Blacklit Jellyfist

Night's blind corner and,

ghosts fall downturned into a

child's faint closing hand. 

Sustainable Eating Plans for 2011

A LARGE MOTIVATION for our moving to a town with affordable housing was the opportunity to implement sustainable eating habits within our own back yard and community.

Our objectives: to live in a scenario where our food choices (as often as possible) are either home-grown, or derived locally, preferably pesticide and antibiotic free and organic.

Climate Cover-Up

Those of you who haven't visited DeSmogBlog.com should do so. A great site that works with diligence to source out and debunk the host of lobbyist-funded climate change skeptics causing confusion in the world of media.

Chances are you've come across a host of them. If you're at all skeptical about climate change, you've been suckered in. Any and all climate scientists will tell you that dramatic change is happening to our climate, and we have something to do with it.

Anything else is carefully-planned confusion by big energy groups who stand to lose a ton of money.

A new book called, Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming by James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore, exposes the global-warming denial campaign in vicious, irrefutable fashion. This book isn't some silly bit of finger-waving by activists, but a concise, well-researched (thanks in large part to my friend, Kevin Grandia) piece of journalism by people who have been immersed in the PR industry for decades.

These people are qualified to call shit...well, shit.

Here's a quote from a review of Climate Cover-Up in The Vancouver Sun:

"Climate Cover-up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming is a remarkable deconstruction of what he (Hoggan) argues is a carefully orchestrated propaganda campaign whose goal is to set the agenda in climate policy by discrediting legitimate science and manipulating public perceptions of the scientific evidence.

This isn't a book about the science behind global warming scenarios, it's an analysis by a well-informed insider of how the debate was skilfully framed by public relations experts to call that science into question, exploit the media's weakness for a good controversy and ultimately to sow confusion and doubt in the public's mind."

David Suzuki, Thomas Hobbes, Going Green

Last week, during the few hours of night when I was asleep, some of Surrey’s finest members of society came by and dumped several bags of garbage on an empty lot across the street. Not the first time this happened. In fact, it was the third or fourth in about two months. Today, as I drove to Crescent Beach with my family, I saw large chunks of rolled up carpet, half-torn bags of residential garbage, fast food wrappers galore—all within twenty meters of an oversized puddle of water labeled a wildlife preserve by the municipality. Surrey-trash love living up to their namesake, but we’re not alone.

Recent studies show Ontario is perhaps the most environmentally ignorant province in all of Canada. The supposed hub of Canada, the true beacon of all things good and prosperous. My ass. Strange as it sounds, the rural towns are the bigger culprits. People with room to compost, to actually make an effort at reducing their ecological footprint, simply don’t. Why? Laziness perhaps. Political affiliation too. Remember Frank Luntz? He was the Republican spin-doctor in the U.S. who defied decades of science by falsely claiming:

“There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science [on global warming]. Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.”

This one phrase set American environmental policy back for several years, not because Luntz was speaking the truth (science definitively derails such stupidity), but because those people who wanted it to be true, most often for the sake of capitalism and a stubborn refusal to admit the need for change, found something they could latch on to. Namely, an out and out lie. Of course, I can’t blame Luntz for the fuckwits out here in Surrey, or in Ontario, or any province in between or beyond. What I can pass commentary on is human nature.

Thomas Hobbes, in his morality framework called the Social Contract Theory, outlines a “state of nature” for all humans. Were we not, as rational beings, to adhere to certain rules for the social wellbeing of all, this state of nature would be a premise for anarchy because of four factors: equality of power (no one person can dominate over others indefinitely), equality of need (we all require the same basic needs – food, shelter, water etc.), scarcity of resources (not enough basic needs to go around), and humans are at base self-centered. Hobbes wrote this in the 1600's, but the relevance, especially the last factor, is contextually sound. We are self-centered people.

Tying morality to the environment is a difficult and most-often convoluted task. For the most part, the best way to argue for a moral obligation to nature is from a utilitarian stand-point, where one should protect the environment because of the overall good it has for the maximum amount of people. I’m shrinking a heavy philosophical debate to four-lines, so there’s plenty more to be said about that. But assuming my premise is correct, what possible cogent argument could exist for a person to acknowledge but ignore the need to change the way they live?

The absolute worst argument I’ve heard to date came from a friend of mine who, amidst her passion for her religion, suggested it didn’t matter what we did to the environment, God could fix it with a snap of his fingers when “end times” came. Sometimes a sentence is so absurd, so void of intelligent thought you are left with nothing to say. No response required to show how blatantly self-serving this comment is. No one treats their finances that way. No one would dare approach human rights with such a framework. Yet when it comes to something as simple as separating your paper and cans from trash, or replacing light bulbs in your house, or starting a compost—somehow that fits in an entirely different paradigm.

I’ve been reading through David Suzuki’s Green Guide, a tidy little book that summarizes a lot of research into an accessible read for the layperson. Three-quarters of the way through and the simplicity of change is evident. His premise is going green is often cheaper, makes more sense, teaches us to connect with nature as opposed to find ways to distract ourselves from it, and often results in better overall health. But the real kicker is how it changes our mindset. In an earlier post about PETA and the meat industry, I mentioned how Western culture is inclined to consume products without considering their source, their impact, and their repercussions on the rest of the world. Judging by what I see around me today, I’d say we have a hell of a long way to go.