Category: Communication

No signs of intelligent life!

Sometimes one just has to scratch one’s head and wonder about life!

I can’t recall when and where I first heard the muse as to why Planet Earth has not been visited by aliens, but I recall the answer: “Because alien passers-by have not found any signs of intelligent life!”

The reason that this comes to mind is that the damage that we are doing to our planet, nay to life on our planet, if we don’t embrace the reality of climate change is truly ‘gob-smacking’!

The evidence for this statement is over-powering.  Just last Friday, I republished a recent essay from Tom Engelhardt under the title of ‘The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.”  Tom’s essay focused on the lack of any change that came out of the recent Presidential election.  That essay closed, thus:

But stop waiting for change, “big” or otherwise, to come from Washington.  It won’t.  Don’t misunderstand me: as the residents of the Midwestern drought zone and the Jersey shore now know all too well, change is coming, like it or not.  If, however, you want this country to be something other than its instigator and its victim, if you want the U.S. to engage a world of danger (and also of opportunity), you’d better call yourself and your friends and neighbors to the colors.  Don’t wait for a Washington focused on its own well-being in 2014 or 2016.  Mobilize yourself.  It’s time to occupy this country before it’s blown away in a storm.

An inciteful comment from reader Jules was this:

“Don’t count on anyone doing the obvious: launching the sort of Apollo-style R&D program that once got us to the moon and might speed the U.S. and the planet toward an alternative energy economy, or investing real money in the sort of mitigation projects for the new weather paradigm that might prevent a coastal city like New York — or even Washington – from turning into an uninhabitable disaster zone in some not so distant future.”

A pity. Americans can do some things very well, the kind of stuff that merits some of the hyperbole of being the greatest nation, the ability to mobilise a nation and lead the world being one of them. We need heroes maybe it’s time for you lot to don that cape and be one.

Americans have such a potential for positive change – I just can’t imagine why this Nation isn’t leading the world to a more Earth-friendly environment.

This then came into my ‘in-box’ on Friday: Could NDAA be the Death of Biofuels in America?  The article opened thus:

The US military is one of the most important developers of new technologies leading them to a point where they can be released onto the market for public and private use. Currently the Department of Defense, led by the Navy, is attempting to reduce its dependence on oil by as much as 50% by 2020, by producing US-made biofuels.

and the author concluded:

Nicole Lederer, the co-founder of E2, despaired that, “the military often leads major economic transitions in our country. Yet right now in Washington, some shortsighted lawmakers are poised to block a potentially major transformation of our national energy supply – and also hold back the significant economic growth and job gains that would come with it.”

Russ Teal, founder of the biorefinery builder Biodico, warned that, “the military is the biggest driver of the biofuels industry right now. If Congress stops the military from doing what the military knows is best, Congress also could threaten the growth of the Made-in-America biofuels industry.”

By. Joao Peixe of Oilprice.com

Then more or less the same time as I read the piece above, in came the latest from 350.org, an essay by Naomi Klein.

Naomi Klein: Do The Math, The Fossil Fuel Industry Is Destroying Our Future

Naomi Klein was out in the shattered neighbourhood of Rockaway Park Queens last weekend, participating in the Occupy relief efforts there. In this interview she underscores the importance of both increasing local resilience as a response to our changing climate and addressing the fossil fuel industry’s business model directly. As 350.org’s Do The Math campaign makes clear, the fossil fuel industry’s business plan will destroy the planet. Bill McKibben reminded the “Do The Math”audience in Seattle this month that the global warming math is quite simple: we can burn 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide and stay below 2 degrees of warming. Anything more than that risks catastrophe for life on earth. The only problem? Fossil fuel corporations now have 2,795 gigatons in their reserves, 5Xs the safe amount. And they are planning to burn it all, unless we rise up & stop them.

So is there any hope?  So easy to think not.  But in terms of hope the answer is “Yes, yes and yes!”  Because the decent peoples of the world are way ahead of their politicians.  Take the transition movement.  I used to live in the village of Harberton, just 3 miles from the town of Totnes, Devon, in the South-West of England.

Totnes High Street

Totnes was the site of the world’s first transition movement: Transition Town Totnes.  But as the Transition US website reveals, there are now:

126 official US initiatives
437 official initiatives worldwide
33 US states
34 countries
13 languages

One of the latest has just been formed in the city where Jean and I were living until just a few weeks ago, namely Payson, Arizona.  Here’s a reflection from John Hurlburt in Payson, one of a group of committed citizens who, like so many millions of others around the world, just can’t wait for governments to ‘lead’ and was one of the founding members of Transition Town Payson.

Keep it Simple

We share a living planet as a living species. Corporate finance fuels political hate and denial. The divisiveness of global and national politics reflects an unprecedented escalating global crisis. We live in a world of constant sorrow.

Our stubborn ignorance is the greatest threat to the objectives of peace and well-being. We have become so entrenched in the ‘ruts’ of our conditioned opinions that any semblance of balanced responsibility is immediately numbed by the deliberate stupidity of well-paid spin-doctors across a global electronic media.

The recovery process is truly simple. Surrender to the scientific facts of our inclusive reality, clean house, and have compassion for each other.  The good news is that a basic natural instinct of all life forms is to survive through adaptation.

John Hurlburt

So, on reflection, I was wrong to open with the degree of irony in my ‘voice’ that I had.  This is now a world of wonderful and amazing communication channels, many of them directly ‘person to person’.  The views of the world’s peoples are now so much louder than in previous times.  I am confident that right, rather than might, will prevail.

More Bird and Fortune

The power of humour in reflecting life back at us!

It was such fun revisiting John Bird and John Fortune back in July, see That sub-prime crisis, that I found another one for your enjoyment.  On the proposal for the privatisation of British Air Traffic Control. Goes back to 1996, I think, but clearly from Rory Bremner: Who else!

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The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.

Tom Engelhardt’s essay on the recent US Presidential election.

Introduction

Regular readers will be aware that republishing essay’s from Tom Engelhardt’s superb blog site TomDispatch has been a regular event on Learning from Dogs.  Again, readers will surely be aware that shortly after this blog got under way and I requested permission to republish a TomDispatch essay, Tom not only promptly gave me permission but added that I was free to republish any others that caught my fancy.  That was very generous and, by way of example, here are links to the last three that have appeared here.  There was the essay on Ernest Callenbach in May, Magic and the Machine in June, and The West in flames at the end of July.

So on to this essay that was recently published by Tom and is called The Meaning of a Do-Nothing Election.  As someone who is not entitled to vote in American elections and is far from understanding local cultures let alone American politics, reading an essay like this is deeply educational and I trust is for you as well.  The full essay including the introduction now follows:

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[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Recently, I went back to a piece I wrote just days after the 2008 election titled “Don’t Let Barack Obama Break Your Heart.”  It reminded me that sometimes a good deal about our American future can be mined from the post-election moment.  So today, I’ve tried my hand at it again.  I’ll have to check it out in November 2016.  In the meantime, if you want to read more of my writings about the years in between, pick up a copy of The United States of Fear — or for $75 that will help this website stay afloat, you can get a signed, personalized copy (with my appreciation) via our donation page. Tom]

The Mandate of Hell 
How Not to Change the World 
By Tom Engelhardt

In the fall of 1948, Harry Truman barnstormed the country by train, repeatedly bashing a “do-nothing Congress,” and so snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in that year’s presidential campaign.  This year, neither presidential candidate focused on blasting a do-nothing Congress or, in Obama’s case, “Republican obstructionism,” demanding that the voters give them a legislative body that would mean an actual mandate for change.

We now know the results of such a campaign and, after all the tumult and the nation’s first $6 billion election, they couldn’t be more familiar.  Only days later, you can watch a remarkably recognizable cast of characters from the reelected president and Speaker of the House John Boehner to the massed pundits of the mainstream media picking up the pages of a well-thumbed script.

Will it be bipartisanship or the fiscal cliff?  Are we going to raise new revenues via tax reform or raise tax rates for the wealthiest Americans?  Will the president make up with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or not?  Will it be war or something less with Iran?  And so on and so forth.  It’s the moment the phrase déjà vu all over again was made for.

A Hell of Our Own Making

When a new Chinese dynasty came to power, it was said that it had received “the mandate of heaven.”  We’ve just passed through an election campaign that, while the noisiest in memory, was enveloped in the deepest of silences on issues that truly matter for the American future.  Out of it, a “mandate” has indeed been bestowed not just on Barack Obama, but on Washington, where a Republican House of Representatives, far less triumphant but no less fully in the saddle than the president, faces media reports that its moment is past, that its members are part of “the biggest loser demographic of the election,” and that its party — lacking the support of young people, single women, those with no religious affiliation, Hispanics, African Americans, and Asian Americans — is heading for the trash barrel of history.

If true, that does sound like a mandate for something, sooner or later — assuming you happen to have years of demographic patience.  In the meantime, there will be a lot more talk about how the Republicans need to reorient their party and about a possible “civil war” over its future.  And while we’re at it, bet on one thing: we’re also going to hear a ton more talk about how much deeply unhappy Americans — the very ones who just reinstalled a government that’s a senatorial blinkaway from the previous version of the same — really, really want everyone to make nice and work together.

But isn’t it time to cut the b.s., turn off those talking heads, and ask ourselves: What does election 2012 really mean for us and for this country?

Let’s start with one basic reality: we’ve just experienced a do-nothing election that represents a mandate from a special American kind of hell. (Admittedly, Mitt Romney’s election, which would have put the House of Representatives and Big Energy in the Oval Office, undoubtedly represented a more venal circle of that fiery establishment.)

That, in turn, ensures two different but related outcomes, both little discussed during the campaign: continuing gridlock on almost any issue that truly matters at home and a continuing damn-the-Hellfire-missiles, full-speed-ahead permanent state of war abroad (along with yet more militarization of the “homeland”).  The only winners — and don’t believe the outcries you’re hearing about sequestration “doom” for the military — are likely to be the national security complex, the Pentagon, and in a country where income inequality has long been on the rise, the wealthy.  Yes, in the particular circle of hell to which we’re consigned, it’s likely to remain springtime for billionaires and giant weapons manufacturers from 2012 to 2016.

How do we know that gridlock and a permanent state of war are the only two paths open to the people’s representatives, that Washington is quite so constrained?  Because we’ve just voted in a near-rerun of the years 2009-2012, which means that the power to make domestic policy (except at the edges) will continue to slowly seep out of the White House, while the power of the president and the national security state to further abridge evaporating liberties at home and make war abroad will only be enhanced.  The result is likely to be stasis for the globe’s last superpower at a moment when much of the world — and the planet itself — is in the process of tumultuous transformation.

Here are things not to expect: a major move to rebuild the country’s tattered infrastructure; the genuine downsizing of the American global military mission; any significant attempt to come to grips with a changing planet and global warming; and the mobilization of a younger generation that, as Hurricane Sandy showed, is ready to give much and do much to help others in need, but in the next four years will never be called to the colors.

In other words, this country is stuck in a hell of its own making that passes for everyday life at a moment when the world, for better and/or worse, is coming unstuck in all sorts of ways.

Fiddling While the Planet Burns

The United States remains a big, powerful, wealthy country that is slowly hollowing out, breaking down.  Meanwhile, on planet Earth, the global economy is up for grabs.  Another meltdown is possible, as the European, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian economies all continue to take hits.  Power relations have been changing rapidly, from the rise of Brazil in what was once Washington’s “backyard” to the Chinese miracle (and the military muscle that goes with it).  A largely American system that long helped keep the Greater Middle East, the energy heartlands of the globe, under grim, autocratic control is unraveling with unknown consequences.  Above all, from increasingly iceless Arctic waters to ever more extreme weather, rising sea levels, and the acidification of the oceans, this planet is undergoing a remarkably rapid transformation based largely on the release into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

Other than a few curious Republican comparisons of an American economy under the Democrats to “Greece,” a near obsessive focus on the death of Ambassador J. Christopher Stephens and three other Americans in Libya, and various denunciations of China as a currency manipulator, not a single one of these matters came up in any meaningful way in the election campaign.  In other words, election 2012 boiled down to little more than a massive case of Washington-style denial.  And don’t for a second think that that’s just an artifact of election year artifice.

Take climate change, which like the Arab Spring blasted its way into our unprepared midst in 2011-2012.  There was the wildfire season of all seasons in a parching Southwest and West, a devastating drought that still hasn’t fully lifted in the Midwestern breadbasket (or corncob) of the country, and a seemingly endless summer that may make this the hottest year on record for the continental United States.  It was staggering and, if opinion polls are to be believed, noted by increasing numbers of concerned Americans who could literally feel the world changing around them.

And yet none of this made global warming an election issue.  Month after month, it was The Great Unmentionable.  The silence of emboldened Republicans plugging their drill-baby-drill and lay-those-pipelines policies and of cowed Democrats who convinced themselves that the issue was a no-win zone for the president proved deafening — until the campaign’s last days.  It was then, of course, that Hurricane Sandy, the “Frankenstorm,” swept through my town and devastated New Jersey.  It provided the extreme weather coup de grâce of 2012.  (And yes, there’s little doubt that climate-change-induced rising sea levels contributed to its fury.)  Superstorm Sandy also revealed just how unprepared the U.S. infrastructure is for predicted climate-change events.

The extremity of Sandy and its 14-foot storm surge was stunning enough that global warming was suddenly forced out of the closet.  It made magazine covers and gubernatorial press conferences.  There was even a last-minute Romney vs. Sandy web ad (“Tell Mitt Romney: Climate Change Isn’t a Joke”), and in his victory statement on election night, President Obama did manage to briefly acknowledge the changed post-Sandy moment, saying, “We want our children to live in an America that isn’t… threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.”

Still, in just about every sense that matters in Washington, real planning for climate change is likely to remain off that table on which all “options” always sit.  Expect the president to offer Shell further support for drilling in Arctic waters, expect a new push for the Keystone XL pipeline which will transport some of the “dirtiest” energy from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, and so on.

Don’t count on anyone doing the obvious: launching the sort of Apollo-style R&D program that once got us to the moon and might speed the U.S. and the planet toward an alternative energy economy, or investing real money in the sort of mitigation projects for the new weather paradigm that might prevent a coastal city like New York — or even Washington — from turning into an uninhabitable disaster zone in some not so distant future.

Climate science is certainly complex and filled with unknowns.  As it happens, many of those unknowns increasingly seem focused on two questions: How extreme and how quickly?  It’s suggested that sea levels are already rising faster than predicted and some recent scientific studies indicate that, by century’s end, the planet’s average temperature could rise by up to eight degrees Fahrenheit, an almost unimaginable disaster for humanity.

Whatever the unknowns, certain things are obvious enough.  Here, for instance, is a simple reality: any set of attempts, already ongoing, to make North America the “Saudi Arabia” of the twenty-first century in energy production are guaranteed to be a climate-change disaster.  Unfortunately, this election ensures once again that, no matter what the planetary realities or the actual needs of this country, no significant money will flow into alteration or mitigation projects.

Among the truly bizarre aspects of this situation, one stands out: thanks in part to a long-term climate-change-denial campaign, well-funded by the giant energy companies, the subject has become “political.”  The idea that it is a liberal or left-wing “issue,” rather than a global reality that must be dealt with, is now deeply embedded.  And yet there may never have been a more basic conservative issue (at least in the older sense of the term): the preserving, above all else, of what is already most valuable in our lives.  And what qualifies more for that than the health of the planet on which humanity “grew up”?

The phrase “fiddling while Rome burns” seems to catch something of the essence of this post-election moment — and it has special meaning when the fiddlers turn out to be slipping matches to the arsonists.

Mobilize Yourself

Just a week after the election, the Republican Party is already gearing up to produce a new, better-looking, more “diverse,” better-marketed version of itself for the 2014 and 2016 Hispanic and Asian American “markets.”  The Democratic Party is no doubt following suit.  In American politics these days, presidential elections last at least four years.  The first poll for Iowa 2016 is already out.  (Hillary’s way ahead).  Elections are the big business, sometimes just about the only significant political business Washington focuses on with any success, aided and abetted by the media.  So look forward to the $7 billion or $8 billion or $9 billion elections to come and the ever-greater hoopla surrounding them.

But stop waiting for change, “big” or otherwise, to come from Washington.  It won’t.  Don’t misunderstand me: as the residents of the Midwestern drought zone and the Jersey shore now know all too well, change is coming, like it or not.  If, however, you want this country to be something other than its instigator and its victim, if you want the U.S. to engage a world of danger (and also of opportunity), you’d better call yourself and your friends and neighbors to the colors.  Don’t wait for a Washington focused on its own well-being in 2014 or 2016.  Mobilize yourself.  It’s time to occupy this country before it’s blown away in a storm.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The United States of Fear as well as The End of Victory Culture, his history of the Cold War, runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050.  You can see his recent interview with Bill Moyers on supersized politics and election 2012 by clicking here.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch and join us on Facebook.  Check out the newest Dispatch book, Nick Turse’s The Changing Face of Empire: Special Ops, Drones, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and Cyberwarfare.

Copyright 2012 Tom Engelhardt

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So what made me select the heading?  Well, it’s the English translation of the well-known French saying, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” that translates to “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”  As Wikipedia tells us, “An epigram by Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in the January 1849 issue of his journal Les Guêpes (“The Wasps”). Literally “The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.”  Seems to pick up Tom’s theme very nicely.

The power of consequences

That unwritten law of the power of unintended consequences strikes again.

Before moving on to today’s post, just wanted to say that our recent move to Merlin, Oregon continues to take up huge (and enjoyable) demands on our time so the opportunity to write lengthy posts on Learning from Dogs is still some way off.  Having said that with the quality of analysis that is available from others, some readers may prefer it as it currently is!

There is no better example of this than the post that follows.  It is from the blog site of Peter Sinclair ‘Climate Crocks‘.  As the ‘About‘ page says,

Peter Sinclair is a long time advocate of environmental awareness and energy alternatives. An award winning graphic artist, illustrator, and animator, Mr. Sinclair runs Greenman Studio from his home in Midland, MI.

Mr. Sinclair’s syndicated cartoons have appeared worldwide, and his work has been profiled in numerous publications, including the New York Times.  He is the producer of the YouTube series, “Climate Denial Crock of the Week”.

A couple of days ago, Peter published a post called, ““La La La I Can’t Hear You” Comes Home to Haunt GOP, in the Election, and on Climate”. I read it with interest and asked Peter if I might republish it.  In a matter of moments, I received a reply giving me such permission; here it is.

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When Al Jazeera and The American Conservative are in agreement that you have a problem, you probably have a problem.

The American Conservative:

But the problem wasn’t just that conservative media gave Romney supporters bad information. The people in conservative media also seem to have been fully taken in by the idea that Romney would win and would do so in decisive fashion, and the campaign came to believe its own propaganda, too. As York notes, Romney didn’t have a prepared concession speech. It apparently never occurred to his campaign that he would lose. That’s not so remarkable by itself, but it is just one part of the overall pattern of the Romney campaign and the conservative movement’s reaction to Obama. Romney spent years running against a fantasy record and campaigning on a series of gross distortions and falsehoods, and so it shouldn’t be too surprising that his campaign and his conservative media boosters didn’t have the firmest grip on political reality.

Al Jazeera:

After the election, a number of different people tweeted about a rather obvious connection – how the same people who didn’t believe the polls don’t believe global warming, either. There’s a further correlation here: On the polling side, the supposedly most liberally-biased pollsters actually came closest to hitting the mark, both in the Fordham analysis of national polls and a more sophisticated analysis of state polls by Emory political scientist Drew Linzer at his Votamatic website.

On the global warming side, a new study comparing climate models finds that those predicting the largest climate impacts by 2100 are the most accurate in modelling climate change that’s already occurred – specifically, humidity levels related to cloud formation. In short, the reality being denied in both cases is even worse than it first appears, so attempts to “compromise” or give conservatives “the benefit of the doubt” actually lead us further astray (since I first wrote this, David Roberts of Grist has written an excellent comparison of the twin delusions).

But there is more than just a correlation here. There is a common causal factor involved: Conservatives, trusting their guts, have created their own separate reality, with their own authorities, and their reasoning dominated by ideology, where certain sorts of facts simply cannot intrude. Election day was one of those rare moments in which the bubble they live inside collapsed.

Dave Roberts in Grist:

In the face of model projections like Silver’s, Jonah Goldberg said that “the soul … is not so easily number-crunched.” David Brooks warnedthat “experts with fancy computer models are terrible at predicting human behavior.” Joe Scarborough said “anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now is such an ideologue.” Peggy Noonan said that “the vibrations are right” for a Romney win. All sorts of conservative pundits were convinced the Romney campaign just felt like a winner.

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Empiricism won. It didn’t win because it’s a truer faith or a superior ideology. It won because it works. It is the best way humans have figured out to set aside their perceptual limitations and cognitive shortcomings, to get a clear view of what’s happening and what’s to come.

As it happens, there’s another issue in American politics where empiricists are forecasting the future and being ignored. Here’s what the Nate Silvers of climate science are up to:

Looking back at 10 years of atmospheric humidity data from NASA satellites, [John Fasullo and Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research] examined two dozen of the world’s most sophisticated climate simulations. They found the simulations that most closely matched actual humidity measurements were also the ones that predicted the most extreme global warming.

In other words, by using real data, the scientists picked simulation winners and losers.

“The models at the higher end of temperature predictions uniformly did a better job,” Fasullo said. The simulations that fared worse — the ones predicting smaller temperature rises — “should be outright discounted,” he added.

The Washington Post spells out what that means:

That means the world could be in for a devastating increase of about eight degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, resulting in drastically higher seas, disappearing coastlines and more severe droughts, floods and other destructive weather.

Just reread that last paragraph a couple of times – and make a promise to yourself, and those loved ones around you, to make a positive difference starting now.  And subscribe to Peter’s blogsite!

Animals in love

The beautiful hidden depths of the consciousness of animals

Back in the Summer of 2011, I published a couple of posts on the subject of consciousness.  The first one was called Consciousness, science or God? and the second one about a month later continued the theme under the heading of And more on consciousness.

In that second article, I concluded with these words:

Finally, do you have a dog at home?  If you do, ponder on how their conscious world engages them.  If science can’t explain human consciousness then all we have is our own intuition with regard to animals.  Not sure about you but when one is feeling a little low and a dog comes up and lays a head across you I feel a very strong conscious connection.

Hazel and Pharaoh

The dog to the left of Pharaoh in the above picture is Hazel.  Shortly before we left San Carlos, Mexico to move up to Arizona in February, 2010, this dog was dumped outside Jean’s house.  She was still in milk and Jean explained that it was common practice for female dogs to be cast out shortly after they had had pups.  The pups would have been sold for a few pesos and the mother dog was no longer of any use or value and was ‘disposed’.

We took her in, of course, and she joined the other dozen dogs on our journey to our new Arizonan home.  Hazel has the sweetest of dispositions and frequently sleeps snuggled up against me at night.  As I write these words, Hazel is sleeping just to the left of my feet.  There are times when Hazel looks into my eyes with what I can’t lable as anything other than the look of a dog in love.

So with that in mind, let me introduce you to Kate and Pippin.  As their website proposes  Kate & Pippin is “An unlikely love story“.

THE STORY

Pippin, a helpless baby fawn was abandoned by her mother on the property of Isobel Springett. Isobel’s Great Dane, Kate, adopted Pippin immediately and they have been best friends ever since.

The story of Kate’s and Pippin’s loving relationship is charmingly chronicled in a handsome book featuring the beautiful photography of Isobel Springett.

Here’s Martin Springett, author of the book.

While there’s a small degree of overlap with the first video, you’ll still love to watch this.

A collection of photos from pips’s early days. She was just a few days old when she found us. Music is by my brother Martin Springett.

To close, here’s Pip at about two and a half months old. She’s just lost her spots and is looking like a teenager, all legs! She loves grapes and bananas after her bottle. (And the music is fabulous – Artist: Jelengue “Amar Mi Verdad”)

Reminds me of that great book from Jeffrey Masson, Dogs never lie about love!

Deeper insights into who we are.

Two fascinating perspectives.

1. A conversation with Charles Taylor – THE 2008 KYOTO PRIZE

Video Messages from Dr. Charles MargraveTaylor, the Laureate of 2008 KYOTO PRIZE, Arts and Philosophy. “Feelings on receiving the Kyoto Prize” “What philosophers can do for society” “Future interest and theme”(2008/11/11)

Wikipedia describes Charles Taylor thus,

Charles Margrave Taylor, CC GOQ FRSC (born November 5, 1931) is a Canadian philosopher from Montreal, Quebec best known for his contributions to political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, and intellectual history. This work has earned him the prestigious Kyoto Prize and the Templeton Prize, in addition to widespread esteem among philosophers. In 2007, Taylor served with Gérard Bouchard on the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on Reasonable Accommodation with regard to cultural differences in the province of Quebec. Taylor currently teaches at McGill University in the Department of Religious Studies. He is a practicing Roman Catholic.

There is also a fuller biography presented here.

2. How we see circumstances is so much more important – Rory Sutherland on Perspectives.

The circumstances of our lives may matter less than how we see them, says Rory Sutherland. At TEDxAthens, he makes a compelling case for how reframing is the key to happiness.

The TED profile of Rory Sutherland explains that:

From unlikely beginnings as a classics teacher to his current job as Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Group, Rory Sutherland has created his own brand of the Cinderella story. He joined Ogilvy & Mather’s planning department in 1988, and became a junior copywriter, working on Microsoft’s account in its pre-Windows days. An early fan of the Internet, he was among the first in the traditional ad world to see the potential in these relatively unknown technologies.

The service industry!

Sent in by an old friend back in the UK.

I became confused when I heard the word ‘service‘ used with these agencies:

Banking ‘Service‘
Postal ‘Service‘
Telephone ‘Service‘
Pay TV ‘Service‘
State & Public ‘Service‘
Customer ‘Service‘
Bureaucratic ‘Service‘

This is not what I thought ‘Service‘ meant.

Then I visited my uncle, he’s a farmer, and he hired a bull to ‘Service‘ his cows. Suddenly WOW!!! It all came clear. Now I understand what all those agencies are doing to us!

A damming indictment!

Life’s strange quirks.

I’m very grateful to John H., a dear friend back in Payson, for forwarding this to me.  Enjoy!

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This is an actual letter sent to a man named Ryan DeVries regarding a pond on his property. It was sent by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Quality, State of Pennsylvania . This guy’s response is hilarious, but read the State’s letter before you get to the response letter, you won’t stop once you start. WOW Love this man.

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This is an actual letter: State of Pennsylvania’s letter to Mr. DeVries: 

SUBJECT: DEQ …. File No.97-59-0023; T11N; R10W, Sec 20; Lycoming County

Dear Mr. DeVries:

It has come to the attention of the Department of Environmental Quality that there has been recent unauthorized activity on the above referenced parcel of property. You have been certified as the legal landowner and/or contractor who did the following unauthorized activity:

Construction and maintenance of two wood debris dams across the outlet stream of Spring Pond.

A permit must be issued prior to the start of this type of activity. A review of the Department’s files shows that no permits have been issued Therefore, the Department has determined that this activity is in violation of Part 301, Inland Lakes and Streams, of the Natural Resource and Environmental Protection Act, Act 451 of the Public Acts of 1994, being sections 324.30101 to 324.30113 of the Pennsylvania Compiled Laws, annotated.

The Department has been informed that one or both of the dams partially failed during a recent rain event, causing debris and flooding at downstream locations.. We find that dams of this nature are inherently hazardous and cannot be permitted. The Department therefore orders you to cease and desist all activities at this location, and to restore the stream to a free-flow condition by removing all wood and brush forming the dams from the stream channel. All restoration work shall be completed no later than January 31, 2010.

Please notify this office when the restoration has been completed so that a follow-up site inspection may be scheduled by our staff. Failure to comply with this request or any further unauthorized activity on the site may result in this case being referred for elevated enforcement action..

We anticipate and would appreciate your full cooperation in this matter. Please feel free to contact me at this office if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

David L. Price
District Representative and Water Management Division.

—————–

Here is the actual response sent back by Mr. DeVries: 

Re: DEQ File
No.. 97-59-0023; T11N; R10W, Sec. 20; Lycoming County

Dear Mr. Price,

Your certified letter dated 11/17/09 has been handed to me. I am the legal landowner but not the Contractor at 2088 Dagget Lane , Trout Run, Pennsylvania .

A couple of beavers are in the process of constructing and maintaining two wood ‘debris’ dams across the outlet stream of my Spring Pond. While I did not pay for, authorize, nor supervise their dam project, I think they would be highly offended that you call their skillful use of natures building materials ‘debris.’

I would like to challenge your department to attempt to emulate their dam project any time and/or any place you choose. I believe I can safely state there is no way you could ever match their dam skills, their dam resourcefulness, their dam ingenuity, their dam persistence, their dam determination and/or their dam work ethic.

These are the beavers/contractors you are seeking. As to your request, I do not think the beavers are aware that they must first fill out a dam permit prior to the start of this type of dam activity.

My first dam question to you is:
(1) Are you trying to discriminate against my Spring Pond Beavers, or
(2) Do you require all beavers throughout this State to conform to said dam request?

If you are not discriminating against these particular beavers, through the Freedom of Information Act, I request completed copies of all those other applicable beaver dam permits that have been issued. (Perhaps we will see if there really is a dam violation of Part 301, Inland Lakes and Streams, of the Natural Resource and Environmental Protection Act, Act 451 of the Public Acts of 1994, being sections 324.30101 to 324.30113 of the Pennsylvania Compiled Laws, annotated.)

I have several dam concerns. My first dam concern is, aren’t the beavers entitled to legal representation? The Spring Pond Beavers are financially destitute and are unable to pay for said representation — so the State will have to provide them with a dam lawyer.

The Department’s dam concern that either one or both of the dams failed during a recent rain event, causing flooding, is proof that this is a natural occurrence, which the Department is required to protect. In other words, we should leave the Spring Pond Beavers alone rather than harassing them and calling them dam names.

If you want the dammed stream ‘restored’ to a dam free-flow condition please contact the beavers — but if you are going to arrest them, they obviously did not pay any attention to your dam letter, they being unable to read English.

In my humble opinion, the Spring Pond Beavers have a right to build their unauthorized dams as long as the sky is blue, the grass is green and water flows downstream. They have more dam rights than I do to live and enjoy Spring Pond. If the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection lives up to its name, it should protect the natural resources (Beavers) and the environment (Beavers’ Dams).

So, as far as the beavers and I are concerned, this dam case can be referred for more elevated enforcement action right now. Why wait until 1/31/2010? The Spring Pond Beavers may be under the dam ice by then and there will be no way for you or your dam staff to contact/harass them.

In conclusion, I would like to bring to your attention to a real environmental quality, health, problem in the area It is the bears! Bears are actually defecating in our woods. I definitely believe you should be persecuting the defecating bears and leave the beavers alone. If you are going to investigate the beaver dam, watch your dam step! The bears are not careful where they dump!

Being unable to comply with your dam request, and being unable to contact you on your dam answering machine, I am sending this response to your dam office.

THANK YOU,

RYAN DEVRIES & THE DAM BEAVERS

oooOOOooo

Those dam beavers!

Postscript to the result

Will we see the renewed President Obama take notice of what we are doing to the planet?

But don’t hold your breath! The BBC reported that President Obama in his victory speech had “pledged to work with Republican leaders in Congress to reduce the government’s budget deficit, fix the tax code and reform the immigration system.”  All well and dandy but, perhaps, missing the big one – climate change.

OK, on to the meat of this post.

“Frankenstorm”

I first came across this reflection on Hurricane Sandy in Christine’s great blog 350 or bust.  It’s an essay written by Colin Beavan, aka “No Impact Man“, who lives in New York City and wrote a response after experiencing Hurricane Sandy last week.  I then asked Colin if I could republish his essay on Learning from Dogs and promptly received his approval.

What to do if Hurricane Sandy scared you

Dear friends,

I don’t say this often but I am scared. Not scared to the point of paralysis. Not scared enough to run away. Not scared enough to stop trying to help. Not scared enough to think we’re doomed. Just scared enough to feel worried for myself, my family, my friends, my community, my country, and my world.

I was lucky when Hurricane Sandy hit. My daughter Bella and I put on our waterproofs in the early hours and ran around Brooklyn’s Fort Greene park in the wind and rain with Frankie–our dog–and our Occupy Wall Street activist friend/hero Monica Hunken.

That night, the lights flickered a couple of times. I lost my internet for three hours. Frankie the dog hid in the upstairs bathroom bathtub. That was the extent of it.

But when I woke up, lower Manhattan was flooded and without power. All the coastal parts of Brooklyn and Queens from Red Hook to Coney Island through the Rockaways and Hamilton Beach were hammered. The wind had driven a fire through Queens that destroyed so many houses. And the world’s most amazing subway system was brought to its knees. To say nothing of poor Staten Island and coastal New Jersey.

We in the Tri-State Area didn’t get Katrina. But we got a taste of her.

Yes, there are some good parts. New Yorkers have been showing up some of the emergency shelters in such numbers that they have been turned away. There are donation drives and volunteer efforts. And about a gazillion New Yorkers have taken to cycling.

But there is a lot of suffering. And a lot of fear not of what Sandy brought. But of what next year’s storm will bring. And the year after that. And after that. First Irene, now Sandy, for how many years in a row can New York City withstand a “once in a century” storm, people are asking?

I hung up the phone with a friend just a few minutes ago. She said, “In some ways, this is way more scarey than 9/11, because you get the feeling that it could happen again and again and again.”

In a coffee shop this afternoon, everyone at every table was talking about climate change. People are talking about where they will go next time. To an aunt’s in New Hampshire. A friend with three cottages in Maine. People are talking about their escape plan for when New York stops functioning.

Katrina, Irene, Sandy, droughts all summer, busted corn crops, water shortages in the southwest: it’s hard to believe we aren’t seeing what the climate scientists predicted. But sooner. Way sooner than they said.

It feels ironic and sad. That the war in Iraq sparked by 9/11 may have got us what we wanted–control over more oil. But that burning that self-same oil has brought us another mini-9/11. Except that this one we are kind of doing to ourselves.

Fracking–the drilling for natural gas by injecting poisonous chemicals into the same rock formations that our drinking comes from. Fighting in the Middle East. Drilling in the arctic. Mountaintop removal in Appalachia. Mining the Canadian tar sands. Building the pipelines. This is bonkers.

Especially when the sun shines everywhere. The wind blows everywhere. The rivers run everywhere. We can generate our power in better, cheaper, safer ways.

Of course, there are reasons for resistance. Our economy is based on fossil fuels. Changing it would be a gargantuan effort. There would be a cost to a transition. But the costs of not making the transition will be much higher. Ask the NY Mass Transit Authority, which is still pumping out the tunnels. Or ask the citizens of New Orleans.

But this isn’t a bitch fest. It’s an appeal.

Years ago, when I did the No Impact Man experiment, I went on the Good Morning America show and I said it wasn’t important that all Americans did as much as I did. “We must each just do something,” I said.

I was mistaken. We must each do a lot.

We all–including me–have a tendency to think that shaking our fist at the TV news or leaving an angry comment on a blog or “clictivism” is some sort of an expression. We need to do more. Not just more at home, but more in our civic engagement, more in the citizen guiding of how our society moves forward.

In fact, I’d argue that we–all of us–need to find a way to dedicate at least some part of our lives to solving our problems. Climate change we need to fix, yes. But also we need to accept that the economic system we live in is driving that climate change. Consumption, as the basis for economy, has become like a winter coat that needs to be shed. It no longer serves us.

Now, I’m not going to claim that I know what each of us should do, how each of us should help to bring about the Great Transformation. I don’t think anyone exactly knows. This, by the way, was the great criticism of Occupy Wall Street, back in the day. That they didn’t say exactly what we should do. They didn’t make their demands clear, the press kept saying.

That was Occupy’s strength in my view. The willingness to bring attention to problems we don’t quite know the solutions for. Occupy didn’t have concrete demands because none of us quite know what we should be demanding quite yet. Occupy was saying “stop ignoring problems just because we don’t know the solution!!!!!!”

You may disagree with me. You may say, we know the solution, it’s renewable energy. But where is the political will to bring that change about when the fossil fuel industry has spent $150 million in this election cycle?

You may say, the solution is getting corporate money out of politics. But how do we do that when the politicians we need to vote for such a thing are the beneficiaries of that self-same corporate money?

You may say, the solution lies in measuring Gross National Happiness instead of Gross Domestic Product. But how do we get that done?

We have lots of ideas about what would fix things, but we have no idea how to actually get those ideas instituted. That’s kind of where we are at a loss. How do we actually bring about the change?

It’s not to say we can’t bring it about. But it is to say that a lot more of us are going to have to join the search for the solutions and the effort to institute them.

In a way, what I am saying is the same as what Occupy said: “Stop pretending that you can’t help just because you don’t know exactly how to help!!!!!!”

We all have to start dedicating some of our lives to these problems. Not just voting for the right people. Not just leaving comments on blogs. Not just having intense conversations over coffee.

So what then?

Here’s a thought. Decide to dedicate five to ten hours a week to helping figure out what to do. Then use those five to ten hours to bring your personal gifts to the search for societal solutions and the means of implementing them.

If you are political then, whatever side of the aisle you are on, start going to your party’s meetings and insist that they address themselves to the major, new-world problems we are facing instead of grumbling over the same stuff they have for 50 years. Get them to try to be leaders instead of winners.

If you are an artist or musician or writer, use your talents to bring more and more attention to our problems and the quest for the solution. Be a constant reminder of the peril our society and world faces.

If you are a therapist or life coach, find a way to introduce to your clients the idea that the problems they face are the same problems all of us are facing. Financial insecurity, for example, is something we can fix together better than any one of us can fix alone.

If you are a banker, bring your personal values and your heart and soul to work with you. The expression “it’s only business” has to be jettisoned. This idea that the free market will fix things so we can ignore the dictates of our conscience needs to be fixed.

If you have a spare bedroom, find an activist who can’t drag themselves away from the work they are doing for all of us long enough to earn themselves some rent. Home and safety for those on the front line of social change is a wonderful service.

If you have two feet, march with my friends at 350.org whenever you have a chance.

All of us have our own ways to help.

One thing is clear, whatever our individual contribution, every one of us needs to be moving back into the political system and the democracy. We are all so disgusted by it that our instinct is to abandon it. In this case, our instinct is wrong. We totally need to Occupy our democracy. We need to flood it with people, with us.

Overall, though, my point here is that all of us have a role to play in our cultural healing. There is no leader who can tell us how to contribute. Each of us has to look around us and use our own minds and souls to see what needs doing and how we are best suited to do it. Each of us must contribute in our own way.

I began this piece by saying that I’m scared. Because I am. But my fear is just a sign that I need to do something. There is really only one thing I know how to do–to write. And so I’m doing it. I don’t know if if will help. But it is the one thing I know how to do.

What is the one thing you know how to do? What is the one thing you can dedicate a slice of your life to?

We can’t leave it to the politicians or the designers or the Occupiers or the activists. It’s up to each of us.

Because–and I’ve said and written this many times–the question is not whether each of us is the type of person who can make a difference. The question is whether we are the type of people who want to try to make a difference. And Sandy has told us we all need each other to try.

Love,
Colin

Nothing much to argue about that! Thanks Colin for letting me republish your essay.

Reflections on an election

A personal perspective on today’s American presidential election

Voting for truth!

In many ways, it’s helpful that despite being a resident of the USA I am not eligible to vote.  That’s because my residency status as a ‘Green card’ holder does not give me such entitlement.  That’s the domain of citizens, and rightly so.

The reason I find it helpful is that as a non-voter and still very much the ‘newcomer’ to this county, I view the proceedings from a different perspective; well that’s my take on things!

So here are two thoughts.

Integrity

The motivation behind Learning from Dogs came from the realisation that dogs offer mankind many lessons, especially the one of behaving with integrity.  You can read more about this aspect of dogs here.

Maybe it’s a naive hope but politicians around the world must rapidly embrace the fact that without integrity in the political processes we are all lost.  To underline this plea, go and read a recent essay that was introduced by Daniel Honan on The Big Think. Here’s a dip into that:

Larry Lessig: End Raging Cronyism, Save Our Republic

What’s the Big Idea?

If you are not planning to vote in the upcoming election, Larry Lessig has a good explanation why.

You, like most Americans, believe that money buys results in Congress. No matter who wins, you believe that corporate interests will still have too much power and prevent real change. You are correct in your belief that money buys results in Congress, Lessig says. However, he has a different prescription than non-participation.

What’s the Significance?

Lessig points out that .000015 percent, or 47 individuals, have given 42 percent of the Super PAC donations this election cycle. As a result of this “money election,” Lessig says a few powerful interests exert an influence that conflicts with the public good.

“… 47 individuals, have given 42 percent of the Super PAC donations this election cycle.”  Just reflect on the power and influence that flows from such a distortion of fairness.

Truthfulness

My second thought is about being truthful.

The time for all our leaders, right across the world, to come together and face the reality of climate change is upon us.  There is no time left to duck and weave.

Peter Sinclair of ClimateCrocks blogsite recently posted this video.  Watch it and ask yourself how much longer the leader of the most powerful nation in the world can sit on the sidelines of the greatest threat to our civilisation ever seen.