Tag Archives: Ray Grigg

Reflections on the Maypole of Spring

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Spring comes, the earth warms, and the multi-foliate greens of fresh buds emerge from branches, stems and soil. People venture freely from the confines of their dwellings and shelters, shed unnecessary clothes, and embrace the outdoors with an optimism and trust that should be remembered throughout the rainy and cold seasons. In this time of opening and promise, as our planet tips itself to the welcoming warmth of the sun, we come closest to realizing our intimate bond with nature.

This memory lives in the spring rituals of tilling and planting, of celebrating and feasting, of travelling and adventuring. May Day, hidden beneath another misnomer called Queen Victoria’s birthday, is actually the modern incarnation of an ancient festival of rebirth and renewal, the traditional honouring of the fertility and revival that occurs every spring. People gather together in open places to parade, make music, dance and — in some remnant places — to dance around the Maypole.

Anthropologists note the symbolic significance of this event. The phallic pole is decorated with coloured ribbons as young children — pubescent girls in ancient history because they are the most vivid symbols of regeneration — skip and wind the ribbons in complex patterns around this erect pole. The intricate lacing and unlacing of the dance represents the biological urge of life inventing, spending and then repeatedly reinventing itself as the male and female energies of egg and sperm, of stigma and stamen, of flower and pollen, replicate themselves to perpetuate life. It’s a time of hope and a definition of our essential selves as participants in the endless rhythms of nature.

We, of course, are intimate partners in the living fabric of the most unique place in the universe. This is a role we have played relatively well for most of our history as a species, the proof of which is simply our survival, adaptation and refinement for more than a million years. Indeed, we have played this role remarkably well. Seven billion of us now occupy the planet, imposing ourselves in every possible piece of its geography, wielding such influence that we are now altering geographies, ecologies and even weather and climate. The effect of our success is currently so great that we are naming this epoch in Earth’s history after ourselves — the Anthropocene, a term that reflects both our power and our responsibility.

As children dance around the Maypole, enacting a primeval ritual and reaffirming our bond to nature and its imperatives, we photograph them with digital cameras, amplify the music with the magic of electricity, and dress in miracle fabrics made by the alchemy of technology. When we choose to travel, we can fly faster, higher and farther than birds, or we can speed along highways more swiftly than cheetahs. Within the confines of dwellings, our ingenuity can turn night into day and winter into summer. The foods of our feasts commonly come from distant corners of the world, brought by vessels that seem to defy the limitations of distance and time.

And yet, the common grass, so fresh and green beneath the feet of the dancing children, is essential to our sense of belonging and meaning. So, too, are the surrounding trees, the nearby ocean, the flowing river, the billowing clouds, the blue sky, the company of distant mountains and the companionship of animals, birds and insects — all are crucial ingredients in the richness we call the marvel of life.
Would our sanity survive if these natural things did not accompany us on our journey from the light of birth to the darkness of death? Could we live fully and contentedly within the mechanical shapes of cities, only wandering within the squares and angles of our buildings, always walking on the hard streets of asphalt and concrete? Just as an imprisoned animal confined to a cage, we would suffocate little-by-little even though we continued to breathe. We should not be surprised, therefore, to discover that we learn better, heal faster and relax more in the company of nature. Or that we protect ourselves from our own destructive inclinations by preserving nature in gardens, greenbelts and parks.

So something sacred pulses in the bodies of the dancing children as their ribbons wind and unwind around the Maypole, as their feet so playfully touch, leave and then return to the living soil. This is the contact that always was and always must be if we are to retain our sanity and our civilizations. We cannot escape the home of our origin and our destiny. The dancing, the parade, the music, the spring festivities — whatever they may be — all affirm that the familiar and unfamiliar members of the community are gathered together as more than neighbours, as more than citizens, as more than shoppers and consumers in the cold machinery of commerce.

The Maypole is an earthy and hopeful reminder that we belong to a more lasting and profound heritage than our tragic wars and our tangled squabbling over economics, finance, philosophy and religion. We all share the same fragile planet, each of us participating in the intricate steps of its timeless and sacred dance.

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Dr. Mark Jaccard was arrested recently in BC at a protest against coal shipments (Vancouver Observer photo)

Radicalizing Scientists

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Dr. Mark Jaccard, professor of economics at Simon Fraser University and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was arrested on railway tracks near Vancouver for blocking the arrival of a Burlington Northern train loaded with Wyoming coal bound for nearby Deltaport and then Asia. Before being released from police custody, he was fined $115 for his May 5th, 2012, trespass violation under the Railway Safety Act, as were the other 12 people in his protest group. “Putting myself in a situation where I may be accused of civil disobedience is not something I have ever done before,” said Dr. Jaccard (CBC, May 5/12). He now joins at least another of his august colleagues, Dr. James Hansen, in this distinction.

Dr. Hansen is one of the world’s foremost authorities on global warming, internationally recognized and awarded for his studies, insights and conclusions on the disruptive effects of greenhouse gases on climate and ecologies. He has been arrested in 2009, 2010 and 2011 for similar protests. During testimony given before the Iowa Utilities Board in 2007, Hansen likened coal trains to “death trains”, contending that they would be “no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.” In his assessment, carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels must be curtailed or the environmental consequences will be catastrophic.

Dr. Jaccard echoed this warning with his own eloquence. “The window of opportunity for avoiding a high risk of runaway, irreversible climate change is closing quickly,” he said. “Within this decade we will either have steered away from disaster, or have locked ourselves onto a dangerous course. Our governments continue to ignore the warnings of scientists and push forward with policies that will accelerate the burning of fossil fuels. Private interests — coal, rail, oil, pipeline companies and the rest — continue to push their profit-driven agenda, heedless of the impact on the rest of us.” Meanwhile, he adds, government response to climate change concerns are “entirely inadequate” (Ibid.).

As a concerned grandfather, Dr. Hansen worries about future generations. So does Dr. Jaccard. “I now ask myself how our children, when they look back decades from now, will have expected us to have acted today,” he said. “When I think about that, I conclude that every sensible and sincere person who cares about this planet and can see through lies and delusion motivated by money, should be doing what I and others are now prepared to do.”

These two scholarly, prominent and respected scientists have been radicalized by the shrinking distance between uncontrollable climate change and our options for preventative action. They are not alone in their recognition of the tragic loss of opportunity as government and industry habitually fail to implement the strategies known to reduce CO2 emissions. The level of frustration, exasperation and desperation in scientists everywhere is intensifying as they gauge the seriousness of our situation against a history of empty promises.

This history is nicely summarized in a documentary, Earth Days (2010) by the American cinematographer, Robert Stone. His film captures the evolution of a crisis as it unfolds during the last half-century. It begins with grainy images of US President John F. Kennedy promising that natural places will be saved for Americans to appreciate in a distant 2000, “If we do what is right now, in 1963.”

Subsequent US presidents discover that merely protecting natural places won’t be enough. Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson warns, “Either we stop poisoning our air or we become a nation in gas masks, groping our way through these dying cities, a wilderness of ghost towns that the people have evacuated.” Then Richard M. Nixon cautions, “The great question of the ’70s is, shall we surrender to our surroundings or will we make peace with nature, and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land and to our water.”

When the “energy crisis” of the ’70s hits, a worried President Gerald Ford promises to “…accelerate technology to capture energy from the sun and the earth for this and future generations.” The next US president, Jimmy Carter, is alarmed enough to advise, “If we fail to act soon, we will face an economic, social and political crisis that will threaten our free institutions.”

Then Ronald Reagan pledges, “We must and we will be sensitive to the delicate balance of our ecosystems, the preservation of endangered species, and the protection of our wilderness lands.”

As for the intended environmental measures of George H.W. Bush, he is equally reassuring. “It is said,” he notes, “that we don’t inherit the Earth from our ancestors but that we borrow it from our children. And when our children look back on this time and this place, they will be grateful.”

Bill Clinton, with ever-clearer scientific evidence, warns, “If we fail to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, deadly heatwaves and droughts will become more frequent, coastal areas will flood and economies will be disrupted. That is going to happen unless we act.”

Finally, George W. Bush observes obliquely but succinctly, “And we have a serious problem. America is addicted to oil.”

In the 49 years since 1963, as environmental awareness has grown, some measures have been implemented to protect ecologies and reduce industrial pollution. But greenhouse gas emissions, a key issue, have continued to rise rather than fall. The United States has abandoned the Kyoto Protocol legal efforts to reduce these emissions. Canada’s endorsement of the Protocol was entirely hollow, and it has since given notice of its withdrawal. The current Canadian government assiduously avoids any mention of climate change and is even cutting relevant scientific funding — not encouraging for an expectant public and hopeful scientists.

As Dr. Jaccard was being led away in handcuffs from the stalled Burlington Northern coal train, he was asked by a reporter, “Was it worth it?” And he replied, “I don’t know. We’ll know — our kids will know — in two decades.”

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Postmedia photo

The Religion Factor in Canada’s Environmental Politics

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Canadian politics has traditionally avoided the religion factor. By common agreement, belief has been deemed a private matter, a facet of a candidate’s qualifications for election that is not relevant to his or her ability to represent voters in parliament or to function as prime minister. The media has generally been respectful of this sensitivity and has averted coverage and commentary that touches on personal religious beliefs. This may be changing.

Most environmentalists and scientists, together with a growing number of Canadians and others, are often bewildered by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s aversion to address or even to mention the spectre of global climate change. This profoundly important environmental issue is prominent in many political discussion in many countries of the world, an integral part of their budgets, economic plans and energy policies. All but a fringe minority now accept the essential science explaining climate change and are taking measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Not so in Canada.

This lapse has focused attention on Prime Minister Harper, particularly because he is such a powerful and skillful political leader who meticulously manages, controls and directs much of Canada’s domestic and foreign policy — this nation’s governance is now the image of Stephen Harper. His response to environmental issues has been perplexing, provocative and worrisome. Green Party MP Elizabeth May outlines these concerns in her response to the government’s 2012 budget, the devious C-38 omnibus bill that devotes 170 of 425 pages to repealing, amending or otherwise weakening existing environmental regulations, while also withdrawing financial support from key scientific research that is environment related (Island Tides, May 17/12).

A mere sample is staggering: no funding for the Polar Environment Arctic Research Laboratory, the definitive and authoritative monitor of northern climate change; withdrawal of financial support for the Kluane Research Station, a 50-year project studying high-latitude ecological changes; the slashing of almost all marine pollution monitoring; and dissolution of the National Round Table on Environment and Economy, the only institution that attempts to find sustainable business options that are satisfactory to both industry and environmentalists. Despite arguing austerity, the government found an additional $8 million of scarce money for Revenue Canada to more closely monitor environmental charities to be certain excessive funds are not being used for “political” advocacy. “Nearly half of the budget implementation bill,” writes May, “is directed at re-writing Canada’s foundational environmental laws.” This includes the Fisheries Act, the Species at Risk Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. Decisions once based on public processes guided by science now move to ministerial discretion.

The Prime Minister’s seemingly anti-environment and anti-science agenda has prompted Andrew Nikiforuk, a prominent Canadian journalist, to search for the root cause of this behaviour. In his quest for an explanation, Nikiforuk has broken from convention, raised the sensitive religion issue, and written an opinion piece in TheTyee.ca (Mar. 26/12) titled, “Understanding Harper’s Evangelical Mission”, subtitled, “Signs mount that Canada’s government is beholden to a religious agenda averse to science and rational debate.”

Nikiforuk had obviously pondered the Prime Minister’s political behaviour, trying to explain why the leader of a modern, progressive and technologically sophisticated country would muzzle public comment by government-funded climate scientists, make no serious effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions, block or stall international agreements on greenhouse gas reductions, provoke the ire of every environmentally conscientious country on the planet, officially withdraw Canada from the Kyoto Protocol, promote rampant fossil-fuel development, and assiduously avoid any mention or discussion of climate change anywhere in his tightly controlled government. To an inquisitive journalist, this behaviour is an anachronistic idiosyncrasy that invites exploration.

Because the Prime Minister will not publicly discuss his religious views, Nikiforuk’s conclusions are conjectural. But the Prime Minister is known to belong to an Alberta fundamentalist Protestant church that espouses “evangelical climate skepticism”. Nikiforuk contends that this church holds seven tenets which “not only explain startling developments in Canada but should raise the hair on the neck of every thinking citizen regardless of their faith: 1. Disdain for the environmental movement, 2. Distrust of mainstream science in general, 3. Distrust of the mainstream media, 4. Loyalty to the party, 5. Libertarian economics as God’s will (God is opposed to government regulation or taxation), 6. Misunderstanding of divine sovereignty (God won’t allow us to ruin creation), 7. Unreconstructed Dominion theology (God calls on humans to subdue and rule creation).”

These are the tenets, Nikiforuk suggests, that could now be directing Canadian policy through the singular authority of the Prime Minister. “Any Canadian listening to the news these days,” he writes, “might well conclude that the Republican extremists or some associated evangelical group has occupied Ottawa. And they’d be righter than Job, I believe.”

Because of the guarded privacy of the Prime Minister, Nikiforuk’s evidence is only circumstantial — without any direct links, his operative word is “believe”. But this belief is strong enough to lead him into territory traditional journalism has not explored, and to open an avenue of consideration that Canadians have been too polite, or perhaps too naive, to explore. In doing so, he has robbed our politics of an element of innocence and added a complicating new dimension to our environmental challenges.

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The Hunger Games and Other Dystopias

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The Hunger Games have arrived, a storm of popularity that is selling millions of books and filling movie theatres. Suzanne Collins’ dystopian story is about North America in ruin after an unspecified cataclysm leaves the rich in absolute power and the poor as their slaves. The story has a credibility because it extrapolates from the present, with the roots of its chaos, poverty, injustice, savagery and heroism firmly anchored in today’s economic, political, social and environmental conditions.

Granted, The Hunger Games is a story written for young adults by an adult. Literary critics correctly note that it ingeniously possesses all the formulaic attributes that appeal to youthful minds in the turmoil of full adolescence rebellion against the wisdom of adults. But its success is something more than marketing cleverness. Adults have also taken an interest in the story because it fits the multigenerational cynicism of our times and is wholly compatible with the deep uncertainty that haunts the promise of a safe, secure and prosperous future.

If The Hunger Games were an anomaly, if it stood alone as a one-of-a-kind dystopia, it could possibly be dismissed as a culturally meaningless entertainment. But it is part of a trend that has obsessively occupied 20th century literature and thought. Therefore, it is significant.

The 20th century did not begin well. The dysfunctional values of the 19th century stumbled into the disaster of World War I. Then came the financial recklessness that caused the Great Depression of 1929. World War II followed, then the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the protracted Cold War with its tense threat of global nuclear annihilation. While hundreds of loaded intercontinental ballistic missiles still sit poised for firing, we are welcomed into the 21st century with enough serious environmental stresses — population, pollution and pillaging — to shake the confidence of any civilization.

The psychological and philosophical impact of all these stresses can be tracked by culture. War poets, playwrights, writers, painters and musicians have tried to understand the wholesale inhumanity unleashed by the mass tribalism of war. The Dada movement of 1916 simply abandoned understanding altogether and resigned existence to meaninglessness. The Existentialists abandoned society for the sanctity and burden of the lonely individual. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) castigated a society numbing itself with drugs and escapism. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) warned about the machinery of state victimizing societies by centralized control. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) also cautioned about totalitarian rule. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) captured the dark and destructive instincts lurking in the heart of humanity. Neville Shute’s On the Beach (1957) dramatized the devastating consequences of a global nuclear war. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) was one of a flood of more current dystopian novels.

Now environmental fear has been added to the list — terrorism is tragic to individuals but it doesn’t threaten the structural foundations of society like the looming and troubling ecological upheavals that scientists predict. So bookstores, television channels, movie theatres and media commentary propagate warnings of climate change, ocean acidification, species loss, excessive population, food shortages, societal havoc — choose your preferred worry. No wonder that The Hunger Games has appeared as a prevalent theme in the literature of young adults.

Phyllis Simon, co-owner of Vancouver’s Kidsbooks, notes that “the top five or six [bestsellers] are dystopias,” all linked to climate catastrophe (Maclean’s, Apr. 16/12). The theme of Exodus is a world drowning in rising sea levels because of melting ice. The Way We Fall explores society on the verge of collapse because of an escaped killer virus — the same threat, incidentally, that Stephen Hawking identifies as his choice of immediate dangers facing our civilization. The theme of The Hunger Games is just one expression of a fear that is infecting all levels of society, from children and young adults to senior citizens.

Such worrisome cultural markers are supported by empirical evidence that our affluence may not be as satisfying as we are induced to believe. Mental health issues cost Canada $50 billion per year in lost production and efficiency. Psychiatric illness in Europe, the New Scientist reports (Sept. 10/11), is the continent’s largest health problem. “Almost 40 percent of the region’s population — around 165 million people — experience a mental disorder each year, such as depression or anxiety…”. Anxiety is the most prevalent at 14 percent, followed by insomnia at 7.0 percent and depression at 6.9 percent. About 10 percent of other psychiatric conditions complete the spectrum of disorders linked to the stress of our lifestyles — not exactly ringing endorsements for a materialistic, consumer society that is busily wrecking the many of the planet’s crucial ecologies.

When our recent and present behaviour is considered in its totality, it reveals an undercurrent of apprehension about the strategies that are guiding our collective lives. The material wealth we have used as the dominant measure of our success hasn’t dispelled a growing doubt about the wisdom, prudence or sustainability of continuing on our current course. The economic, social, political and environmental conditions in which we presently find ourselves are disquieting and stressful, not a source of happy contentment but of worry and tension. The Hunger Games is just the latest expression of this mood.

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Change Blindness: Not Seeing the Obvious

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The psychology underlying people’s behaviour is as fascinating as the things they do. “Change blindness” is a case in point. Psychologists describe it as the inability of people to notice anomalies, differences and the unusual in their surroundings. The obvious, it seems, is not always obvious. Two classical examples of change blindness, both conducted as experiments at American universities, serve as illustrations.

The first is known as the “invisible gorilla”. In the middle of a basketball game, a gorilla wanders onto the court — actually, it’s a man dressed in a gorilla suit but he looks, moves and acts like a gorilla. He lumbers around the court, mixes with the players and then exits through a side door. Half the spectators, when questioned afterward, failed to notice the gorilla. They were apparently so intent on the game that they didn’t register such a strange anomaly.

In a second experiment, a stranger on a university campus stopped individual people to ask for directions. In the middle of the resulting conversation, two men carrying a large door passed between the stranger and the person offering directions. During that brief moment, the stranger was replaced by a second stranger, someone of different height, build and clothing. Half the people in the experiment failed to notice that the stranger they had been talking to had been replaced by a second stranger.

Change blindness occurs, psychologists suggest, “because it is not possible to perceive and remember all of the details” that surround us (New Scientist, Feb. 19/11). It also occurs because we stitch together events to fit the reality we expect, keeping the familiar ones that are comfortable while leaving out the others. And, additionally, we sometimes fail to even register sensory evidence that is totally foreign to our sense of reality. Change blindness smooths over events and circumstances to make them compatible with our sense of normal.

This psychological dynamic becomes relevant when applied to environmental matters. And the implications are not reassuring. For example, we seem to have an inherent inclination to overlook or rationalize as normal the weather abnormalities that arise from global warming. If this strategy doesn’t serve to diminish the significance of an extreme weather event in our minds, we excuse it by extending the range of normality — a once-in-a-century event occurring once every ten years is deemed normal. This is a psychological mechanism we use to excuse the significance of exceptional floods, rains, snowfalls, winds, droughts and hot spells. We quickly adopt new extremes into a new normal so that the exception goes unnoticed. Shifting the criteria for normal is one way of activating change blindness.

Because most people now live in the comfort of urbanization, surrounded by human creations and separated from the natural world, the unusual absence of a species of bird, animal or butterfly goes unnoticed. But even when noticed, the absence quickly becomes a new normal, whether this be silence, darkness, missing fish or old-growth forests. Accounts of old timers describing huge salmon runs become a fiction that fails to illustrate the dramatic deterioration that has taken place in a mere lifetime. An environmentally diminished present quickly becomes the new and accepted normal.

Scientific studies that underscore the significance of ecological damage are commonly discredited by change blindness. The public’s impulse is to construe disturbing scientific evidence as opinion because its threatening facts don’t fit into the established system of normalcy. In essence, we have difficulty accepting information that conflicts with our paradigm of understanding — belief takes precedence over evidence. As Marshall McLuhan noted in one of his famous adages, “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it” is replaced with ”I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.”

Which raises a more sinister issue. This is the impulse to control evidence in order to control public opinion — deliberately using change blindness for calculated purposes. Scientists in the employ of Canada’s present federal government have repeatedly and increasingly voiced concerns about being censured. Even though these scientists may profess political neutrality, the reality is that all the evidence they collect has unavoidable policy implications — no information is politically neutral. A public without evidence of unprecedented environmental shifts doesn’t register a problem.

Thus, change blindness keeps us from anticipating the future — or, more accurately, the future we anticipate is based on limited experience. Curtail experience and our ability to adapt to climate change or a melting Arctic is handicapped. If oil spills are not part of our personal history, then the real ramifications of oil tankers emptying Northern Gateway’s Alberta crude into pristine West Coast waters is unlikely to register. If wild salmon have always been a part of British Columbia’s ecology, then the actual devastation that could be caused by destructive diseases and parasites emanating from open net-pen salmon farms is unexpected.

This is why history always surprises us. Change blindness keeps us from perceiving what is happening slowly — until the unwanted consequences cannot be avoided. We won’t notice the new stranger if we haven’t registered the first one; we can’t remove gorillas from a basketball court if the action of the game absorbs all our attention.

Unfortunately, the faster we move as a civilization — the more dense, complicated and speedy the surroundings that contain us — the less likely are we to notice what our civilization is doing, where it is going and what it is forfeiting. The energy, excitement and promise of modern civilization is, ironically, an ingenious distraction from its own failings, adroitly hiding from us what it is inflicting upon us. Indeed, this spell of obliviousness functions best in the ubiquitous, intense and unrelenting character of our age. Change blindness keeps us from noticing the changes that are carrying us into an uncertain future.

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The Alberta Tar Sands (National Geogrpahic photo)

Ecocide: Crimes Against Nature and Humanity

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On September 30, 2011, a mock trial by judge and jury at the University of Colchester in England found two oil executives of Canada’s tar sands guilty of ecocide. The jury deliberated a mere 50 minutes before reaching its unanimous verdict. During the trial, the evidence supported the contention that development of the tar sands was the biggest crime against nature on the planet, exceeding even BP’s 2010 huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The trial, conducted with real judges, lawyers and jury, respected all judicial procedures. It proceeded “as if ecocide were an international crime against peace, alongside genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression, and placed under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court” (Toronto Star, March 31/12). The only difference, of course, was that the corporate oil executives were fictitious.

The trial was the creative effort of an international lawyer and environmental activist, Polly Higgins, who has dedicated her life to eradicating ecocide, which is defined as, “The extensive destruction, damage to or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished” (Ibid.).

Polly Higgins’ story is illuminating and inspiring. Until 10 years ago, the Scottish-born lawyer was representing corporations charged with pollution offences. That’s when she had an epiphany, a realization that “the executives and directors of corporations” are legally bound “to maximize profits for their shareholders”, making “it illegal for them to prioritize the environment in their business decisions” (Ibid.).

Higgins’ epiphany changed her perspective and her life. Everything corporations do, she realized, is subservient to their legal obligation to shareholders. Corporations worship at the Altar of Profit in the Temple of Mammon under a set of rules that have evolved over the course of centuries. Their security as legal entities has been entrenched and supported by law to safeguard their historic role in the fabric of an economic system. Environmental protection has never been a consideration, except when beneficial to investors. It is still incidental, a recent and intrusive inconvenience that has only occurred as we have become aware of the terrible ecological consequences of unfettered economic activity.

But a paradigm shift is underway — although some people and governments are more aware of this transition than others. To those who don’t believe the system can be changed, Higgins has two wise and ready replies. The first pertains to slavery, an entire economic system of 200 years ago that was wholly based on the brutal exploitation of others. When the British parliamentarian, Wilbur Wilberforce, spoke for the abolition of slavery, he confronted widespread opposition. The status quo insisted that slavery was “necessary”, the “public” demanded it, and eliminating it would “lead to economic collapse”, Higgins said in an interview with the Toronto Star — precisely the present arguments used against eliminating fossil fuels and giving priority to environmental health. Slavery’s end became inevitable when Charles Grant, the man who owned the British East India Company and controlled over half the world’s slave trade, publicly declared that slavery was morally wrong.

Higgins’ second argument pertains to World War II. In January, 1942, American industry was too busy tearing up railway tracks and building cars, she said, to make the 50,000 planes required for the war effort. “The government came back the next day and said it is now illegal for you to make cars; you will make planes” (Ibid.). So they did. The war was won and industry became more powerful and profitable than ever.

If we can win huge economic benefits by eliminating slavery, Higgins argues, and if we can win a world war by revolutionizing production objectives, then we can rebuild an economic system on a sustainable foundation by respecting environmental imperatives. All that’s needed is the political will.

Environmental concerns are rapidly gaining profile. Indeed, they are quickly moving from issues of interest to issues of worry, emergency and crisis. Unanimous public opinion may still be elusive but the trend is clear. Environmental considerations are gaining precedence over corporate interests. The time is fast approaching when all economic considerations will be founded upon sound ecological principles, simply because to do otherwise will be deemed foolhardy and immoral. Governments that resist this trend will be seen as irresponsible, anachronistic and dangerous. In Higgins’ words, “Now we’re starting to have a narrative emerging in big business which says we have to stop destroying the Earth. We have to put people and planet first. This is about the moral imperative trumping the economic imperative” (Ibid.).

The ground is already destabilizing beneath the old economic model, and a new one is emerging. Its form is still taking shape. Like any profound idea, it is reaching a critical mass and a momentum that will not be stopped by resistance, denial or obstruction. Indeed, efforts to thwart its arrival simply draw attention to its validity and imperative. Those who do not yield to its oncoming weight and authority will soon be judged by history for crimes against nature and humanity. Except this time, the trial of ecocide will be real.

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Australia's Great Barrier Reef is just one of the world's coral reef's under attack by increasing ocean acifdification (National Geographic photo)

For Whom the Bell Tolls: Disappearing Coral Reefs, Ocean Species

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In one of the most beautiful essays ever written in the English language, the 17th century courtier, poet, adventurer, priest and lecturer, John Donne, reflected on the meaning of a tolling funeral bell. His Meditation 17, when rendered in a modern idiom, reads like this:

“No man is an island unto himself. Each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. When one man dies, it diminishes me for I am a part of all mankind. Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Ernest Hemingway used a few of these words for the title of one of his famous books. But “for whom the bell tolls” has another relevance today that is more poignant, one encapsulated by a visitor to Hawaii who casually noted that the islands’ coral reefs are dying.

Indeed, they are. And they are dying elsewhere, too: throughout the South Pacific, the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, the Mediterranean, the Red, the Indian — everywhere there are coral reefs. Perhaps the most spectacular casualty is Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Scientists give it another 10 years before its corals will no longer be able to adapt to warming oceans. Unfortunately, like most of the world’s corals, the Great Barrier’s corals use a heat-sensitive single species of symbiotic algae for energy. And the reefs are not mobile enough to migrate poleward 15 km per year to cooler water (New Scientist, Apr. 9/11). As these reefs die, so too will the myriad species of spectacular fish that make these ecologies so rich and beautiful.

Reefs, as marine biologists attest, are the oceans’ nurseries. With about a quarter of all marine species living there, they are key to maintaining healthy fish stocks and biodiversity. If these multi-hued corals turn into bleak and grey gravestones of death, then the impacts will be dramatic and global.

Ocean acidification, an even more serious consequence of the carbon dioxide emissions from the burning fossil fuels we burn, threatens the entire marine ecosystem. The 500 billion tonnes of CO2 that has dissolved into the oceans since the Industrial Revolution is now threatening the foundation of the marine food chain with rapidly dropping pH levels. If phytoplankton, krill and the micro-crustacea are no longer able to form their carbonate shells, then the entire system collapses, from the smallest of creatures to salmon and great whales.

But the funereal bell is tolling almost everywhere these days. About one third of all mammals, plants, fish and birds are expected to be extinct within a human lifetime, victims of a fatal combination of climate change, habitat loss, exotic species, disease, pollution, commercialization, greed or any of the litany of ills sponsored by human indiscretion and ignorance. Amphibians are suffering some of the worst declines. People now travel the globe to get a rare glimpse of the few remaining tigers, white rhinos, frogs and rare birds. Over-fishing has brought most large fish to the edge of extinction.

We still live mostly in isolation from the consequences of our actions. The industrial machinery that makes our consumer products, the fossil fuels that generate our electricity, the cars that drive us to work, the airplanes that skitter us around the planet add 70 million tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere each day. In the myopia of our daily lives, we don’t notice that about 30 percent of that CO2 is absorbed into the world’s oceans to form carbonic acid. Our oceans are now 29 percent more acidic than they were 250 years ago, and by 2050 they will be 70 percent more acidic. The consequences are already being felt. Along Washington’s coast, for example, the water is now so corrosive that oyster larvae cannot form shells — Pacific oysters there have been unable to reproduce in the wild since 2004 (Strait Talk, Spring 2012). This increasing acidity will eventually threaten squid, starfish, shrimp, sea urchins, mussels and abalone. Even fish at the larval stage may be unable to survive. Hardy jellyfish will be the last survivors in an excessively acidic ocean (Ibid).

Somehow, by a perverse and dexterous trick of self-deception, we have failed to duly personalize the wholesale environmental crisis that surrounds us. The outer limit of ourselves too often ends at our skin, as if an imaginative handicap prevents us from realizing that everything else on our planet is a part of us, too. All the things we know and experience derive from the diverse wealth of nature that contains us. It is the frame of reference for all our understanding and meaning. Time, rhythm, perspective, size, shape, colour, sound, taste, smell, distance, relationship — our very sentience — are all anchored in nature. Earth itself is only unique because of the living species that enliven it. As our treasured surroundings are threatened, degraded or lost, a justified response should be outcries of trespass, theft, anger and outrage, not indifference or vague expressions of concern. Environmental destruction is an assault against our person. At the very least, the measure of our present situation and the weighing of our future prospects should warrant silent mourning and inward weeping.

Donne’s Meditation 17 is an apt reminder that each death on our planet diminishes us because we are part of the whole. Each species that is endangered or goes extinct narrows the breadth, depth and richness of our experience as human beings. Each loss shrinks and withers the quality of our lives. How ironic and tragic that, just as we are discovering the incredible intricacy, complexity and intelligence of nature, we are destroying this astounding miracle with unprecedented efficiency, as if the same bell that is celebrating life is also tolling its death.

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Wealth and Ethics

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For a glimpse into the strategy, psychology and ethics of the corporate world, read the Dilbert cartoons. They can range from humorous and ironic to cynical and chilling as they reveal the deviousness of the human character unleashed by the influence of power, authority and money. A recent example from March 17, 2012 is particularly poignant.

Dilbert and Alice are sitting at a board meeting while their boss is outlining the corporate response to proposed government legislation. “Our company opposes passage of the new internet law because it would be bad for our business,” he pronounces. “But that sounds selfish,” he adds, “so we’ll issue a press release saying the new law would impinge freedom of speech.” Alice, with her usually caustic bluntness, summarizes, “So…we’re selfish liars.” To which the boss retorts, “You can’t get more free than that.”

A few moments considering this exchange will yield unsettling results that are, unfortunately, substantiated by recent research.

The University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, together with the University of California, Berkley, recently published studies in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that substantiate the inclination of the wealthy to lie, cheat and break the law. The studies conclude that, “It’s people at the top of the income scale for whom honesty, integrity and generosity seem to be a challenge” (Ibid.).

The authors of the paper are quick to provide the qualifier that these findings do not necessarily describe or predict the behaviour of single individuals. Like all such sociological studies, the conclusions are a generalization. But they do confirm the findings of other studies that wealthy people “have a reduced concern for others” (Ibid.) and that CEOs of large corporations can have higher psychopathic profiles than prison inmates “diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders” (Guardian Weekly, Nov. 18/11).

This is not a mere academic matter. For consumers, for governments, for voting citizens and for society as a whole, it is an advertisement to be cautious of promises, claims and guarantees made by the rich and the powerful. In our economic, industrialized and technological world, this usually means investors, corporations and their representatives. Generous offers commonly come with hidden attachments that, if not devious, can be misleading and hollow. Assurances of environmental safety, economic improvement and social benefits are often exaggerated or patently false. Risks are routinely minimized while merits are maximized.

The promotion of smoking by tobacco corporations is a classical example. It boggles the ethical mind how an executive with information that cigarettes cause cancer and death could diligently defend and promote such a product. A more current example is the funding by the fossil fuel industry of anti-science movements with the sole purpose of confusing the global warming issue so that corporations can delay regulations on their profitable extraction of gas, oil and coal — climatologists argue, with increasing desperation, that we must change energy sources and cut greenhouse gas emissions immediately to avoid catastrophic consequences.

Ethics hasn’t dissuaded the wealthy from investing wherever the returns are highest. The quest for profit seems disconnected from the negative social, cultural and environmental consequences. Those with money to invest seem undeterred by the inevitable oil spills that will result from the Northern Gateway pipeline and the subsequent stream of super-tankers enticed into demonstrably dangerous waterways. Salmon farming, against withering scientific evidence of extensive damage to marine ecologies, doggedly continues to operate their open net-pens. Industrial fishing of our oceans represents a pillaging that can only end in ecological and social disaster. Genetically engineered crops and the centralized control of seeds by transnational corporations are proving to be exercises in power and profit rather than being of benefit to humanity.

Indeed, the subject of wealth and ethics has become particularly relevant during the last few decades given the shift in economic power away from the lower and middle classes toward the affluent few. Whether or not this trend is a measure of their consolidation of influence and control is a moot point. But the pressures of lobbying, financing and investing seem to be eroding democratic processes while favouring the ascent and security of the wealthy.

All this has environmental implications. If most people in a society have concerns about the health and viability of the ecologies that sustain and enhance the quality of their lives, but the power structure is indifferent to those concerns, then the machinery of industry and investment will continue to exploit and abuse nature in the interests of profit.

The environmental result, so far, is a deepening planetary mess, mostly because of the initiatives of the wealthy and influential. Of course, society has also benefitted hugely from their ingenuity and assertiveness. The comfort, safety, convenience, affluence and health of our collective well-being owes much to the wealthy and their initiatives. But their ethical lapses have also led us into an intensifying ecological crisis that is becoming entrenched, structural, systemic and dangerous. Indeed, unless these negative effects are dramatically curtailed by a redirection of initiative, investment and governance, the consequence could be catastrophic for everything we know and value. Perhaps the time has come for the wealthy to realize that Earth and all its inhabitants can no longer afford their kind of freedom.

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Climate Change: Forcing and Feedback

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The chainsaws are still snarling weeks after the windstorm of March 12, 2012, busily cutting up the thousands of trees that blew down in forests, fields, roadsides and yards. Firewood seems to be the preferred fate for most of these once stately trees. Most of them will probably just decay on the ground where they have fallen, although some of the larger ones may become lumber. With this exception, they are all examples of feedback.

Two principal dynamics are at work in the global warming process that is changing the planet’s climate. The first is “forcing”. This is the term climatologists use to describe the initial heating effect of the gases we emit into the atmosphere. The best known of these is carbon dioxide — about 33.5 billion tonnes of it per year now come from our burning of fossil fuels. Methane, also a significant influence and about 20 times more potent than CO2, escapes from oil and natural gas wells, garbage dumps and untreated sewage. Other less known gases such as hydrofluorocarbons also contribute their influence. Another forcing process is deforestation, our deliberate removal of forests for fibre, lumber, agriculture, roads, urban sprawl, right-of-ways or any other purpose.

The dynamics of forcing are fairly clearly understood. And we can correct its damaging effect on climate simply by reducing or stopping the offending emissions. “Feedback”, however, is a more complicated problem. It is the consequence of forcing, a process that is potentially much more dangerous because it sets in motion conditions that are beyond our control once we have initiated the global warming.

As the temperature of the atmosphere rises from forcing, secondary event begin to accelerate the warming. Carbon dioxide, for example, dissolves in the ocean to form carbonic acid, and the increasing acidity impairs the growth of the phytoplankton that transform CO2 into oxygen. Higher levels of CO2, therefore, handicap the process that is absorbing and reducing the problem gas. A similar effect occurs with terrestrial plants. They, too, absorb CO2. But temperatures and levels of CO2 beyond a certain threshold begin to slow growth and impede carbon dioxide uptake. Feedback, therefore, accelerates the warming process.

Other worrisome feedbacks also occur. Melting ice and snow in polar regions expose water and land to the warming effect of sunlight. Without the reflective cover of white, the so-called albedo effect, more surface heating increases the melting which, in turn, melts more ice and snow, thus causing more heating. This is why polar regions are warming at two to four times the rate at lower latitudes.

More feedback trends are occurring in polar regions. As permafrost melts, huge amounts of methane are released. In classical feedback fashion, the escaped methane heats the atmosphere, causes more permafrost to melt and releases more methane to melt even more permafrost. Similarly, cold and pressure hold vast quantities of methyl hydrates in solid storage at the bottom of northern oceans. As these oceans warm, the hydrates effervesce, release methane and heat the atmosphere to add even more warmth to the ecosystems.

Lay critics of climate change theory often confuse forcing with feedback. In the complex subject of global climate change, one misunderstanding has been clarified for deniers by the astute reply of a climatologist who made the simple distinction between forcing and feedback. Cloud formation is known to cause warming because it reflects radiant heat back to earth — this is why clear nights are usually cooler than cloudy ones. Deniers argue that the warming process is simply caused by more clouds. Clouds, however, are the result of atmospheric humidity. And higher temperatures increase the activity of the hydrological cycle. As greenhouse gases force up temperatures, humidity increases, clouds become more prevalent, and they become feedback that accelerates the warming.

These are examples of “positive feedback” — results we don’t want. But “negative feedback” can also occur to slow the global warming process. Volcanos are the best natural example. When millions of tonnes of sulphates and particles explode into the atmosphere by a huge eruption, the gas and debris reflect sunlight back into space. The planet can cool for years or decades, sometimes by as much as 2°C — some eruptions may have shifted the climate balance enough to initiate ice ages.

We can cause the same cooling effect by adding specific pollutants to the atmosphere. Climatologists noted a sudden and inexplicable rise in global temperatures during the 1980s, a rise that couldn’t be explained by the increase in greenhouse gas emissions. The spike in temperature was caused by efforts to reduce air pollution from the world’s factories and coal-burning thermal plants. The reduction in atmospheric sulphates and soot cleaned the air and accelerated planetary heating. The same process occurred during the days immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US. With all passenger planes grounded over North America, the skies cleared of contrails and particulates, causing a surge in regional temperatures.

But most feedback is positive, amplifying the effect of forcing. Windstorms topple trees. Downed trees can no longer sequester carbon from the atmosphere and replace it with oxygen. Decaying wood releases carbon dioxide and methane that become net contributors to the problem of global warming. So the snarl of chainsaws is more than just the simple aftermath of a windstorm.

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Blackberry maker RIM - one of the latest victims of

Founder’s Syndrome: Corporations and Civilization

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Civilizations are like corporations. At some point in their evolutionary rise as innovative and unique organizations, they fail to adapt to changing circumstances and drift into fatal vulnerability. History, of course, is crowded with the wreckage of civilizations that declined into oblivion after failing to rejuvenate themselves. Corporations follow the same route, as outlined in the ideas of Professor Noam Wasserman of the Harvard Business School and Christine Comaford, an expert on corporate structural dynamics (Globe & Mail, Jan. 28/12).

As Wasserman notes in his book, The Founder’s Dilemma, corporations that are rapidly successful because they have discovered new and unorthodox strategies or products often find that their “strengths early on tend to become pitfalls, [their] Achilles heel.” Comaford reiterates this observation with terms such as “Founder’s Syndrome”, “Founderitis”, and “severe reality distortion field”. All refer to a corporation’s inability to adapt to changing competitive circumstances because its old successful vision no longer fits evolving realities.

The corporate world is littered with vivid examples of Founder’s Syndrome. Despite selling 10 million cars by 1924, the Ford Motor Company almost collapsed in bankruptcy when its founder, Henry Ford, failed to embrace the fresh engineering that was remaking the auto. And when Walt Disney died, the stock value of Disney rose dramatically, apparently because his founding influence was blocking innovation. The latest victim of this dynamic is the maker of the Blackberry, Research in Motion, a corporation whose original ideas are being outdated by other electronic designs.

So, how is Founder’s Syndrome avoided? For Comaford, “the key is to establish a vibrant set of outsiders who ask tough questions.” For Wasserman, “you need people internally who push back and consider not just the best-case or expected scenarios, but worst-case situations, where you might have to adjust the vision radically.” The corporate trick for survival is constant evaluation and criticism — even of the founding principles that everyone holds sacred to the corporation’s identity.

Now transpose this corporate dynamic to our present civilization. Our modern
era is essentially founded on the principles of the Industrial Revolution. About 250 years ago, Europe underwent a dramatic change as human and animal energies were replaced by fossil fuels — first coal and then petroleum. Human effort was amplified enormously. (To test this notion, simply try pushing your car instead of moving it with the engine.) And the sophistication of the entire process was heightened by the marriage of industry with science, a partnership we call technology.

The consequences were incredible: massive production and distribution of consumer goods, huge utilization of natural resources, unimagined growth in food production, exponential generation of wealth, global travel and communication. But, like a corporation that has found an especially successful niche in the business world and risen with meteoric speed, our civilization is now showing cracks of vulnerability — the attributes of its success have now become its weaknesses.

Marvellous as this technological civilization is, serious indications are now
evident that the environmental impacts of this success cannot be absorbed by our planet’s ecosystems. The sustainability of unrestrained growth, powered by ever-rising quantities of fossil fuels, has become a legitimate concern. If this unfolding crisis of civilization were a corporate problem, Comaford would recommend, “a vibrant set of outsiders who ask tough questions.” Or for Wasserman, “you need people internally who push back and consider not just the best-case or expected scenarios, but worst- case situations, where you might have to adjust the vision radically.”

These “outsiders”, of course, are the environmentalists, climatologists, biologists, other scientists and critics who are asking “tough questions” and pushing for a radical change of “vision”. To those who are supporting and perpetuating the founding principles of the Industrial Revolution, together with its existing economic system, these “tough questions” are interpreted as subversive irritations that are undermining the success of a seemingly good idea. How can those who clearly benefit from such success, doubt the generous and lavish rewards that come from it?

The journey from a peak to a valley down a cliff  can be very sudden and very brief. Ask RIM. Ask Kodak. Or ask Yahoo that almost instantly lost over $20 billion in value because it refused to innovate in a changing communication world.

We live on a planet of rapidly deteriorating ecosystems. The disturbing environmental destabilization being unleashed by our civilization is pervasive, structural and profoundly serious. More than destabilizing, the results could escalate to fatal if they are not addressed immediately and dramatically. The critics who are trying to alert the system to these dangers are not enemies but merely perceptive “insiders”, fellow members of the corporate body who care profoundly about the well-being of humanity and the natural world that contains, sustains and enlivens everything we hold rich, dear and sacred.

As a civilization, indications are that we are facing Founder’s Syndrome, an outdated vision of success so fixated on past accomplishments that it fails to see their shortcomings. The warning signs are flashing for those astute enough to notice. If these alarms are disconcerting, so be it. Failed civilizations are far more tragic than failed corporations.

 

 

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