Glaciergate

Found a great article today by journalist Gwynne Dyer, Climategate and Disbelief. Y’all know how much I love recommending things for you to read, but this is a good one, and quite short.

The weight of the evidence rests overwhelmingly on the side of those who argue that climate change is real and dangerous. Ninety-seven or ninety-eight percent of scientists active in the relevant fields are convinced of it; all but a couple of the world’s two hundred governments have been persuaded of it; public opinion accepts it almost everywhere except in parts of the “Anglosphere.” The United States, and to a lesser extent Australia, Britain and Canada, are the last bastions of denial.

From being the least ideological countries fifty years ago, when much of the rest of the planet was drunk on Marxist theories, these countries have become the most ideological today. Disbelief in climate change has been turned into an ideological badge worn by the right, and evidence is no longer relevant.

This wouldn’t matter much if the countries in question were Bolivia, Belgium and Burma, but one of them is really important.

Freaks of nature

So I found some apples today, when due to some long and stupid circumstances I ended up going through the fridge of another tenant in my building who’d skipped out on his lease about a month ago. Needless to say, said fridge had gotten pretty nasty, but there was a bag of apples in which about half of them were still good enough to make pie with. So I started cutting up the apples, and this was the weird part. No seeds! I’ve never seen apples without seeds in them before. I looked at the package. Mixed apples from Washington. No mention of them being seedless (and you’d think that’s the kind of thing they’d advertise as a selling point, right?). Really odd. Three different varieties of apples in the bag and only one apple that had any seeds in it.

Intellectually I know that seedless apples aren’t really any odder than seedless bananas, which have a long and honourable (?) history. So there’s no reason to assume these are weird genetically-modified part-llama deliberately-sterilized freak apples. But there’s nothing in Canadian food labelling requirements that requires anyone to tell me if they are. Which is unsettling.

And, yeah, I know I said a few weeks ago that I was going to pay more attention to where my food comes from; but I’m not being inconsistent here, cause I feel like avoiding the throwing away of perfectly good food trumps most other considerations. I have no idea what the provenance of these apples is (other than “Paul’s fridge”, obviously) but the pie smells good so far, so, hey. If I get some sort of alien bursting out of my chest tomorrow, y’all will know what to blame.

(Oh, and today’s Dinosaur Comics is, as usual, topical and awesome.)

F(l)ail: How the Establishment Protects Itself While the Earth Declines

Today’s special guest post comes from Professor Peter G. Brown of the McGill University School of Environment, co-author of
Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy and author of two previous books.

* * *

HOW THE ESTABLISHMENT PROTECTS ITSELF, OR THINKS IT DOES WHILE THE EARTH DECLINES.

1. DROWNING IN OUR WORRIES. One of the common problems of our news-saturated culture is “idea fatigue”. People are so overloaded by the constant barrage of new things to worry about, that they become narcotized and unable to be roused to action. We get tired of hearing about the environment, about Afghanistan, about the federal government’s latest shenanigans, about the spread of wildfire zones north and south, about countless other issues – precisely because they *are* countless and no-one’s mind can deal with them all at once.

2. APPOINT A COMMISSION. This is another of the ways in which entrenched institutions protect themselves: by encouraging a sense of powerlessness in people who might otherwise feel called upon to change them. The internal reform efforts which are then put forward by these institutions are welcomed despite their toothlessness – because they allow people to put that issue at the bottom of the worry pile, comforted that at least something is being done.

3. NARROW THE MANDATE. The current Angelides “Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission” is very much a case in point. Even leaving aside its actual inquiry process, which remains to be seen, the very questions it is asking fail to do more than scratch the surface of the problem. But, because it’s being trumpeted as a major reform, a lot of people will sit back and think “Well, at least that’s taken care of” and be distracted by the next new thing to worry about.

4. PRESERVE THE FRAMEWORK THAT LEGITIMIZES YOU. The “Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission” principally looks at how to keep capital markets stable, but pays no attention at all to the fact that these very markets are destabilizing the earth’s life support systems on which the well-being of life on Earth depends. With all the talk about the “getting the economy moving again” and the “recovery” they are able to distract everyone from the biggest disaster humankind has ever experienced. Summers and Secretary Geitner have pulled the wool over our eyes.

Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do…

One of the arguments often made by people who don’t understand science very well is that the evidence for climate change is “circumstantial”. Yes, the increase in global temperatures correlates with the increase in human-produced carbon emissions – but that could all be a coincidence! Yes!

My dad told me a story once, about one time when he decided to go over to the courthouse and listen in on the cases being tried that day. (Incidentally, if you’ve never done this, I highly recommend it. Most trials are open to the public, and it can be surprisingly edutaining to watch the justice system in operation.) (Yes, I did just use a very silly word. If we don’t use made-up words every once in a while, the prescriptivists will have won. Whatevs.)

So he went into a courtroom where a trial had just begun, and the prosecutor was in the process of giving instructions to the jury. “Now,” he said, “the defense attorney is going to tell you that the evidence against the suspect here is mostly circumstantial. And he’s going to say it in such a way as to try to make you believe that circumstantial evidence is flimsy evidence, hardly worth considering.”

Which is, indeed, how a lot of people interpret the word.

“I’d like to give you an example of circumstantial evidence,” the prosecutor continued. “Suppose you were to wake up in the morning to see snow on the ground, and in the snow, there’s a set of footprints going from one side of your lawn to the other. You might think this meant that someone had walked across your lawn during the night – but the evidence is only circumstantial! You didn’t actually see anyone there. For all you know, the footprints could be the result of extremely localized earthquakes, or a kangaroo wearing boots, or someone leaning out of a hovering helicopter and poking holes in the snow. But if you were to assume, based on this purely circumstantial evidence, that someone had walked across your lawn – then you would almost certainly be right.”

Yes, there is a possibility, albeit a wildly unlikely one, that global warming is being caused by strange unobserved solar activity of which we have no evidence, or cosmic strings, or it’s sent by God with no scientific cause whatsoever, or it’s all a mass hallucination actually. You could call the scientific evidence circumstantial, and, in the strict definition of the word, you would be right.

You could also call it convincing, and you’d be right about that too.

The word of the day: praxis

I read an article today on “The Religion of Sustainability”, in which the author calls for less theory and more practical work.

Oh for the day when we all cared about the environment and the human race and that was our single mission. When we didn’t spend most of our time in meetings and forums discussing the issues, rather we were out in the field working on the problem. How many trees have died to produce position papers and minutes from meetings only to be filed away?

I don’t think I was around during this purported Golden Age, but I’m sure it was very nice. (Although, parenthetically, this sounds a lot like the complaints I’ve heard from certain groups of feminists decrying the fragmentation of the feminist movement and wanting a return to the good old days when feminists were much more united in purpose, ignoring the fact that that comparative unity [if it existed] was largely due to the systematic exclusion of Black women, trans women, lower-income women, etc. As you gain a diversity of viewpoints, of course you’re going to have different ideas of what should take precedence, and people are going to argue about them. That’s what people do. Likewise the environmental movement, which has grown enormously and brought in people who weren’t talking each other about this stuff until recently [insert "Twitter will save us all" rant as appropriate].)

So I’m not sure I agree with this article, but it got me thinking about the divide between theory and practice.

Here’s the thing. We’re basically theorists here at the Moral Economy Project. Our core group is largely academics; our mission is largely the promulgation of ideas. I’ll admit, this took some getting used to for me. The main thing I’ve had trouble with is that it’s a lot harder to quantify progress, with theory. When you’re doing concrete physical work, there are benchmarks. Planting ten thousand trees. Reducing energy usage by thirty percent. Preventing fifty tons of electronics going into the landfill. That sort of thing.

How do you do that with ideas? Sure, there are things you can count, if you feel so inclined. Number of books sold, number of people who sign up for your mailing list, that sort of thing. But it’s really, really hard to know exactly what effect you’re having on the minds of the people who hear you. Except when they contact you directly, of course, and only a fraction of readers, listeners, etc. will ever do that.

Which I think is part of what leads to perspectives like in the article above: the idea that because physical work is more quantifiable, it’s accomplishing more, and that theorizing is therefore a waste of time, resources, etc. And I think we’ve all known people who seemed to be “all talk” and had the urge to tell them that if they were really serious they’d push off and go plant trees someplace far, far away.

But one of the main things we’re striving for, in our re-envisioning of the world, is balance – a balance between rights and responsibilities, between pessimism and hope – between our obligations to others, to the world, to God, and to ourselves (insofar as those four things can ever be separated in any meaningful way). That sense of balance has to apply to the blend of theory and practice that makes up our movement as well.

I’m not strong on theory – that’s why all of this has undoubtedly been said before, and better. But I can’t help but appreciate its value. In their own way, the seeds of ideological reform grow into beautiful trees too.

New Year News

So here are some interesting things from around the internet on this the first EcoMonday of the new year:

Other Worlds Are Possible: the sixth report from the New Economics Foundation. If you’re looking for something to read that isn’t wholly pessimistic, this is pretty interesting stuff. Note that it’s a PDF download and pretty big.

Law requiring solar energy heaters in new homes – well, I guess if any state was going to do this, Hawaii’s the one to start it.

Chemical regulations that might actually work: the Environmental Defense Fund’s blog discusses the EPA’s new “Chemical Action Plans”.

Peace Teaching: stories from North Kivu, the Congo – by Zawadi Nikuze.

The Obligatory Bicycle-Related Link.

Finally, things to write to your MP about! Here are some private members’ bills you may be interested in.

Establishing a National Ecosystems Council

Prohibiting the Export of Water

Establishing an Oil and Gas Ombudsman

And then there’s The Tartan Day Act – yeah, I don’t know either.

Circles of concern, circles of influence

I just read an article in the current issue of The Canadian Friend that resonated very strongly with me. In “Making Peace With Our Place on the Planet”, Tony McQuail of Kitchener Monthly Meeting writes:

Something that has been helpful to me is distinguishing between my circle of concern and my circle of influence. If I spend a vast amount of time and energy worrying about the things out in my circle of concern, I can get pretty wound up, frustrated, and lose my inner peace. When I concentrate on my circle of influence I feel far more positive, and bring a hopeful and constructive energy to bear on situations where I actually have some impact. It helps me work on what I can do, rather than worry about what I can’t.

This is a very helpful way of thinking, to me. I spend a lot of time in this job listening to bad news, much of it coming from distant places where I can’t have much if any direct impact, or occurring on a scale too vast to be affected by individual will. This is generally the point where despair sets in.

It’s sometimes hard, too, to figure out what exactly my “circle of influence” is. I know that I could be doing more than I am. I could put in more volunteer hours than I do. I could donate more money to causes I care about. I could, when my current job ends, go and join the Peace Corps and spend the next few years building schools in Africa or whatever. The point is, there’s this large nebulous zone just outside the things I can currently have a positive impact on, full of things I could have a positive impact on if I had more strength, more willpower, more energy, less time commitments, less emotional entanglements, less ties to the place where I live – if I were, in short, a different person altogether. For me, that leads to more guilt than it probably ought to, and that feeds the despair too.

Maybe it’s helpful to remind myself what exactly my circle of influence is.

My garden is the first thing that comes to mind. A large part of Tony McQuail’s article is about his farm, and the ways in which food production is linked to oil and thence to war and violence. I don’t have the skill to grow some things (celery, so far, has been a dismal failure) or the environment to grow other things (chickens, say, or pineapples – damn you, delicious pineapples, and your inability to thrive in the St. Lawrence Lowlands!), but my boyfriend and I can generally get our quota of vegetables entirely from the garden during the peak tomato-producing months.

Another group within my circle of influence is my immediate circle of friends and acquaintances, with whom I walk a fine line between wanting to mention when they’re doing something environmentally terrible (“You know you shouldn’t be seting Styrofoam on fire, right?”) and wanting to actually keep said friends. Generally I find perky enthusiasm a lot more helpful than nagging. (“Guess what I saw today! Recycled paper coffee filters! Those used to be impossible to find! Isn’t it great how many more recycled products you can get these days? I feel so much less guilty going shopping when I can get recycled stuff, don’t you?”)

Then there’s the other people in my environment, who I don’t necessarily know but who can see me bicycling, or using a refillable mug, or darning my socks on the bus, or whatever, and might think it’s a good idea. I don’t know how much that actually happens, but it’s certainly happened to me a few times. Besides, it’s a critical mass thing – how many people do you see now using reusable grocery bags? Practically everyone. There’s social pressure about it now. Several times in the past month I’ve seen people apologize (to the cashier, or to the other customers at large) for taking plastic bags. This is a positive step. (The next step is for the supermarkets to just stop offering plastic bags altogether. They’re already doing it in Halifax. Come on, Montreal, do you always want to be trailing behind Halifax??)

There’s my government, of course. Sometimes, like everyone else, I feel I have next to no impact on the decisions of the government that theoretically represents me. But I write letters to them anyway. And hey, we finally got Peter McQueen elected; that has to do some good.

There are my consumer decisions – what to buy, what to wear, where to shop. I’ve finally got my clothes-buying algorithm mostly figured out. (The Salvation Army figures prominently.)

Finally (and by “finally” I mean “I’m probably forgetting something”), there’s this blog, and its literally tens of readers (“Dozens! Baker’s dozens! They come in thirteens.”). Writing for a living has always been my goal, though admittedly I usually visualise that as involving fiction. But I’ve always thought writing was one of our most powerful tools for shaping the world. The amount of positive response that Right Relationship has received over the past year has been truly staggering, and I want to make sure to keep that firmly in mind as I continue in my own writing career in the months and years ahead. I know I now have the skill to write well enough to get people interested in what I have to say; now let’s see if I can make sure I’m saying something worth reading.

Eat, drink and be merry

I met up with a friend of mine over the Christmas holidays, whose name I’m not going to mention for reasons that will become obvious. When we got together, I was surprised to see that she was carrying a bottle of water in her backpack. She’s usually pretty good about environmental stuff, so I asked her, “What’s with the bottled water?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well, you know, I thought you were avoiding it because of how resource-intensive it is?” I said.

She shrugged. “Oh, that’s okay,” she said. “This water’s organic.”

I’m not telling this story to make fun of her, although it was pretty funny. The point is that we all get tripped up sometimes by the myriad of environmental buzzwords now circulating through our collective cultural memespace. Especially with the kind of greenwashing that’s become increasingly common these days.

“Organic” is one of those words that can have a pretty wide range of actual definitions. Apparently there are more than forty organizations in Canada alone that can certify foods as organic, and they use several different standards. That’s not including foods that use labels like “authentic” or “natural”, which don’t have legally specified definitions. Sometimes that means an advertiser is trying to put one over on people; sometimes it means a small producer doesn’t have the money or the ability to go through the organic certification process, even though their food would meet the qualifications if they did. Without knowing about the specific supplier, it’s hard to know which.

And of course, like anything else, this issue doesn’t exist in isolation. There’s a market in my neighbourhood that sells organic apples imported from Japan. Quebec apples, probably sprayed with pesticides, are still available at this time of year at the Provigo. Buy local or buy organic? Or, as is far more likely at the moment, run out of time, buy whatever I can get at the store that’s directly on my way to work, and then feel guilty about it?

There are other options; I’ve been volunteering for the past few months at Zero Food Waste (which, incidentally, would love to have more volunteers, if you’re in Montreal!). It’s kind of like dumpster diving, except officially approved-of by the stores – they put aside food that they’re going to throw out, and we pick it up and sort it out for use by the food bank, community kitchen, and other local organizations.

I try to avoid making New Year’s resolutions, except in a really general way, but I am going to make more of an effort to pay attention to what I eat this year. Hanging out with the above group of cool people should help. We’ll see how it goes.

(As an ironic epilogue, I found out later, via Wikipedia, that there actually was a complaint filed with the USDA in 2004 against a company that was indeed declaring tap water to be “certified organic” in order to claim that their various personal care products contained organic ingredients. Weird.)

Read all about it

Interviews! Today we’ve got a great interview with Peter Brown from The Lionel Show, which, as usual, WordPress will not let me embed directly. But fear not; just click here and it ought to either play or download, depending on how paranoid your media player settings are.

Also there’s a print interview at Investor’s Business Daily with quotes from Geoffrey Garver. Well worth reading, although quite short.

Was going to post another interview, but the interviewer was so clueless that it’s not even worth giving them the link traffic. Yes, it’s important to engage with people of all views, no matter how bizarre, but at some point it just becomes inefficient to keep pouring our energy and effort down that big ol’ hole. The scientific evidence on climate change is in. There’s as much consensus as there’s ever going to be, because the people who are still unconvinced are the people who aren’t likely to be persuaded by scientific evidence anyway. Can we just declare ourselves to have won the debate (and if there’s ever been a better definition of a Pyrrhic victory, I can’t think of it, because I’m pretty sure we’d all be delighted for the other folks to have been right, yes?) and then proceed to ignore them?

And yeah, I realize we can’t, because some of them run countries. Which is one of a number of things that keep me up at night. (Car alarms are another.)

I guess we’ll see the final shape of world opinion soon, as Copenhagen grinds onward. Keep watching the skies!

Plan C is panic…also Plans D through Z

On this week’s episode of CBC’s The Sunday Edition, among the guests was one David Keith, an advocate of geoengineering. Geoengineering, for those that don’t know, is basically the same as terraforming, except we’d do it here on Earth rather than on some alien planet. It involves making large-scale alterations to the way the planet works. So pretty much what we’ve been doing ever since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, then, except this time we’d be doing it on purpose. The CBC host called it “Plan B” in case our glorious leaders fail to come to a sufficiently drastic agreement in Copenhagen.

The specific technology that would be brought into play in this instance involves the spraying of sulphur compounds in the upper atmosphere to reflect a greater proportion of the sun’s radiation and thus cool the Earth. This is similar to what happens after a major volcanic eruption. In theory, it should work. It might even work in practice.

Keith is careful to say that this wouldn’t be an easy fix, and wouldn’t substitute for cutting carbon emissions; we have to cut emissions, and drastically. At best, this plan would provide us with some breathing space to allow us to minimize the damage while emissions are dropping. But I wonder how many people, upon hearing about this plan, are actually going to take that away as the message. I think it’s more likely that a lot of them will be all “oh look, technology’s going to save us, just like we thought it would, la la la we can do whatever we want.”

I’m not saying that technology isn’t going to be extremely helpful for both mitigation and adaption in the years ahead. Of course it will. Our society is too large and too complex for any kind of back-to-the-land ideology to work on a global scale. But it’s worth going back to the I=PATE formula here, and remembering that technology is only one part of the equation. Without a shift in values away from the commodification of life, all the gadgets in the world will be no better than a brief distraction from the abyss.

Oh, and to the guy who keeps writing me angry letters about “censorship”: I will let your comments through once you’ve demonstrated that you can get through three consecutive sentences without using a racial slur of some kind. Meanwhile you can peddle your garbage on your own blog, thanks.