now are on the downslope, and it gives you more time to think about it. This might be alright, a sort of preparation for death as Freud proposed.(6) For some it might bring relief; you will miss things, of course, like how the kids are doing or the laughter or your mate; but on the other hand, you will be free of pain if you have that, and certainly you will not have to hear or read about Taylor Swift ever again – no small compensation, that.

     Still, death can be a ruminative burden and for some is frightening, although not inevitably so. Many are consoled by religion, and look forward to an afterlife. Others – those of us without a strict belief in the continuation of a human soul – are without this solace, yet we are still not afraid. After all, if we come from the cosmic ether, we will go back to it; there is not much frightening about that. Although to be sure there can be anticipatory grief – about one’s pending absence from the dance.

     So with the past done, and a future that is dodgy, what we are left with is the present moment – just as good old Watts prescribed. And as Freud implied, and the Buddhists advise, contemplation of mortality provides a focus, an opportunity to experience the present to its fullest, in a way we never have before.

     Friends and companions help a great deal on this journey. The old gang at the office or the plant have gone on ahead without us. What we are left with is a partner, if we have one, and our old friends. The old reliable, more-or-less daily, enforced socializing of the workplace has vanished, and for many a void is opens up.

     Much is made of the value of socializing in general, especially in popular psychology and the New York Times. This notion is a regular feature and sells a good number of issues of Psychology Today. But the idea appears to be overrated and there is not much real social science behind this.(7) As a confirmed and contented Introvert, I am skeptical about the value of casual socializing. I can take it or leave it, mostly the latter. And I don’t think I am alone in this: ask the third of the North American population who share my temperamental trait.

     That said, complete isolation is bad for one, and correlates with higher rates of depression, heart attack, early death and inebriated purchasing of workout equipment from infomercials at three in the morning. So for goodness sake, despite the reservation expressed above, if you are isolated and lonely, by all means do join that backgammon club, church choir, or a weekly book club, or if desperate and in danger of developing suicidal ideation, take up pickleball. Make a friend!

 

I am sitting on an August Sunday early afternoon, eating a store-bought turkey sandwich with a good old friend at the picnic table at the Stewart’s store in the quaint village that he grew up in. He is an empathetic fellow who sat with me one time many years ago in another Stewart’s, and listened when I was at a very low point in my life. A couple of times a month I receive a brilliant multi-page longhand letter from him, describing the subtleties of everyday life, his reading regimen, and intellectual explorations. He is a member of a select class of people: highly intelligent, yes, but more, a true scholar. I count myself fortunate to know not just one, but two people like this, who, no matter what they are doing as a livelihood at a particular time, read and learn and think for its own sake. Once I called up the other of them, M.W., when he was in Brooklyn visiting his daughter and I asked him what he was planning to do that evening. “I’m going back to the hotel to think,” he replied.

     K.B. takes me on a walking tour around the village, with tales of adventures at the old school, early and later grades, middle-school exploits, and unrequited teenage love. We wander by the now-dilapidated band shell where his high-school rock and roll band debuted. As we walk away from the now sad and decrepit little public park, I am carrying on about my current side-by-side re-reading of Jack Kérouac’s The Subterraneans vs. Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers, and why the former is a success, while the latter is a failure, in my opinion. I declare that it is because Kerouac’s telling is full of emotion and a visceral love of life, while Cohen’s lacks these and is rather cold. I find I have no empathy for its characters: surprising in a work by the writer of So Long Marianne and Dance Me to the End of Love. K.B does not interrupt my opining and instead listens attentively, which I appreciate. Is it not true that we all want to be heard?

     After the walkabout, we talk about his upcoming project of reading the eight hundred pages of L’Être et le Néant : Essai d’Ontologie Phénoménologique that he had ordered – half-jokingly he proposes to read two or three pages at a time, in the booths at each one of the 350 plus Stewart’s stores in New York and the few in Vermont. I think this is an outstanding idea. He jokes again and wonders how it might stack up against the wanderings of Herodotus.(8) We consider what kind of car would be appropriate for such an epic journey. K. B.’s 2018 Honda does not seen quite right for the odyssey – a more classical ride would seem appropriate. I suspect my friend leans toward something like his previously-owned late-sixties Dodge Charger, but I am envisioning something more modest, such as a Morris Minor Traveller station wagon from 1957, preferably in the classic British racing green. Of course, I am thinking that offsetting the carbon would have to be considered, which is difficult these days as it has come to light that most of the available offset schemes are fraudulent.

     Before we part, we wonder out loud if there is a market for a basic car without all the annoying features like fobs, lane correction, touch screens and heated seats. Something with key-entry, roll-down windows, no-draft vents, and a standard transmission would be nice. I am imagining a two-door Valiant with a Slant Six under the hood, not with that push-button automatic, maybe a sixty-one with the classic fins. A perfect car: would there not be buyers for such a thing in 2023, I ask? We muse that one would think so, but probably not. To be sure, for my part, this – old cars were better etc. – is retired geezer jawing at its very best. Very satisfying. I am sorry to take leave of my friend.

     Now I am back in the afternoon sun, in the yard, sitting in a weather-worn wooden Adirondack chair. I am the lazy one; I am reading and smoking a cigar while my mate labours in the garden. I see a bee – not my bee from July, the one that came to the window during news time, but another one and I wonder where my bee went. I hope it wasn’t eaten. A big Monarch butterfly comes by and flutters around me, darting here and there, up and down, back and forth. Then, apparently not bothered by the the cigar smoke, it alights on my knee and there it perches.

     I am one lucky bastard. This Monarch thinks I am trustworthy enough to rest awhile on my blue jeans. I live on an acre of rural paradise. My modest income is sufficient for my needs: there is nothing more I want to own and nowhere I want to travel. My health ain’t perfect, but it ain’t bad, either. I have some friends. My wife, K., loves me unconditionally, and when I grumble about one or another of my shortcomings, tells me that I am perfect just as I am. I am inclined to disagree with this assessment, but I do not debate the point; in any case, I feel the same about her, so have no basis to argue. The sun is on my face, the book is excellent, and our friendly dog-like cat is lying by the raised garden. My daughter, off in Toronto, is thriving, and my smart and good-natured grandchildren are launching into the world. None of this is permanent, of course; any of it could change in an instant.

     But in this moment, I am grateful. I am retired and have nothing to do.

     I have only to be here, now.

__________________________________

1. Hanshan. Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the Tang Poet Han-Shan. Translated by Burton Watson. Columbia University Press, 1970. Accurate details have been lost in time and myth, but the Buddhist recluse is thought to have lived around the seventh or eighth century. 

2. Columbus, Peter J., and Donadrian L. Rice. Alan Watts – Here and Now: Contributions to Psychology, Philosophy, and Religion. State University of New York Press, 2012.

3. Browne, Jackson. The Pretender. Flat Town Music Co., 1976.

4. Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály Róbert. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row, 1990.

5. Erikson, Erik, with Joan Erikson. Childhood and Society. W. W. Norton & Co., 1959.

6. Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Translated by C. J. M. Huback. Digireads Publishing, 2020. First published 1920.

7. La Grassa, Jennifer. Do Exercise, Nature and Socializing Make People Happier? Research Suggests We don’t Really Know. CBC News, August 26, 2023.

8. Kapuściński, Ryszard. Travels with Herodotus. Translated by Klara Glowczewska. Vintage, 2008.

 

 

On Retirement Part I: Being

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

For the last part of June and most of July, every day a big bumblebee arrived at the livingroom window and buzzed around for a while – not bumping into the glass like the foolish houseflies, but just checking it out, floating. I thought of Muhammad Ali. “Float like a butterfly” – and do what a bee does. The big window is my favourite in the house, a place to daydream now that I am retired, overlooking, as it does, the lush yard, the swamp beyond, and further beyond that the Green Mountains of Vermont. The bee arrived each day as K. and I watched world tragedies without end unfold in vivid colour on the BBC news.

I know it was the same guy. Scoff not: I recognized him. Like all sentient beings, bees live according to their biological patterns of course, but at the same time, they are individuals like our cats, our dogs, our chickens, and ourselves.

In any case, I have seen this on PBS, in a documentary by Martin Dorn, who stayed home during the pandemic and studied and filmed the bees in his garden for a year. (1) He showed that they have habits, traits – you could even say personalities – and that they keep individual travel and visitation schedules, according to whatever whims are driving them, beyond their biological predispositions and imperatives. This strikes me as a good way to live: to follow a schedule that comes not from without, but within. Just like me, now. After seventy years, I have a personal schedule that is free of the relentless overlay of outside demands.

It begins with grade one at King George school. Six-and-a-half-years-old, I have lucked out and missed the calamity of kindergarten, newly introduced in Northern Ontario. Still, there I am: having been free and wild on the streets and alleys of our small town, I now find myself expected to go to the same place every day, to the same dull room, to sit unmoving in the same confining desk under the hostile eyes of the sadistic Miss Scott.

Miss Scott: she is the first among a number of bad bosses. In the first few days of class, she has us come up to her desk one at a time and sing Oh Susanna or such, a cappella, standing in front of her: excruciating enough. Then, based on what she hears, she divides us into Canaries, Robins, and Crows. I am a Robin. The poor Crows probably never sang again, not even in the shower. What sort of person does that to children?

Years later I mentioned her to a cousin who is ten years older than I am, but who also had Miss Scott. He flew into a tirade, sputtering and cursing. He had never forgotten her either.

Seventy-five percent of Americans name a bad boss as the number one stressor in the workplace. (2) But despite Miss Scott, and later Kenny and Frank, I don’t really think it was only bad bosses that made me not want to get up and go to work – but they coloured that world, to be sure.

Kenny and Frank are drill operators and hence my bosses when I work as a helper during summers as a university student. Kenny has spent thirteen years in the Kingston Pen for manslaughter after jamming a broken beer bottle into the forehead of a barroom opponent. He is okay most of the time, but you don’t want to rile him, if you follow me. A year after I work with him, I hear that his clothing gets caught and he is dragged into the business end of a big auger machine, breaking every bone that could be broken in a human being, before the helper could turn the machine off. I don’t hear how he fared after that.

Frank, on the other hand, has not been to jail, but is a wife-beater and drinks twenty beers a day. He can single-handedly pick up the two-hundred-and-fifty pound drop-hammer and place it on the equipment trailer – not that much if you consider the world dead-lift record, but still. At one point he rushes at me with fists clenched vowing to kill me after I drop a drill rod down a three-hundred-foot borehole. Terrifying to have that raging hulk come at you: I can still feel the adrenaline. He only stops when I threaten him with the thirty-six inch pipe-wrench, which I cock like a baseball bat. He comes to his senses and just curses me out; a good thing, as the pipe-wrench would not have been enough to stop him. No doubt these guys contributed to my having a bad – or at least a sceptical, you might say – attitude early on toward the supposed pleasures and benefits of the workplace.

Fortunately the work and the bosses got better after this, and once I became a boss myself, I improved a lot on my first role models: low bar, I know. Lest I create a completely negative impression here, I must say that management and working conditions improved dramatically over the years. I worked for terrific people and excellent organisations. 

Early bad bosses aside and given great improvements in the nature of the work that followed, it remains something of a mystery that I don’t remember ever really wanting to go in to a place of employment. I preferred to stay home and do things I wanted to do, by myself, probably with a coffee pot and the radio playing in the background. I suspect this feeling is common enough. It is true that you hear of people describing how they can not wait to get to the office in the morning, to accomplish this and that, and see the gang, etc. However, the reluctance of Covid-era remote workers to return to the office surely indicates something different for many of us.

I have thought that perhaps I am just lazy, but that seems unlikely. I have degrees aplenty, which certainly required work, and I did accomplish things in years of community mental health work and in teaching that I am most contented to remember. I know that in my way I made the world a better place. And I was a decent boss. Yet, the mental health work was trying; it wore me out. At the time I was studying Zen Buddhism and so I tried to emulate the scholar warriors (3) and to take heart from the teaching of the bodhisattvas: “Remedy suffering wherever it is, whatever form it takes and whoever causes it.” (4) This helped me, and then the years of teaching were easier. I experienced failure of course, but overall, I found success at both. And so now I retire happy, perhaps with some not-unusual regrets over missed opportunities or paths not taken, but with the knowledge that I did my best.

Not wanting to go into work might simply have been a result of my introversion. In any case, I can say I don’t miss it. I’m happy to stay home, and like the bee, figure out each day what I want to do. I have no empty feeling, no existential panic in face of blank canvases of days.

Nor does it bother me that I have no role and no status. I had a foretaste of this. In 2010, after some trials in my personal life, I decided to change how I was living. I wanted to stay home, to live more creatively, to write some and take a few pictures – and to move back to Canada. With few prospects, and no money to speak of, I resigned my tenured professorship. I recall the feeling, after I moved, of sitting on a park bench in Toronto on a cold November day, the wind whipping in from Lake Ontario, known to no one around me, with no persona, no role, no position – just another bozo on a bench, with no place to go and nothing to do. It was absolutely exhilarating.

Of course, I had to eat and pay the rent, so I built a late-season career as an online adjunct professor, with a couple of courses at my old college and some from other institutions. “Full-time work for one-third the pay,” an ex-colleague joked. True enough, but I loved it. I woke on my own time and read awhile with coffee and classical music on the radio. Sometimes I would go out on the balcony of my high-rise apartment and watch the homo sapiens racing to work on foot, in cars, on the busses and streetcars. I watched with satisfaction – not with schadenfreude, although there was something comical to all the intense hotfooting around, something that I can’t quite name. Mainly I felt empathy for these people along with immense gratitude that I no longer had to do this. After all the decades, I finally got to stay home.

I still had demands: course sites to build, clever assignments to create, tests to post, emails to answer, and useful feedback to give on submissions. Enjoyable enough tasks, but now I am glad to be without them. I am relieved not to wake up each Tuesday morning and to log on to sixty or a hundred essay assignments waiting in the mailbox, all begging timely review and grading. I liked my work very much, and especially liked working on my own, but I’d had enough. A clear example of Cameron’s Second Law: Good things go on too long.

By the way, it says something about human nature that although students had a full week to submit assignments, almost all of them came in about a half-hour before the time limit. Also, despite there being 167 other hours to take an online test, most were completed in the hour before the deadline.

In any case, in online teaching, I had gone as far as I could go. As a professor – never mind the formal “course assessments” that have been foisted off on teachers – when the semester ends, every educator worth his or her salt thinks “how could I do better?” After my last semester, this spring, my answer was: nothing. I could do no better. Time to go, then.

Although it is not the case so far, I expect I will miss the students more than some other things. You won’t hear me complaining about younger people. Some, of course, were happily illiterate or worse: resentful participants, just putting in time. But most wanted to accomplish something, wanted to learn, wanted to make something of themselves. And they cared about this world, about climate broiling, about racism and sexism and institutionalized inequity, and most wanted no part of these and other injustices. They helped me to feel optimism, to believe there was some hope for the human race.

Optimism is important when you have retired and are getting older, when your bones ache inexplicably and these warty things start growing on your bulgy, once-svelte body, and all the musicians and singers and great people who populated your world start dropping dead – and as well, you have all the time you could want to ruminate about the television news.

It must be said: it is critical not to end up being that old codger in his nasty recliner, Keystone beer can in hand, sitting in the corner of the room jawing at loved ones about the deplorable condition of the world and the decline of civilization as we know it. These things are true of course: the world is in deplorable condition, and civilization is in decline, but that is no excuse to sit around and allow yourself to develop OBD – Old Bastard Disorder. OBD, by the way, is not gender-typed; you may be a man or a woman, or in keeping with fashionable ideology, anything in between or outside of those categories, and still succumb to OBD.

No, you have to stay optimistic and carry on, even while, for example, a dreadful little psychopath slaughters the good people of Ukraine, or given climate change, when it looks like your grandchildren will live on a planet much like the one in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road – or while the whole country of Canada is on fire (and, to boot, firefighters say that people are stealing their equipment when they are not looking, as CBC reported about the Kelowna fire).

And the whiners: oh my God, the whiners! These people complain when the cell signal is poor – meanwhile, I remember that my parents, for decades after the Great Depression, saved string out of fear of not having any in the future. It is hard to think that civilization has not gone down the pipe when a Yellowknife story described people complaining about the (successful) evacuations. Days before the fire reached the town (the fire never made it, in fact, due to the diligence of the firefighters), 95% of the population had been evacuated hundreds of miles by air, or guided down the one two-lane highway, with the government providing free gas from tankers along the way – brilliant! Yet the paper quoted a person complaining that the government had acted too slowly, that the evacuation should have been done sooner, even though the fire had not reached the city. In the preceding days, she could smell the smoke in her office even with the “HEPA” filters going full blast, and it was “uncomfortable,” she reported, with a straight face. Perhaps she also was put off that the civil servants did not offer fresh trays of sushi and avocado-on-toast as well, along NWT Route 3 as she headed south. Another evacuee, safely ensconced at a paid-for motel hundreds of miles south of the fire, complained that there was “nothing to do.” One wonders why the news providers give these people any air time, but that is another problem, I suppose.

So, yes, it is hard to stay optimistic knowing these knuckleheads are out there, and I am not even talking about the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world – this one, an actual American Congressional Representative elected by real citizens eligible to vote, who believes the California fires were caused by Jews firing lasers from outer space. On purpose. No, I say I won’t even talk about these people.

But enough! Remember: OBD. In retirement, with time and space to think, you have to navigate this and other similar things. One immediate solution is to limit how much you watch the news, which is what K. and I have done: hence, the half-hour of BBC with the visiting bee.

As for the rest – what to do with your freedom from schedules, tasks and bosses? If your health is decent (that’s another story: more later), it isn’t that hard. Take a walk down the dirt road and check out the wild turkeys. Plunk yourself in the yard and read The Consolations of Philosophy that has been gathering household fallout on your bookshelf. Like K., get out the watercolour kit and paint a picture. Play your vinyl version of Sticky Fingers, or stream the Queen’s Own Highlanders piping The March of the Cameron Men on your phone, if you really must. Grow some tomatoes or sunflowers. Dust off the disused Yamaha and play My Wild Irish Rose. Write a mystery, however crappy, or a letter to the editor. Volunteer, if you are up to it, to take a person even older than yourself to a doctor’s appointment. Send a few bucks to the local fire company or the U.N. Refugee fund. Meditate and find compassion in your heart for the Miss Scotts and the Kennys and Franks of the world, for surely they must have suffered, as did their victims. Sit on a rainy September day, when the leaves are just beginning to change from green to yellow, and stare out the window. Step outside into the air and sniff it. For God’s sake, avoid OBD, although I think it is good to stay a tad crusty. Probably the best advice I’ve ever read that applies to retirement is to “chop wood, carry water.” (5)

But I take inspiration from my visitor: the free, black and orange insect who, for a while, came by regularly during news time, and reminded me of the inimitable Muhammad Ali and his counsel. “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” Right. Got it.

     Next: On Retirement, Part II: The End Game.

1. Dorhn, Martin. My Garden of a Thousand Bees. Passion Planet, 2023.

2. Abbajay, Mary. What to Do When You Have a Bad Boss. Harvard Business Review, September 7, 2018.

3. Deng, Ming-Dao. Scholar Warrior: An Introduction to the Tao in Everyday life. HarperCollins Publisher, 1990.

4. Marchese, David. Talk (Matthieu Ricard). New York Times Magazine, August 20, 2023.

5. Fields, Rick. Chop Wood, Carry Water: A Guide to Finding Spiritual Fulfillment in Everyday Life. Penguin Publishing Group, 1984.

 

It Makes Ya Stop and Think, Don’t It! (3)

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

      A CBC online news feed article (in the “Science” section, no less) entitled Why Air Conditioners Can Be a Problematic Solution to Extreme Heat (1) reported the startling news from Statistics Canada that household air conditioning can be one of the “most effective adaptation strategies to reduce heat-related mortality and morbidity,” but that – surprise, surprise – this is not sustainable because air conditioning use contributes to global heating!

     Well, blow me down!! Who could have seen that coming??

     In a perhaps related article, the news feed reported the story – one that probably should be filed under the category of We Are All Doomed – of a father and son who drove all the way from Virginia to Niagara Falls, Ontario, in their vintage army jeep, in order to buy forty bags of Lay’s Ketchup Chips, which they love and are not available in the U.S.A. Depending on how you go, and your starting point in Virginia, that is about 530 – 690 miles (853 – 1111 kilometers). Let’s choose a mid-number, say 600 miles, and very generously allow the aforementioned vintage army jeep twenty miles per American gallon. That’s sixty gallons, round trip.

At twenty pounds per gallon, that is 1200 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere, in order to obtain these ketchup chips.

Naturally, I hate to be critical — but better get an air conditioner, it is gonna get hot. The chips are probably bad for their health, too. Anyway, I prefer the salt and vinegar variety.

(1) Chung, Emily. Why Air Conditioners Can Be a Problematic Solution to Extreme Heat. CBC News. July 24, 2023. https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/air-conditioners-sustainability-heat-1.6914054

(2) Hristova, Bobby. Father and Son Drive for 2 Days from Virginia to Niagara Falls to Load Up on Ketchup Chips. CBC News. July 24, 2023. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/father-son-road-trip-ketchup-chips-1.6913941

 

Our Gun Fetish: A Letter to the Editor

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

(This is an updated and expanded version of the letter printed in the Granville Sentinel, May 25, 2023. Given that this is a U.S. piece, partially published, I have eschewed my usual practice of using Canadian spellings.)

Dear Editor:

I read in the May 11 Granville Sentinel that Matt Simpson, the State Assemblyman for our District (114), applauds New York’s “updated language” that permits concealed-carry in the Adirondack Park and other State lands. I also read in the Albany Times-Union that he supports a proposed “stand-your-ground” law for the State. Ironically, the Sentinel article appeared alongside an update on the bail appeal of Kevin Monahan, who senselessly shot and killed young Kaylin Gillis in rural Hebron, New York, where I live. With all due respect to the Assemblyman, the last thing we need is wider concealed-carry, or any carry for that matter, and we certainly do not need a stand-your-ground law. New York’s “Castle Doctrine” and other standards already provide for reasonable self-defense.

Let me qualify: I grew up in a small town surrounded by wilderness, where hunting and long-gun ownership was taken for granted. I hunted when I was young. I am not against reasonable gun ownership per se, and I am certainly not against hunting. What I am against is the killing of young children in their classrooms. I am against someone using an assault rifle to murder ten people and wound three more at a Buffalo supermarket. I am against shooting a young man who mistakenly rings your doorbell, and against shooting two cheerleaders who get into the wrong car. I am against my neighbor taking pot shots at a group of retreating young people – killing one of them – who mistakenly had entered the wrong driveway.

More and more guns in more and more places do not make Americans safer and safer. If that were true, the U.S. would be the safest place in the world. But it is the opposite: compared to similar Western democracies like Canada, Britain, and Germany etc., the per capita rates of murder and gun violence are off-the-scale. Here, there are simply too many guns, too many handguns, too many military-grade guns, too many places we can carry them, and we are too free and too quick to use them. The result is a horrifying number gun-related deaths. As of May 8, 2023, there already had been 202 mass shootings in the United States for the year – nearly two per day. And as repugnant as it is startling, gun violence is now the leading cause of death for children – excluding infants – in this country. If this does not make one want to stop and reconsider what we are doing, how we are living, what would?

It seems obvious, but apparently must be said, since people do not appear to understand: States with more restrictive gun safety laws like California and New York have significantly lower rates of gun violence than states with weak or permissive laws, like Texas and Florida (Everytown Research). (1) These facts do not lie.

Further, stand-your-ground laws only make people trigger-happy, so that, for example, a movie theater argument and thrown popcorn result in a pulled gun and a death – and the killer walks, as happened in Florida. Multiple studies, including by the Rand Corporation, have found that homicide numbers go up, not down, after states enact stand-your-ground laws. (2)

I don’t pretend to know all the solutions to American gun mayhem, but a few things are obvious as a start: sensible gun control (that the majority of Americans support), limiting the public carrying of guns, concealed or otherwise, and reasonable self-defense standards (that we already have in New York State and in Canada) as opposed to stand-your-ground laws.

Enacting gun control legislation is, I admit, notoriously difficult given the funding of the gun-toting diehards, the recalcitrant Republican opposition, and a Supreme Court that has been acting rather unwisely in its recent interpretations. But there are practical ways to start, as Nicholas Kristof has so well outlined in his New York Times editorial. (3) He advocates an incremental harm-reduction approach, including stronger background checks, moderate limits on the types of weapons (automatic) that can be bought, and so on – regulatory efforts that are similar to those that have been used with success in reducing smoking deaths and making driving safer.

Of course, regulatory efforts run into the problem of that devilishly-phrased Second Amendment to the Constitution. Something from another time, an old notion written with confusing grammar: debating its true meaning stands between us and sanity. I will skip that. A constitution should serve a people, not people serve a constitution. And enlightened social policy should not be determined by consulting the likes of militant second-amendment supporters such as The Proud Boys, Ammon Bundy of Idaho, or Greg Abbot of Texas.

Start the struggle to change the damn thing! Amend it, or repeal it. Naïve, you say? Perhaps, but what is the alternative? 125 +/- gun deaths per day as it is now? 150? 250? 500? What is the number, exactly, that will inspire us to action? Amendments can be, and have been, changed or repealed (at least the misguided 18th).

Yet we must go further; it is not just the second amendment and laws that are the problem. It is the culture itself: a propensity for violence coupled with the “gun culture.” Over time. the belief in owning, carrying and using guns has become a American fetish, a form of cultural neurosis, complete with puerile notions of manliness and immature patriotism. One writer (Ed Pilkington) has called it a fatal attraction – a “fatal gun attraction,” that is. (4) He is correct. It is time for  a program of cultural psychotherapy with the goal of putting guns back in their place as hunting weapons, not as something symbolizing freedom or manhood, not something to brandish, not something to carry around in public places, not something used to menace your neighbors, and certainly not something used to settle disputes – or for that matter, to be used as weapons of despair by alienated people, slaughtering innumerable others as they commit public suicide.

Which brings up the issue of mental health: services for the mentally ill have been touted as a solution. They are not. The United States does not have higher rates of mental illness than comparable countries. In addition it is a fallacy to say that the mentally ill have higher rates of murder and gun violence than the so-called “normal” population. They don’t. So one can’t say that mental illness is the problem. Proposals to fix gun violence with more mental health services are nothing but misdirection: a way to avoid facing the problem.

Addressing all of this, and the gun fetish particularly, will require a considerable cultural self-examination and public conversation. It is not impossible to do this, even with the likes of Fox News and Twitter as obstructionist forces. It has happened before: after World War Two, the populace, in public discourse, attempted to figure out what to do about mental illness and the practice of psychiatry. That conversation culminated in the establishment of the National Institute of Mental Health and later the very successful Community Mental Health Act, signed by President Kennedy in 1963. We can do this again with guns. Nothing less is required as part of the solution to the calamitous public health gun crisis that we are experiencing.

An Albany Times-Union article on May 14 discussed the intention of some Capital Region schools to restrict student smart-phone usage during school hours. Prominent among student concerns was they would be without their phones in a school shooting situation.

It shames us all to read this. It makes one ask: how could we allow things to get to this?

What sort of people are we? This last question, really, is the one we have to answer.

Yours sincerely,

Peter S. Cameron
____________________

1. Gun Safety Laws Save Lives. Everytown Research, 2023. https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/

2. Effects of Stand-your-Ground Laws on Violent Crime. Rand Corporation, January 10, 2023. https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/stand-your-ground/violent-crime.html

3. Kristof, N. A Smarter Way to Reduce Gun Deaths. New York Times, April 11, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/opinion/gun-death-health.html

4. Pilkington, E. How America’s Fatal Gun Attraction Turned Schools into War Zones. The Guardian, May 12, 2023.  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/13/mass-shootings-schools-guns-violence