“We need acts of restoration, not only for polluted waters and degraded lands, but also for our relationship to the world.”
-Robin Wall Kimmerer 

Confession: I’ve always had a huge problem with the word “sustainability.” Last week I attended the inspirational Resurgence online Festival of Wellbeing, featuring, among other fine speakers, Robin Wall Kimmerer, scientist, professor, founder of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment and author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Robin spoke about that problematic word, and she quoted what an Indigenous elder had to say about it: “That sounds to me like they’re trying to find a way to just keep on taking. It’s not our right to keep taking. When your feet hit the ground in the morning, we should be thinking, what can we give?” https://www.resurgence.org/

The 27 September climate protest march starting from the Université de Sherbrooke (see photo) was supported by barely 200 people, with a smattering of elders and primary school students. The Université de Sherbrooke has a student population of tens of thousands, but where were they? Bishop’s University students were in short supply too. Despite the daily alarms sounded by climate scientists, who declare that with the ever-increasing rise in carbon emissions will come more and more catastrophes, what is going on with such a disengaged group?

Why won’t Canadian students do anything to help their own future?

Well, of course some students are rising up to challenge and change the narrative away from submission to a broken political agenda that only cares about more accumulation as opposed to one of inclusivity with Nature. All young adults need to embrace a new economic model and have a policy centred on degrowth. Survival depends on it.

If you are still not convinced, this talk is of critical importance for you: https://tinyurl.com/Earth-health-summary 

In an article titled “La marche pour le climat a-t-elle encore un sens?” (“Does marching for the climate still make sense?”, Le Devoir, 1 October 2024) Juliette Husson confirms what so many of us feel: that in the midst of unprecedented Earth disasters, ecological matters are no longer being taken seriously by the governments, corporations or citizens of the global north. Husson concludes that it is vital to continue to protest, even though many people do not believe that protest is relevant or the priority while they are concerned about solving their perceived economic woes. Climate protests renew our commitment to Nature, Husson asserts. https://tinyurl.com/march-for-climate 

Even the success of the Canadian carbon tax, which has helped reduce Canada’s carbon emissions and has put more money back in the pockets of lower-income families, is now being threatened by both the Conservatives and, bizarrely, the New Democratic Party. https://tinyurl.com/carbon-tax-faces-axe 

Misinformation has contributed to a dangerous retreat from confronting climate risks, even though most people have seen how climate breakdown is showing up in their own vicinity; take last year’s Québec wildfires as our local example. 

Truly wanting less, and even ultimately knowing that we have enough, is not an easy task to internalize if so many in our western society want more. (By the way, this conversation is not motivated by some plot to get the poor to accept a more debilitating poverty. A policy of austerity has already accelerated poverty. No: it is the top 10% of households that are ransacking the planet.) 

There are so many questions as to why, how and when to create a rejuvenated society, but working against this realization is today’s corporate fetish-technology fundamentalism, which declares that all our ills will be solved by the future magic of technological innovation. In his article “Ironic and Tragic: Technological Fundamentalism and Our Fear of Limits,”Robert Jensen writes: “We lack strategies that we can implement tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t wrestle with the challenge today. It is ironic that technological fundamentalists believe we can do anything we set our minds to, except limit the voraciousness of the human enterprise.” https://tinyurl.com/jensen-ironic-tragic

Working contrary to the anti-Nature pie-in-the-sky techno-fix delirium are many great thinkers, including Indigenous people and artists. On a global trajectory to realize a humane response, the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is in effect till 2030, alongside the Sustainable Development Goals. These endeavours cannot succeed too soon. Many people think this decade is humanity’s last chance to halt the climate and biodiversity crises. 

Sometimes it feels that it is impossible to keep up with all the latest scientific and cultural news, which is intensifying. My file named “Biodiversity” has so many subjects of interest that I am adding a new file about the upcoming UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16) taking place in Colombia from October 21, 2024, because news reports and media announcements are soaring. The UN Climate Change Conference in Azerbaijan (COP29) beginning on 11 November this year is a separate file. The information I have accumulated on subjects from conservation, activism and ecocide to a plastics treaty is enormous. The abundance of information coming to us daily and the red flags that are increasingly attached must make us not only stop and consider where we went wrong but also reflect urgently on a system of knowledge and education that left out what is most important: our place in Nature—not beside Nature or playing the puppeteer for our distant cousin Nature.

The safe carbon level of 350 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere 35 years ago has now reached 421.9 ppm, never before realized since the dawn of humanity. We’d better re-evaluate what is important to us, because we have arrived at a rapidly shrinking window of opportunity to turn towards a clear and safe planetary response and act decisively for our long-term survival. The victims of Hurricane Helene know viscerally what survival means, as do many others in the seemingly endless cycles of catastrophic paths of ruined lives around the world because the global north can’t get its act together. 

Could it be that the usual extreme-right demagogues’ mantra that sings about how down and out the economy is, or adding on to that, how immigrants are to blame for a undefined national malaise, has successfully permeated so deeply the public consciousness and is now a key reason that people refuse to pay attention to climate science? They feel perhaps that acting on climate/biodiversity issues should no longer be on the agenda, even though ecological health is the foundation for all economic wellbeing.

Trump’s “Make America Great Again” doesn’t include cleaning up air pollution or resolving how to reduce atmospheric carbon levels. Has all of his poisonous bluster finally infected the body politic to such a degree that most people really believe that the USA, or for that matter, Canada, is a failed nation because our pay cheques are not large enough to consume even more? Again, the notion of wanting less, for mainstream economists and not only would-be dictators, is a profoundly anti-capitalist concept and according to these people must be blotted out from any discussion that looks at our perceived ills.

In 1972 the Club of Rome published The Limits to Growth. This seminal book is even more relevant now. Each of us needs to reflect on our own propensity to demand more from a finite planet. 

“I think calling it climate change is rather limiting. I would rather call it the everything change because when people think climate change, they think maybe it’s going to rain more or something like that. It’s much more extensive a change than that because when you change patterns of where it rains and how much and where it doesn’t rain, you’re also affecting just about everything. You’re affecting what you can grow in those places. You’re affecting whether you can live there. You’re affecting all of the species that are currently there.”

Margaret Atwood

There has been a flurry of activities at the United Nations this week. The Summit for the Future included a Pact for the Future with a Declaration for Future Generations. Following the summit, a day was set aside to address the existential threats posed by sea-level rise.

On September 26, the UN’s International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons again stressed a key goal of most UN members. At the same time, the UN Sustainability Development Goals are being heralded as key objectives even while they flounder before 2030, the date by which they are meant to be reached. World “leaders” debated all these issues.

These well-intentioned summits have brought into focus the enormous dangers that are now upon us. The following article lays out some of those climate realities. Let’s hope that governments wake up to their responsibilities while there is still time. https://www.un.org/en/high-level-week-2024

The polycrisis mentioned by Margaret Atwood is transforming every aspect of life on Earth. Health, world cultures, ecological integrity, political stability, social justice and Earth systems are fraying rapidly as a direct result of the burning of fossil fuels,

The acceleration of extreme temperatures in the 21st century was particularly intense in 2023. It’s hard to forget the massive air pollution and ecological devastation brought on by Québec’s wildfires, which caused 15 million hectares to burn, seven times the yearly rate in the last 40 years.

Recently the global flooding of 2024 hit Central Europe. Meanwhile in Brazil, the doubling in one year alone to 3.3 million hectares scorched in August’s wildfires resulted from the accompanying mega droughts. All this was caused by a 165-year rampage of unabated destructive fossil fuel carbon colonialism, which has brought mayhem to all parts of the world. 

The world is now experiencing flash droughts as well as flash floods. Scientists now speak of “climate whiplash,” when wild swings in weather have devastating consequences. Abrupt transitions from drought to flood and vice versa are intensifying. But this climate whiplash is becoming even more prevalent with our winter’s increasingly early transition to spring. A sudden heatwave at the beginning of March will cause trees to produce flowers that will die in the subsequent freeze. Maple syrup production has become more and more unpredictable. As usual these extreme events are impacting the global south’s ability to cope. And they exact an ever-increasing toll on animal health and are ultimately pushing forward extinctions. 

The new levels of heat are responsible for endless infernos/flooding/pollution, but these same scourges, self-inflicted by humans, have spawned the spread of unanticipated health risks. Phoenix, Arizona recently experienced 113 consecutive days on which the temperature reached at least 37.7C, causing massive health issues. And it is not only landmasses that are succumbing to these ever-intensifying heatwaves. In the Mediterranean region, which is warming 20% faster than the global average, water temperature is expected to rise by between 1.8C and 3.5C by 2100. https://tinyurl.com/Mediterranean-heatwaves

But to better take in how climate warming has infiltrated all aspects of life on Earth, here is one more astonishing example: heatwaves in Zimbabwe and Siberia have released previously dormant anthrax spores in the soil, killing thousands of animals and some humans.

The climate scientist Johan Rockström put humanity’s planetary crises into undeniable focus with his 2009 “planetary boundaries,” which show graphically the limits our Earth system will tolerate, riddled by human interference, before it is destabilized. Climate heating and biosphere integrity are just two boundaries in the framework that can tip all the others. Rockström has called the Holocene epoch the “corridor of life,” as these last 12,000 years of stability gave humans the ability to flourish. “The planetary boundary (PB) approach aims to define a safe operating space for human societies to develop and thrive, based on our evolving understanding of the functioning and resilience of the Earth system,” Rockström writes. https://tinyurl.com/boundaries-for-stability

In an important no-nonsense appraisal of where our Earth system is heading, Rockström’s recent TED Talk describes our grave situation as an “act now” emergency.

https://tinyurl.com/Earth-health-summary

Upending the Holocene’s climate predictability is also turning up the heat for democracies. Peaceful protest has always been regarded as a pillar of democracy. Now the right to assemble for climate demonstrations is being crushed by many so-called free states. Long prison sentences have been imposed to suppress and deter protests that highlight climate breakdown and the lack of political will to stop it. https://tinyurl.com/suppression-of-activists

A recent New York Times article, “How Extreme Heat Is Threatening Education Progress Worldwide,” explains how climate chaos has impacted children’s ability to go to school and concentrate in many of those countries that did not contribute to this heatwave crisis. Yes, heatwaves caused by accelerating climate breakdown are a social justice issue. What child can learn when the temperature is 38C? Unlike their grandparents, millions of students are missing weeks of school. https://tinyurl.com/education-and-heatwaves

However, it is not only disadvantaged children who are suffering during these unprecedented heatwaves. Many construction workers have died recently because they are not being allowed to take extra breaks in conditions of extreme heat. “Even as extreme heat raged across the southern United States this summer, the governors of Florida and Texas struck down heat protections for outdoor workers. Construction companies and agricultural firms lobbied against the rights of workers to water, shade and rest breaks when temperatures soar,” writes George Monbiot in The Guardian.

And let’s clearly understand that escalating wars multiply the risks for an already fragile Earth balance both ecologically and socially, and push otherwise commendable and positive Earth solutions off the priority lists of war-zone embattled governments. Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar and at least ten other countries are affected by wars that kill, contaminate, and produce even more carbon pollution. 

On top of this, “democratic” governments are sanctioning and enabling international arms trading. In a webinar I attended recently, hosted by Campaign Against Arms Trade, an extremely knowledgeable panel discussed the unparalleled access that large arms manufacturers have to the highest levels of government, even though those companies do not bring large economic benefits.

Bluntly said, the blowing up of oil refineries and dams using bombs provided by western countries causes untold environmental destruction, thereby accelerating even more intense heatwaves. https://tinyurl.com/arms-trade-destruction

Often not associated with planetary concerns is “ecotourism,” of which I will write more in a forthcoming article. Building hotels and boutique resorts in or beside nationally and internationally recognized parks and ecologically sensitive zones that are often protected by Indigenous people and farmers is a major source of strife. Degrading areas so that rich tourists can view sanitized landscapes that then suffer landslides and other whiplash climate eventualities must be a priority for governments to prohibit instead of promoting. One such assault that is currently occurring is in the UNESCO World Heritage Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve in southern India, where multinational hotel franchises are swaying local officials to wreak havoc.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist and policy expert who has just published What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures, a book of essays, poetry and conversations from many of the world’s most engaged voices, who write passionately and embrace a pathway away from heatwaves, climate breakdown and biodiversity loss. The question, “What If…?” is one we must not leave to others. Rather, we must act as if a better climate future is possible. There are solutions. https://tinyurl.com/getting-solutions

“Even if there were no environmental pressures caused by population growth, we should still support the measures required to tackle it: universal sex education, universal access to contraceptives, better schooling and opportunities for poor women. Stabilising or even reducing the human population would ameliorate almost all environmental impacts.”

George Monbiot, author and journalist 

“The UN has been over-anticipating fertility decline and underestimating population growth.”

Jane N. O’Sullivan, population and climate change researcher 

World Population Day is July 11 and its purpose since 1990 has been to highlight major social justice and environmental concerns relating to human population. https://tinyurl.com/events-population-day

Although the UN has dedicated resources to do more to protect women’s right to be in control of their fertility, 40% of women have still not achieved this. Cutting back on family planning initiatives, even in the United States, has forced many more women and children into poverty. Furthermore, population growth in general makes those very voluntary family planning goals more difficult to achieve. Although fertility rates are lower in many parts of the world, this will have very limited impact on population growth in this century. If the ecological foundations for human wellbeing are to be stabilized and enhanced, society must look to other ways than solely fertility rates to bring this about. As we will see, a smaller population brings many benefits. Economic growth does not necessarily translate into a healthier society. On the contrary, degrowth policies can have more positive outcomes. 

In a 2023 article, Jane Nancy O’Sullivan put forward the strong argument that the models showing a levelling off of population growth are inaccurate and that in the long run it will be only by family planning that world populations will decrease. “The common assumptions that fertility decline is driven by economic betterment, urbanization or education levels are not well supported in historical evidence. In contrast, voluntary family planning provision and promotion achieved rapid fertility decline, even in poor, rural and illiterate communities. Projections based on education and income as drivers of fertility decline ignore the reverse causation, that lowering fertility through family planning interventions enabled economic advancement and improved women’s education access…” https://tinyurl.com/demographic-delusions

And in a recent interview, O’Sullivan pointed out: “Family planning in Africa is no substitute for reducing the footprint of the rich countries, but even if we do the latter perfectly, we’ll still fail if world population is too high. And it would be people in high-fertility countries who’d suffer most.”

The opportunity to have an education increases literacy rates, and this in turn enables women to have a stronger voice in a country’s affairs. Today only six countries have 50% or more women in their parliaments, thereby enabling women to influence the national legislation to bring justice for more women: family planning ultimately gives greater prosperity to girls and women when they are heard. 

Large families can mean far fewer opportunities for children, and unbridled population growth in a country can plague that country’s ability to provide better health care, education, infrastructure and biodiversity protection as well as to ensure that social justice issues are addressed. 

Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren’s famous paradigm I = PAT (Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology), developed in 1970, has been successfully used to show what drives ecological destruction. “Population” is the number of humans, and “Affluence” refers to lifestyles. “Technology” includes all the ways in which aspirations are achieved, so the typical billionaire’s four homes and use of private planes would strongly contribute to that person’s impact on the planet. Population will also strongly influence the equation. The impact of the world’s 2.5 billion humans on the planet in the 1950s was far less than that of today’s 8 billion-plus population. 

Global Footprint Network assesses population’s impact on the biosphere in relation to the total biocapacity of the Earth. It looks at how most global north individuals, businesses and governments use, through consumerism as one example, more resources in a given year than the Earth can regenerate, and the entire world then suffers for their excesses. https://www.footprintnetwork.org

In 2024, August 1 is Earth Overshoot Day, the day it is calculated that humans will have bankrupted the Earth’s ability to hold its own for the year. David Lin, Science Director of Global Footprint Network, emphasizes its value: “The persistence of overshoot, for over half a century, has led to declines in biodiversity, excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and heightened competition for food and energy. Symptoms are becoming more prominent with unusual heat waves, forest fires, droughts, and floods.”

Global Footprint Network states: “If every other family had one less child and parenthood was postponed by two years, by 2050 we would move Overshoot Day 49 days.”

The deprioritization of population stabilization started in 1994 at the landmark International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. Since that time less and less money has been given to family planning programmes. The paradigm of endless growth has tragically permeated almost all political leaders’ actions. https://tinyurl.com/funding-family-planning

An article last week in The Guardian/Observer’s business section, “The Baby Bust: How Britain’s Falling Birthrate Is Creating Alarm in the Economy,” spits out all the old and disproven alarmist status quo corporate/government negative bluster regarding lower fertility rates. Only a sentence or two is begrudgingly given over to women who for very valid reasons don’t want children. This reactionary article in a supposedly liberal newspaper vividly tells us how hard women have to fight to secure their rights for a better future. https://tinyurl.com/observer-birthrate

It’s vital to link the state of Nature and population issues. Edward O. Wilson’s 2016 book, Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life makes the case for protecting half the surface of the Earth and thereby triumphantly saving perhaps 80 percent or more of its biodiversity. Mass extinction, ecological collapse and climate breakdown could be avoided. Wilson’s seminal work on island ecology in the 1960s led him to believe that the entire world’s ecological stability is found on those series of islands surrounded by human habitation, and it is in exactly that fragile habitat found on islands that an equilibrium is found and needs protection. Wilson stressed the need for Indigenous peoples to stay in those biodiverse regions, and that other people could still visit or live there, but that Nature needs to be the priority, as without it humanity would be destroyed. Wilson knew that to effectively conserve biodiversity, stewardship begins with having Indigenous communities represented in all decision-making.

The respect for incorporating traditional knowledge and for the inalienable right of Indigenous peoples to speak for and protect biodiversity has been acknowledged by the UN and in ecological studies. https://tinyurl.com/indigenous-justice

In December 2022 the target to protect 30 percent of Nature by 2030 won approval at the UN biological diversity conference in Montreal. For Wilson, that 30 percent was not nearly good enough. Before he died in 2021, he said that Half-Earth was his last wish. “I dream that I could have had a major influence in moving global conservation ahead.”

So if, in the near term, population growth will continue and not contribute significantly to social justice and ecologically positive outcomes for humanity and the rest of biodiversity, determined citizens must steadfastly take up the mantle for a thriving and vibrant green world order and push for just legislation and community involvement that reflect a commitment to protect Earth’s inhabitants. There are a thousand ways for this to happen. 

“Courage is the resolve to do well without the assurance of a happy ending.” 

Kate Marvel, climate scientist 

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

 “We need courage, not hope, to face climate change. But the scale of climate change engulfs even the most fortunate. Courage is the resolve to do well without the assurance of a happy ending.” 

Kate Marvel, climate scientist 

Our determination to set in motion a community-based ecological transformation can be discovered in a plethora of ways. The arts, farming, meditation, a liberal arts education, scientific avenues, religious practices and political conversations are all possible entry points to discussions that include Nature as our focal point.

On June 13 I attended a two-hour gathering in Sherbrooke’s Baobab Café community space facilitated by Observatoire estrien du développement des communautés [OEDC](Eastern Townships Signpost for Community Development), a nonprofit organization that has been engaged with our population since 2006. [https://oedc.qc.ca] 

The first of a series of workshops, the gathering brought together people of all ages to better understand the direction our community is striving for. Through a series of fifteen multiple-choice questions, each with three or four possible responses, we were asked what we collectively need to drive the values of our societies. Do we remain in an technocratic, capitalist, anthropocentric sphere, or do we transition towards a more democratic, social justice focused, ecocentric community? OEDC wishes to help its members, both individuals and organizations, to ferry themselves along that transition.

After two hours it was very clear that the Township citizens wanted to initiate actions that were firmly tethered to an ecocentric transition. We need to examine our role in this dangerous age of advancing climate breakdown and biodiversity loss and accelerating pollution. At the end of the workshop we discussed briefly local questions such as “Are we aware of the ecological issues in Sherbrooke?” Although I found some of the questions and particularly the answer options to be too vague, limited and overlapping, this was the first community meeting and I would expect future conversations to delve more deeply into collective actions that urgently need to be taken if, as they suggest, a “better way of life” is to be achieved. Although we wore name stickers, there was not enough time to get to know the other people present, or to discuss the questions in depth: that will come in future workshops. But what was abundantly clear was that OEDC got 35 strangers together and wish to help foster collective action. 

Tragically, it is also clear that Nature activists around the world are being relegated to the sidelines in the quest by governments, corporations, institutions and individuals to grab more extractive resources to the extreme detriment of Nature and non-western societies. By pushing at a feverish pace, corporations sing the praises of consumerism, but by in doing so they are sending democracy into a downward spiral that will undeniably place many of the promising achievements to protect Nature in utter jeopardy. This is not a harbinger of prosperity, but a death wish. Trump, Putin and company have made no secret of the fact that they wish to dismantle decades of protection. 

Even in the European Union, the 2024 parliamentary election could see the rescinding of the positive green biodiversity legislation of 2019, which would be lamented as a sought-after but failed attempt to enshrine eco-centric policy firmly in EU law. Those Earth-focused laws were at last to permeate all future activities and result in a long-held commitment to end, and thus heal, humans’ war against Nature that is best epitomized by our relentless use of fossil energies. 

In the UK, outgoing Green Party MP Caroline Lucas has long been a staunch advocate for Nature, but she warns us that we now risk shoring up the status quo by not challenging more vigorously the anthropomorphic economic and political rulebooks of most governments and corporations. This is not the time to give into malevolent populists.

We don’t want to see the heady rise of youth participation and protest fizzle out. The days of half a million climate protesters in Montréal need to transform into an increasingly invigorated activist-driven Earth agenda that can take the form, for example, of individuals coming together to refuse to pay for services that contravene health and ecologically safe practices, as demonstrated in unsafe water and sewerage policies. [https://tinyurl.com/water-actions]

A massive wave of invigorated Earth-saving climate activism is called for. Youth Climate Lab  [https://www.youthclimatelab.org]  brings the world’s young activists together to stitch a powerful network of effervescent unstoppable voices into an eco-centric movement.  “We enable young people to become leaders in the climate space by empowering them with skills, financial access and policy knowledge through the creation of tools and programs.”

Indigenous education centres reconnect and reaffirm humanity’s place in Nature. The Ulnooweg Education Centre in Nova Scotia is “Inspiring Indigenous communities through a holistic educational approach through initiatives in science & innovation, agriculture, and health while revitalizing Indigenous culture and language for the benefit of all youth and communities.” [https://ulnoowegeducation.ca] 

In the political domain, will climate scientist Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo’s success in the  Mexican presidential election translate into climate progress? Mexico can and should transition away from its dependence on fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, Extinction Rebellion’s world agenda keeps it in the news by celebrating non-violent protest. [https://tinyurl.com/climate-worldwide-actions]

An article in The New York Times brings home the contradictory values that underpin many of the elite universities’ overwhelmingly progressive student perspectives. “Introspection is required when we speak of progressives. Symbolic progressive actions are many times a smokescreen to do nothing… Land acknowledgments—when people open public events by naming the Indigenous peoples who had their land stolen from them—are the quintessential progressive gesture… The lesson for those of us in the educated class is to seriously reform the system we have created or be prepared to be run over.”https://tinyurl.com/Educated-elites

Can our Earth actions be rooted in/derived from our subconscious? “First and foremost we have to challenge our own memory, our own forgetfulness, our ancestral memories…” [https://tinyurl.com/nightingales-song]

Whether we once more go out into the night to listen to the nightingales, or to the birds of North America, our actions will be shaped by our depth of connection to Nature.

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.”

Flannery O’Connor

“It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.”

Bertrand Russell 

Last Saturday in Paris a woman placed a blood-red poster over “Les Coquelicots” (“Poppies”) by the French impressionist painter Claude Monet, saying: “This nightmarish image awaits us if no alternative is put in place.” The nightmare is runaway climate heating and biodiversity loss. The painting, depicting Nature’s beauty, is not the first to have been defaced. Young activists point to Earth treasures that will be lost. Of course these actions are meant to shock. If the portrayal of Nature is so revered, why do we allow Nature, which inspired the painting, to be desecrated? People need to accept that having less, especially in the global north, but also demanding less, will rejuvenate Earth. 

I approached Teresa Bassaletti, director of Sherbrooke’s centre for women immigrants, a few weeks ago to ask her whether immigrants, including refugees the centre supports, feel traumatized when they hear the sound of fireworks. Her answer was swift: the fireworks sound like bombs going off and the women she knows want those massive explosions, which happen frequently in summer, to end. Furthermore, there are readily available alternatives that don’t recreate the sounds of war. As a result of our conversation, Teresa and I, accompanied by seven women from the centre, went to speak to Sherbrooke city council at their public meeting on May 21. Teresa told the council that the fireworks affect the women’s lives by bringing back nightmarish memories. Many refugees suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Although chair of the meeting councillor Raïs Kibonge and mayor Évelyne Beaudin welcomed the testimony and empathized with the refugees, it isn’t clear whether the council will support a ban on fireworks when they sign a new contract with La Fête du Lac des Nations in the coming months. Will the pro-fireworks lobby be too much to withstand? A strategy is now coming to fruition for the Sherbrooke council to be in no doubt as to how immigrants and other Sherbrooke citizens are affected by those war-like sounds.

Two weeks ago I mentioned in an article that smoking ads are widely prohibited and that climate offensive products should be too, including advertising for pick-up trucks and other large vehicles. One major city council in Scotland has done just that. You won’t see any advertising for fossil-fuel-powered cars, or indeed for cruise ships or airlines, on city buses or land owned by the city of Edinburgh, because the council believes that the high carbon emissions associated with such activities are incompatible with net zero ambitions.

https://tinyurl.com/Edinburgh-bans-ads

Scotland’s capital is not the only city in the UK to ban advertisements that promote irresponsible fossil fuel use. Advertisements that show cars driving up roadless pristine mountains or forging rivers are no longer to be tolerated. Toyota’s ad campaign “Born to Roam” (all over every corner of the planet) has been banned by the UK’s regulatory Advertising Standards Authority.

https://tinyurl.com/SUV-off-roads

“SUVs are being sold on a false promise of rugged adventure exploiting imagery of the natural world,” said Adfree Cities’ co-director Veronica Wignall. “In reality, SUVs are harming Nature, polluting our air, clogging up our cities and causing tragic loss of life.”

Being climate/biodiversity literate informs us that we need to put into action what we have learnt from science and must go on to divest from many of our global north entitlements. It is not only universities, pension funds and banks that are finally being forced to take notice. Yet many of us wish to rationalize and bargain our way out of any perceived inconveniences. Recently someone told me that because they didn’t have any children they felt comfortable with flying whenever they wished, because having children is one of the major sources of more intensive consumerism and a higher carbon footprint. Comparing apples with oranges? As most of us are aware, children’s lives aren’t solely measured by their carbon footprint, and climate literate parents can inspire their children to have a very prudent consumer mindfulness throughout their lives.

Although it’s true that one of the most efficient ways to lower an individual’s carbon footprint is to have fewer children (notably in the global north), this “educated” person thought it was their right to pollute on an equal carbon level to that of a parent. Of course an Indian child’s carbon budget wouldn’t even get you to the airport. Take a private plane? Sure, they said, even though a private plane pollutes ten times as much per passenger as a commercial one does.

By hook or by crook that person demands their “credits” to add to planetary pollution. It sounds like an insane climate game to keep up with the Joneses—and the endgame is guaranteed climate destruction. That person reminded me of a pouting infant demanding her pound of goodies after seeing the baby next door devouring a corresponding mound of junk. This perverse “argument” promoting essentially rampant individualism is a legacy of capitalism gone wild. If all of us only respond to realizing our own wishes, shielded from consequences, oblivious to others, and refuse to be climate literate and protect the Earth for future generations, all is definitely lost. The 10% of the world’s population that is steadily ransacking the health of the other 90% needs to back off. Being climate/biodiversity criminals is not what humans should aspire to. 

Conversations that centre on degrowth actions by individuals, communities, corporations and governments need to be accelerated. Inspired by John Lewis Gaddis’s On Grand Strategy, the means and ends to fulfill desire or indeed achieve anything not only need to reflect the capacity to do so, but also should be tethered and tempered by a global ethic that mirrors the beauty and fragility of this world. 

Knowingly pursuing a course of action that increases carbon emissions should be a global criminal offence. While Biden is refusing to allow more natural gas export terminals in the United States, Greece, which produces 70% of its electricity from renewables, has emerged as a exporter of natural gas to Central Europe and beyond—but the gas is being imported first from the US! As Canadians know all too well, we have taken part in that extravaganza of gas exporting, which has a terrible climate and biodiversity cost.

Despite the world gas industry branding their production as a “transition fossil fuel” leading to a renewable energy commitment, their actions prove that this is not their intention. The rush to cash in on gas exports after the Ukraine war began has created on a global scale a huge hindrance to moving briskly towards renewable energies, even though solar and wind power are cheaper than the production of methane gas. (“Natural gas” is a slick way of saying it must be good if the gas is “natural,” even though methane is in the near term a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.)

Demanding that the natural world be subjugated so that those super-consumers can have it all must be stopped. Climate/biodiversity literacy starts at home. Ask yourself if you truly need those outdoor lights on all night. Scientists tell us that natural nighttime darkness is essential for insects and other animals to thrive. If we are to help the myriad forms of life to heal, can we not also be quieter? Noise is a major contributor to wildlife stress, including by not giving animals a quiet space from dusk to daylight. Fireworks are a real problem for wildlife, and allowing the use of seismic reflection for ocean oil exploration interferes severely with the ability of many marine species to function. 

World Environment Day took place on June 5, focusing this year on land restoration, desertification and drought resilience. Saudi Arabia is the “host” country for the discussions, even though it is in no small part responsible for worldwide habitat loss, desertification and drought. How could the UN allow one of the world’s largest oil producers to be the poster child for the UN’s oldest Nature education day? Nothing can change until we recalibrate, recreate and recall our seamless integration within Nature.

“In proportion as [a person] simplifies [their] life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.”

Henry David Thoreau

“I’d make this the lead story in every paper and newscast on the planet. If we don’t understand the depth of the climate crisis, we will not act in time.”

—Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org

“Half of our climate debt is hidden under the carpet of a forgiving planet. If we don’t protect it, we will cause unstoppable, permanent, and irreversible damage.” 

—Johan Rockström, joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research 

Last week several days focused on our planet’s ecological wellbeing – Endangered Species Day, May 17; World Bee Day, May 20; International Day for Biological Diversity, May 22; World Turtle Day, May 23.World Environment Day follows on June 5. These days celebrate the natural world and educate the public to be more involved with it. They are there to inform all governments too: the basis for all economics is Nature. It is vital to encourage climate and biodiversity literacy. But, as an amazing and engaging website makes clear, knowing about the climate begins with the recognition that we are one with Nature: https://tinyurl.com/Breathing-with-forest

But who is listening? People are flying more, taking cruises to formerly off-limits places such as Antarctica, and unabashedly are demanding bigger cars, all of which is astounding in light of recent world climate catastrophes. Humans appear to be living on two parallel planets: one that supports and is interlinked with Nature, and another that is encased in a human construct that knows no self-restraint and indeed flouts the most basic communion with others. (One new condominium complex in Florida has a private lift not only for you but also for your vehicle, so you needn’t ever meet anyone…)

As an example of this self-siloed individualism, over the last several months I have pointedly noticed an explosion of pickup trucks on our roads. Not only does their sheer size (and in particular the height of their front fenders) make these super-SUVs more dangerous to other road users in a collision, but they are also adding to an already alarming rise in emissions. Just last week global atmospheric CO2 emissions reached a disastrous 426 parts per million (ppm), the highest level since 4 million years ago. (This is 426 molecules of carbon dioxide in one million molecules of air.) Scientists have shown 350 ppm to be the highest safe level. It is as if people are no longer satisfied with having an SUV, which is destructive enough, and now they need to go for broke. I call this the “Pickup Culture,” whereby you can pick up nods of approval from other people for your status-riddled acquisition. Most people put very little in the cargo space.

Of course, farmers and tradespeople need a vehicle that can transport heavy building materials and farm equipment, but the articles I have read on the subject point to conspicuous consumption as the main objective in having an $80,000 Tesla Cybertruck or other off-road pickup vehicle that is constantly being promoted as a crash-through-river-and-mountain anti-Nature statement. Indeed, as most countries now ban smoking advertising, those perverse car ads that proclaim omniscient power over Nature are toxic and should not be allowed either! The global north’s 10% of world population is defined by a super consumerism whose shopping sprees seems to be limitless. No wonder climate scientists are in despair. https://tinyurl.com/Despair-of-climate-scientists

A few weeks ago, the $34 billion Edmonton to Burnaby Trans Mountain Expansion 980 km pipeline began filling with bitumen to be exported to all parts of the planet. Climate/biodiversity activists, including many Indigenous communities as well as other citizens across Canada grieved upon hearing this news, and with good reason. The pipeline will soon deliver 144,000 barrels a day. This amount will go up over the coming years, but for the sake of a minuscule quantity of the dirtiest and most energy-intensive oil produced on the planet, pristine terrain has been sacrificed, Indigenous territory violently expropriated, and the British Columbian coast put in jeopardy.

Add to this oil tanker traffic polluting with more fossil fuel to get the oil to market, and the project is untenable; include, too, new Alaskan and Ugandan pipelines further adding oil to the daily world usage. Remember that the world currently burns almost 100 million barrels of oil each day! What sort of human gives the green light to build an oil pipeline in the face of accelerating climate change? Clearly there are plenty of us who would do so. Avarice is not in short supply.

The Pickup Culture is only too happy to bleed Earth dry in order to be cool. And although the vast majority of young people want a climate action plan to be implemented now, 10% of Earth’s population is all too content to open the oil spigot. Americans and Canadians burn around ten times more fossil energy than Indians do. So-called educated people continue to fly or take cruise ships, both of which use vast amounts of oil. Amazingly, many cruises are promoted by National Geographic which receives millions in revenue when rich North Americans fly to southern Chile and take small cruise ships to see penguins and icebergs in Antarctica, along with a National Geographic wildlife photographer who accompanies them to document that they saw these animals before they disappeared because of climate breakdown. Talk about blowing your life’s complete carbon budget.

At the same time, young people try to take their governments to court to argue that a failure to protect them from climate breakdown is unjust. Most of the time, these court hearings are stopped. One major trial in Oregon ended abruptly this last week. Meanwhile, the following website unflinchingly lays out the role banks play in funding our collective 10% global north madness: https://tinyurl.com/Banking-chaos

At the same time, in northern Ontario the Omushkego people are protecting what they call the Breathing Lands, as their lands contain vast peat bogs that hold immense quantities of carbon. They wish to protect an area five times the size of Nova Scotia. https://tinyurl.com/Breathing-lands

Please read the UN Emissions Gap Report 2020 to better understand the “the role of equitable low-carbon lifestyles.” https://tinyurl.com/Equitable-living

Not sure of all the information you need to be climate literate? A fantastic booklet, Atlas of Climate Change: Changes in the Atmosphere and Risks of Warming enhances our climate/biodiversity literacy. It was written by scientists for the general public to have an informed and strong foundation to make Earth-friendly decisions. https://tinyurl.com/Atlas-of-climate

We know that conservation actions make a huge difference. A new report points out that great success has come by doggedly pursuing biodiversity goals. https://tinyurl.com/Conservation-actions, and a recent meeting attended by all countries connected to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity made headway to protect Nature at the upcoming conference in Colombia this autumn.

Finally, a world symposium on climate literacy will take place online this September. The organizers say: “The many challenges posed by climate change outline the need for climate change literacy… As climate change affects all sectors of society, climate literacy is necessary for everyone, from policy-makers and scientists to students and the general public, ensuring a well-informed community ready to tackle these challenges effectively.” https://tinyurl.com/Climate-literacy-symposium 

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

—Robert Frost

This is a conversation featuring a dedicated young man who has worked tirelessly to bring climate/biodiversity awareness to many schools and communities in Uganda. I first spoke with Nicholas in a global online meeting of people who were discussing climate breakdown. 

Nicholas, please tell us a little about your life when you were growing up.

I grew up in a rural community of Pallisa in Eastern Uganda in a pastoralist family. My family heavily relied on livestock as a critical source of food, labour and milk.

In our tribe the boys are meant to take livestock for grazing, and the girls fetch water for home use. Through this combined effort there is equal delegation of tasks and in such a way we would be able to have water at home and keep our livestock healthy. My father would sell milk, livestock and cash crops like cotton so that he could pay our school fees and handle the basic needs at home.

As I grew up we faced severe droughts, which dried up most of the seasonal wells that provided water in the village and to livestock in the community. The droughts not only depleted our water wells and grazing lands but also resulted in food scarcity. Together with my brothers, I embarked on extensive journeys with livestock in search of accessible water and grassy areas located kilometres away from their residence. We would leave at about 9am after  breakfast and come back at around 2 or 3pm.

Simultaneously, my sisters also had to walk longer distances to fetch water from the nearest available water wells and boreholes that still had some water. Although the water was not clean enough, they did not have a choice but to fetch that water. Our livestock grew malnourished and it became difficult to sell them at a fair market price. Fruits and crops also dried up. Since my father could not get enough money to fend for us, he resorted to rearing chickens to raise extra income. He would sell a tray of eggs for roughly US$2.5, which was below the market price.

In 2017, I graduated from high school and because I performed well I was given a scholarship to Kyambogo University, a glimmer of hope for me because it enabled me to study for a bachelor’s in surveying in the School of Built Environment, graduating in 2023.

Did you embrace your connection with Nature as a young child, or was it through your education that you slowly felt such an affinity for Nature and the need to protect it?

I think for me the connection with Nature was already there. I loved climbing the trees to pick fresh mangoes, and I would climb tamarind trees in my grandfather’s compound to pick and taste the fruits. We also had jackfruit, passion fruits, banana plantations, cotton, cassava and sweet potatoes. Getting these fruits fresh from the garden was exciting for me and was an exercise in trying to explore each one. We also had many trees around our compound and I noticed that some would shed leaves during droughts.

I didn’t really know as a teen that I had to protect all that we had until I reached the university. Things are different now. I no longer see so many bees in the compound, and it’s difficult to find even a single snake there, yet back in the day you would encounter a snake at almost every tree you climbed. I don’t see squirrels any more, and I don’t see any fireflies at night. So much has changed.

When did you become an activist? 

I found out about climate change from the university in 2021. Discovering that the droughts that I had faced as a teen were a result of climate change, I decided to do research and take steps to fight it so that communities like mine don’t have to face the same issues that ours faced. I knew I couldn’t do much at the time, so I decided to become a climate and biodiversity activist to spread more awareness about how climate change is affecting East African communities.

Do you and your fellow activists think you have made a difference in opposing ecocide?

I think we are making a difference. One thing we have done is educate communities about climate change. We have also planted trees in over 100 schools, and we have received a good success report of those trees surviving. Besides doing community work, we have organized campaigns on the protection of forests in Uganda like Bugoma Forest and Mabira Forest, which have been threatened by deforestation due to human activity. We have also been campaigning against the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) to protect human rights, ecosystems and our climate.

Uganda calls itself a parliamentary democracy, but one party, whose leader, Yoweri Museveni, is president of Uganda, has oppressed the opposition to such a degree that there really is only one political group. Human Rights Watch has documented human rights abuses. What is your vision for Uganda’s democracy and its ecological heritage?

I envision our democracy as one where communities are involved in most of the decision-making processes. One thing about our country is that the minority in power make decisions for their own selfish benefit without involving the community. There is a lot of corruption, tribalism and nepotism. At the same time, the opposition is prone to oppression and the risk of loss of life.

I would love to see a country where there is freedom of speech, where communities have a right to say no if they are not involved in any decision-making processes, and where there is a balance between the opposition and the ruling party.
 

Nicholas has shown great courage and dedication in climate/biodiversity action. Here he tells me of the impacts of a major oil pipeline that, if built, would run through Uganda and Tanzania. 

The East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) is a 1443-kilometre pipeline being built by TotalEnergies, China National Offshore Oil Company and the state-owned Uganda National Oil Company with the Tanzania National Oil Company to transport oil produced from Uganda’s Lake Albert oilfields to the port of Tanga in Tanzania. Nicholas, please tell our readers why you and other activists in Uganda are adamantly opposed to this pipeline.

We are against the pipeline for a number of reasons:

• Displacement and loss of livelihoods

The construction of the EACOP has resulted in the forced displacement of local communities, who have lost their lands and properties. People have been relocated without fair compensation. The project has left these people without farms, money for education, adequate shelter, and a sense of belonging, leading to increased food insecurity for those affected.

• Environmental consequences

The pipeline’s route crosses more than 200 water bodies, which are vital sources of food, provide habitat for diverse animal species, and support biodiversity. The project endangers life both underwater and on land, jeopardizing ecosystems and the livelihoods of people dependent on these resources.

Besides that, some of the oil wells for the pipeline are located in the middle of Murchison Falls National Park, which is home to threatened wildlife.

• Human–animal conflicts

The noise from the oil drilling has driven animals out of their usual territories and onto people’s land, leading to conflict between wild animals and humans. Local people’s lives are at risk, and as of today at least six people have been killed by elephants in villages around Murchison Falls National Park.

• Climate change impact

One of the most significant global challenges we face is climate change. It is estimated that the EACOP project will emit over 34 million tonnes of CO2 every year, contributing to global warming. The consequences of this will include more frequent floods, heatwaves, droughts, landslides and heavy rains. While Uganda and Africa as a whole emit a fraction of global carbon emissions, they bear the brunt of the climate crisis. This raises critical questions about fairness in addressing climate change.

• Oppression and restrictions 

Climate activists and others who have tried to oppose the project have faced severe oppression from Oil Taskforce police and the army. In addition, people are not allowed to fish or farm in areas close to the site, evidenced by the capture of fishing boats from locals who try to fish around there.

Climate activists have faced illegal detention, beatings, arrests and blackmail.

Various pro-Nature groups have accused TotalEnergies of being perpetrators of “climaticide.” Do you agree with them?

Yes. TotalEnergies is responsible for over 40 million tonnes of CO2 emissions. This means that it has made an immense contribution to the climate crisis. Besides that, most of the TotalEnergies projects have had appalling effects on human rights, ecosystems, and the health and livelihoods of people in the global south.

In your opinion, can the global south, of which Uganda is a part, prevail in its insistence on social and ecological justice as a prerequisite for an equitable relationship with a post-colonial global north that can finally bring colonialism to an end?

I believe the global south can prevail in instilling social and ecological justice. Most people in the global south are very much connected with Nature and ecosystems. To them land means food for their children, it means cultural heritage, it’s their home, it’s their source of income, and it’s also where they seek medication when they fall sick.

If global north countries do not tamper with our land, with our resources, I believe we can have social and ecological justice. Before colonialism and the scramble for and partition of Africa, people used to live in harmony with each other and with Nature.

I think if local communities are allowed to decide on their own what they do with their land, and whether they favour any specific fossil fuel project, it will be easy to have social justice. I think that before any project is set up in any global south country the different risks should be analyzed, and if they are great then the project has to be stopped without causing any damage. But with corruption and capitalism it has been easy to set up such disastrous projects that affect our climate and biodiversity.

Nicholas plans to attend the next UN climate conference with other young people from the global south. As a result of his direct experience of UN climate conferences in Egypt and the UAE, he feels strongly that the meetings offer young people an important opportunity to exchange ideas about how to protect our planet. He also hopes to study for a master’s degree in climate and society. 

Please visit https://www.stopeacop.net/ to better understand how disastrous the oil pipeline is for the people of Uganda, Tanzania and the rest of the world. You can also help by signing petitions mentioned on the website.

“The proposed route looks almost as if it were drawn to endanger as many animals as possible.”

Bill McKibben, climate/biodiversity activist

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more”

Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage 

“We need the tonic of wildness—to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of Nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features . . . the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.” 

 —Henry David Thoreau, Walden 

When, years ago, I visited the surrounding land and swam in Walden Pond, not far from Concord, Massachusetts and made famous by Henry David Thoreau, who went to live there in a small cabin in 1845, I had already read Walden; or, Life in the Woods, which describes his stay there over a period of two years. I had time to reflect on where I was going as I cycled there from Boston, and felt that I was approaching a sacred place. Oddly, there was no one else there, and I was pleased to find the water clean and inviting.

I had known since the age of 15, when I had first read Walden and Thoreau’s other writings, including On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, that I could trust his deep connection to Nature. He had built his cabin from repurposed and found materials, all for the grand sum of $28.12½ (equivalent to $938 today). I have tried to emulate his handiness and quest for living a simple life. I have never felt happier than when being with people in the tropics who do not have a door to their dwelling.

Walden Pond hasn’t changed since Thoreau was there, though the trees are broader and higher. I’m not alone in my praise or in taking a pilgrimage to Walden Pond, as thousands have come too. His sojourn there was an inspiration for the world to cherish Earth. 

The renowned biologist Edward O. Wilson wrote a letter to Thoreau more than a century later. He imagined the two of them a-sauntering through the woods and spoke of his gratitude for Thoreau’s presence in a prologue to his book The Future of Life. He even invited Thoreau to join him and a hundred others at Walden Pond on July 4, 1998 for the first Biodiversity Day (sometimes called a BioBlitz, in which local people and scientists try to find and document all the forms of life in a small area of land and water).

https://tinyurl.com/Letter-to-Thoreau

He also sang Thoreau’s praises as the “founding saint of the conservation movement,” and wrote, “a lake is the eye of the world through which—your metaphor—we can measure our own souls.”

Wilson believed that giving young people an interactive set of discussions on biology would foster a deeper love for Nature. His free 7-unit, 41-chapter multimedia work E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth, written for high school students, is remarkable. You can download the series from the iBooks Store. As an example, the description of cells is astonishing, and to see one magnified 10,000 times took my breath away. Such beauty. We are taken into the multi-faceted interlocking parts of the cell. We see how a cell lives. This series certainly helps us celebrate Nature’s wonders.

https://tinyurl.com/eow-life-on-earth

All of this brings me to the celebrations, protests, concerts, lectures, films and poetry gatherings that started in 1970 for Earth Day—a grassroots initiative that has become the world’s largest secular holiday, and that for many of us has expanded into Earth Week. Earth Day itself falls on April 22, but many times it’s scheduled to take place on the weekend before or after a mid-week April 22 to enable more people to attend. The official theme for 2024 is Planet vs. Plastics.

The deadly effect of plastics for humans and other animals is well known, so highlighting the UN negotiations on substantially curbing plastics on such a recognized global event as Earth Day makes sense. The UN negotiators are at last moving ahead with a global plastics treaty. Their fourth session starts in Ottawa this coming week.

https://tinyurl.com/UN-plastics-treaty

This weekend the Center for Biological Diversity and others in the Break Free From Plastic movement will rally to remind the negotiators what’s at stake: human rights, public health, the climate, and the environment. 

https://tinyurl.com/micro-plastics-human-health

“We need to ensure that we use, reuse, and recycle resources more efficiently. And dispose safely of what is left over. And use these negotiations to hone a sharp and incisive instrument to carve out a better future, free from plastic pollution,” said Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme Inger Andersen.

You can learn more about Earth Day at https://tinyurl.com/Earth-Day-conversation

Having a day or a week to meditate on appreciating as well as protecting our wonderful planet is clearly not enough. There are many internationally designated theme days that should also be contemplated, including, to name a few that many have taken part in, World Water Day, World Wetlands Day, World Environment Day, World Population Day, International Day of Forests, Amphibian Week, World Oceans Day, World Frog Day, World Rainforest Day, and International Day for Biological Diversity. These events are meant to educate us into becoming activists for protecting our Earth, and the global north needs to take particular notice.

Earth Day celebrates our enfolding commitment to Earth. Is Earth Day, then, the binding of all the above celebratory days, and the centre of our love for life on Earth? Many say that Earth Day is every day. Let’s make it so. 

“High-income countries use six times more materials per capita and are responsible for ten times more climate impacts per capita than low-income countries.”

Global Resources Outlook 2024

Besides the usual musical definition of “tone-deaf” there is this one: “Having or showing an obtuse insensitivity or lack of perception particularly in matters of public sentiment, opinion, or taste.” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary) 

Jubilation followed the news that a biodiverse and fecund cold-water coral reef off the coast of British Columbia had been discovered by Indigenous people and that another reef had been discovered near the Galápagos Islands. Calls to immediately protect the areas received support. At a time when warming oceans are harbingers of coral bleaching, any good news gets its rightful share of publicity, but is it enough?

A concatenation of ongoing Earth crises is upon us, but not because the warnings haven’t been voiced. Governments have been swayed by corporate money instead of being clarion voices for their own peoples’ wellbeing.

More than a century after Eunice Newton Foote recognized and articulated the greenhouse effect in 1856 (something that has often wrongly been attributed to John Tyndall), the oil companies’ scientists realized that there is long-term danger from burning fossil fuels, which increases the temperature not only in the atmosphere but also in the ocean. They kept this knowledge from the public because they wanted to maximize profits.

In 1985 the astronomer and science communicator Carl Sagan laid out before the US government the coming existential crisis that humanity would face if greenhouse gases were not urgently curtailed in the coming decades. https://tinyurl.com/Carl-Sagan-speaks

Sagan called for all nations to act together on a plan to combat the rise of emissions so that future generations could flourish. The eminent climate scientist James Hanson, testifying in 1988 in front of Congress, basically said the same thing.

In 1989, Bill McKibben published The End of Nature, the first popular book on the perils of increasing climate warming. The 1992 Rio Earth Summit helped to cement the relationship between Earth systems, economics and political engagement, and the resulting Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was signed by most countries, including the United States, and the landmark accord was the first global treaty to explicitly address climate change.

In 1992 some 1,700 leading scientists signed a letter of warning asking for immediate action “if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated.” More than 15,000 scientists endorsed a second warning 27 years later, declaring a climate emergency and detailing the need to limit the human population and reduce the per capita consumption of meat and, amongst other resources, fossil fuels. The 2006 climate documentary based on Al Gore’s book An Inconvenient Truth reached millions of people and helped launch the climate movement. 

Even though humanity has witnessed the multifaceted catastrophes brought on by rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions, there is no enforceable treaty in sight to reduce these emissions. Take methane, for example. Although it is a much shorter-lived gas than carbon dioxide, its potency to heat up the planet is many times greater. Aggressively reducing its emissions can give us some drastically needed time to focus on carbon dioxide.

However, although nations have pledged to reduce methane, the vast majority do not accurately report their emissions statistics to the UN. What emerges is a potpourri of estimates and downright lies. “Satellite data analysed by the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows methane emissions from oil and gas fields globally are around 70 percent higher than governments claim, mainly because of unreported leaks and flaring.” From Turkmenistan to the US and Canada, there is a great deal of cheating. https://tinyurl.com/undercounted-emissions

How can the UN finally call out the industries that have not curtailed emissions? Enter the MethaneSAT satellite, which can pinpoint where all the methane is coming from and hold governments and corporations accountable by “ushering in a new era of climate transparency and accountability.” https://tinyurl.com/methane-momentand https://www.methanesat.org

We also need to have an intelligent and perhaps intense discussion regarding the methane produced by belching cows, which is the greatest agricultural source of the gas and is impacting climate change. Through diet and breeding, concerned farmers are working on reducing the methane produced by cows, but more emphasis needs to be placed on eliminating meat from our diet altogether, as this would also make room for a resplendent biodiversity turnaround.

After seemingly large public climate education gains in the last 6 years, beginning with Extinction Rebellion’s 2018 creative civil disobedience strategies and, inspired by Greta Thunberg, Fridays For a Future climate actions across the globe, governments and corporations are now backtracking on their commitments to make large dents in their greenhouse gas emissions, to the dismay of climate/biodiversity scientists, social justice advocates and concerned citizens everywhere. Though some investment companies are implementing positive changes to their climate/biodiversity policies and the advice they give their clients, many of the world’s largest are erasing from their literature their resolve to do so.

A new word has emerged that describes these reactionary decisions: “greenhushing” is when these corporations no longer publicly express pro-climate business advice or frame their financial planning around knowledge based on climate science. What they say behind closed doors might lend credibility for green policies, but it’s hush-hush now. From mighty banks to corporations, mum’s the word.

https://tinyurl.com/icn-greenhushing

Suddenly, governments are afraid to affront the fossil fuel industry and their cronies and are retracting promises to spend billions on climate/biodiversity action. Even the new rules approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, detailing how public companies disclose to investors climate risks and the greenhouse gas emissions they produce, have been watered down. 

Right-wing threats to sue or haul these institutions in front of hostile government committees, suppress new pro-Earth strategies and have pressured the largest banks and investment corporations to mute their new found enthusiasm for the transition away from fossil fuels. This spells a disaster for future generations. Why would we be surprised? It has never been easy to get past the corporate self-imposed barriers that artificially separate business decisions from a more holistic planetary approach, even if that approach will ultimately distribute greater financial benefits over the long term. 

It’s not only business models that don’t accurately reflect the required impetus towards the greener technologies, ecological responsibilities and ethical obligations that many investors are now clamouring for. The highly complex scientific climate models that have been used for 40 years to guide society haven’t by a long way kept up with the on-the-ground realities of the climate crisis. Those same models that inform, amongst others, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change must reflect the rapidly unfolding climate emergency. We simply haven’t internalized what is around us. By burrowing our heads in the sand we aren’t even attuned to the crises. Yes, our bodies and minds in the west are tone-deaf to visceral reaction by Nature to the onslaught. Climate models haven’t responded to the severity of what is swiftly challenging those models, so a huge chasm has appeared. Models are no longer adequately advising humanity of future planetary upheavals. Erica Thompson’s book Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It details the growing concern with these models.

Let us be inspired by the five women Amnesty International recently highlighted for their fervent voices for climate justice.

“Local and Indigenous communities should be at the center of conversations around climate justice, and have a key role to play in seeking solutions. Their voices must be heard, including those from the youth and women, and the solutions they propose should be considered and implemented.”

Astrid Puentes, environmental lawyer, Colombia-Mexico.

https://tinyurl.com/Amnesty-activists

“The long lifetime of fossil fuel CO, creates a sense of fleeting folly about the use of fossil fuels as an energy source. Our fossil fuel deposits, 100 million years old, could be gone in a few centuries, leaving climate impacts that will last for hundreds of millennia. The lifetime of fossil fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is a few centuries, plus 25% that lasts essentially forever. The next time you fill your tank, reflect upon this.”

The Long Thaw: How Humans are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate by David Archer, geophysicist 

Monday’s eclipse experience viscerally includes all of us as beings of the universe who do not control the heavenly orbs. Most of the time we forget this at our ultimate peril. A few dozen private jets came to Sherbrooke for the occasion, spewing pollution and causing more haze.

The history of our use of fossil fuels is one of utter devastation. Wars, expropriation of lands, biodiversity loss, climate breakdown, glacial melting, vast areas of contamination affecting land, oceans, rivers and aquifers, massive human rights violations, huge health impacts and even constant small spillages of gas or oil in our streets and neighbourhoods, are leading to untold suffering that is already beginning to unfold. As oil companies in 2024 increase their obscene profits so does their legacy of pillaging Nature expand.

Four years ago I bought a small electric car, and these days I have many conversations about electric vehicles (EVs). Most people’s negative reactions to them range from passionate opposition to being worried about whether there are sufficient rapid charging stations along the roads. 

Frankly, I’m perplexed why those same educated people seem to forget that their lives have been spent travelling by plane, buying carbon-intensive products (including cars, electric or not) and generally being in the top 10% of the world’s population that is ripping apart the natural world through biodiversity loss, fossil fuel pollution and climate heating. Canada is one of the top five elite and notorious countries for overconsumption. As people accelerate their use of flights—Montreal’s Trudeau airport is getting a C$4 billion facelift to tempt them to do so—the simplest research shows that there is a lot going for electric vehicles, if only to massively lower pollution levels, as well as getting rid of the chemical stench from fossil cars’ exhaust which is not often spoken of. 

But the details make the arguments in favour of EVs appear less clear-cut and merit examination.

The majority of new cars will probably be electric by 2040. Some of the very valid questions that come up all the time concern the vast amounts on energy and water needed to produce them, as well as the difficult recycling process, on which only now is any progress being made. 

https://tinyurl.com/Lithium-questions

Like all road vehicles, EVs use tires, which through particle abrasion are a major contributor to air and water pollution, with humans and wildlife equally affected. (Fishers are suing tire companies for polluting rivers.) In fact, because of the weight of the batteries EVs carry, their tires wear out faster those of fossil-fueled (ICE) vehicles, causing greater pollution. https://tinyurl.com/Tires-toxic-pollution

And if you are considering buying an electric SUV or, worse, an electric pickup truck, think again: the fossil energy required to build those monsters outweighs any climate benefits for a very long time–and they use larger tires.

Québec’s hydro-electricity source can be counted as one good reason to drive an EV. In Québec we like to think that our hydro production is the cleanest source of electricity, but there are serious problems associated with it. Does it cause less climate heating than coal, gas or oil generation? Of course, but it releases considerable quantities of dissolved methane from the breakdown of vegetation through disturbing the water. Fortunately there is research going ahead to capture this potent greenhouse gas from the dams. https://tinyurl.com/Hydro-dams-and-methane

We also need to remember that Québec’s hydro dams come with ethical issues relating to the large areas of land that are flooded and the displacement of Indigenous communities in order to build them.

Another contentious issue relating to EVs is the mining for lithium, nickel and cobalt for the batteries, as well as the production of the batteries themselves, both of which have a vast impact on local people’s lives and the surrounding Nature. Many new mines violate the rights of Indigenous communities, and most of the time there has been little or no consultation between communities, mining companies and governments. Thacker Pass Lithium Mine in Nevada is one such devastating mining extravaganza approved by government, and it will operate on federal lands, no less. A court recently refused to rescind the mining permit despite the acknowledged harm accruing to the land and the people living there. 

Closer to home, the Québec government allowed electric battery producer Northvolt to obtain permits for EV battery production close to Montreal without going through a thorough assessment process. Considering that a different development was refused building permits on the same precious wetland area, I do wonder what twisted machinations came to pass… There have been many protests, but Northvolt is still pushing ahead. https://tinyurl.com/Northvolt-protests

Conversely, a proposal by Rio Tinto to develop one of Europe’s largest lithium mines, in Serbia, was also strongly opposed, and in 2022 the permits to proceed were rescinded, although the corporation is still trying to find a way forward. 

The devastation continues: Indonesia finds itself in the midst of huge criticism for allowing nickel mining to proceed on an island where an Indigenous uncontacted tribe lives. Adlun Fikri, a Sawai activist from Sagea, summed up the situation: “In the upstream area where they mine, it’s destructive, degrading forest, destroying forest, and causing human rights violations. The local residents here bear the cost for global ambition [net zero]. Western people enjoy the electric vehicle, and meanwhile we get the negative impact.” 

The introduction of a coal-fired nickel-smelting complex in the area is also causing considerable damage and distress.

“It is an unacceptable, false climate solution to build new captive coal plants to power nickel processing operations and to deforest such large areas for nickel mining,” said Krista Shennum, a researcher at Climate Rights International. “Electric vehicle companies should ensure their critical mineral supply chains are fossil fuel free, and foreign governments—including the U.S. and E.U. member states—should provide financial support to Indonesia’s energy transition, including to decommission these coal plants.” https://tinyurl.com/Indonesia-nickel-project 

If the global north is to break from its colonial mindset, it must stop expecting that there have to be sacrificial zones for its ill-begotten extractive technologies. A new social paradigm must ensure that social justice is the norm and basis for all actions, and ecologically driven policies must underscore it, turning away at last from the excesses of the Industrial Revolution. 

What, then, is there to celebrate about EVs? In my opinion, they are undoubtedly the lesser of two evils. In fact, I have never read a peer-reviewed study that concluded otherwise. Over their lifetime, electric cars do not pose the heightened climate risks that fossil-burning (ICE) cars do. True, it takes a couple of years to pay back all the fossil fuel emissions embodied in their manufacture, but over the lifetime of the vehicle the pollution is less than that of a typical ICE car. Every small reduction is significant. If possible, getting rid of a car is always the best solution.

EVs, no matter their size, cut down drastically the obnoxious odours, air and noise pollution where that is needed most: the city. And whereas EV reliance on fossil energy for charging their batteries slowly diminishes with the increasing use of renewables, fossil-fueled vehicles will emit harmful pollution every second of their existence.

Electric vehicles will not save us from ourselves and will definitely not stop by themselves the slide towards climate/biodiversity collapse, but they are one part of the endeavour to turn a final page on fossil fuels.

It is definitely not to our governments and certainly not to the corporations that voraciously encircle society that I look for glimpses of humanity’s better self. A week ago I visited Sherbrooke’s Café 440 on Wellington South. The café hosts many events, including traditional dancing and discussions. Possibly eighty people under the age of 40 were there to listen to Caroline Desruisseaux, who is obtaining her masters degree from Université de Sherbrooke, speak about Québec’s Indigenous people, biodiversity and climate heating. Apart from the occasional move of a chess piece, everyone was in rapt silence. All of those bright, vigilant people are the reason why there is cause to believe that we can transform our growing ecological tragedy into a celebration for Earth justice and peace.