Still, when showing off his new glasses, he was heard to say he looks just like Grandpa Gordie.
["I look like Papa!": photo by MOM]
I’m a sensitive man.
Stuff like that really stings.
***
Please click here for more It Strikes Me Funny
.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
It Strikes Me Funny: I was hurt deeply, of course
Grandson Ollie, age four, is tall and reedy. I’m short and not reedy. He’s clean shaven. I sport a beard. There are many other differences.
Still, when showing off his new glasses, he was heard to say he looks just like Grandpa Gordie.
["I look like Papa!": photo by MOM]
I’m a sensitive man.
Stuff like that really stings.
***
Please click here for more It Strikes Me Funny
.
Still, when showing off his new glasses, he was heard to say he looks just like Grandpa Gordie.
["I look like Papa!": photo by MOM]
I’m a sensitive man.
Stuff like that really stings.
***
Please click here for more It Strikes Me Funny
.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Motorcycle Miles: Port Bruce... again. And again.
I know. If I take my hands off the handlebars of my motorcycle it will take me to Port Bruce almost every time.
My 1994 Virago knows well the route to ‘the land that time forgot.’ I’ve stopped so many times at the Corner View Cafe (formerly known as The Beach Hut, Shutters on the Beach, Shutters) the owner has reserved a parking spot for me and tosses in free coffee and refill on occasion.
(Not every time. I need to return for another 20 years before ‘free coffee’ becomes the norm. I’m up for that).
["Why wouldn't my bike know the way?": photos by GH]
Sunday was a busy day in the Port. Many fishermen lined the pier. Over flow fishermen lined the stony beach. Sailors had a perfect day.
***
Please click here for more Motorcycle Miles.
.
My 1994 Virago knows well the route to ‘the land that time forgot.’ I’ve stopped so many times at the Corner View Cafe (formerly known as The Beach Hut, Shutters on the Beach, Shutters) the owner has reserved a parking spot for me and tosses in free coffee and refill on occasion.
(Not every time. I need to return for another 20 years before ‘free coffee’ becomes the norm. I’m up for that).
["Why wouldn't my bike know the way?": photos by GH]
Sunday was a busy day in the Port. Many fishermen lined the pier. Over flow fishermen lined the stony beach. Sailors had a perfect day.
***
Please click here for more Motorcycle Miles.
.
Birdhouse Hunting: Purple Martins in the air... and hats
[“There’s no place like hat.” Gord Harrison, June 5, 2011]
Port Bruce is a tiny hamlet located on the north shore of Lake Erie, five or six miles south of Aylmer, and is - in my humble opinion - the birdhouse capital of southern Ontario.
When entering the port I often turn right on Rush Creek Rd., bike slowly east for about one mile, park at the side of the road adjacent to Wayne Cahill’s spacious property (he has an easy-to-spot red mailbox), take off my motorcycle helmet and reach for my camera.
[* Note - swooping marting in upper right of photo below.]
Then I duck. Purple Martins fill the air and often swoop toward me to see what’s left of my hair. Or, maybe they’re curious about my motorcycle helmet.
Mr. Cahill has built several metal trees filled with a dozen-plus modified hard hats and martins fill many of the hats. That’s right - they’re at home in a hard hat.
["Plastic helmets - solid homes.": photos GH]
They’re also at home in gourds and salad bowls. But, according to the numbers, there’s no place like hat.
***
Please click here for more Birdhouse Hunting.
.
Port Bruce is a tiny hamlet located on the north shore of Lake Erie, five or six miles south of Aylmer, and is - in my humble opinion - the birdhouse capital of southern Ontario.
When entering the port I often turn right on Rush Creek Rd., bike slowly east for about one mile, park at the side of the road adjacent to Wayne Cahill’s spacious property (he has an easy-to-spot red mailbox), take off my motorcycle helmet and reach for my camera.
[* Note - swooping marting in upper right of photo below.]
Then I duck. Purple Martins fill the air and often swoop toward me to see what’s left of my hair. Or, maybe they’re curious about my motorcycle helmet.
Mr. Cahill has built several metal trees filled with a dozen-plus modified hard hats and martins fill many of the hats. That’s right - they’re at home in a hard hat.
["Plastic helmets - solid homes.": photos GH]
They’re also at home in gourds and salad bowls. But, according to the numbers, there’s no place like hat.
***
Please click here for more Birdhouse Hunting.
.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Series of Some Significance: Catch-44, the progress trap, and the greedy monkey
[The following five posts were originally published in December, 2010 on separate days. They appear together below for your convenience.]
Catch-44, the progress trap, and the greedy monkey PT 1
I’ve recently discovered that the term Catch-44 is pretty popular.
By ‘recently’ I mean within the last few hours and after coming inside from my shop.
I used the term twice today thinking it was a product of my own imagination, but a Google search reveals Catch .44 is an indie crime drama filmed in Shreveport, LA., starring Bruce Willis and Forest Whitaker, among others.
Stink. I wanted the term all to myself, just like the litre of ice-cream loaded with Smarties I found in the downstairs freezer a few days ago. (Somehow my wife knew about it!)
I like the term Catch-44 because it conjures up memories of Catch-22 (a gripping book and film with later connections to the movie and TV show M*A*S*H) and... it denotes something twice as bad as a Catch-22.
Feelings that I would describe as Catch-44-ish come up almost every day. Sometimes early in the morning before I’m even out of bed.
(The feelings are unrelated to having to get out of bed. I like getting out of bed - eventually. Coffee awaits. Sorry, I digress).
I used the term first while describing our predicament with rising costs - and not just related to hydro, which much on the minds of many Ontarians.
I said:
“Because no government is effectively encouraging the move toward smaller cars, homes and lifestyles, our roads will continue to support more cars per capita (and the related expense), our homes will continue to grow and demand more energy and production of household goods, and the associated costs of our lifestyle will increase.
It’s a Catch-44, which is twice as shocking and frustrating as a Catch-22 and any hydro bill.
I elaborated a bit on my use of the term in a later post when I said, “In other words, we’re in a Catch-44, a bad trap, twice as bad as a Catch-22.
We’re building and paving roads today that we’ll never repair or replace in the future as far as present home owners are concerned, because they’ll be dead.”
Now, where did I get the idea that we’re in a bad trap?
Stay tuned.
.
Catch-44, the progress trap, and the greedy monkey PT 2
The popular term Catch-44 not only conjures up memories of Catch-22 (a gripping book and film with a M*A*S*H connection) but infers there are troubles that are twice as big as size 22 troubles.
In an earlier post I mentioned that I experience Catch-44-ish feelings almost every day, e.g., when I read about rising hydro costs and our growing demand for more juice.
I elaborated a bit on my use of the term in a later post re rising infrastructure costs, i.e., related to tarmac roads, and our inability to pay our way when I said, “In other words, we’re in a Catch-44, a bad trap, twice as bad as a Catch-22.”
In my mind, I relate Catch-44 back to another term - a progress trap - and illustrative examples of the same found in the book A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright (see Read This, right margin).
In it he writes:
“Since the early 1900s, the world’s population has multiplied by four and its economy - a rough measure of the human load on nature - by more than forty. We have reached a stage where we must bring the experiment under rational control, and guard against present and potential dangers,” (pg. 31) i.e., lest we fall into a progress trap.
“We have already caused so many extinctions that our dominion over the earth will appear in the fossil record like the impact of an asteroid... a bad smell of extinction follows Homo sapiens around the world.”
["Asteroids - like the blunt fist of mankind"; photo link here]
In Chapter 2 he reveals “what we can deduce from the first progress trap - the perfection of hunting, which ended the Stone Age - and how our escape from that trap by the invention of farming led to our greatest experiment: worldwide civilization. We then have to ask ourselves this urgent question: Could civilization itself be another and much greater trap?”
What a great question.
The book is a real page turner.
I highly recommend it, but don’t expect a happy ending a la Walt Disney, e.g., Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
The tone of the book is reflected in Wright’s thoughts about some of the roots of modern civilization.
“From ancient times until today, civilized people have believed they behave better, and are better, than so-called savages. But he moral values attached to civilization are specious: too often used to justify attacking and dominating other, less powerful, societies. In their imperial heyday, the French had their “civilizing mission” and the British their “white man’s burden” - the bearing of which was eased by automatic weapons. As Hilaire Belloc wrote in 1898: “Whatever happens, we have got / The Maxim gun, and they have not.” Nowadays, Washington claims to lead and safeguard “the civilized world,” a tradition in American rhetoric that began with the uprooting and exterminating of that country’s first inhabitants.” (pg. 33)
So, about that first progress trap mentioned earlier...
.
Catch-44, the progress trap, and the greedy monkey PT 3
I use the term Catch-44 to mean a bad trap, twice as bad as a Catch-22.
A ‘progress trap’ is a term I encountered in the book entitled A Short History of Progress.
In Chapter 2 the author, Ronald Wright, reveals “what we can deduce from the first progress trap - the perfection of hunting, which ended the Stone Age...”
Now, about that first progress trap he writes the following:
“Modern hunter-gatherers - Amazonians, Australian Aboriginals, Inuit, Kalahari bushmen - are wise stewards of their ecologies, limiting their own numbers, treading lightly on the land.”
I know, you’re already ahead of me. You’ve deduced that early man did not tread lightly, were not good stewards. You may also have jumped farther ahead to modern day, to our wastefulness, and to the corner we have painted ourselves into quite nicely.
Hey, not so fast.
["Are we nothing more than a greedy monkey?": photo by GH]
Wright continues:
“It is often assumed that ancient hunters would have been equally wise. But archaeological evidence does not support this view. Palaeolithic hunting was the mainstream livelihood, done in the richest environments on a seemingly boundless earth.”
Stop it. Already you’re thinking about how unwisely modern corporations have decimated the seemingly boundless forests and salmon stocks in the NW region of the US, aka ‘the Pacific North-west.' Let Wright finish.
“(Palaeolithic hunting was) done, we have to infer from the profligate remains, with the stock-trader’s optimism that there would always be another big killing just over the next hill. In the last and best-documented mass extinctions - the loss of flightless birds and other animals from New Zealand and Madagascar - there is no room for doubt that people were to blame. The Australian biologist Tim Flannery has called human beings the “future-eaters.” Each extinction is a death of possibility.”
Okay, it’s my turn to openly reflect on a related matter.
This from an essay I read last night from a book entitled Moral Ground (K.D. Moore, M.P. Nelson):
“We are indeed experiencing the greatest wave of extinctions since the disappearance of the dinosaurs,” said Ahmed Djoghlaf, head of the UN convention on biological diversity. “Extinction rates are rising by a factor of up to 1,000 above natural rates. Every hour, three species disappear. Every day, up to 150 species are lost. Every year, between 18,000 and 55,000 species become extinct,” he said. “The cause: human activities.”
Sorry, I digress.
Wright says:
“So among the things we need to know about ourselves is that the Upper Paleaolithic period, which may well have begun in genocide, ended with an all-you-can-kill wildlife barbecue. The perfection of hunting spelled the end of hunting as a way of life. Easy meat meant more babies. More babies meant more hunters. More hunters, sooner or later, meant less game. Most of the great human migrations across the world at this time must have been driven by want, as we bankrupted the land with our moveable feasts... the hunters at the end of the Stone Age were certainly not clumsy, but they were bad because they broke rule one for any prudent parasite: Don’t kill off your host.”
“As they drove species after species to extinction, they walked into the first progress trap.”
“Some of their descendants - the hunter-gatherer societies that have survived into recent times - would learn in the school of hard knocks to restrain themselves.”
Question: Does modern man restrain himself?
Wright concludes:
“But the rest of us found a way to raise the stakes: that great change known to hindsight as the Farming or Neolithic “Revolution.”
And how is that going for us?
We’re inflicting other progress traps upon ourselves.
Now we’re burning rain forests to plant soy for beef cattle.
Now we’re stripping ancient forests in the Pacific NW - at the same time destroying salmon stocks - to send raw wood and jobs to Asia.
Your turn.
Do you know of other examples of Catch-44s, other progress traps?
Are we nothing but greedy monkeys?
.
Catch-44, the progress trap, and the greedy monkey PT 4
By now, especially after reading the previous 3 parts of this brilliant series, you probably use Catch-44 in your daily conversations to mean a bad trap, twice as bad as a Catch-22.
How could you not?
You may also use the term ‘progress trap’ in the manner described in the book A Short History of Progress (author - Ronald Wright), i.e., to mean that we get so good at living a certain way it spells the end of us. (E.g., the first progress trap - the perfection of hunting, which ended the Stone Age).
But you may wonder where “the greedy monkey” fits in when encountering the title to my posts.
Well may you ask, as per the conclusion to PT 3, “Are we nothing but greedy monkeys?”
No, I say. We're worse.
And from an anthropomorphic point of view, I even think any self-respecting monkey would agree with me.
Though monkeys are greedy, they will never be as greedy as humankind. Though easily trapped because of their greed, their weakness is a mere nothing in comparison to our own.
For example, all one requires to catch a monkey in some regions of the world are the following materials:
A wooden stake,
a length of rope,
a hollowed out coconut shell with a 1-inch hole,
a few sweet candies.
Then follow the following instructions:
Drive the stake into the ground,
attach the stake securely to one end of the rope and the coconut to the other,
toss the candies into the coconut,
and wait for a greedy monkey.
What will happen once a monkey smells the sweets?
It will reach inside the hole and grab them. And when approached by the trap-setter, it will make a tight fist around the candies and attempt to flee.
However, can you see the monkey’s problem?
Its fist, full of candy, will now be larger than the 1-inch hole, and it can only escape from being caught by releasing its treasure.
Any greedy monkey will soon find itself inside a cage or soup pot. Many do. They are too greedy to release the prize and are held in place by their own hand.
Greed may cost the monkey its life, but the level of greed demonstrated is a mere nothing to that shown by humankind in many instances, because our collective greed can lead not just to the loss of one life but many, and to the extinction of many plant and animal species at the same time.
We know that modern man can barely restrain himself in the use of earth’s resources. Sustainable use of water, land, trees, minerals, fuels and multiple food sources is not practiced.
Though through the centuries humankind has moved from hunting and hunting-gathering to (predominantly) farming because of progress traps (we hunted so well many types of game were hunted to extinction), we’re inflicting other progress traps upon ourselves as we extensively farm around the world.
I wrote in an earlier post, “Now we’re burning rain forests to plant soy for beef cattle.”
About life on the largest scale, A Short History of Progress presents the following:
“Richard Alley points out what should be obvious: humans have built a civilization adapted to the climate we have. Increasingly, humanity is using everything (e.g., renewable and non-renewable resources) this climate provides... (and) the climate of the last few thousand years is about as good as it gets.” (pg. 52)
Ronald Wright continues:
“(Climate) change is not in our interest. Our only rational policy is not to risk provoking it. Yet we face abundant evidence that civilization itself, through fossil-fuel emissions and other disturbances, is upsetting the long calm in which we grew. Ice sheets at both poles are breaking up. Glaciers in the Andes and Himalayas are thawing (we now know that Canada’s north and Greenland are loosing their ice layers quickly); some have disappeared in only twenty-five years. Droughts and unusually hot weather (Canada has experienced its hottest year on record) have already caused world grain output to fall or stagnate for eight years in a row. During the same eight years, the number of mouths to feed went up by 600 million.”
“Steady warming will be bad enough, but the worst outcome would be a sudden overturning of earth’s climatic balance - back to its old regime of sweats and chills. If that happens, crops will fail everywhere and the great experiment of civilization will come to a catastrophic end.”
“In the matter of our food, we have grown as specialized, and therefore as vulnerable, as a sabre-toothed cat.”
Talk about your Catch-44, your progress trap, your greedy monkey.
Will humankind suffer through vast changes associated with climate change with its greedy fist caught in a trap of its own making?
.
Catch-44, the progress trap, and the greedy monkey PT 5, The Conclusion
Being a man of few words, I was earlier able to explain the meaning of the title in only 4 posts.
Though we will find ourselves in many predicaments in the near future, the greatest will be because of climate change. Our role in our own demise is indisputable.
Catch-44, progress trap, greedy monkey and countless other terms, I’m sure, will be used to describe our inability to solve a solvable problem.
It seems, though “our only rational policy is not to risk provoking it” (i.e., the near-perfect climate in which 6.7 billion of us live), we poke it with a sharp stick - our motive relates to greed in many instances - at almost every opportunity.
I concluded Pt 4 by asking, “Will humankind suffer through vast changes associated with climate change with its greedy fist caught in a trap of its own making?”
Though I said ‘no’ when wondering aloud if we are like a greedy monkey (we are far worse than any monkey), I say ‘yes’ to the above.
Consider humankind’s carbon emissions related to its pursuit of what many call the essentials of life, i.e., food, clothing and shelter, as well as a few systems upon which we have grown dependent, i.e., transportation, communication and recreation. (There are others, of course. There is no end to our pursuits).
About Canada I would say the following:
On average, bellies are getting bigger. Unnecessarily so.
Closets are getting bigger. Unnecessarily so.
Homes are getting bigger. Unnecessarily so.
The number of cars per capita is growing. Comfort and convenience wins over conservation.
The number of electronic communication devices is growing. Convenience wins again.
The number of recreational opportunities is growing. And no one plays checkers anymore.
Related carbon emissions are growing.
According to recent news, ‘countries that signed (the Kyoto Protocol in 1997) were supposed to cut their emissions from 1990 levels, but Canada’s have risen 24%.’ (Dec. 7, London Free Press)
The Canadian government allows emissions to grow.
So do so many other governments on planet Earth. So, climate change advances. Total calories, cotton shirts, square feet per person, cars, cellphones and play times advance further.
Will we slow the amassing of material goods for the sake of the present and any future generations?
Not at this time. Methinks our greed will not allow it.
Catch-44. Progress trap. Greedy monkey. All apply.
We may be at the point when only a series of major economic set backs or environmental disasters will force us to release our tight grip on a multitude of sweet treasures of so little value when compared to life itself.
Intriguing times we live in, aren’t they?
***
Please click here to read another Series of Some Significance.
.
Catch-44, the progress trap, and the greedy monkey PT 1
I’ve recently discovered that the term Catch-44 is pretty popular.
By ‘recently’ I mean within the last few hours and after coming inside from my shop.
I used the term twice today thinking it was a product of my own imagination, but a Google search reveals Catch .44 is an indie crime drama filmed in Shreveport, LA., starring Bruce Willis and Forest Whitaker, among others.
Stink. I wanted the term all to myself, just like the litre of ice-cream loaded with Smarties I found in the downstairs freezer a few days ago. (Somehow my wife knew about it!)
I like the term Catch-44 because it conjures up memories of Catch-22 (a gripping book and film with later connections to the movie and TV show M*A*S*H) and... it denotes something twice as bad as a Catch-22.
Feelings that I would describe as Catch-44-ish come up almost every day. Sometimes early in the morning before I’m even out of bed.
(The feelings are unrelated to having to get out of bed. I like getting out of bed - eventually. Coffee awaits. Sorry, I digress).
I used the term first while describing our predicament with rising costs - and not just related to hydro, which much on the minds of many Ontarians.
I said:
“Because no government is effectively encouraging the move toward smaller cars, homes and lifestyles, our roads will continue to support more cars per capita (and the related expense), our homes will continue to grow and demand more energy and production of household goods, and the associated costs of our lifestyle will increase.
It’s a Catch-44, which is twice as shocking and frustrating as a Catch-22 and any hydro bill.
I elaborated a bit on my use of the term in a later post when I said, “In other words, we’re in a Catch-44, a bad trap, twice as bad as a Catch-22.
We’re building and paving roads today that we’ll never repair or replace in the future as far as present home owners are concerned, because they’ll be dead.”
Now, where did I get the idea that we’re in a bad trap?
Stay tuned.
.
Catch-44, the progress trap, and the greedy monkey PT 2
The popular term Catch-44 not only conjures up memories of Catch-22 (a gripping book and film with a M*A*S*H connection) but infers there are troubles that are twice as big as size 22 troubles.
In an earlier post I mentioned that I experience Catch-44-ish feelings almost every day, e.g., when I read about rising hydro costs and our growing demand for more juice.
I elaborated a bit on my use of the term in a later post re rising infrastructure costs, i.e., related to tarmac roads, and our inability to pay our way when I said, “In other words, we’re in a Catch-44, a bad trap, twice as bad as a Catch-22.”
In my mind, I relate Catch-44 back to another term - a progress trap - and illustrative examples of the same found in the book A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright (see Read This, right margin).
In it he writes:
“Since the early 1900s, the world’s population has multiplied by four and its economy - a rough measure of the human load on nature - by more than forty. We have reached a stage where we must bring the experiment under rational control, and guard against present and potential dangers,” (pg. 31) i.e., lest we fall into a progress trap.
“We have already caused so many extinctions that our dominion over the earth will appear in the fossil record like the impact of an asteroid... a bad smell of extinction follows Homo sapiens around the world.”
["Asteroids - like the blunt fist of mankind"; photo link here]
In Chapter 2 he reveals “what we can deduce from the first progress trap - the perfection of hunting, which ended the Stone Age - and how our escape from that trap by the invention of farming led to our greatest experiment: worldwide civilization. We then have to ask ourselves this urgent question: Could civilization itself be another and much greater trap?”
What a great question.
The book is a real page turner.
I highly recommend it, but don’t expect a happy ending a la Walt Disney, e.g., Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
The tone of the book is reflected in Wright’s thoughts about some of the roots of modern civilization.
“From ancient times until today, civilized people have believed they behave better, and are better, than so-called savages. But he moral values attached to civilization are specious: too often used to justify attacking and dominating other, less powerful, societies. In their imperial heyday, the French had their “civilizing mission” and the British their “white man’s burden” - the bearing of which was eased by automatic weapons. As Hilaire Belloc wrote in 1898: “Whatever happens, we have got / The Maxim gun, and they have not.” Nowadays, Washington claims to lead and safeguard “the civilized world,” a tradition in American rhetoric that began with the uprooting and exterminating of that country’s first inhabitants.” (pg. 33)
So, about that first progress trap mentioned earlier...
.
Catch-44, the progress trap, and the greedy monkey PT 3
I use the term Catch-44 to mean a bad trap, twice as bad as a Catch-22.
A ‘progress trap’ is a term I encountered in the book entitled A Short History of Progress.
In Chapter 2 the author, Ronald Wright, reveals “what we can deduce from the first progress trap - the perfection of hunting, which ended the Stone Age...”
Now, about that first progress trap he writes the following:
“Modern hunter-gatherers - Amazonians, Australian Aboriginals, Inuit, Kalahari bushmen - are wise stewards of their ecologies, limiting their own numbers, treading lightly on the land.”
I know, you’re already ahead of me. You’ve deduced that early man did not tread lightly, were not good stewards. You may also have jumped farther ahead to modern day, to our wastefulness, and to the corner we have painted ourselves into quite nicely.
Hey, not so fast.
["Are we nothing more than a greedy monkey?": photo by GH]
Wright continues:
“It is often assumed that ancient hunters would have been equally wise. But archaeological evidence does not support this view. Palaeolithic hunting was the mainstream livelihood, done in the richest environments on a seemingly boundless earth.”
Stop it. Already you’re thinking about how unwisely modern corporations have decimated the seemingly boundless forests and salmon stocks in the NW region of the US, aka ‘the Pacific North-west.' Let Wright finish.
“(Palaeolithic hunting was) done, we have to infer from the profligate remains, with the stock-trader’s optimism that there would always be another big killing just over the next hill. In the last and best-documented mass extinctions - the loss of flightless birds and other animals from New Zealand and Madagascar - there is no room for doubt that people were to blame. The Australian biologist Tim Flannery has called human beings the “future-eaters.” Each extinction is a death of possibility.”
Okay, it’s my turn to openly reflect on a related matter.
This from an essay I read last night from a book entitled Moral Ground (K.D. Moore, M.P. Nelson):
“We are indeed experiencing the greatest wave of extinctions since the disappearance of the dinosaurs,” said Ahmed Djoghlaf, head of the UN convention on biological diversity. “Extinction rates are rising by a factor of up to 1,000 above natural rates. Every hour, three species disappear. Every day, up to 150 species are lost. Every year, between 18,000 and 55,000 species become extinct,” he said. “The cause: human activities.”
Sorry, I digress.
Wright says:
“So among the things we need to know about ourselves is that the Upper Paleaolithic period, which may well have begun in genocide, ended with an all-you-can-kill wildlife barbecue. The perfection of hunting spelled the end of hunting as a way of life. Easy meat meant more babies. More babies meant more hunters. More hunters, sooner or later, meant less game. Most of the great human migrations across the world at this time must have been driven by want, as we bankrupted the land with our moveable feasts... the hunters at the end of the Stone Age were certainly not clumsy, but they were bad because they broke rule one for any prudent parasite: Don’t kill off your host.”
“As they drove species after species to extinction, they walked into the first progress trap.”
“Some of their descendants - the hunter-gatherer societies that have survived into recent times - would learn in the school of hard knocks to restrain themselves.”
Question: Does modern man restrain himself?
Wright concludes:
“But the rest of us found a way to raise the stakes: that great change known to hindsight as the Farming or Neolithic “Revolution.”
And how is that going for us?
We’re inflicting other progress traps upon ourselves.
Now we’re burning rain forests to plant soy for beef cattle.
Now we’re stripping ancient forests in the Pacific NW - at the same time destroying salmon stocks - to send raw wood and jobs to Asia.
Your turn.
Do you know of other examples of Catch-44s, other progress traps?
Are we nothing but greedy monkeys?
.
Catch-44, the progress trap, and the greedy monkey PT 4
By now, especially after reading the previous 3 parts of this brilliant series, you probably use Catch-44 in your daily conversations to mean a bad trap, twice as bad as a Catch-22.
How could you not?
You may also use the term ‘progress trap’ in the manner described in the book A Short History of Progress (author - Ronald Wright), i.e., to mean that we get so good at living a certain way it spells the end of us. (E.g., the first progress trap - the perfection of hunting, which ended the Stone Age).
But you may wonder where “the greedy monkey” fits in when encountering the title to my posts.
Well may you ask, as per the conclusion to PT 3, “Are we nothing but greedy monkeys?”
No, I say. We're worse.
And from an anthropomorphic point of view, I even think any self-respecting monkey would agree with me.
Though monkeys are greedy, they will never be as greedy as humankind. Though easily trapped because of their greed, their weakness is a mere nothing in comparison to our own.
For example, all one requires to catch a monkey in some regions of the world are the following materials:
A wooden stake,
a length of rope,
a hollowed out coconut shell with a 1-inch hole,
a few sweet candies.
Then follow the following instructions:
Drive the stake into the ground,
attach the stake securely to one end of the rope and the coconut to the other,
toss the candies into the coconut,
and wait for a greedy monkey.
What will happen once a monkey smells the sweets?
It will reach inside the hole and grab them. And when approached by the trap-setter, it will make a tight fist around the candies and attempt to flee.
However, can you see the monkey’s problem?
Its fist, full of candy, will now be larger than the 1-inch hole, and it can only escape from being caught by releasing its treasure.
Any greedy monkey will soon find itself inside a cage or soup pot. Many do. They are too greedy to release the prize and are held in place by their own hand.
Greed may cost the monkey its life, but the level of greed demonstrated is a mere nothing to that shown by humankind in many instances, because our collective greed can lead not just to the loss of one life but many, and to the extinction of many plant and animal species at the same time.
We know that modern man can barely restrain himself in the use of earth’s resources. Sustainable use of water, land, trees, minerals, fuels and multiple food sources is not practiced.
Though through the centuries humankind has moved from hunting and hunting-gathering to (predominantly) farming because of progress traps (we hunted so well many types of game were hunted to extinction), we’re inflicting other progress traps upon ourselves as we extensively farm around the world.
I wrote in an earlier post, “Now we’re burning rain forests to plant soy for beef cattle.”
About life on the largest scale, A Short History of Progress presents the following:
“Richard Alley points out what should be obvious: humans have built a civilization adapted to the climate we have. Increasingly, humanity is using everything (e.g., renewable and non-renewable resources) this climate provides... (and) the climate of the last few thousand years is about as good as it gets.” (pg. 52)
Ronald Wright continues:
“(Climate) change is not in our interest. Our only rational policy is not to risk provoking it. Yet we face abundant evidence that civilization itself, through fossil-fuel emissions and other disturbances, is upsetting the long calm in which we grew. Ice sheets at both poles are breaking up. Glaciers in the Andes and Himalayas are thawing (we now know that Canada’s north and Greenland are loosing their ice layers quickly); some have disappeared in only twenty-five years. Droughts and unusually hot weather (Canada has experienced its hottest year on record) have already caused world grain output to fall or stagnate for eight years in a row. During the same eight years, the number of mouths to feed went up by 600 million.”
“Steady warming will be bad enough, but the worst outcome would be a sudden overturning of earth’s climatic balance - back to its old regime of sweats and chills. If that happens, crops will fail everywhere and the great experiment of civilization will come to a catastrophic end.”
“In the matter of our food, we have grown as specialized, and therefore as vulnerable, as a sabre-toothed cat.”
Talk about your Catch-44, your progress trap, your greedy monkey.
Will humankind suffer through vast changes associated with climate change with its greedy fist caught in a trap of its own making?
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Catch-44, the progress trap, and the greedy monkey PT 5, The Conclusion
Being a man of few words, I was earlier able to explain the meaning of the title in only 4 posts.
Though we will find ourselves in many predicaments in the near future, the greatest will be because of climate change. Our role in our own demise is indisputable.
Catch-44, progress trap, greedy monkey and countless other terms, I’m sure, will be used to describe our inability to solve a solvable problem.
It seems, though “our only rational policy is not to risk provoking it” (i.e., the near-perfect climate in which 6.7 billion of us live), we poke it with a sharp stick - our motive relates to greed in many instances - at almost every opportunity.
I concluded Pt 4 by asking, “Will humankind suffer through vast changes associated with climate change with its greedy fist caught in a trap of its own making?”
Though I said ‘no’ when wondering aloud if we are like a greedy monkey (we are far worse than any monkey), I say ‘yes’ to the above.
Consider humankind’s carbon emissions related to its pursuit of what many call the essentials of life, i.e., food, clothing and shelter, as well as a few systems upon which we have grown dependent, i.e., transportation, communication and recreation. (There are others, of course. There is no end to our pursuits).
About Canada I would say the following:
On average, bellies are getting bigger. Unnecessarily so.
Closets are getting bigger. Unnecessarily so.
Homes are getting bigger. Unnecessarily so.
The number of cars per capita is growing. Comfort and convenience wins over conservation.
The number of electronic communication devices is growing. Convenience wins again.
The number of recreational opportunities is growing. And no one plays checkers anymore.
Related carbon emissions are growing.
According to recent news, ‘countries that signed (the Kyoto Protocol in 1997) were supposed to cut their emissions from 1990 levels, but Canada’s have risen 24%.’ (Dec. 7, London Free Press)
The Canadian government allows emissions to grow.
So do so many other governments on planet Earth. So, climate change advances. Total calories, cotton shirts, square feet per person, cars, cellphones and play times advance further.
Will we slow the amassing of material goods for the sake of the present and any future generations?
Not at this time. Methinks our greed will not allow it.
Catch-44. Progress trap. Greedy monkey. All apply.
We may be at the point when only a series of major economic set backs or environmental disasters will force us to release our tight grip on a multitude of sweet treasures of so little value when compared to life itself.
Intriguing times we live in, aren’t they?
***
Please click here to read another Series of Some Significance.
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It Strikes Me Funny: The mighty clothesline is still a mystery to some
After writing about my use of clotheslines in a column in The Londoner (a few years ago, though memories are fresh : ) because of the post below) I received a veritable flood of emails from - as always - interested and interesting readers.
A woman suggested a way to hang underwear outside without offending neighbours: Hang them under a sheet or behind a towel.
Good idea. Sure, I don’t care if my saggy, soggy pants flap so loudly in the breeze that they turn heads, but some people do.
[Photo link]
One reader also suggested a whole generation is growing up without knowing what a clothesline looks like or why it is beneficial. Her daughter had a young friend over one day and the friend saw laundry on an outdoor line and wondered what the heck it was. Yipes.
Raise your hand if you don’t know about clotheslines or their benefits. Hmmm... the number appears to be growing.
That strikes me funny, but not in a ‘haha’ kind of way.
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Please click here to read more It Strikes Me Funny.
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A woman suggested a way to hang underwear outside without offending neighbours: Hang them under a sheet or behind a towel.
Good idea. Sure, I don’t care if my saggy, soggy pants flap so loudly in the breeze that they turn heads, but some people do.
[Photo link]
One reader also suggested a whole generation is growing up without knowing what a clothesline looks like or why it is beneficial. Her daughter had a young friend over one day and the friend saw laundry on an outdoor line and wondered what the heck it was. Yipes.
Raise your hand if you don’t know about clotheslines or their benefits. Hmmm... the number appears to be growing.
That strikes me funny, but not in a ‘haha’ kind of way.
***
Please click here to read more It Strikes Me Funny.
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Austerity without Anxiety: Maybe it’s because I’m retired
Two clotheslines stretch across my back deck and if you ever come to visit, remember to duck. Especially if my hockey shin pads are on the line. You’ll get quite the whack on the forehead!
Even in the winter, I hang up my clothes to dry. (I have three lines in the basement for rainy day or cold weather). I don’t ever think about using the electric dryer. Maybe it’s because I’m retired and have the extra 10 minutes it takes to hang up my clothes.
Maybe it’s because ‘hanging up’ is in my genes. My mother’s line stretched from the back door of the house to the barn and, as a teen, I got used to retrieving and thawing out my jeans before school started during winter months.
["Clean, and not frozen.": photo and cartoon by GH]
Whatever the case, using lines is a healthy habit, saves me more than pennies a day (the electric dryer is one of North America’s greediest home hydro users, and one of the easiest to avoid) and by the time my clothes are dry most of the wrinkles are gone.
Iron? What’s an iron?
***
Please click here to read more Austerity without Anxiety.
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Even in the winter, I hang up my clothes to dry. (I have three lines in the basement for rainy day or cold weather). I don’t ever think about using the electric dryer. Maybe it’s because I’m retired and have the extra 10 minutes it takes to hang up my clothes.
Maybe it’s because ‘hanging up’ is in my genes. My mother’s line stretched from the back door of the house to the barn and, as a teen, I got used to retrieving and thawing out my jeans before school started during winter months.
["Clean, and not frozen.": photo and cartoon by GH]
Whatever the case, using lines is a healthy habit, saves me more than pennies a day (the electric dryer is one of North America’s greediest home hydro users, and one of the easiest to avoid) and by the time my clothes are dry most of the wrinkles are gone.
Iron? What’s an iron?
***
Please click here to read more Austerity without Anxiety.
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The Workshop: From scrap to ‘antique shop’
It takes an hour or two to turn scraps of white cedar into a basic birdhouse. The more I make at one time (eight last week), the more time slips by in the workshop, the more dust settles on my jeans and sandals. Cough, cough! (I know, I should always wear a mask).
It takes 3 - 4 hours to turn scraps of barnboard into an ‘antique shop.’ More fussy work is involved, though ‘work’ is the wrong word to describe the process of painting small signs and attaching bits and pieces to the outer walls.
["Projects from the 'land of dust'": photos by Dusty Jeans]
‘A bit of fun’ is closer to the truth.
***
Please click here for more from The Workshop.
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It takes 3 - 4 hours to turn scraps of barnboard into an ‘antique shop.’ More fussy work is involved, though ‘work’ is the wrong word to describe the process of painting small signs and attaching bits and pieces to the outer walls.
["Projects from the 'land of dust'": photos by Dusty Jeans]
‘A bit of fun’ is closer to the truth.
***
Please click here for more from The Workshop.
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Sunday, June 5, 2011
Cartoon in Progress: “Life’s like that, eh” 13
“When the teacher saw Tommy holding his car door open for him, he quickly suspected yet another prank.”
gah
***
Please click here to view “Life’s like that, eh” 12
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The Workshop: Am I spending too much time in the shop?
I think I must be. The weather is brilliant and I’m thinking about finishing two birdhouses before I take off on the motorcycle.
Also, and this is happening more often, important messages and plans are jotted down on chunks of wood rather than notepaper.
["Photos by Dusty Jeans"]
Really. I should go for that bike ride right now.
***
Are you writing notes on chunks of woods? Do you need a break?
Please click here for more dusty stuff from The Workshop.
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Also, and this is happening more often, important messages and plans are jotted down on chunks of wood rather than notepaper.
["Photos by Dusty Jeans"]
Really. I should go for that bike ride right now.
***
Are you writing notes on chunks of woods? Do you need a break?
Please click here for more dusty stuff from The Workshop.
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“IT STRIKES” Again: Conclusion - Family pictures Tupperware-fresh for future generations
[The first half of the following article (originally published almost 9 years ago) can be read here for context. Go ahead. I’ll wait. Included below is my favourite photo from Chicago, taken the day before the marathon, October, 2002. gah]
Family pictures Tupperware-fresh for future generations PT 2
How many times do we have the patience to look at ourselves eating turkey or opening presents from one year to the next? (It appears I ate turkey last year in much the same way as I ate it in the early 1950s. I have the black and whites to prove it.)
So, photos in hand, I resorted to the well-worn habit of trying to stuff them into one of the four Tupperware containers under our bed.
["My #1 shot from Chicago, inside 'rain dog cafe'": photo GH]
The tubs are so full our mattress lays at an awkward angle. At present, one person is needed to lift the bed frame while the other pulls a tub out from under. Eventually my wife and I will be too weak to show anyone we have a family history. We’ll be able to sleep on it but not look at it.
Another problem followed on the heels of the last. Once the plastic container was out and the lid was popped I entered a nostalgic time-zone from which it was nearly impossible to escape.
I chuckled about hair-styles, eye-glass frames and wildly colourful, durable polyester fashions we wore without embarrassment in the distant past.
When I saw our two boys as youngsters I was compelled to stop for a backward peek. I paused to wonder why we have 48 pictures from different angles of David and Paul holding red and green balloons. I asked myself if they would remember dressing up as Batman and Robin day after day?
Eventually the need to eat urged me toward my present senses and I barely squeezed the latest package of photos into the last remaining space.
The next batch will likely find a new home in the large iMac box Pat asked me to save in case we ever move. It is easily large enough for the next 20 year’s worth of photographs.
Meanwhile, our combined family histories (Tamblyn/Harrison) dating back to the 1940s, in no apparent order or chronology, will remain Tupperware fresh for future generations.
***
Please click here to read PT 1 of Family pictures Tupperware-fresh for future generations.
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Family pictures Tupperware-fresh for future generations PT 2
How many times do we have the patience to look at ourselves eating turkey or opening presents from one year to the next? (It appears I ate turkey last year in much the same way as I ate it in the early 1950s. I have the black and whites to prove it.)
So, photos in hand, I resorted to the well-worn habit of trying to stuff them into one of the four Tupperware containers under our bed.
["My #1 shot from Chicago, inside 'rain dog cafe'": photo GH]
The tubs are so full our mattress lays at an awkward angle. At present, one person is needed to lift the bed frame while the other pulls a tub out from under. Eventually my wife and I will be too weak to show anyone we have a family history. We’ll be able to sleep on it but not look at it.
Another problem followed on the heels of the last. Once the plastic container was out and the lid was popped I entered a nostalgic time-zone from which it was nearly impossible to escape.
I chuckled about hair-styles, eye-glass frames and wildly colourful, durable polyester fashions we wore without embarrassment in the distant past.
When I saw our two boys as youngsters I was compelled to stop for a backward peek. I paused to wonder why we have 48 pictures from different angles of David and Paul holding red and green balloons. I asked myself if they would remember dressing up as Batman and Robin day after day?
Eventually the need to eat urged me toward my present senses and I barely squeezed the latest package of photos into the last remaining space.
The next batch will likely find a new home in the large iMac box Pat asked me to save in case we ever move. It is easily large enough for the next 20 year’s worth of photographs.
Meanwhile, our combined family histories (Tamblyn/Harrison) dating back to the 1940s, in no apparent order or chronology, will remain Tupperware fresh for future generations.
***
Please click here to read PT 1 of Family pictures Tupperware-fresh for future generations.
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Zoom w a View: The Harrison barn
My mother was a pretty good painter and, fortunately, I have a watercolour she completed many years ago of the barn that stood at the back of our family’s property in Norwich, Ontario.
My dad parked his car inside it but before he got home from work I’d practice my wrist shot in the laneway (out of the picture on the right side).
["Watercolour by Edith J. Harrison": photo by GH]
Unfortunately, the sound of the puck banging against the inside wall of the barn scared the chickens in the coop on the other side. (Coop is visible on left side of the barn in the painting, behind the crooked apple tree.) Egg production dropped off. I was sent elsewhere to practice my shot.
(Full story here at Practice makes perfect, eh).
Drat.
The crooked apple tree. That one’s on me as well but that’s a story for another day.
***
Please click here for more Zoom w a View.
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My dad parked his car inside it but before he got home from work I’d practice my wrist shot in the laneway (out of the picture on the right side).
["Watercolour by Edith J. Harrison": photo by GH]
Unfortunately, the sound of the puck banging against the inside wall of the barn scared the chickens in the coop on the other side. (Coop is visible on left side of the barn in the painting, behind the crooked apple tree.) Egg production dropped off. I was sent elsewhere to practice my shot.
(Full story here at Practice makes perfect, eh).
Drat.
The crooked apple tree. That one’s on me as well but that’s a story for another day.
***
Please click here for more Zoom w a View.
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Friday, June 3, 2011
“IT STRIKES” Again: Family pictures Tupperware-fresh for future generations
[The following article was originally published in November, 2002. What has changed since then? The Tupperware tubs contain more photos and most of them are fresher than I am. gah]
Family pictures Tupperware-fresh for future generations PT 1
One week after I returned from an October marathon in Chicago with a van-load of ambitious runners, I picked up my photos from Black’s on Wharncliffe and raced home to see the results of my photographic labours.
I spread out the pictures on the dining room table to get a second look at the streetscapes of the ‘Windy City’, runners treading softly on day-old blisters, long tidy rows of blue portable johns, and young, thoughtful artists sketching enormous bronzes at the entrance to Grant park.
["Chicago in October, 2002. Marathon start line was two blocks to the right"; photo by GH]
After sifting and sorting it was time to put them away. But where?
Where can a person put or display Kodak moments if they’ve collected photos for 40 years or more?
I could select a couple and tack them onto the last piece of bare wall behind the furnace or rotate a handful in one frame on the coffee table.
I could lean one on the fireplace mantle beside the blue titanite (or is it gneiss?) from Bancroft or among the dried leaves from our golden plum or against a cranberry glass from Pat’s collection.
I could stick one on the bathroom mirror so Pat and I would be able to look at something more pleasant than our droopy noses first thing in the morning.
I could start a new album and pile it with the 195 other albums that dominate the shelves of the bookcase in the living room, though the weight of the photos is starting to make the house shift to one side.
Few people actually glance at the albums anymore. How many times do we have the patience to look at ourselves eating turkey or opening presents from one year to the next? (It appears I ate turkey last year in much the same way as I ate it in the early 1950s. I have the black and whites to prove it.)
So, photos in hand...
... to be continued, asap!
***
Please click here to read the last exciting episode of “IT STRIKES” Again.
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Family pictures Tupperware-fresh for future generations PT 1
One week after I returned from an October marathon in Chicago with a van-load of ambitious runners, I picked up my photos from Black’s on Wharncliffe and raced home to see the results of my photographic labours.
I spread out the pictures on the dining room table to get a second look at the streetscapes of the ‘Windy City’, runners treading softly on day-old blisters, long tidy rows of blue portable johns, and young, thoughtful artists sketching enormous bronzes at the entrance to Grant park.
["Chicago in October, 2002. Marathon start line was two blocks to the right"; photo by GH]
After sifting and sorting it was time to put them away. But where?
Where can a person put or display Kodak moments if they’ve collected photos for 40 years or more?
I could select a couple and tack them onto the last piece of bare wall behind the furnace or rotate a handful in one frame on the coffee table.
I could lean one on the fireplace mantle beside the blue titanite (or is it gneiss?) from Bancroft or among the dried leaves from our golden plum or against a cranberry glass from Pat’s collection.
I could stick one on the bathroom mirror so Pat and I would be able to look at something more pleasant than our droopy noses first thing in the morning.
I could start a new album and pile it with the 195 other albums that dominate the shelves of the bookcase in the living room, though the weight of the photos is starting to make the house shift to one side.
Few people actually glance at the albums anymore. How many times do we have the patience to look at ourselves eating turkey or opening presents from one year to the next? (It appears I ate turkey last year in much the same way as I ate it in the early 1950s. I have the black and whites to prove it.)
So, photos in hand...
... to be continued, asap!
***
Please click here to read the last exciting episode of “IT STRIKES” Again.
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Cartoon in Progress: “Life’s like that, eh” 12
“Suddenly, twins Al and Hal were besides themselves with fright!”
gah
***
Please click here to view “Life’s like that, eh” 11
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Zoom w a View: Favourite photo of the week
When I say ‘favourite photo of the week,’ of course, as you likely already have surmised, I mean “besides the one at the very top of the right hand margin that I change fairly frequently because I live such an exciting life.”
I call this one “Sixty-six point six-six per cent of the lovely ladies in my life.” (My other daughter-in-law had to work that day and my mother-in-law didn't know about the parade).
[Canon Power Shot SD 1200, faded sepia, high contrast and sharpness, reduced shadow. GH]
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Please click here to see last week’s ‘favourite photo of the week.’
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I call this one “Sixty-six point six-six per cent of the lovely ladies in my life.” (My other daughter-in-law had to work that day and my mother-in-law didn't know about the parade).
[Canon Power Shot SD 1200, faded sepia, high contrast and sharpness, reduced shadow. GH]
***
Please click here to see last week’s ‘favourite photo of the week.’
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Thursday, June 2, 2011
Zoom w a View: Ferns unfurled while I shivered
This morning, the grass in the backyard felt cold and damp to my feet.
But ferns, unfurling, held my attention. I zoomed in for close ups.
[Photos by GH w cold, wet feet]
Was the trip out back worth the goosebumps?
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Please click here for more Zoom w a View.
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But ferns, unfurling, held my attention. I zoomed in for close ups.
[Photos by GH w cold, wet feet]
Was the trip out back worth the goosebumps?
***
Please click here for more Zoom w a View.
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Series of Some Significance: Climate change and the limits of growth
[The following series of posts, from December, 2010 are now collected in one place for your convenience. gah]
Climate Change Concerns: Our growth has limits
Part 1
You’re on your own.
If you want climate change concerns to be addressed in your lifetime you’ll have to address them by yourself.
As you may already know, and bearing the UN climate summit in Cancun, Mexico in mind, greenhouse gas emissions will not be reduced this year. (Or the year after that, or the year after that, or the year after that).
The results of the summit are best summarized by the cartoon below:
(Dolighan.com; London Free Press, Dec. 7)
“OK, I think we finally have all the oars in...”
No, we don’t. We obviously don’t.
“... We can begin to move forward on climate change.”
No, we can’t. We obviously can’t.
We will suffer much more tragic loss (up to this point in time, our losses have not been tragic enough) before governments act collectively to reduce carbon emissions and slow global warming.
We know the truth.
For example:
“Human activities are imposing enormous costs on the Earth’s climate and other life-support systems... Whether one looks at the loss of forests, fisheries, species, or climate stability, the level of environmental destruction is very high and, in almost all cases, rising rapidly.” (The Limits of Growth, essay by J. G. Speth)
Obviously, not rapidly enough for governments to notice.
“The exponential expansions of human populations and, even more, economic activity are the main drivers of these momentous transformations. For all the material blessings economic progress has provided, its impact on the natural world must be counted in the balance as tragic loss.”
After Cancun, some may say that there is still hope for the long run, or, that you’re not entirely on your own.
One such person is Gwynne Dyer, author of Climate Wars and Crawling from the Wreckage (his latest book).
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Climate Change Concerns: Our growth has limits
Part 2
You’re on your own. Address climate change concerns by yourself.
I think the recent UN climate summit delivers the same message.
Gwynne Dyer, author of Climate Wars and Crawling from the Wreckage (his latest book), thinks otherwise. (I hope he’s right).
In a recent column in the local paper, under the headline ‘No Climate Progress At Cancun,’ he writes:
“The UN climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, is nearing its end, but there will be no global deal on cutting greenhouse gas emissions this year. However, there is some hope for the longer run.” (Dec. 7, London Free Press)
Upon what does he base his hope?
The slim chance that rich countries will some day in the future help poorer, developing countries grow their economies without bearing all the costs of doing so in a cleaner, greener fashion.
Will rich countries one day bear some of the costs that would allow, e.g., China, India, Brazil, to grow their economies with the help of expensive (much more expensive than coal-fired energy plants) solar-, wind-, water-based energy systems?
Well, they should.
Dyer says the following re rich countries:
“...it was 200 years of burning fossil fuels that made them rich, and they are responsible for 80% of the greenhouse gases of human origin in the atmosphere now.”
At this point in history, rich countries may all know this but have unrealistic expectations for poorer countries.
Dyer says, “...the rich countries ignore the history and demand similar cuts from all countries, rich and poor.”
Such demands are unreasonable to the poorer, developing countries.
Dyer says:
“ ...the developing countries refuse to accept limits on their emissions for fear of stunting their economic growth. They also resent the fact that the past emissions of the rich countries have brought us all so close to the point of no return.”
How can any hope be found in the positions of the rich and poorer countries?
There is this notion: Poorer countries may be willing to switch to more expensive energy systems - and get off coal - with financial assistance from rich countries.
Is there any hope of this happening?
Dyer writes:
“People in the rich countries don't even understand that history, so they are still a long way from accepting that deal. It won't happen at Cancun, and it may be years before it does. Maybe too many years.”
If he sees any hope, it is a faint, faint hope, and not for the long run, but as he said earlier, “for the longer run.”
While we wait, let’s not hold our breath.
Let’s realize there are limits to economic growth, live small and save money for tough times ahead.
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Climate Change Concerns: Our growth has limits
Part 3
Do you feel as if you’re on your own?
I.e., if you want climate change concerns to be addressed in your lifetime, do you feel as if you’ll have to address them by yourself?
I read the following recently:
“Human activities are imposing enormous costs on the Earth’s climate and other life-support systems... Whether one looks at the loss of forests, fisheries, species, or climate stability, the level of environmental destruction is very high and, in almost all cases, rising rapidly.” (The Limits of Growth, essay by J. G. Speth)
After reading the essay I thought, not enough is being done. And it’s almost as if we’re on our own in finding solutions.
However, although Gwynne Dyer recently wrote, “ ...the developing countries refuse to accept limits on their emissions for fear of stunting their economic growth. They also resent the fact that the past emissions of the rich countries have brought us all so close to the point of no return...” he also feels there is some hope for positive change in “the longer run.”
Humankind has a history of coming to the end of, e.g., an entire natural resource, before realizing there are limits to growth.
If we could travel back a few centuries and travel to Easter Island we would see islanders carving stone statues, or moai, out of volcanic rock while surrounded by thick woods of Chilean wine palm, “a fine timber that can grow as big as an oak.” (R. Wright, ‘A Short History of Progress’)
To move the moai into a standing position on an altar of stone, however, several wine palms had to be cut down and used as wheels and levers.
The moai grew larger as their numbers increased over time and the wine palms decreased in numbers, and the soil, held in place by the trees, decreased in fertility and eroded away. Still more statues were built.
However, the last and largest moai never was raised onto its altar. There was not enough timber. At some point in time, whether for moving a moai or for building a wooden floor or house beam, the last tree was cut down.
In ‘A Short History of Progress’ we can read about the result:
“In the epilogue to their 1992 book, Easter island, the archaeologists Paul Bahn and john Flenley are explicit. The Islanders, they write, carried out for us the experiment of permitting unrestricted population growth, profligate use of resources, destruction of the environment and boundless confidence in their religion to take care of their future. The result was an ecological disaster leading to a population crash... Do we have to repeat the experiment on a grand scale?...Is the human personality always the same as that of the person who felled the last tree?”
In our lifetime we may learn the answer to that last question because we do not know yet that our growth has limits.
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Climate Change Concerns: Our growth has limits
Part 4
Because humankind has a history of using up resources without concern for natural limits, chances are good that little united action will be taken to combat global warming and resultant climate instability.
No positive steps will likely ever be encouraged by the Federal Conservative Government of my own country, Canada, which is a great shame in my humble opinion.
Former Federal Liberal Member of Parliament Glen Pearson (for London North Center) wrote a post entitled ‘Santa Claus Joins Ranks Of The Homeless’ at his blogsite on Dec. 9 that certainly relates to the above statements.
“Just in time for the global environment meetings in Cancun, Mexico, this country’s Environment Commissioner delivered a harsh report on the Conservative record in battling climate change. As it was being released, the Harper government was being awarded three “Fossil of the Day” awards. Alas, from both within and without, Canada has adopted environmental policies that are an embarrassment to our international reputation and likely formed a key reason why we lost the Security Council vote a short while ago.”
“The humiliation grew only more acute with the release of the latest Climate Change Performance Index, in which Canada fell to 54th out of 57 countries. The current government took up the practice almost five years ago of saying one thing about its environmental commitment while practicing the opposite. This purposeful benign obstructionism has left Canadians and the provinces confused, frustrated and embarrassed. In reality, the death of any real climate change agenda is almost complete.”
Some Canadians will say, wait. Our Prime Minister is doing his best. London’s former Liberal MP says otherwise.
“This week, the Prime Minister stood up in Question Period and stated that he is looking out for the economy of this country by focusing on security, among other things. Yet there is nothing more insecure than a planet in decline – nothing. Will stealth jets clean up our water? Will billions of dollars spent on prisons lower our carbon footprint? Could it possibly be that cutting taxes on corporations will lead to a green revolution? Did the $50 + billion stimulus plan deal in any significant way with our staggering emissions? No matter how many people you throw in the slammer, or how many high-tech jets you purchase, you will in no way reduce our carbon footprint by one smidgen. How can you have security when farms are lost due to drought, lakes are poisoned, agriculture is in decline, and coasts are ruined by rising tides?” (MP G. Pearson’s complete post is here).
Canadians don’t know the meaning of limits.
Personal debt is extremely high and has put many families in a very vulnerable position.
Ontario’s provincial debt has never been higher.
Federal or national debt has never been higher.
Carbon emissions only decline when we experience a recession. Otherwise, our main desire is to burn fuel like there’s no tomorrow.
No tomorrow.
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Climate Change Concerns: Our growth has limits
Part 5
We're like stupid chickens in some ways, and are in a pot of trouble here in Canada concerning climate change.
From a former Liberal MP’s point of view, and I trust it, our Conservative government will do nothing to turn things around regarding rising carbon emissions and global temperatures.
We have a government that puts too many things before the environment, the future.
E.g., our economy first (when did the environment ever get a $50 billion stimulus package?), our excessive lifestyle first, our GDP first, the tar sands first, more prisons first, etc.
Is it any wonder I say at times, you’re on your own if you want to see reductions in carbon emissions?
Not only does our government promote weak-kneed policies, as far as the environment and a healthy, sustainable future is concerned, but it receives a lot of vocal support.
Case in point. Our local paper, The London Free Press, featured a hollow ‘Three cheers for Environment Minister John Baird’ point of view earlier this week.
It was entitled ‘Speaking climate truth makes Baird hot stuff.’
(Beware. Any piece linking the words “climate truth” and “Baird” is bound to be malicious).
It begins:
“Environment Minister John Baird goes to the UN’s climate change smoke blower in Cancun, only to be accused back home of being a bull in China’s shop. He should be let loose more often.”
(The UN’s attempt to facilitate progress is a ‘smoke blower’, but Baird’s lack of any plan - any plan to reduce emissions - is a good thing?)
“What got Baird in the bad books of the left was his rightful insistence that if a billion Chinese didn’t give a damn about change then what’s the point?”
Now, if you’re looking for any history about China’s position re climate change relative to the US position, you won’t find it in a Baird-supporter’s ‘point of view’ piece.
And if you’re hoping for ideas from Canadian Conservatives or its Environment Minister about what could be done to prepare for the inevitable change in economic direction that will be required now and in the future, look away.
The point of view continues, listing a few reasons why we should view Baird and ‘business as usual’ Canada as the good guy and China as the bad:
“Last year, partially because of the recession, Canada had a 2% drop in greenhouse gas emissions while China increased its by 8%... (Canada is) a massive country with a small population... not cheap to heat, and not cheap to get around. That’s the reality.”
I’m glad the writer mentions the recession. The next one may be only way we’ll ever lower emissions again. Not that I look forward to it, but it may just be around the corner.
No mention was made, however, about the number of jobs wealthy countries, such as Canada, have exported to China (thus contributing to China’s growing economy and carbon emissions) because we are addicted to cheap goods aka Dollarama- and Wal-Mart-style.
And, yes, it is expensive to live in Canada. But not for long. Very soon it will be “even more expensive.” Climate change has a way of mucking up monthly budgets!
The writer ends with a question. (Oh, I love a quiz).
“Some billion Chinese have spewed out 8% more in Greenhouse gases than they did the year before, while a comparative 35-million smidgen of Canadians managed to lower their levels by 2%. Who’s the bad guy here?”
Wait. Wait. I know the answer to this one. It’s...
“Well, apparently,” says the writer, “it’s Canada - and Baird, of course...”
He took the words right out of my mouth.
.
Climate Change Concerns: Our growth has limits
Part 6, Conclusion
Times are tough all over.
Individuals and countries are burdened with growing debt and the expectation to keep growing and spending or driving the economy to save themselves.
Because our philosophies related to lifestyles and economic matters have unsustainable growth factors attached, tougher times are coming.
Why? Growth in fact has limits.
Here is a statement from an essay entitled ‘A Letter to My Boys’ by H. Murray - Philipson and found in the book ‘Moral Ground.’
“We stand at the fork in the road when we must choose between sustainability and catastrophe.”
I ask, will we stand at the fork alone?
In the following brief history lesson from Murray -Philipson’s essay, I think we find out answer.
“On current trends we may have ten years before we cross the point of no return on climate change. Our generation bears a unique responsibility to those who come after - unique, because this set of circumstances has never existed before.”
Now, about that history lesson. The writer continues:
re 1900 -
“The pace of change in one hundred years has been extraordinary.
“In 1900, the Wright brothers had not yet flown and the world’s population was 1.5 billion.
“The impact of man on the natural world was limited, and it still made sense to convert natural capital into manufacturing and financial capital to improve the human condition.”
re 1950 -
“Half a century later... the foundations (were laid) of the modern global economy.
“At that time, there was no mention of “sustainability” or “the environment.”
“The assumption was that nature could be taken for granted.
“There were plenty of warning signs, even then, that unrestricted exploitation of nature had unfortunate side effects - the near-extinction of the North American bison, the pollution of the Great Lakes, the smogs in London - but the notion of climate change was unheard-of, and the bounty of the planet was still considered unlimited.”
re 2000
“Global population quadrupled to 6 billion in the twentieth century, and the relationship between man and nature has been turned upside down in the process.
“Economic growth was achieved through burning fossil fuels... atmospheric levels of CO2 have risen from preindustrial levels of 280 parts per million (ppm) to 387 ppm. Despite increasing scientific alarm, they continue to rise by 3 ppm per year.
“The economic model off which the world is working came from an Age of Innocence and is not fit for our purpose in the twenty-first century - the Age of Consequences. The rules for 1 billion people cannot be the same for 6 billion...”
- re 2010 [population 6.7 billion]
“There has to be a global agreement on global sustainability... we are all in the same business, the business of survival. There is no point pursuing wealth for its own sake.”
And now, back to that fork in the road “when we must choose between sustainability and catastrophe.”
Will we stand alone?
No. All 6.7 billion people are crowded shoulder to shoulder in the same spot.
But, there appears to be no one to lead us toward sustainability.
If the recent Climate Change Conference in Cancun is any indication, major governments worldwide still stress economic growth at an unsustainable pace.
So, though we stand at the forks along with everyone else, we are without proper leadership and therefore stand as if alone.
How did I begin this set of posts several days ago?
“You’re on your own. If you want climate change concerns to be addressed in your lifetime you’ll have to address them by yourself.”
Sad but true?
I think so.
***
Please click here to read more Climate Change Concerns.
.
Climate Change Concerns: Our growth has limits
Part 1
You’re on your own.
If you want climate change concerns to be addressed in your lifetime you’ll have to address them by yourself.
As you may already know, and bearing the UN climate summit in Cancun, Mexico in mind, greenhouse gas emissions will not be reduced this year. (Or the year after that, or the year after that, or the year after that).
The results of the summit are best summarized by the cartoon below:
(Dolighan.com; London Free Press, Dec. 7)
“OK, I think we finally have all the oars in...”
No, we don’t. We obviously don’t.
“... We can begin to move forward on climate change.”
No, we can’t. We obviously can’t.
We will suffer much more tragic loss (up to this point in time, our losses have not been tragic enough) before governments act collectively to reduce carbon emissions and slow global warming.
We know the truth.
For example:
“Human activities are imposing enormous costs on the Earth’s climate and other life-support systems... Whether one looks at the loss of forests, fisheries, species, or climate stability, the level of environmental destruction is very high and, in almost all cases, rising rapidly.” (The Limits of Growth, essay by J. G. Speth)
Obviously, not rapidly enough for governments to notice.
“The exponential expansions of human populations and, even more, economic activity are the main drivers of these momentous transformations. For all the material blessings economic progress has provided, its impact on the natural world must be counted in the balance as tragic loss.”
After Cancun, some may say that there is still hope for the long run, or, that you’re not entirely on your own.
One such person is Gwynne Dyer, author of Climate Wars and Crawling from the Wreckage (his latest book).
.
Climate Change Concerns: Our growth has limits
Part 2
You’re on your own. Address climate change concerns by yourself.
I think the recent UN climate summit delivers the same message.
Gwynne Dyer, author of Climate Wars and Crawling from the Wreckage (his latest book), thinks otherwise. (I hope he’s right).
In a recent column in the local paper, under the headline ‘No Climate Progress At Cancun,’ he writes:
“The UN climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, is nearing its end, but there will be no global deal on cutting greenhouse gas emissions this year. However, there is some hope for the longer run.” (Dec. 7, London Free Press)
Upon what does he base his hope?
The slim chance that rich countries will some day in the future help poorer, developing countries grow their economies without bearing all the costs of doing so in a cleaner, greener fashion.
Will rich countries one day bear some of the costs that would allow, e.g., China, India, Brazil, to grow their economies with the help of expensive (much more expensive than coal-fired energy plants) solar-, wind-, water-based energy systems?
Well, they should.
Dyer says the following re rich countries:
“...it was 200 years of burning fossil fuels that made them rich, and they are responsible for 80% of the greenhouse gases of human origin in the atmosphere now.”
At this point in history, rich countries may all know this but have unrealistic expectations for poorer countries.
Dyer says, “...the rich countries ignore the history and demand similar cuts from all countries, rich and poor.”
Such demands are unreasonable to the poorer, developing countries.
Dyer says:
“ ...the developing countries refuse to accept limits on their emissions for fear of stunting their economic growth. They also resent the fact that the past emissions of the rich countries have brought us all so close to the point of no return.”
How can any hope be found in the positions of the rich and poorer countries?
There is this notion: Poorer countries may be willing to switch to more expensive energy systems - and get off coal - with financial assistance from rich countries.
Is there any hope of this happening?
Dyer writes:
“People in the rich countries don't even understand that history, so they are still a long way from accepting that deal. It won't happen at Cancun, and it may be years before it does. Maybe too many years.”
If he sees any hope, it is a faint, faint hope, and not for the long run, but as he said earlier, “for the longer run.”
While we wait, let’s not hold our breath.
Let’s realize there are limits to economic growth, live small and save money for tough times ahead.
.
Climate Change Concerns: Our growth has limits
Part 3
Do you feel as if you’re on your own?
I.e., if you want climate change concerns to be addressed in your lifetime, do you feel as if you’ll have to address them by yourself?
I read the following recently:
“Human activities are imposing enormous costs on the Earth’s climate and other life-support systems... Whether one looks at the loss of forests, fisheries, species, or climate stability, the level of environmental destruction is very high and, in almost all cases, rising rapidly.” (The Limits of Growth, essay by J. G. Speth)
After reading the essay I thought, not enough is being done. And it’s almost as if we’re on our own in finding solutions.
However, although Gwynne Dyer recently wrote, “ ...the developing countries refuse to accept limits on their emissions for fear of stunting their economic growth. They also resent the fact that the past emissions of the rich countries have brought us all so close to the point of no return...” he also feels there is some hope for positive change in “the longer run.”
Humankind has a history of coming to the end of, e.g., an entire natural resource, before realizing there are limits to growth.
If we could travel back a few centuries and travel to Easter Island we would see islanders carving stone statues, or moai, out of volcanic rock while surrounded by thick woods of Chilean wine palm, “a fine timber that can grow as big as an oak.” (R. Wright, ‘A Short History of Progress’)
To move the moai into a standing position on an altar of stone, however, several wine palms had to be cut down and used as wheels and levers.
The moai grew larger as their numbers increased over time and the wine palms decreased in numbers, and the soil, held in place by the trees, decreased in fertility and eroded away. Still more statues were built.
However, the last and largest moai never was raised onto its altar. There was not enough timber. At some point in time, whether for moving a moai or for building a wooden floor or house beam, the last tree was cut down.
In ‘A Short History of Progress’ we can read about the result:
“In the epilogue to their 1992 book, Easter island, the archaeologists Paul Bahn and john Flenley are explicit. The Islanders, they write, carried out for us the experiment of permitting unrestricted population growth, profligate use of resources, destruction of the environment and boundless confidence in their religion to take care of their future. The result was an ecological disaster leading to a population crash... Do we have to repeat the experiment on a grand scale?...Is the human personality always the same as that of the person who felled the last tree?”
In our lifetime we may learn the answer to that last question because we do not know yet that our growth has limits.
.
Climate Change Concerns: Our growth has limits
Part 4
Because humankind has a history of using up resources without concern for natural limits, chances are good that little united action will be taken to combat global warming and resultant climate instability.
No positive steps will likely ever be encouraged by the Federal Conservative Government of my own country, Canada, which is a great shame in my humble opinion.
Former Federal Liberal Member of Parliament Glen Pearson (for London North Center) wrote a post entitled ‘Santa Claus Joins Ranks Of The Homeless’ at his blogsite on Dec. 9 that certainly relates to the above statements.
“Just in time for the global environment meetings in Cancun, Mexico, this country’s Environment Commissioner delivered a harsh report on the Conservative record in battling climate change. As it was being released, the Harper government was being awarded three “Fossil of the Day” awards. Alas, from both within and without, Canada has adopted environmental policies that are an embarrassment to our international reputation and likely formed a key reason why we lost the Security Council vote a short while ago.”
“The humiliation grew only more acute with the release of the latest Climate Change Performance Index, in which Canada fell to 54th out of 57 countries. The current government took up the practice almost five years ago of saying one thing about its environmental commitment while practicing the opposite. This purposeful benign obstructionism has left Canadians and the provinces confused, frustrated and embarrassed. In reality, the death of any real climate change agenda is almost complete.”
Some Canadians will say, wait. Our Prime Minister is doing his best. London’s former Liberal MP says otherwise.
“This week, the Prime Minister stood up in Question Period and stated that he is looking out for the economy of this country by focusing on security, among other things. Yet there is nothing more insecure than a planet in decline – nothing. Will stealth jets clean up our water? Will billions of dollars spent on prisons lower our carbon footprint? Could it possibly be that cutting taxes on corporations will lead to a green revolution? Did the $50 + billion stimulus plan deal in any significant way with our staggering emissions? No matter how many people you throw in the slammer, or how many high-tech jets you purchase, you will in no way reduce our carbon footprint by one smidgen. How can you have security when farms are lost due to drought, lakes are poisoned, agriculture is in decline, and coasts are ruined by rising tides?” (MP G. Pearson’s complete post is here).
Canadians don’t know the meaning of limits.
Personal debt is extremely high and has put many families in a very vulnerable position.
Ontario’s provincial debt has never been higher.
Federal or national debt has never been higher.
Carbon emissions only decline when we experience a recession. Otherwise, our main desire is to burn fuel like there’s no tomorrow.
No tomorrow.
.
Climate Change Concerns: Our growth has limits
Part 5
We're like stupid chickens in some ways, and are in a pot of trouble here in Canada concerning climate change.
From a former Liberal MP’s point of view, and I trust it, our Conservative government will do nothing to turn things around regarding rising carbon emissions and global temperatures.
We have a government that puts too many things before the environment, the future.
E.g., our economy first (when did the environment ever get a $50 billion stimulus package?), our excessive lifestyle first, our GDP first, the tar sands first, more prisons first, etc.
Is it any wonder I say at times, you’re on your own if you want to see reductions in carbon emissions?
Not only does our government promote weak-kneed policies, as far as the environment and a healthy, sustainable future is concerned, but it receives a lot of vocal support.
Case in point. Our local paper, The London Free Press, featured a hollow ‘Three cheers for Environment Minister John Baird’ point of view earlier this week.
It was entitled ‘Speaking climate truth makes Baird hot stuff.’
(Beware. Any piece linking the words “climate truth” and “Baird” is bound to be malicious).
It begins:
“Environment Minister John Baird goes to the UN’s climate change smoke blower in Cancun, only to be accused back home of being a bull in China’s shop. He should be let loose more often.”
(The UN’s attempt to facilitate progress is a ‘smoke blower’, but Baird’s lack of any plan - any plan to reduce emissions - is a good thing?)
“What got Baird in the bad books of the left was his rightful insistence that if a billion Chinese didn’t give a damn about change then what’s the point?”
Now, if you’re looking for any history about China’s position re climate change relative to the US position, you won’t find it in a Baird-supporter’s ‘point of view’ piece.
And if you’re hoping for ideas from Canadian Conservatives or its Environment Minister about what could be done to prepare for the inevitable change in economic direction that will be required now and in the future, look away.
The point of view continues, listing a few reasons why we should view Baird and ‘business as usual’ Canada as the good guy and China as the bad:
“Last year, partially because of the recession, Canada had a 2% drop in greenhouse gas emissions while China increased its by 8%... (Canada is) a massive country with a small population... not cheap to heat, and not cheap to get around. That’s the reality.”
I’m glad the writer mentions the recession. The next one may be only way we’ll ever lower emissions again. Not that I look forward to it, but it may just be around the corner.
No mention was made, however, about the number of jobs wealthy countries, such as Canada, have exported to China (thus contributing to China’s growing economy and carbon emissions) because we are addicted to cheap goods aka Dollarama- and Wal-Mart-style.
And, yes, it is expensive to live in Canada. But not for long. Very soon it will be “even more expensive.” Climate change has a way of mucking up monthly budgets!
The writer ends with a question. (Oh, I love a quiz).
“Some billion Chinese have spewed out 8% more in Greenhouse gases than they did the year before, while a comparative 35-million smidgen of Canadians managed to lower their levels by 2%. Who’s the bad guy here?”
Wait. Wait. I know the answer to this one. It’s...
“Well, apparently,” says the writer, “it’s Canada - and Baird, of course...”
He took the words right out of my mouth.
.
Climate Change Concerns: Our growth has limits
Part 6, Conclusion
Times are tough all over.
Individuals and countries are burdened with growing debt and the expectation to keep growing and spending or driving the economy to save themselves.
Because our philosophies related to lifestyles and economic matters have unsustainable growth factors attached, tougher times are coming.
Why? Growth in fact has limits.
Here is a statement from an essay entitled ‘A Letter to My Boys’ by H. Murray - Philipson and found in the book ‘Moral Ground.’
“We stand at the fork in the road when we must choose between sustainability and catastrophe.”
I ask, will we stand at the fork alone?
In the following brief history lesson from Murray -Philipson’s essay, I think we find out answer.
“On current trends we may have ten years before we cross the point of no return on climate change. Our generation bears a unique responsibility to those who come after - unique, because this set of circumstances has never existed before.”
Now, about that history lesson. The writer continues:
re 1900 -
“The pace of change in one hundred years has been extraordinary.
“In 1900, the Wright brothers had not yet flown and the world’s population was 1.5 billion.
“The impact of man on the natural world was limited, and it still made sense to convert natural capital into manufacturing and financial capital to improve the human condition.”
re 1950 -
“Half a century later... the foundations (were laid) of the modern global economy.
“At that time, there was no mention of “sustainability” or “the environment.”
“The assumption was that nature could be taken for granted.
“There were plenty of warning signs, even then, that unrestricted exploitation of nature had unfortunate side effects - the near-extinction of the North American bison, the pollution of the Great Lakes, the smogs in London - but the notion of climate change was unheard-of, and the bounty of the planet was still considered unlimited.”
re 2000
“Global population quadrupled to 6 billion in the twentieth century, and the relationship between man and nature has been turned upside down in the process.
“Economic growth was achieved through burning fossil fuels... atmospheric levels of CO2 have risen from preindustrial levels of 280 parts per million (ppm) to 387 ppm. Despite increasing scientific alarm, they continue to rise by 3 ppm per year.
“The economic model off which the world is working came from an Age of Innocence and is not fit for our purpose in the twenty-first century - the Age of Consequences. The rules for 1 billion people cannot be the same for 6 billion...”
- re 2010 [population 6.7 billion]
“There has to be a global agreement on global sustainability... we are all in the same business, the business of survival. There is no point pursuing wealth for its own sake.”
And now, back to that fork in the road “when we must choose between sustainability and catastrophe.”
Will we stand alone?
No. All 6.7 billion people are crowded shoulder to shoulder in the same spot.
But, there appears to be no one to lead us toward sustainability.
If the recent Climate Change Conference in Cancun is any indication, major governments worldwide still stress economic growth at an unsustainable pace.
So, though we stand at the forks along with everyone else, we are without proper leadership and therefore stand as if alone.
How did I begin this set of posts several days ago?
“You’re on your own. If you want climate change concerns to be addressed in your lifetime you’ll have to address them by yourself.”
Sad but true?
I think so.
***
Please click here to read more Climate Change Concerns.
.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Live Small: “How is our infrastructure doing?”
[“We are building roads today we will be unable to afford tomorrow.” June 1, 2011, G. Harrison]
Do we know whether we’re coming or going related to the current and future price tag on our lifestyle?
If we think extreme weather- and climate change-related expenses are climbing (extreme weather-related losses may outstrip GWP, Gross World Product, in our lifetimes), but feel safe and sound here in Deforest City, we should try to find real figures related to how much we have to pay for solid infrastructure in our city, our county, our province, our country.
["The depressions in Elmwood Ave., west of Wortley, raise doubts": photos GH]
And if we’re unable to keep up with ever-growing infrastructure costs, can we actually afford the lifestyle we’re building and enjoying?
Just the condition of roads in Deforest City make me have a few doubts.
***
Please click here for more Live Small.
.
Do we know whether we’re coming or going related to the current and future price tag on our lifestyle?
If we think extreme weather- and climate change-related expenses are climbing (extreme weather-related losses may outstrip GWP, Gross World Product, in our lifetimes), but feel safe and sound here in Deforest City, we should try to find real figures related to how much we have to pay for solid infrastructure in our city, our county, our province, our country.
["The depressions in Elmwood Ave., west of Wortley, raise doubts": photos GH]
And if we’re unable to keep up with ever-growing infrastructure costs, can we actually afford the lifestyle we’re building and enjoying?
Just the condition of roads in Deforest City make me have a few doubts.
***
Please click here for more Live Small.
.
Climate Change Concerns: Can we afford our present lifestyle?
[The following two posts were recently listed in separate parts. They are here in one piece for your convenience. No extra charge. gah]
Part 1
Climate Change Concerns: Can we afford our present lifestyle?
Summer is coming. Travel plans are being made. Back deck lovers will eat many a gourmet hotdog and overloaded cheeseburger.
Burp. Life is good.
Maybe too good.
Planet Earth is becoming a pretty expensive piece of real estate to live upon. Fire-, weather- and climate change-related events are coming with higher price tags than ever before. Should we be reducing our spending and saving for tougher times ahead?
Relatively recently we’ve read about Iceland’s volcanic eruptions delaying travel, fires in Alberta driving entire populations from their towns and homes, tsunamis crippling some parts of Japan, floods burying large parts of Australia, tornados flattening towns like Joplin, Missouri. The heavy personal and financial tolls of international disasters seem to be rising.
From Dec. 23, 2009:
“A report from the Center for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters noted that 224 out of 245 international disasters this year were weather-related, causing $15 billion US in economic damage.”
I think the Center for Research must have only been looking at specific kinds of disasters. According to insurance company records, international losses are staggering.
This from The Little Green Handbook:
re The probability of global bankruptcy.
“Perhaps the best and the most convincing short-cut to the problems associated with studying the slow process of climate change and extreme weather lies in weather-related economic losses... i.e., the money we have to pay for weather-induced damage. These records are maintained by insurance companies, and it is in their interest to make them reliable.”
“According to Munich Re, global weather-related economic losses increased from $3 billion per year in 1980 to $80 billion per year at the end of the 20th century.”
(That’s an increase of $77 billion per year in 20 years. Pretty steep. Our years spent on the planet are getting dearer as I speak.)
“Losses per decade increased from $86 billion for 1980 - 89 to $474 billion for 1990 - 99.”
Though I have no records of economic losses for the last, most recent decade, and though not all economic losses were climate-change related, I have to assume global expenses went north.
It begs the question? Can Planet Earth and its inhabitants afford the way humans choose to live?
.
Part 2
Climate Change Concerns: Can we afford our present lifestyle?
Economic losses related to weather and climate change increased from $86 billion for 1980 - 89 to $474 billion for 1990 - 99. (pg. 102, Little Green Handbook)
And though I have no numbers for the last, most recent decade, I have to assume global expenses went north.
Ron Nielsen, DSc and author of the Green Handbook asks, “How long can we cope with weather-related economic losses?”
He then answers his own question.
“If global income is substantially greater than the losses, and if it increases at least as fast as the losses, we have nothing to worry about. There will always be enough money to repair the damage. If global income increases more slowly than the losses, it is worthwhile to calculate how long the money will last.”
Okay, someone has to ask, Dr. Nielsen, how long will the money last?
“To estimate this period I have analysed the data for weather-related economic losses and for gross world product (GWP), both expressed in 2001 US dollars. Preliminary examination of the data shows that the prospects are not encouraging, because the losses are increasing much faster than income.
“As we have seen, global weather-related losses per decade increased from $86 billion to $474 billion, or 450 per cent, in the last two decades of the 20th century. However, GWP increased from $291 trillion per decade to $386 trillion, or 33 per cent, during the same period. GWP is still greater than the weather-related losses, but the losses are increasing much faster, and in time they might match global income. That would mean global bankruptcy.”
Okay, someone has to ask, if present trends continue, when will the planet be bankrupt?
“Weather-related economic losses can be fitted by using exponential function. The best fit corresponds to a doubling time of 4.42 years. GWP can be fitted using a polynominal function, which increases slowly and has no doubling time. The two calculated curves cross in 2045. If about that time we decide to repair the damage there will be no money left for anything else.”
Thank you, Dr. Nielsen. I’d give you a parting gift but I don’t think I can afford one.
2045. Bankrupt. If alive, I’ll be 95, closing shutters to protect myself from extreme weather and dipping into my birdhouse money on a pretty regular basis.
So, as I ask in the post’s title, can we afford our present lifestyle, knowing that the costs related to extreme weather - some undoubtedly related to climate change - will get higher? Or, can Planet Earth and its inhabitants afford the way humans choose to live?
If we think long-term and have half a wit of concern for those that follow in our deep footprints on Planet Earth (maybe we’ll have changed the name by 2045 to Junk Star Galactica), the answer must be NO.
I recommend we reduce spending, pay down debt, and save money for the tough, thin times ahead.
***
Please click here for more Climate Change Concerns.
.
Part 1
Climate Change Concerns: Can we afford our present lifestyle?
Summer is coming. Travel plans are being made. Back deck lovers will eat many a gourmet hotdog and overloaded cheeseburger.
Burp. Life is good.
Maybe too good.
Planet Earth is becoming a pretty expensive piece of real estate to live upon. Fire-, weather- and climate change-related events are coming with higher price tags than ever before. Should we be reducing our spending and saving for tougher times ahead?
Relatively recently we’ve read about Iceland’s volcanic eruptions delaying travel, fires in Alberta driving entire populations from their towns and homes, tsunamis crippling some parts of Japan, floods burying large parts of Australia, tornados flattening towns like Joplin, Missouri. The heavy personal and financial tolls of international disasters seem to be rising.
From Dec. 23, 2009:
“A report from the Center for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters noted that 224 out of 245 international disasters this year were weather-related, causing $15 billion US in economic damage.”
I think the Center for Research must have only been looking at specific kinds of disasters. According to insurance company records, international losses are staggering.
This from The Little Green Handbook:
re The probability of global bankruptcy.
“Perhaps the best and the most convincing short-cut to the problems associated with studying the slow process of climate change and extreme weather lies in weather-related economic losses... i.e., the money we have to pay for weather-induced damage. These records are maintained by insurance companies, and it is in their interest to make them reliable.”
“According to Munich Re, global weather-related economic losses increased from $3 billion per year in 1980 to $80 billion per year at the end of the 20th century.”
(That’s an increase of $77 billion per year in 20 years. Pretty steep. Our years spent on the planet are getting dearer as I speak.)
“Losses per decade increased from $86 billion for 1980 - 89 to $474 billion for 1990 - 99.”
Though I have no records of economic losses for the last, most recent decade, and though not all economic losses were climate-change related, I have to assume global expenses went north.
It begs the question? Can Planet Earth and its inhabitants afford the way humans choose to live?
.
Part 2
Climate Change Concerns: Can we afford our present lifestyle?
Economic losses related to weather and climate change increased from $86 billion for 1980 - 89 to $474 billion for 1990 - 99. (pg. 102, Little Green Handbook)
And though I have no numbers for the last, most recent decade, I have to assume global expenses went north.
Ron Nielsen, DSc and author of the Green Handbook asks, “How long can we cope with weather-related economic losses?”
He then answers his own question.
“If global income is substantially greater than the losses, and if it increases at least as fast as the losses, we have nothing to worry about. There will always be enough money to repair the damage. If global income increases more slowly than the losses, it is worthwhile to calculate how long the money will last.”
Okay, someone has to ask, Dr. Nielsen, how long will the money last?
“To estimate this period I have analysed the data for weather-related economic losses and for gross world product (GWP), both expressed in 2001 US dollars. Preliminary examination of the data shows that the prospects are not encouraging, because the losses are increasing much faster than income.
“As we have seen, global weather-related losses per decade increased from $86 billion to $474 billion, or 450 per cent, in the last two decades of the 20th century. However, GWP increased from $291 trillion per decade to $386 trillion, or 33 per cent, during the same period. GWP is still greater than the weather-related losses, but the losses are increasing much faster, and in time they might match global income. That would mean global bankruptcy.”
Okay, someone has to ask, if present trends continue, when will the planet be bankrupt?
“Weather-related economic losses can be fitted by using exponential function. The best fit corresponds to a doubling time of 4.42 years. GWP can be fitted using a polynominal function, which increases slowly and has no doubling time. The two calculated curves cross in 2045. If about that time we decide to repair the damage there will be no money left for anything else.”
Thank you, Dr. Nielsen. I’d give you a parting gift but I don’t think I can afford one.
2045. Bankrupt. If alive, I’ll be 95, closing shutters to protect myself from extreme weather and dipping into my birdhouse money on a pretty regular basis.
So, as I ask in the post’s title, can we afford our present lifestyle, knowing that the costs related to extreme weather - some undoubtedly related to climate change - will get higher? Or, can Planet Earth and its inhabitants afford the way humans choose to live?
If we think long-term and have half a wit of concern for those that follow in our deep footprints on Planet Earth (maybe we’ll have changed the name by 2045 to Junk Star Galactica), the answer must be NO.
I recommend we reduce spending, pay down debt, and save money for the tough, thin times ahead.
***
Please click here for more Climate Change Concerns.
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It Strikes Me Funny: What’s wrong with my birdhouses?
I have eight birdhouses on my small property. Most are made from white cedar, cheerfully painted, and cared for well. I vacuum the rooms regularly.
Recently my wife spotted a bird making its home at the side of the house - not in one of the birdhouses - on a ledge at the base of our chimney.
["There's a tri-plex out back, rent free!": photos GH]
I once read that robins like open, three-sided boxes. I guess I have another project for my workshop.
***
Please click here for more It Strikes Me Funny.
.
Recently my wife spotted a bird making its home at the side of the house - not in one of the birdhouses - on a ledge at the base of our chimney.
["There's a tri-plex out back, rent free!": photos GH]
I once read that robins like open, three-sided boxes. I guess I have another project for my workshop.
***
Please click here for more It Strikes Me Funny.
.
Series of Some Significance: Hudak’s ‘work gang’ election plank
[The following three posts were recently listed separately. I have arranged them together here for your convenience and ultimate satisfaction. Ultimate! gah]
Do you support Hudak’s ‘work gang’ election plank?
Part 1
“Put crooks to work.” That’s the spirit.
At least that’s the spirit in Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak’s Ontario, if he is elected our next Premier.
What Hudak wants:
He wants 2,700 convicted prisoners (excluding young offenders and inmates awaiting trial) to perform up to 40 hours of mandatory manual labour a week, including “raking leaves, collecting garbage and cleaning graffiti.” (May 27, London Free Press)
[“We’re workin’ on a chain gang”: photo link]
He wants to “end the practice of letting convicted prisoners spend their time watching TV or playing cards.”
What Hudak thinks:
“I just think it’s the right thing to do.”
“It’s time for inmates to give back to society.”
He thinks ‘the value of the work the inmates perform would cover the added cost of security and travel involved in doing it, but would also set aside a $20 million contingency fund in case it doesn’t.’
What do I think? Stay tuned.
***
What do you think of Hudak’s plan?
.
PT 2 - Do you support Hudak’s ‘work gang’ election plank?
Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak plans to put 2,700 (approx.) convicted criminals to work for up to 40 hours per week if elected Premier.
Though Hudak thinks it’s the right thing to do and “details on whether inmates would be manacled together to prevent escape have yet to be worked out” (May 27, London Free Press), not everyone agrees whole-heartedly with his work gang idea.
For example, Jim Bradley, Community Safety and Corrections Minister, feels Hudak “will be putting citizens at risk by bringing dangerous criminals into their midst... (i.e.) our parks and our neighbourhoods and our schoolyards and our business districts, where there are kids and families.”
Correctional workers “support the idea of inmates doing work but would prefer the tasks to be meaningful and productive.”
Alex Hoyos, a resident of my own city, says the following in a Letter to the Editor:
“Bad idea... punitive labour for criminals is a thing of the past.”
Among other things he adds, “Forced labour is immoral, guarding the criminals... costs more than the benefits, the risk of a criminal fleeing is many times higher...”
However, he notes he is not against paid or voluntary jobs within prison facilities that provide meaningful occupations, the possibility of earning some money, and opportunities to learn skills for a job outside of prison. And finally he notes, “this is just another crazy idea from Hudak.”
Then there’s an idea from Harrison.
***
Do you think this is another crazy idea from Hudak?
Would you want criminals raking leaves in a park next door to your property?
.
PT 3 - Do you support Hudak’s ‘work gang’ election plank?
Alex Hoyos of London thinks PC Leader Hudak’s plan to make 2,700 provincial inmates perform up to 40 hours of mandatory manual labour per week “is just another crazy idea from Hudak.”
And me? What do I think? Two things.
I think Hudak’s intentions might not be half-baked. I think his initiative, however, is.
Hudak’s intentions: No one can look inside the PC leader’s little round head to determine the full extent or purity of his intentions, but if he intends to make prisoners rake leaves or collect garbage instead of play cards in order to better prepare them to re-enter society with useful job skills and more education, then society as a whole will receive a benefit.
If Hudak intends to take any monetary savings connected to his work gangs and make some form of restitution to those who suffered losses as a result of certain crimes, then some citizens will receive a benefit.
But can we attribute such intentions to his initiative to send prisoners to do mandatory work such as “raking leaves, collecting garbage and cleaning graffiti?”
I don’t think so. Though Hudak attributes ‘value’ to the manual labour (“He expects the value of the work... would cover the added cost of security and travel... but would also set aside a $20 million contingency fund in case it doesn’t”) I don’t think the value is in sound education or meaningful job skills that will help anyone in the future.
$20 million spent, in my opinion, on meaningful education and job skills is a sound investment in Ontario’s future. And Hudak’s plan has less to do with investing and more to do with inventing. Or re-inventing, i.e., the chain gang.
I’ll let Michael Den Tandt have the last word:
“And of course there's the now obligatory crime wedge issue, whereby right-thinking, law-abiding folks are invited to get mad at the lousy, despicable felons and crooks.
“So the Conservatives would use public money to have convicts, presumably in striped jailhouse outfits or Guantanamo orange, paraded along the boulevards, picking up trash and cutting grass.
“As a campaign platform, it is truly pitiful. It throws the door open to Horwath and the NDP to do something interesting, if they can.” (May 31, London Free Press)
***
If you feel Hudak’s plan has some merit, please let me know.
Please click here to read deep thoughts from a conservative think-tank.
.
Do you support Hudak’s ‘work gang’ election plank?
Part 1
“Put crooks to work.” That’s the spirit.
At least that’s the spirit in Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak’s Ontario, if he is elected our next Premier.
What Hudak wants:
He wants 2,700 convicted prisoners (excluding young offenders and inmates awaiting trial) to perform up to 40 hours of mandatory manual labour a week, including “raking leaves, collecting garbage and cleaning graffiti.” (May 27, London Free Press)
[“We’re workin’ on a chain gang”: photo link]
He wants to “end the practice of letting convicted prisoners spend their time watching TV or playing cards.”
What Hudak thinks:
“I just think it’s the right thing to do.”
“It’s time for inmates to give back to society.”
He thinks ‘the value of the work the inmates perform would cover the added cost of security and travel involved in doing it, but would also set aside a $20 million contingency fund in case it doesn’t.’
What do I think? Stay tuned.
***
What do you think of Hudak’s plan?
.
PT 2 - Do you support Hudak’s ‘work gang’ election plank?
Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak plans to put 2,700 (approx.) convicted criminals to work for up to 40 hours per week if elected Premier.
Though Hudak thinks it’s the right thing to do and “details on whether inmates would be manacled together to prevent escape have yet to be worked out” (May 27, London Free Press), not everyone agrees whole-heartedly with his work gang idea.
For example, Jim Bradley, Community Safety and Corrections Minister, feels Hudak “will be putting citizens at risk by bringing dangerous criminals into their midst... (i.e.) our parks and our neighbourhoods and our schoolyards and our business districts, where there are kids and families.”
Correctional workers “support the idea of inmates doing work but would prefer the tasks to be meaningful and productive.”
Alex Hoyos, a resident of my own city, says the following in a Letter to the Editor:
“Bad idea... punitive labour for criminals is a thing of the past.”
Among other things he adds, “Forced labour is immoral, guarding the criminals... costs more than the benefits, the risk of a criminal fleeing is many times higher...”
However, he notes he is not against paid or voluntary jobs within prison facilities that provide meaningful occupations, the possibility of earning some money, and opportunities to learn skills for a job outside of prison. And finally he notes, “this is just another crazy idea from Hudak.”
Then there’s an idea from Harrison.
***
Do you think this is another crazy idea from Hudak?
Would you want criminals raking leaves in a park next door to your property?
.
PT 3 - Do you support Hudak’s ‘work gang’ election plank?
Alex Hoyos of London thinks PC Leader Hudak’s plan to make 2,700 provincial inmates perform up to 40 hours of mandatory manual labour per week “is just another crazy idea from Hudak.”
And me? What do I think? Two things.
I think Hudak’s intentions might not be half-baked. I think his initiative, however, is.
Hudak’s intentions: No one can look inside the PC leader’s little round head to determine the full extent or purity of his intentions, but if he intends to make prisoners rake leaves or collect garbage instead of play cards in order to better prepare them to re-enter society with useful job skills and more education, then society as a whole will receive a benefit.
If Hudak intends to take any monetary savings connected to his work gangs and make some form of restitution to those who suffered losses as a result of certain crimes, then some citizens will receive a benefit.
But can we attribute such intentions to his initiative to send prisoners to do mandatory work such as “raking leaves, collecting garbage and cleaning graffiti?”
I don’t think so. Though Hudak attributes ‘value’ to the manual labour (“He expects the value of the work... would cover the added cost of security and travel... but would also set aside a $20 million contingency fund in case it doesn’t”) I don’t think the value is in sound education or meaningful job skills that will help anyone in the future.
$20 million spent, in my opinion, on meaningful education and job skills is a sound investment in Ontario’s future. And Hudak’s plan has less to do with investing and more to do with inventing. Or re-inventing, i.e., the chain gang.
I’ll let Michael Den Tandt have the last word:
“And of course there's the now obligatory crime wedge issue, whereby right-thinking, law-abiding folks are invited to get mad at the lousy, despicable felons and crooks.
“So the Conservatives would use public money to have convicts, presumably in striped jailhouse outfits or Guantanamo orange, paraded along the boulevards, picking up trash and cutting grass.
“As a campaign platform, it is truly pitiful. It throws the door open to Horwath and the NDP to do something interesting, if they can.” (May 31, London Free Press)
***
If you feel Hudak’s plan has some merit, please let me know.
Please click here to read deep thoughts from a conservative think-tank.
.
It Strikes Me Funny: Finally. Hot sticky weather
Deforest City, land of tarmac, is finally warming up.
Honestly, it took me almost 6 weeks to get used to the cool, wet spring weather.
Now - I’m sure - it will take me almost that long to acclimatize to the hot, humid, muggy, sticky weather that typifies summers in our corner of the ever-warmer universe.
I look on the bright side, however. I can now regularly use my favourite sticky summer line...
“I would have got here sooner but I was stuck to the vinyl seats in my van.” [photo GH]
Feel free to use whenever appropriate.
***
Please click here for more It Strikes Me Funny.
.
Honestly, it took me almost 6 weeks to get used to the cool, wet spring weather.
Now - I’m sure - it will take me almost that long to acclimatize to the hot, humid, muggy, sticky weather that typifies summers in our corner of the ever-warmer universe.
I look on the bright side, however. I can now regularly use my favourite sticky summer line...
“I would have got here sooner but I was stuck to the vinyl seats in my van.” [photo GH]
Feel free to use whenever appropriate.
***
Please click here for more It Strikes Me Funny.
.
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