Diehard, not.

(I don' care'f I do die do die do die do ... Johnny Cash.)                   Up, Down.                                     Ides 

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Contents: David Suzuki & Jeff Rubin, Oratory List, All vs Honey Bees, and Here's for the Pope ... uh?.

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Coming into focus (perhaps). So the Musak^® from our Neil is the same, almost in focus: Hey Hey, My My with Crazy Horse in 1991 & this year in Australia, 2013; & Johnny.

Luckily I have kids, some of whom still talk to me; a constitution which has survived considerable abuse; and an abiding willingness to laugh at it all (including myself) - accidents of birth and temperament for which I am humbly grateful.

Can't be posting on the Ides of March without a tip to Julius Caesar (from Act I scene 2):
        Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March.
            Caesar: He is a dreamer; let us leave him. Pass. 

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There's a lot of good straight talk in this: David Suzuki & Jeff Rubin at University of Western Ontario in October 2012 (45 minutes). If you just want the protein: they speak for 20 minutes each, Jeff Rubin begins at 4:30, David Suzuki at 24:30; followed by a Question & Answer session (45 minutes).

This short clip from the Q&A is where the focus came from: "We need to get down on the ground and actually meet living human beings and engage ourselves in discussion." Yes. Easier said than done but, yes.

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But as I consider the audience these men are addressing in the light of the remarks by Gwynne Dyer (below) a light begins to dawn. It is too late to even bother trying to reach the bourgeois burghers and their good wives because the problem is now in the hands of the great unwashed - the under-educated in the West (including the shaken but still smug union members) and the huge numbers in China, India & Africa whose dearest wish is to grow up and somehow (any how) become just like them.

Someone I know, a climate scientist, gets on a plane to go south because the lengthening days in March have inspired him and he wants the warm sun, not when it comes to him, but right now! (Many in my family do the same.) And CO₂ be damned!

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Some revealing moments in the gnocchi from Keith Marnoch, the host, Director of Media at UWO, who says things like "entertaining and interesting," and "we're hoping for a really good show," and "we hope that you enjoyed yourself." He might have said, "Maybe now you'll get your fricken thumbs out!"

An American pundit (who apparently believes in miracles) writes: "But surely we would all feel better about the future if the full creative power of American capitalism were unleashed on the climate problem." Oh really?! 

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 Collection of good speeches:

Severn Suzuki: UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, June 1992.

 

Lula da Silva: COP15 Part 1 & Part 2 in Copenhagen, December 2009.

 

Ian Fry: COP15 in Copenhagen representing Tuvalu, December 2009.

 

Noam Chomsky: How Climate Change Became a Liberal Hoax, early 2010.

 

Gwynne Dyer: Hot Hungry and Hostile: The Geopolitics of a Warming World (skip to 'Keynote Address') at the BC Power Smart Forum, October 2011.

 

Anjali Appadurai: COP17 in Durban, December 2011.

 

Dennis Meadows: Perspectives on the Limits of Growth during the Smithsonian Institution symposium, March 2012.

 

Jim Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change with TED, March 2012.

 

José Mujica: president of Uruguay Rio+20 in Rio de Janeiro, June 2012.

 

Tim Jackson: Green Growth, Fairytale or Strategy? at Technische Universität / University of Technology in Berlin, December 2012.

 

Naderev Sano: COP18 in Doha representing the Phillipines, December 2012.

 
I don't know if any of this does any good at all; and no way of knowing. No surprise anymore though that none of them speak to me eh? 

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We kept bees on the farm - through the propitious arrival of a swarm one day into a bush by the house, and a friend with the requisite knowledge & equipment being handy. And of course Jimmie Rodgers' hit Honeycomb in 1957 when I was 11 permanently spliced honey bees and yellow (Oxum) into the primary sexual circuit, the main bus.

So reports of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) touch me deeply (as it were). The latest political evilness of sacrificing the bees to expedient economics by Owen Paterson is here in The Guardian: Owen Paterson set to scupper EU plans to ban pesticides.

This Wikipedia paragraph includes the phrase "sub-nanogram toxicity". A nanogram is not very much - one billionth of a gram. I can hardly grasp the notions of parts per million (ppm) & parts per bellion (ppb) - they escape my imagination. A while ago I mentioned a study (abstract here) showing that less than 5 ppb of bisphenol A (BPA) in the water more-or-less stops reproduction among brown trout. To make a comparison I (awkwardly) convert "sub-nanogram toxicity" into something less than 1 ppm by body weight (100 milligrams for a slightly above average honey bee worker apparently).

These are infinitesimally small amounts! The purveyors of this neonicotinoid poison should be prevented. That they are not - and that anyone sells or uses it at all, knowing what it does ... leaves me speechless. 

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Of course, making such infantile montages marks me as a yahoo ... so ...

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I sent out one more email suggesting an action to follow up on Suzuki's remarks (short clip here): sandwich boards in Dundas Square saying 'Ask Me." ... And had a response: at least two ready to go out together and more taking an interest.

Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.                                         Robert Frost.

"Diehard!" I thought.

But within a few hours it became too confusing, overwhelming. I was terrified to see them again, freaked; did not want to be myself anymore; cut my hair, shaved off the moustache & goatee and pulled out.

That's it I guess.

Be well. 

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Irritation at Daylight Savings Time lingers on (usually for months). Send the meddling bureaucrats responsible for it home! Fire every last one of 'em!

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Ah! The problem with the keyboard is the built-in mousepad thingy. Too complicated to figgure out how to disable it in Windows7 so - duct-tape & cardboard have stopped the sucker and I am the happier for that.   :-)

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Down.

Totally Different. ('Eunoia? Is that it?)

                                                                                                                                                              Up, Down. 

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Three foundations:                                                               [I like it when things come in threes :-)   ]
              1962 - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson (1907–1964);
              1973 - Small Is Beautiful, Fritz Schumacher (1911–1977);
              1972 - The Limits to Growth,
                                   Dana Meadows (1941-2001), Dennis Meadows (1942-),
                                   Jørgen Randers, Bill Behrens, and many others.

Habits die hard, says Dennis (last man standing); three lessons: 1. It requires effort; and, 2. It's uncomfortable; but 3. It's possible. Four videos of him (~50 min. each): 2009, 2010 (90 min.), 2011, & 2012; and a symposium in March 2012 - here is a playlist.

I read these books in the 60's & 70's when they were written; some of my friends were already talking seriously about the greenhouse effect by the mid-70's; my 'A' subjects were maths & biology - Doh!    Better late than never I guess - for ethical if not practical reasons :-) 

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So ... towards the end of the 2011 lecture (at minute 29), he says, "I think we need something totally different."

Sure, he is talking about discount rates but the question hits me at another level and I am wondering: What would 'totally different' look like? (vis-à-vis the approaches of various social movements towards somehow re-establishing balance).

I have found two clues:

1. Efficacy in this context depends absolutely upon the nature and the strength of relations between individuals - that is what (fundamentally) moves us. Consider the word 'saw' in Luke 10-33 (possibly qualified by Matthew 18-15).

 

2. Economics and other (dismal) models based on the metric of price simply do not wash - they are irrelevant. Dennis Meadows proves it in a specific case - just try it on as a general principle. Why is my inbox jammed with messages asking me for money but offering no connection? Try Matthew 6-31. Too extreme? Look again at Theresa Spence and Raymond Robinson.

 
 
That's it; and both couched today in a manner which I am certain will distract and mislead you. Please believe me gentle reader that I do not quote scripture as if I were any sort of a Christian, not at all. 

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The list of disconnects becomes longer and longer:    Some people say to me, "So then, H. sapiens has had it. Oh well. Ho hum." Some say, "I have to bring up my kids," or, "pay for my house," or, "build up my career." Some just refuse to think about it at all. Some think about it and are overwhelmed and so stop thinking about it on purpose. And some are doing what they can.

And somewhat, a year or so, before the point at which abatement alone will not serve, we are already turning to adaptation & resilience. Resilience is very good - but is it a condition or a result of right relationship? And resilience or not, our best (last and faint) hope is for immediate economic collapse.

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When I first read In Watermelon Sugar I got it wrong (I thought it was about sex but you know, I was in my 20's, everything was about sex). A friend took me up on it at the time but I wouldn't hear it. Thirty or forty years later I read it again and finally understood that I had got it wrong and how.

Just this week I looked at Brautigan's potted bio on Wikipedia, discovered that he died by suicide at 49, AND that his body lay for a month or more before being found. Hell, my father (not a suicide but dead nonetheless) only lay for a week! Something else I might be wrong about.

I am often wrong and it often takes a long time to figgure out - decades.

And I probably never get anything right either :-) I re-read In Watermelon Sugar this week and except for some tantalizing almost-connections I understand it no better than I did back in 1968. Reading some of the reviews at Brautigan.net I see that no one else does either.

A very old friend said to me recently, "Our time here is short anyway - so we should do our best to be happy." Yes. Quite. I wonder if predicate logic permits happiness in the midst of economic collapse - I think so. 

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Problématique:    Humanity's predicament, the complex of problems facing humanity; and a central concept in The Limits To Growth.

One of the problems certainly is just that - the snake has so many heads. Hydra (defeated by Hercules only with the help of Iolaus - a lesson perhaps) and the Gorgon sisters all rolled into one and no Greek hero in sight.

Some of the fragmentation and competition among the aforementioned social movements stems from this: there are many issues and no clear hierarchy to provide an encompassing category. The 'environmental catastrophe' is close, 'décroissance' is close, but so is 'the 1%' and even 'the subject/object split in Graeco-Roman thought' ... lots of 'close', but no cigar.

Problématique may be the best; but it embodies a similar quandary to that faced by Stéphane Dion - and his 'Green Shift' failed to ignite. It takes time and study and probably a bourgeois education to understand.

If the Christians had managed to perfect humankind maybe everyone would already have that bourgeois education; anyway there is no time for that now (nevermind other impracticalities).

Just have to get on with no rubric banner I guess. 

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Complete cultural disconnect: (coming soon to a theatre near you)

The very last sentence of The Limits To Growth:

The crux of the matter is not only whether the human species will survive, but even more whether it can survive without falling into a state of worthless existence.

Maybe it merits thinking about what 'human flourishing' and 'worthless existence' might mean? And now, at the end of his (last?) lecture, I hear Dennis Meadows saying:

If we go through this period of decline without foreknowledge, without preparation, I fear that it will strip away many of our fundamental values and that we will be left afterwards with a system that is very very unpleasant.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see what 'unpleasant' might mean.


So-oh, clue #3 - with a video (1.5 min.) this time: "If you go out'a here promoting sustainable development but your actions are consistent with overshoot, that's what you're gonna get."    [There had to be three eh? :-)   ] 

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Catching up on a few threads:

Tim DeChristopher is in a half-way house (see here and it was confirmed for me by someone who knows him), and due for parole as soon as April.

 

Stephen Gardiner has written several notable essays: Human Rights in a Hostile Climate; and, Geoengineering and Moral Schizophrenia: What’s the Question?. He keeps a list of publications on his website.

 

Simon Critchley published this just before Christmas: The Freedom of Faith: A Christmas Sermon.

 

The UN's FAO tells us that as of December 6 the Food Price Index was falling. (?) Hard to believe.

 

Paul & Anne Ehrlich ask a good question: Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided? January 8, 2013. "Yes," they say; but qualify it so heavily as to mean "No".

 
 

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Stephen Harper is up to dirty tricks; but Theresa Spence is right - it is a distraction. Nonetheless I am left thinking about 120 million over 7 years for 1,800 people - that's ~10 grand a year each - hard to ignore. I was mayor of a small isolated town for a while. We had about 400 grand in the bank and figgured we were all set for life. The mayor got no salary. Granted there were only 150 of us (scale it up is 5 million) ... still, 125 grand a year each for Theresa Spence & Clayton Kennedy?

That said, last word goes to Pam Palmeter: "... to stop Harper’s destructive environmental agenda."

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Another eu-word: Eunoia, meaning "well mind," or "beautiful thinking," according to Wikipedia. Not in the electronic OED I have (and that does almost piss me off :-) but I bet it's in the 24-volume.

That's it. Be well. [Try a few bars of Euphoria, see if that works :-)   ] 

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Down.