Good News 2: Climate Change

Posted on January 15, 2024January 16, 2024 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.

Global Burning: It’s Personal

Posted on November 27, 2023December 3, 2023 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.

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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 November 11, 2023 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.

It Makes Ya Stop and Think, Don’t It

Posted on July 24, 2021July 24, 2021 by Peter Scott Cameron

The Great Barrier Reef

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has agreed to delay placing the Great Barrier Reef on its list of “in danger” sites after heavy lobbying from the Australian government.

The reef is the world’s largest coral reef. Like many of these reefs the world over, it is in imminent danger from the effects of climate change. Other kinds of water pollution (plastic etc.) and human over-use may also be factors in the die-off of the coral.

However, the Australian government was concerned that officially designating it as “in danger” would result in a decline in tourism, especially for snorkelling.

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Source:

Readfearn, Graham. “World Heritage Committee Agrees not to Place Great Barrier Reef on ‘In Danger’ List.” The Guardian, July 23, 2021.

The Pandemic is Ending: I’m Disappointed

Posted on June 14, 2021June 16, 2021 by Peter Scott Cameron

Here in the U.S., the Covid-19 epidemic is winding down as more and more people are vaccinated. Canada is somewhat behind, but after the country’s faltering start in vaccinating, things are going well, and rates of infection are coming down there, too. This is wonderful news, and I am so very grateful. I hope to see my Canadian family and friends. And I am glad that people I know and love, and so many other people, are more-or-less out of danger. Vaccines are our way out of this, and they are working.

World-wide, things are less rosy. India is in trouble. Rates of infection are sky-rocketing in South America; Brazil, led by a fool, has a total death number second only to that of the United States, and the situation is worsening. African countries, despite remarkable competence learned from previous dealings with epidemics, are struggling with no vaccine supply to speak of. Still, even for these areas, there is reason for optimism; we, the wealthy and privileged, are starting to share vaccine supplies and help with cash and supplies for medical infrastructure, and our leaders including Uncle Joe and Justin are showing a taste to do exactly that.

And so, we can look forward to a time in the not-so-distant future when this terrible pandemic will be under control, at least, if not entirely wiped out. Most likely, just like the flu, we will get our annual shot, and go on our merry way. We will return to normal life.

Yet, I am disappointed. It is “normal” life that concerns me.

I had hoped – naïvely, perhaps – that the pause, as difficult as it was, and as much hardship as it caused, would give us a chance to rethink how frenetically we live, and about our relationship with the planet. (See my earlier posts: Imagine, Parts I and II in July and August, 2020.) I had hoped that we would consider the benefits of a more settled life, with more space and time to be human beings. More important (since what you do with your time is not my business), I had hoped that we would use the the experience of clearer skies, fresher air, and the uncluttered streets as an opportunity to change our behaviour and reduce our carbon output permanently.

But no. It is apparent that this is unlikely to happen. It seems that we can hardly wait to get geared up and carry on, with even greater intensity, a way of life that is devastating earth. I know: Debbie Downer.

A good friend, who is a New York State employee, has been working from home for well over a year. It has gone well. Productivity has been high, and life has been easier. Yet, it seems the department, and his bosses, cannot wait to get him and his hundreds of fellow cubicle-dwellers back under direct scrutiny. I can’t think of another plausible reason for it. The petite Mussolinis of bureaucracy and commerce cannot tolerate the thought of not having their charges back in the cubicles under “panoptic surveillance,” to use Foucault’s term, even though electronic monitoring could rather easily satisfy the neurotic compulsion[i]. And so, consequently, with that will come the stalled traffic, the time lost and the oppressive frustrations of commuting, along with the wasteful burning of fuel and the emissions of carbon dioxide and all that this entails.

It appears that we just can’t wait! We can’t wait to drive all over the continent. We can’t wait to cram ourselves into airplanes and start flying all over the place. We can’t wait to herd ourselves onto cruise ships, all the while burning shocking quantities of fuel (28 thousand gallons of fuel per hour, in the case of the ship, Freedom of the Seas).[ii] We can’t wait to pack ourselves into tourist cities like Barcelona and Venice, stampede into museums and cafés, and while we are at it, once again make these cities unlivable to the people who reside there. It would be comical, really, if it were not so destructive.

The great writer and editor E. B. White penned an essay in 1956 entitled Sootfall and Fallout, which focused on his concern, even then, about environmental degradation, but especially, at that time, radioactivity that was being put into the atmosphere by nuclear bomb testing. (The fact that we no longer do this is evidence that we can stop doing harmful things if we decide to.) In that essay, he talks about “forms” – meaning the standard, habitual way we do things, often despite all the evidence that these forms have failed us and continue to fail us. Here is what he says with reference to the end of WWII and the era (the fifties) that he was writing in:

“Are we for ‘new forms,’ or will the old ones do? In 1945, after the worst bloodbath in history, the nations settled immediately into old forms. In its structure, the United Nations reaffirms everything that caused the Second World War. At the end of a war fought to defeat dictators, the UN welcomed Stalin and Perón to full membership, and the Iron Curtain quickly descended to put the seal of authority on this inconsistent act.” [iii]

This is exactly what we are doing. Before the pandemic, our form was that we trapped ourselves in stalled traffic, crammed into cubicles, crowded onto cruise ships, packed into airplanes, and swarmed tourist cities like locusts – all maintained by alarming levels of resource consumption and emissions that threaten to make the world unliveable.

During the pandemic we had some respite from this. We experienced a new form. We had time to come back to ourselves. We travelled less, or not at all. Those whose work permitted it, did it at a distance, and commuted less or not at all. Monstrous cruise ships were docked. Airplanes were parked alongside the runways. Cities and other spaces suddenly became liveable once more, and quiet. Streets were free of cars. Oil and gas consumption reduced; there was a noticeable decline in the production of greenhouse gases. We slowed down and were in our world as human beings. Relatively speaking, it was a return to the Garden.

But are we keeping this form? Quite apparently: no. We are determined to go back to the old form – with a vengeance. It is reported that after declining during 2020, carbon dioxide levels have rebounded, and in May carbon dioxide emissions rose to 419 parts per million, “the highest such measurement in the 63 years that the data has been recorded.” [iv]

This looks like it will be an opportunity lost, and that is a great shame.

Many expect that technology will save us. Indeed, technological improvements are coming, and we need those badly. But the problem cannot be solved by technological fixes alone – and every new technology comes with its own, new set of problems. (Gas-powered buggies solved the problem of horse-manure pollution in nineteenth century cities.) Now, electric cars are touted as the fix-all so we can keep driving as we wish: but surprise! – they require power (coal? gas? solar? nuclear?) and their battery materials will necessitate mining on a scale that I doubt we have ever seen before. I know what mining is: I grew up in a gold-mining town.[v] Kirkland Lake was built in the nineteen-twenties on the side of a large, beautiful lake. I have a picture of my father rowing on it in the nineteen-thirties. By the fifties, when I was growing up, the lake was gone. It was filled in with a shiny greenish sludge that we called “The Slimes,” and that we, as children, played on: a mucky swill of crushed rock, chemical-laden tailings, cyanide, arsenic, and God knows what else. There are other such Slimes all over Northern Ontario and Quebec.

No: in addition to technological improvements, we need to change behaviour if we are going to fix this problem. We need a new form: a form of doing less and consuming less, a form of sustainable economics and sustainable life.[vi] As many have pointed out, it is not possible to obtain infinite growth from a finite system (earth). And so, what to do?

We can start by buying less stuff, and when we do buy stuff, acquire things that last longer and that can be repaired. We can travel less. Zoom to work; Zoom to out-of-town business meetings. If your recalcitrant employer resists, fight hard for the right to stay home. If we have travelled twice a year for breaks or vacations, make it once a year. I would say park the cruise ships, but if we must cruise, make it a biannual trip rather than an annual one. And we know the rest. Simply drive less. Combine trips. Don’t idle our cars while Suzie dashes into the 7-11 for a Big Gulp. Take the train. Go to into twenty-eight-day rehab, if necessary, to recover from our addiction to monster-sized SUV’s and pick-up trucks; drive smaller, more efficient vehicles. At home, if we mow our lawns once a week with a gas mower, make it every week and a half, or even two weeks. If we eat beef twice a week, make it once a week…and so on. It is not about denying ourselves. It is about moderating.

Canadians – and I know this will be painful – could get rid of their second fridges, those beer fridges in the basement, and recycle them. It is a lot to ask, I know, but we could hold ceremonies to assuage the grief.

While we are at it – if you are a person with an actual investment portfolio – dump the fossil fuel holdings and put your money in renewables or ask your mutual fund managers to do the same. And it goes without saying that we need to support and pressure our politicians to move aggressively on renewable energy infrastructure and climate improvement targets.

It is not easy to change habits; I more than understand this. It is all about human “wanting.” We all want to get ours. It is a trait built into us, and one that is cleverly exploited by marketers and the corporate colonizers of culture. Part of me (if I had the money) could jilt my trusting and faithful seven-year-old Subaru and trade it in on a hot, gas-guzzling, 800 horsepower Saleen “Black Label” Mustang and drive the beast at over a hundred-miles-an-hour all the way to Texas. A ’68 GTO with that saucy ram-air 400 cubic inch V-8 and the four-barrel carb would do also. Well, no wait – not Texas: too many gun-toting, Covid-denying, anti-masking, voter-suppression knuckleheads there, so no, never Texas. California, then. Yes! – a big road trip to California: I’ll roar across the Golden Gate and then I’ll floor it all the way back via Oregon and the Dakotas, thereby burning up a few hundred gallons of gas. Fun!

But in truth, I expect that I would feel no better after the binge. No doubt I would call up my Subaru and ask if I could come over, hat in hand, to see if we could reconcile and get back together.

In any case, if we want to save ourselves and the planet, those times are over, or ought to be over. Time to find other ways to have fun, closer to home.

There is a fatal flaw in our culture. It is that we share this tacit belief that if an individual wants to do something, and is able to do that thing, then that person should do that thing, or has a right to do that thing. But this is faulty logic, because it leaves out a very fundamental component: the consequences, intended or not, of the action. So, if you can afford a Lincoln Navigator, then by all means, get it. If you are billionaire Bill Gates and his soon-to-be-ex, Melinda, and want a 66,000 square foot home (Xanadu 2.0!) for two people, go for it! If you are smiling Jeff Bezos and want to fly yourself into space in your own rocket, do it! There is no thought at all for the social and environmental consequences of these actions. Of course, it is not just the wealthy and their extravagances; I include myself. We all do this, all the time, and salve our consciences by telling ourselves the consequences are small or don’t matter because we have a right to “ours.”

And so, it is a moral matter; but it is also a spiritual matter, a matter important to our simple human wellbeing.

We really know in our hearts that materialism and the acquisition of things, beyond an essential level of comfort and security in our lives, do not make us any happier.[vii] That is old news. We never run out of desire but satisfying every want does not necessarily benefit us. The Buddhists point out that desires are inexhaustible, and their practice is to vow to put an end to them, knowing that the best we can do, in fact, is to steward these. The great Yogic teacher, Paramahansa Yogananda said to “put a hedge around your wants.” However, we do not have to look to Eastern cultures for this wisdom; in the Western tradition, from the Stoics on, the philosophers have recommended not necessarily the abandonment of desire, but rather the regulating of it. [viii]

A moral matter: going forward, we must think of consequences not just for ourselves, but also, consider our children and grandchildren and beyond. In the aboriginal cultures of North America, a common precept when considering a course of action is to reflect on not just ourselves, but the “seven generations” that will follow. [ix]

We do know what we need to do, where we need to go. It is only a question of will, of whether we will do it. Many are doing this: people who are already moving ahead on this good path. I invite myself, and one and all, to accompany them.

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Notes

[i] Meaning, in its simplest terms, a state of constant monitoring. Foucault, Michael. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Pantheon Books, 1977.

[ii] De Santiago, Edward. “How Much Fuel Does a Cruise Ship Use?” Love to Know, www.cruises.lovetoknow.com /wiki/How_Much_Fuel_Does_a_Cruise_Ship_Use. Accessed 5 June 2021.

[iii] White, E. B. “Sootfall and Fallout.” The Golden Age of the American Essay, edited by Phillip Lopate, Anchor Books, 2021, pp. 171-182.

[iv] Gammon, Katherine. “Global Carbon Dioxide Level Continued to Rise Despite Pandemic.” The Guardian, 6 June 2021.

[v] McDonald, Joshua. “The Island With no Water: How Foreign Mining Destroyed Banaba.” The Guardian, 8 June 2021.

[vi] Victor, Peter A. Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster. 1^st ed., Edward Elgar Publishers, 2009.

[vii] Long-term happiness studies, such as the Harvard study begun in 1938, have confirmed this repeatedly. As material wealth increased over the decades, median happiness stayed the same, and was related to other factors, such as quality of relationships, etc., not wealth and spending. Noethen, Robin. “A Study Lasting Over 80 Years Might Change Your View of Happiness.” Curious. https://medium.com/curious/a-study-lasting-over-80-years-might-change-your-view-on-happiness-33a28cdc6611. Accessed 9 June 2021.

[viii] Loori, John Daido. The Eight Gates of Zen: Spiritual Practice in an American Zen Monastery. Dharma Communications, 1992, p. 249.

Yogananda, Paramahansa. The Science of Religion. Self-Realization Fellowship, 1982, p. 28.

The idea of “moderation in all things,” is attributed to the Greek poet Hesiod (c.700 bc).

[ix] I first heard this in a workshop with Jake Swamp-Tekaronianeken, a Mohawk Chief, an ambassador for peace, and the founder of the Tree of Peace Society. It is a simple idea changes how one think about the consequences of one’s actions in the world.

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Resources

– 350 Org. https://350.org/. Founded by Bill McKibben and colleagues with the hope that knowledge and campaigning, we could limit carbon dioxide emissions to 350 parts per million. As noted in the essay, we are now at 419 parts per million.

– David Suzuki Foundation. https://davidsuzuki.org/. Suzuki is a scientist and a naturalist; his foundation educates, and advocates for sensible environmental policy. Suzuki himself, over 80, is a Canadian national treasure.

See “Ten Reasons to be Hopeful About Climate Action.” David Suzuki Foundation. https://davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/ten-reasons-hopeful-about-climate-action/. I am not as optimistic as Suzuki is, but then again, he is smarter than I am! 🙂

– Gates, Bill. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need. Alfred A. Knopf, 2021. Ideas on technological fixes to help avoid catastrophic climate change.

– McKibben, Bill (Ed.). A Global Warming Reader: A Century of Writing about Climate Change. OR Books, 2011.

– Kolbert, Elizabeth. Field Notes from a Catastrophe. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006. A “boot camp” primer on the real situation we are in. Of course, it is now 15 years later.

– Norgaard, Kari Marie. Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life. MIT Press, 2011. Concerns the mechanisms that contribute to denial of the situation.

– Rosen, Julia. “The Science of Climate Change Explained: Facts, Evidence and Proof.” The New York Times, May 12, 2021. A terrific summary.

– United Nations Climate Action: Climate Reports. https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/reports. These reports are ongoing and updated regularly.

I Answer All Your Questions: Part II

Posted on April 25, 2021April 27, 2021 by Peter Scott Cameron

Question: Welcome back. Shall we return first to the news and some more brilliant ideas circulating on the Internet? But later I would like also to ask you some personal questions, such as “are you a misanthrope? Are you happy?” Is that okay? Answer: It is okay. Thank you.

Question: So, let’s talk about social movements. Tell us, are the Proud Boys and other such groups patriots, or are they cases of arrested development? Answer: I am inclined to say that too often those are the same thing, but instead I will just say yes to the latter. Research has shown that members of such groups have trouble with complex problem-solving and have a strong preference for simplistic explanations of complex phenomena. [i]

Question: Since you are a person who has studied psychology, what developmental age would you say they are? Answer: Per Piaget, early “concrete operational” stage. Emotionally, per Erikson, I would say the stage of “industry vs. inferiority,” which places them at about the same developmental level both cognitively and emotionally: about eight years old. Their anthem that they sing for their mothers, Proud of Your Boy, from Aladdin, gives them away.

Question: Is it true that the Proud Boys were founded by a Canadian? Answer: Unfortunately, yes. A stain on the country. They were founded in Brooklyn by the scoundrel, who was supposedly educated at Carleton University, and who high-tailed it from Ottawa. Scottish parents, I understand, which makes it even uglier.

Question: Speaking of Canada, what about Prime Minister Trudeau? Answer: Decent guy. Has his mother’s heart, though he is not quite as smart as his father, who was, after all, a leading Quebec intellectual, which says a lot. Gets into hot water unnecessarily. Loved the famous hand-shake with Trump. Brilliant! I agreed with the 85-year-old woman in the seniors’ building I was living in at the time: I asked her how she liked him, and she replied, “Smokin’ hot!”

Question: If an election is called in the next months, given his minority government, will Trudeau win? Answer: Yes. He will win a minority government, and thereby Parliament and the country will be in precisely the same position as before the election. This is not uncommon in Canada and Israel. Both countries seem to enjoy having a lot of elections in which nothing changes.

Question: I have heard the term “proroguing Parliament,” and both Trudeau and the Conservative Prime Minister before him, Stephen Harper, did that. Proroguing sounds like something you would eat, possibly Polish, and perhaps on a stick. Would you explain what it means to the Americans in the group? Answer: Certainly. “Proroguing” is a mechanism with which you can send Members of Parliament home and start over when you don’t like how things are going, say, for example, when opposition members are closing in on a corrupt deal the government has made, etc. Then, when Parliament reconvenes, the game starts over with a clean slate. Of course, in our real lives, we are not allowed do this, but those clever politicians are smarter than us and so have availed themselves of the playground equivalent of a “do-over.”

Question: The Canadian Conservative Party rejected a resolution that would have recognized that climate change was real, and that we should do something about it. What will happen to them? Answer: They will go the way of the Dodo bird and the 50% of Republican men and certain health care workers who are refusing a Covid vaccine. It is Darwinian natural selection. Unfortunately, they may take the rest of us with them.

Question: But is climate change real and caused by human activity? Answer: Yes, along with accompanying weather extremes, species extinction and habitat collapse.

Question: Do we have the capability, with relatively straightforward and not unduly difficult fixes, to halt climate change and impending ecological disaster? Answer: Yes.

Question: Will addressing climate change harm the economy? Answer: No, it will help the economy. If we pursued it, it would be like the boom after WWII.

Question: Great! Given that, will we take necessary action on climate change soon enough to avoid devastating ecological collapse, with considerable human suffering and the decimation of other species? Answer: No.

Question: ??? But what about all that is happening right now? Biden’s plans, the fantastic drop in solar power costs and so on? Answer: It is great; what Uncle Joe is trying to do is terrific. But we are thirty-years-plus too late to avoid serious troubles. We are already experiencing some of them, in fact. The permafrost and glaciers are melting and already we have lost three billion birds in North America alone. We knew about this problem going into the eighties. The Kyoto protocol was, after all, was signed in 1992, and it has only gotten worse. Even now, I see a lot of unwillingness by people to change or to inconvenience themselves – things like horrendous cruise ships, gigantic suburban pickup trucks, all that flying around, bottled water, etc. So, no, we will not avoid suffering.

Question: Does that mean we should give up? Are you a pessimist? Answer: No. Of course not, to both. Remember Gramsci’s and Rolland’s dictate: “pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.” We can mitigate, and everything we do helps the planet and all sentient beings on it.

Question: Okay. A different subject: can established main-stream news providers be trusted? Answer: Yes: employing, of course, your faculty for critical thinking acquired in college.

Question: What about Fox News? Answer: No. Fox is not a news provider.

Question: Speaking of Fox News: do supply-side economic policies with big tax cuts, aka “trickle-down” (aka Reaganism or Thatcherism), work as claimed? Answer: No. Four decades of evidence show that its effect is the reverse: it is “trickle-up.” Or rather, wealth floods up to the already rich.

Question: Speaking of Thatcher, has Britain harmed itself by pursuing Brexit? Answer: Yes, substantially. Although I am sure it is not the case for those living through it, it has been a bit comical to watch from the outside. I suppose because it is self-inflicted. But I am sorry they have made such a colossal error and are making their citizens suffer. And it is most unfortunate that they are being “guided” through the process by a buffoon with weirdly tousled hair.

Question: Why, then, did they pursue it? Answer: Domestic chauvinism, fear of outsiders. But a correction: I’m not sure one can say “they,” speaking collectively of Great Britain. Wales tilted “yes” for obscure reasons including a large influx of conservative English in recent years. Scotland and Northern Ireland voted “no,” and it appears that a significant number of English “no” voters stayed home, considering the idea absurd, and so the true believers won. As one wag said, watching the English pursue Brexit was like seeing them gleefully sawing off both their legs. Sorry, I may have added the adverb, “gleefully.”

Question: Okay, a big one, as this continues to be contested hotly on the Internet: what about the Holocaust? Did Hitler really exterminate six million Jews? Answer: Most likely more than that if you include both the camps and the killings outside the camps – along with at least five million others outside of “regular” war casualties: Poles, Roma, gay people, the mentally ill, mentally retarded, and sundry other unfortunates. In addition to the millions killed in the concentration camps, there were untold numbers of Jews and others murdered in fields and towns of countries like The Ukraine. When there were children, the Nazis simply buried them alive, throwing them in with the bodies of their parents, to avoid “wasting” a bullet.

Question: Does this history bother you? Answer: Bother me? Bother me, you say? It stops me in my tracks. My mind freezes. It wakes me up at night. It makes me grind my teeth. It is horror, the stuff of nightmares, like the Japanese rape of Nanking,[ii] the genocide in Rwanda, the attempted genocide of the Indigenous People of the Americas, slavery, what neighbours did to each other in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia, ISIS beheaders and rapists, and dreadful Taliban women-stoners. It goes on and on.

Question: What can we do about it? Answer: Personally: what Buddhists call “lovingkindness,” or the Christian Golden Rule. Publicly: atonement and active reconciliation. Politically: the determination to prevent and stop occurrences at every opportunity, with force, as necessary and possible.

Question: Some people say that “history,” as we call it, is just a constructed narrative. Or as the Postmodernists claim, and all the students in the 90’s were indoctrinated to believe, that there is no truth, just “truth.” What do you think? Answer: Social and historical reality exist. Truth exists. Postmodernism is a catchy idea, but it goes too far. “Desconstruction” became a parlour trick. Derrida, the great showman that he was, overstated the case.[iii] To test this proposition, try standing in front of an oncoming locomotive.

Question: Does evil exist? Answer: ? You just asked me about the Holocaust.

Question: Does the Devil exist? Answer: Look in the mirror.

Question: Does Goodness exist? Answer: Of course. It is both all around us and inside us. The remarkable thing about goodness is you do not even have to exert yourself to get it. All you must do is open yourself to it.

Question: What is virtue? Answer: Consult Socrates.

Question: Can virtue be taught? Answer: Yes, according to Socrates.

Question: So, there is hope! What about love? Answer: It is the best thing we do, and the capability for love is the best quality we have.

Question: Now you sound like a Humanist. Are you? Answer: Yes, Enlightenment rationalism and humanism is one of the West’s greatest gifts, including liberating us from organized religion. Despite that, I know that there are larger and deeper aspects of existence that we cannot understand.

Question: Now you sound like a Mystic. Answer: I am all too aware that I am but a miniscule fragment of an incomprehensibly larger whole that is beyond my capacity to comprehend. And in the face of that, the best thing I can do is to experience great awe.

Question: Earlier, you sounded misanthropic. Are you? Answer: Misanthropic? No, I deny that. But I admit that each additional year that I continue to exist, my esteem for humanity lowers a few percentage points. It is now at 31.4%. But perhaps I have been watching too much television news. The past five years of American politics have taken a toll.

Of course, there are many one-hundred-percent people, although I sometimes have trouble recalling whom, other than dear friends and family. Well, no, I take that back: there are all sorts of ordinary, everyday hundred-percenters walking around – kind, generous, loving people, I see them in the grocery store.

And there are Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai for sure. Uncle Joe Biden is certainly looking like a hundred-percenter. Historically, so many: Haydn no doubt. Dickens and Dostoevsky, of course. Voltaire, and Frida Kahlo. Nelson Mandala. Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. Martin Luther King, Jr. All those great Canadian women, like Emily Carr, “Canada’s Van Gogh,” and the aboriginal poet Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake), or the Inuit artist Kenojuak Ashevak, who was born in an igloo on Baffin Island. Then there was Viola Desmond, whose refusal to move from her seat in a movie theatre, in 1946, began to the end segregation in Nova Scotia. It took forever. The last segregated school in Nova Scotia shut its miserable doors in 1983! Don’t be smug, Ontarians, you had segregated schools from the late nineteenth century until 1965, when the last one closed in Colchester! Don’t get me started!!

Question: Okay, not a misanthrope, but touchy, if I might say so. So, given Covid and all the concerns you have mentioned, are you happy? Have you suffered with the pandemic? Answer: Let me start with the second one. No, I have not suffered with the pandemic.

I am a privileged person in all this. At most, I have merely been inconvenienced by having to stay home, not seeing family and friends, and not going to movies or out to hear live music. Mostly trivial disruptions. I have been helped by my essentially introverted nature.

I do miss those friends and family members very much and at times I feel sad about it. And I have had bouts of anxiety about when I will see my daughter and grandchildren again. I have gotten fatter, which bugs me. But unlike so many who have really suffered, I have lost no job, no business, nor income. I have not been sick, and most important, I have lost no loved ones. Instead, I have had a greater opportunity to be with myself, and have been able to make improvements, such as lowering my carbon footprint by not driving anywhere. I want to find ways to build on that.

Question: Okay. Then, happiness: are you happy and do you have a philosophy of happiness? Answer: Again, I will answer the second question first. I will have to start charging you double.

I understand that, contrary to the U.S. Constitution, happiness cannot be attained through pursuit. Nor is it “choice,” as new-agers claim. Try telling that to a Syrian refugee or a person suffering from major depression. You will risk a sock on the chin, and rightly so.

Rather, happiness is an understanding, a realization coupled with gratitude. For me, being unhappy would be a monumental act of selfishness. I am reminded of a saying, attributed to the Ojibwa, or properly, the Anishinaabe people: “Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while a great wind carries me across the sky.”

So yes, I am happy. I am a most fortunate person. Aside from being carried across the sky by a great wind, my gratitude list has become encyclopedic. Let me expound in detail. Despite all the usual human defeats and disappointments, I have made it to my overly-ripe mid-seventies, with no cancer, no heart attack or diabetes, and no Parkinson’s. So far, I have all my marbles. I am a citizen of not just one, but two of the West’s candy-store democracies. I am not, say, a Rohingya refugee living in shit-soaked squalor in Pakistan, a Uighur suffering “re-education” in despotic China, or a single mother trying to protect her children in gang-infested Honduras.

Instead, I live in freedom and tranquility in a little white house in Grandma Moses territory, the rolling countryside near Vermont’s Green Mountains, sharing life with a wonderful woman who loves me, all my alarming deficits included. I have a remarkable daughter and two stellar grandchildren, two terrific sisters and families, and good friends – and, as I said earlier, every one of these people so far has survived Covid.

All my life, I have been given unlimited opportunities to do meaningful work. And now, every month the American government, in its beneficence, deposits a nice sum of money into my chequing account. I never have to remind them. Mundane stuff really, but I have Beethoven on the radio, Stan Getz and Tim Hardin on the old iPod. Through the real miracle of the Internet, I can listen to my favorite radio station in the world, Jazz-FM from Toronto, any time I want, while remembering fondly when I lived there. I will never run out of books to read. For breakfast, I can sip fair-trade coffee, spread jam on my toast and devour an egg from free-range chickens. I can enjoy a modest cigar in the late afternoon and an Irish whiskey in the evening, while watching television in tranquility with my sweet partner. We have a 100-year-old rescue dog who does not bite, though God knows she would be entitled to, given her early history of abuse.[iv] We also share life with two foundling cats, one of whom thinks the dog is his mother, and the other who thinks he is part dog. Dudley walks around the yard with me when I do my daily inspection, and then when I go sit on the large stump to smoke my cigar, he jumps up and sits beside me, taking stock of things, as I do. Just that. It is amazing. So much to be grateful for.

I’ve got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.

But I do not live just for these “tranquil pleasures,” as Manuel Vilas said of his father. [v]

Instead, like most human beings, I know that there is a great light within me. And every day I grow one day closer to setting it free.

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[i] Grover, Natalie. People with Extremist Views Less Able to do Complex Mental Tasks, Research Suggests. The Guardian, February 21, 2021.

[ii] Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking. Basic Books, 1997.

[iii] Derrida, Jacques, Of Grammatology. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (transl.). Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.

[iv] Dear Sandy died on Wednesday, April 21, 2021. I left this sentence written as is, in tribute. I continue to hear her patter in the house, and to look for her poking around in the yard, blind as she was, navigating by her sniffing, very fine doggish nose.

[v] Vilas, Manuel, op cit., page 179.

An Open Letter to Climate Change Deniers

Posted on September 27, 2020September 28, 2020 by Peter Scott Cameron

I have known some otherwise reasonable people who have fallen prey to think-tank propaganda, funded by the oil interests, that denies the reality of climate change, or its impact, or its origin – or in most cases, all three.

Let me state what the scientific consensus, and the reality is:

Climate change is occurring, including global warming, along with increasing catastrophic weather changes.
Its effects are substantial and accelerating.
Mainly this devastation is due to the release of excessive carbon into the atmosphere because of human activity, including the burning of fossil fuel and cattle husbandry.
Left unchecked, this will render life miserable, if not unsustainable, for most creatures, including human beings.
The only true area of remaining scientific debate concerns how fast and how severe the effects will be.
We can ameliorate this, if not stop and even reverse it, by concerted wise human effort and intelligent technological change.

Period. End of story. Finum suum.

We have been aware of the problem for at least forty years, although the scientific picture has gotten clearer over the decades. At the same time, we have had forty years of climate-change-denial propaganda that has muddied things and derailed action. The propaganda has been constructed and disseminated by so-called “think tanks” and their minions on television and talk-radio, mainly funded by oil interests such as Exxon and extreme right societal and political manipulators such as the Koch brothers. It is unconscionable, criminal.

Concerning the scientific consensus, consider this thought experiment, with thanks to Tom Friedman.[i] Suppose your doctor says to you that your child has a deadly condition, but that it can be remedied by a careful course of treatment. However, your child appears to be pretty much okay, and you are not sure you want to have your child take the medication, so you ask for a second opinion. You go to ninety-eight other family physicians and pediatricians, and despite some slight differences concerning the potential severity of the condition and the strength of the remedy required, they all give you essentially the same diagnosis and treatment plan.

However, you find one doctor who says that your child’s apparent disease is a part of a completely normal cycle of nature, and adds that even there were a problem, it will disappear causing no harm. All you must do is to make sure your child continues life as before.

As a concerned parent, what would you do? Whom would you believe: the ninety-nine reputable physicians, or the last one?

This is the situation. The consensus from objective scientific observation and data analysis communicated by reputable scientists is clear and decisive.

Even if you prefer to acquire your opinions second-hand from television, as many of us do, whom would you trust on the matter of climate change: say, David Attenborough, the honoured naturalist and renowned BBC broadcaster, a level-headed man of integrity? Or would you trust the likes of Tucker Carlson, highly paid to bloviate, make trouble and manufacture controversy on Fox “News,” funded by the nefarious Rupert Murdoch?

I know what my choice would be.

It is all rather simple. The basic news is bad of course. It is uncomfortable and calls for changes. Yet there is good news. The problem really is fixable and does not have to be all that painful. The medicine is good, and we are perfectly capable of both making it and taking it. It is as easy to swallow as that good old Canadian cough syrup, Buckley’s Mixture, notorious in my childhood for its dubious taste. It was a little challenging going down, but boy, did you feel good about it afterward. And you got better.

Addressing climate change is like that. It can be halted. If you are a denier and will not help us out on this, at least, please:

Get out of the way so that we can get on with the doable job of reclaiming a habitable planet for our grandchildren and the other remaining species on earth.