Archive for the ‘other’ Category

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing besides remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreak, Boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Shelley

That’s the meaning of life: finding a place for your stuff.”
George Carlin Talks about Stuff

Our extra ‘stuff’ is put away in storage facilities that cover an area as large as New York and San Francisco. Green consumption was meant to make us feel better about ourselves while we continue to buy more stuff, but none of this has made us any happier. It’s critical to reassess our values. In 1972 Bhutan’s King Jigme Singye Wangchuck decided that Gross Domestic Product indicators had no bearing in defining his country’s ‘wealth, but Gross National Happiness measurements did. The bottom line is that the GDP only looks at ‘success’ through the veil of capitalistic growth. Exponential growth and its foot soldier, consumption, has been anathema to a healthy and biologically diverse planet. As we approach 7 billion people, less than a billion people have participated in the west’s economic dream, and 70 percent of all consumption is created by those same billion people. Over-consumption in North America raises the GDP, but as monetary rewards surge they blithely disregard the implications economic gains have for water quality, First Nation peoples’ lack of clean water, increased greenhouse gas emissions, soil erosion in ethanol production, mining for gold in Canada and why we are opening up the Northwest Passage to explore for new oil and gas while encouraging dangerous global shipping to proceed through arctic waters. The accelerating rape of our planet and higher GDP numbers go hand in hand with the inevitable collapse of ecological resiliency. Perhaps this is why there have been many credible attempts to have other indicators of ‘wealth’ such as the Genuine Progress Indicator and the Happy Planet Index, an index of well-being and ecological impact. ”The HPI is based on general utilitarian principles — that most people want to live long and fulfilling lives, and the country which is doing the best is the one that allows its citizens to do so, whilst avoiding infringing on the opportunity of future people and people in other countries to do the same.”  The HPI has shown that out of 143 countries Canada is rated 89th on the list for 2009 and ecologically balanced Costa Rica is at the top.
Fifty-three of the hundred largest economies in the world are corporations. Many of these corporations embody what the UN’s 1996 Human Development Report terms as jobless, ruthless, voiceless, rootless and futureless growth. An example of such types of growth in Canada can be found in the push to expand globalization and profits by selling Alberta’s dirty tar sands to Asian markets via unwanted pipelines and new coastal infrastructure. This adds up to a more divided society as well as an increasingly impoverished Earth including B.C.’s marine species.
James G. Speth, Dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale and author of, “The Bridge at the End of the World”, promotes the well-being of people and Nature through “Being, not having; giving not getting; need, not wants; better, not richer; community, not individual; other not self; connected, not separate; ecology, not economy; part of nature, not apart of nature; dependent, not transcendent; tomorrow, not today.” Speth’s book  begins with 16 graphs ranging from population growth, great floods, damming of rivers and water use, to name a few, and in each case by the time we proceed to year 2000 from 1900 measurements, consumption has spiraled to unsustainable levels.

“We stand at a critical moment in Earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise.” The Earth Charter

Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday celebrations are coming to an end after an amazing year of scholarship and activities that have given us a better understanding of the man and his legacy. His many books have inspired many of us to want to protect biodiversity. (Biodiversity is often described as the diversity of life on Earth.)  “On the Origin of Species” is inherently much more than the theory of evolution; it is a celebration of the interdependency of all life.  Darwin’s 1831-36 voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle took him around the world. His “Voyage of the Beagle” jubilantly speaks of an Earth brimming with more life than our planet has ever known. By all scientific accounts we are losing that natural wealth created over millions of years at a faster rate than ever before.

The World Wildlife Fund Living Planet Report 2006, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s ‘Red List’ of threatened species or the United Nations’ Millennium Ecosystem Assessment’s ‘Ecosystems and Human Well-Being Biodiversity Synthesis’ will enable you to understand the depth of the biodiversity crisis. As well, the Convention on Biodiversity that was signed by Canada says,” The global biodiversity target will not be reached by 2010” in time for International Year of Biodiversity. In fact, continuing habitat loss, climate change, invasive alien species, pollution, human overpopulation, and over exploitation makes any target implausible if business-as-unusual prevails. Instead of now suggesting that a 2020 or a 2050 target be considered, many scientists want the Millennium Development Goals for 2015 be the inspiration for a concerted effort to bring down the rate of biological loss. New research entitled “The velocity of climate change” published in the science journal, Nature, describes the plight of species in keeping up with moving climates. The researchers estimated that, of the protected areas such as national parks that provide habitat for species, only 8 % would have a similar climate as they have now beyond the next 100 years.  Therefore, unless we drastically lower greenhouse emissions and substantially enlarge protected areas, species will have nowhere to go when they are forced to migrate to a more hospitable climate. Humans must be included in the climate migration patterns.

No one knows how many species live on our planet. What are we prepared to do if the Earth is to continue to be home to five to thirty million species? The Earth Charter, developed as a result of the 1992 Earth Summit, is a way forward. Over the last several years, many communities have embraced the Earth Charter’s path on overcoming our greatest problems through “Respect and care for the community of life, Ecological Integrity, Social and economic justice, and Democracy, nonviolence and peace”.

Throughout the world new initiatives are taking hold to ‘take back’ the Earth. The Transition Initiative movement is based on moving from oil dependency/climate change to local resilience. It is making great headway in creating a new ethos away from planetary crisis to sustainability. www.transitiontowns.org and www.transitionculture.org

On January 16, it was encouraging to see so many young people attend the University of Guelph’s 16th Environmental Sciences Symposium. The Symposium made it clear that individuals and small groups of dedicated people do make a difference.  We can all make International Year for Biodiversity a turning point for our planet through education and behavioural change that leads us towards a new era of respect for the Earth.

On January 25 at 1PM in Thornbury I will be giving a presentation on climate change and biodiversity at the Beaver Valley Community Centre as part of the Town of Blue Mountains’ lecture series. Please join us.