I’m writing this from the lawn in front of the White House.
In front of me there’s a sprawling rally underway, with speakers ranging from indigenous elders to the great Canadian writer Naomi Klein. In back of me, another 243 courageous people are being hauled away to jail — it’s the last day of Phase 1 of the tar sands campaign, and 1,252 North Americans have been arrested, the biggest civil disobedience action this century on this continent.
But we’ve been just as cheered by the help that has poured in from around the world — today, activists in front of the White House held a banner with a huge number on it: 618,428. That’s how many people around the world who signed on to the “Stop the Tar Sands” mega-petition to President Obama, including many of you in the 350.org network. Check out this beautiful photo of passion and courage on display:
(Photo Credit: Josh Lopez. If you can’t see the photo above, click here to see it and more inspirational photos from DC.)
But this movement does more than sign petitions: many of you stood strong in front of the White House risking arrest, and protesters on every continent have picketed outside embassies and consulates. That makes sense, for global warming is the one problem that affects everyone everywhere.
And the next moment to prove that is Sept. 24 for Moving Planet — the massive day of climate action that will unite people all over the world. We’ve heard news of amazing actions from every corner of the earth -— from a massive bike rally in the Philippines to an incredible eco-festival in Philadelphia. I truly can’t wait to see the pictures pour in.
But here’s why it’s important: we’re not just a movement that opposes things, we’re also a movement that dreams of what’s coming. And we don’t just dream, we also transform those dreams into reality. On September 24, on bike and on foot and on boards, we’re going to point the way towards that future. By days’ end, we’ll have shown why the bicycle is more glamorous than the car, and why the people have the potential to be more powerful than the polluters.
On some days fighting global warming means swallowing hard, mustering your courage, and making a sacrifice — other days it means getting all your friends up in the saddles of their bikes to have some fun and help move the planet forward.
350.org is building a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis. Our online campaigns, grassroots organizing, and mass public actions are led from the bottom up by thousands of volunteer organizers in over 188 countries. You can join 350.org on Facebook by becoming a fan of our page atfacebook.com/350org and follow us on twitter by visiting twitter.com/350. To join our list (maybe a friend forwarded you this e-mail) visitwww.350.org/signup. To support our work, donate securely online at 350.org/donate.
What is 350? 350 is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Scientists measure carbon dioxide in “parts per million” (ppm), so 350ppm is the number humanity needs to get below as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change. To get there, we need a different kind of PPM–a “people powered movement” that is made of people like you in every corner of the planet.
Feel free to circulate this as far and wide as you wish. Thanks, Learning from Dogs
Regular readers will know that I wrote about the XL Pipeline on the 29th August setting out the arguments of those who know much more of the detail as to why the tar sands of Canada are just the worst possible way to continue the madness of using oil. If you didn’t read that then it’s here, and please do so.
The rest of this Post is taken from the Credo Action website. Please do participate. Sign the petition NOW.
That’s what climate scientist James Hansen calls the proposed Keystone XL pipeline — which would carry oil out of Canada’s vast tar sands oil fields to Texas, where it will be refined, then burned across the globe, dealing a catastrophic blow to our chance of returning earth to a stable climate.
This project requires a presidential permit to start building — and it is President Obama’s decision alone to grant or deny that permit. He will make the decision as soon as September.
Tell President Obama: Stop the Keystone XL pipeline.
The Alberta tar sands are a carbon bomb. The 3rd largest oil field in the world, the difficult extraction and transportation of the tar sands oil ultimately produces up to three times the carbon emissions of traditional oil. (And extreme environmental devastation along the way.)1
The Keystone XL pipeline is the fuse to this bomb – a highway to swift consumption of this dirty, dangerous crude. As if that wasn’t enough, it poses a massive spill risk in the six states along the pipeline route, including over the Ogallala Aquifer which provides up to 30% of our nation’s agricultural water.
We. Must. Stop. This.
Tell President Obama: Stop the Keystone XL pipeline.
Twenty leading climate scientists have just sent a letter to President Obama urging him to deny the permit.
And from August 20th to September 3rd, there will be a massive, historic, daily sit-in outside the White House where more than 1500 people, including CREDO staff, have already signed up to risk arrest in peaceful protest. (For more about the sit in, see below.)
The administration’s previous decisions on climate do not inspire confidence that they will deny the permit. Recently the administration has opened new areas to offshore drilling and coal mining, and late last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even said she was “inclined” to approve Keystone XL.
But President Obama still has the final word. He does not have to negotiate with Congress or industry. As his State Department reviews the permit, the decision — which could have a devastating impact on the livability of our nation, and our world — is entirely in his hands.
We’ve lost too many climate fights already. We need a massive, historic show of pressure to make sure we don’t lose this one. Please sign the petition and read below for other ways to get involved.
Tell President Obama: Stop the Keystone XL pipeline.
Because this fight is so important, leading climate activists including Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein and climate scientist James Hansen are organizing a historic, daily series of peaceful protests between August 20th and Sept. 3rd. The CEO’s and Directors of nearly 30 leading Environmental Organizations, including CREDO’s Michael Kieschnick and Laura Scher, are urging people to participate.
More than 1500 people from across the country, including CREDO staff, have already signed up to join the sit-in outside the White House and risk arrest.
This will be a slightly longer letter than common for the internet age–it’s serious stuff.
The short version is we want you to consider doing something hard: coming to Washington in the hottest and stickiest weeks of the summer and engaging in civil disobedience that will quite possibly get you arrested.
The full version goes like this:
As you know, the planet is steadily warming: 2010 was the warmest year on record, and we’ve seen the resulting chaos in almost every corner of the earth.
And as you also know, our democracy is increasingly controlled by special interests interested only in their short-term profit.
These two trends collide this summer in Washington, where the State Department and the White House have to decide whether to grant a certificate of ‘national interest’ to some of the biggest fossil fuel players on earth. These corporations want to build the so-called ‘Keystone XL Pipeline’ from Canada’s tar sands to Texas refineries.
To call this project a horror is serious understatement. The tar sands have wrecked huge parts of Alberta, disrupting ways of life in indigenous communities–First Nations communities in Canada, and tribes along the pipeline route in the U.S. have demanded the destruction cease. The pipeline crosses crucial areas like the Oglalla Aquifer where a spill would be disastrous–and though the pipeline companies insist they are using ‘state of the art’ technologies that should leak only once every 7 years, the precursor pipeline and its pumping stations have leaked a dozen times in the past year. These local impacts alone would be cause enough to block such a plan. But the Keystone Pipeline would also be a fifteen hundred mile fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the continent, a way to make it easier and faster to trigger the final overheating of our planet, the one place to which we are all indigenous.
As the climatologist Jim Hansen (one of the signatories to this letter) explained, if we have any chance of getting back to a stable climate “the principal requirement is that coal emissions must be phased out by 2030 and unconventional fossil fuels, such as tar sands, must be left in the ground.” In other words, he added, “if the tar sands are thrown into the mix it is essentially game over.” The Keystone pipeline is an essential part of the game. “Unless we get increased market access, like with Keystone XL, we’re going to be stuck,” said Ralph Glass, an economist and vice-president at AJM Petroleum Consultants in Calgary, told a Canadian newspaper last week.
Given all that, you’d suspect that there’s no way the Obama administration would ever permit this pipeline. But in the last few months the administration has signed pieces of paper opening much of Alaska to oil drilling, and permitting coal-mining on federal land in Wyoming that will produce as much CO2 as 300 powerplants operating at full bore.
And Secretary of State Clinton has already said she’s ‘inclined’ to recommend the pipeline go forward. Partly it’s because of the political commotion over high gas prices, though more tar sands oil would do nothing to change that picture. But it’s also because of intense pressure from industry. The US Chamber of Commerce–a bigger funder of political campaigns than the RNC and DNC combined–has demanded that the administration “move quickly to approve the Keystone XL pipeline,” which is not so surprising–they’ve also told the U.S. EPA that if the planet warms that will be okay because humans can ‘adapt their physiology’ to cope. The Koch Brothers, needless to say, are also backing the plan, and may reap huge profits from it.
So we’re pretty sure that without serious pressure the Keystone Pipeline will get its permit from Washington. A wonderful coalition of environmental groups has built a strong campaign across the continent–from Cree and Dene indigenous leaders to Nebraska farmers, they’ve spoken out strongly against the destruction of their land. We need to join them, and to say even if our own homes won’t be crossed by this pipeline, our joint home–the earth–will be wrecked by the carbon that pours down it.
And we need to say something else, too: it’s time to stop letting corporate power make the most important decisions our planet faces. We don’t have the money to compete with those corporations, but we do have our bodies, and beginning in mid August many of us will use them. We will, each day, march on the White House, risking arrest with our trespass. We will do it in dignified fashion, demonstrating that in this case we are the conservatives, and that our foes–who would change the composition of the atmosphere are dangerous radicals. Come dressed as if for a business meeting–this is, in fact, serious business.
And another sartorial tip–if you wore an Obama button during the 2008 campaign, why not wear it again? We very much still want to believe in the promise of that young Senator who told us that with his election the ‘rise of the oceans would begin to slow and the planet start to heal.’ We don’t understand what combination of bureaucratic obstinacy and insider dealing has derailed those efforts, but we remember his request that his supporters continue on after the election to pressure his government for change. We’ll do what we can.
And one more thing: we don’t just want college kids to be the participants in this fight. They’ve led the way so far on climate change–10,000 came to DC for the Powershift gathering earlier this spring. They’ve marched this month in West Virginia to protest mountaintop removal; a young man named Tim DeChristopher faces sentencing this summer in Utah for his creative protest.
Now it’s time for people who’ve spent their lives pouring carbon into the atmosphere to step up too, just as many of us did in earlier battles for civil rights or for peace. Most of us signing this letter are veterans of this work, and we think it’s past time for elders to behave like elders. One thing we don’t want is a smash up: if you can’t control your passions, this action is not for you.
This won’t be a one-shot day of action. We plan for it to continue for several weeks, till the administration understands we won’t go away. Not all of us can actually get arrested–half the signatories to this letter live in Canada, and might well find our entry into the U.S. barred. But we will be making plans for sympathy demonstrations outside Canadian consulates in the U.S., and U.S. consulates in Canada–the decision-makers need to know they’re being watched.
Twenty years of patiently explaining the climate crisis to our leaders hasn’t worked. Maybe moral witness will help. You have to start somewhere, and we choose here and now.
As plans solidify in the next few weeks we’ll be in touch with you to arrange nonviolence training; our colleagues at a variety of environmental and democracy campaigns will be coordinating the actual arrangements.
We know we’re asking a lot. You should think long and hard on it, and pray if you’re the praying type. But to us, it’s as much privilege as burden to get to join this fight in the most serious possible way. We hope you’ll join us.
Maude Barlow — Chair, Council of Canadians
Wendell Berry — Author and Farmer
Tom Goldtooth — Director, Indigenous Environmental Network
Danny Glover — Actor
James Hansen — Climate Scientist
Wes Jackson — Agronomist, President of the Land Insitute
Naomi Klein — Author and Journalist
Bill McKibben — Writer and Environmentalist
George Poitras — Mikisew Cree Indigenous First Nation
Gus Speth — Environmental Lawyer and Activist
David Suzuki — Scientist, Environmentalist and Broadcaster
Joseph B. Uehlein — Labor organizer and environmentalist
Sustainable is an overused word these days. All for the right reasons, of course! But how often is the word used in the context of relationships? Of the relationships between the domesticated dog and man? I suspect rarely.
Take the example of the Japanese Akita dog called Hachi, (Hachikō in Japanese) that I wrote about almost a year ago.
In 1924, Hidesaburō Ueno, a professor in the agriculture department at theUniversity of Tokyo took in Hachikō as a pet. During his owner’s life Hachikō saw him out from the front door and greeted him at the end of the day at the nearby Shibuya Station. The pair continued their daily routine until May 1925, when Professor Ueno did not return on the usual train one evening. The professor had suffered from a cerebral hemorrhage at the university that day. He died and never returned to the train station where his friend was waiting. Hachikō was loyal and every day for the next nine years he waited sitting there amongst the town’s folk.
Hachikō 1925
“…. every day for the next nine years he waited sitting there amongst the town’s folk” Truly a sustainable relationship.
Now to something closer to home; literally.
The Payson Roundup is our local newspaper. Last Tuesday’s edition had the following story which Tom Brossart, Editor, has kindly given me written permission to reproduce here on Learning from Dogs. Thank you, Tom.
Best friends help save man’s life
Both Logger and Harold Green are a little gray around the muzzle, but they have lots of good days ahead after Logger helped save Green’s life back on July 1.Photo by Andy Towle
Logger is Harold Green’s best friend. Logger isn’t a flannel-wearing, tattooed burly woodsman; he is a sweet-tempered chocolate Labrador retriever. And this best friend saved Green’s life.
Green makes his home up in Happy Jack. Recently he and Logger drove into the woods and went for a walk, and then Green had a heart attack. He didn’t have a history of heart disease, but all of a sudden his chest became tight. He collapsed and on his way to the ground, he hit a fallen log and wound up hitting his forehead and nose, tearing his bottom lip away from his gums, cutting his chin and breaking a rib.
“Right before I had the heart attack I had a page there was a fire, and that’s the last thing I remember,” he said. Green is an emergency medical technician with the Blue Ridge Fire Department.
He said the next thing he remembers was waking up and trying to call 911. “There was so much blood in my eyes I couldn’t see at first, but Logger licked the blood away.”
Green was conscious long enough to dial 911 and try to explain where he was. He heard the sirens go past him and with that information; the emergency responders had a place to start looking for him.
At that point, Logger left Green’s side to go to the rescue personnel.
“From what they told me, he was like Lassie. He came running to them, barking, and started running back to me, stopped and made sure they were following,” Green said.
The first person on the scene with him was a law enforcement officer with the Forest Service. Green said he told him his nose was bleeding so much he thought it was broken.
Next to arrive was a deputy sheriff. Green said he later learned the guy was off duty, but came to help anyway.
The Blue Ridge ambulance crew arrived next.
“Logger did the same with all of them as he had with the first one on the scene. They told me, without Logger’s help they would have had to search for me a lot longer.”
Green said when they first reached him his heart rate was in the mid-40s and he had no blood pressure. The rescue team stabilized him and carried him out to the ambulance to take him to the fire station where a helicopter could land.
“They said Logger tried to get into the ambulance with me,” Green said.
He said he has little or no memory of everything that took place, when he woke up he was in the hospital in Flagstaff.
Logger couldn’t ride in the ambulance with Green and couldn’t come see him in the hospital, but since he has been out, the dog has not been more than three feet from him for three weeks.
“It is really humbling to have so many friends there to help you out,” Green said.
The people who came to his rescue were all friends and, just like Logger, they did what best friends do, except it was something they do every day, for friends and strangers alike.
Logger has been part of Green’s family for seven years, joining it when he was just a puppy.
Green is the son of longtime Rim Country Realtor Bea Baxter, who has been in the community for around 40 years.
So dear, lovely Logger also demonstrated the same, deep sustainability of relationship that Hachikō did back in 1925. There is so much that we can learn from dogs. Think about sustainability, as it relates to the relationship between dogs and man. It goes back at least 30,000 years. It’s an unimaginable length of time.
In this context, sustainability is an underused word!
A recent item on the BBC website provides a welcome reminder of the power of the relationship between dogs and mankind.
Practically no-one is unaware of the role that dogs provide, for example, as guides for humans with sight impairment. But there’s much more to the ‘service’ dog than that.
A service dog might be described as,
“any guide dog, signal dog, or other animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including, but not limited to, guiding individuals with impaired vision, alerting individuals with impaired hearing to intruders or sounds, providing minimal protection or rescue work, pulling a wheelchair, or fetching dropped items.”
That definition is taken from the United States Code of Federal Regulations for the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990!
Carrie and Lilly
But then cast your eye over this, as I mentioned, from the BBC on the 26th May, 2011.
Dogs can help reduce stress in parents of children with lifelong developmental disability autism, a study suggests.
The University of Lincoln compared 20 families with dogs with 20 without.
Daniel Mills told a Royal Society of Medicine conference early results suggested any breed could improve communication and relationships.
The veterinary behavioural medicine professor hopes to use video footage to show how dogs can improve child eating, sleeping and tantrum behaviour.
At a three-day Parents’ Autism Workshops and Support course, the families listed more than a thousand ways their dog had helped – from developing language and establishing a routine to using the pet to request action in a non-confrontational way.
Full story is here in which is included Professor Mills saying: “While there is no shortage of opinion on how dogs can help, there has been little money given to scientifically look into this.”
Autism is a challenging condition and anything that can establish a scientific underpinning for the role that dogs can have is to be welcomed whole-heartedly.
Finally, there are quite a few videos online that provide more information about the special, almost magical relationship between dogs and autistic people. Here’s one that is the first part of a series of five.
The latest announcement continues to show dogs in very good light!
Before I plunge into this Post, just an apology. I’m trying hard to get out of what feels like a recent pattern of ‘re-publishing’ stuff rather than posting material that is primarily my own creative output. Ironically, it’s become a little harder to achieve since starting a creating writing course last Tuesday 23rd (every Tuesday evening for 12 weeks!). The course requires several thousand words of ‘homework’ each week.
Then I lost the plot and published two posts yesterday, when one of them should have been scheduled for today! Thus making it almost impossible to be fully creative today!
Anyway, to today’s theme. Which comes very close on the heels of my post on Monday about the antics of the big oil companies and ‘recovering’ oil from tar sands in Canada.
We all know that some of the most ecologically and environmentally fragile places on the planet are the polar regions. Of the two polar regions, the more sensitive one is the North Polar region. The Arctic ice cap is forecast to be clear of ice each Summer by 2030 assuming the huge annual run-off of fresh water doesn’t screw up the existing ocean currents before then. (Indeed, a fascinating film about the complexity of the weather systems as a result of very long heating and cooling cycles was seen recently on YouTube – link at the end of this post.)
So continued madness over our love affair with oil is just that: madness. Don’t get me wrong. Jean and I drive gasoline-powered vehicles but at least we are conscious of the damage we are doing and will change just as soon as it becomes viable for us to so do.
So with all that in mind, here’s a recent announcement from Exxon first seen on the BBC News website.
US oil major Exxon Mobil has clinched an Arctic oil exploration deal withRussian state-owned oil firm Rosneft.
The venture seemingly extinguishes any remaining chance of BP reviving its own deal, which lapsed in May.The agreement was signed on Tuesday in the presence of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a Rosneft spokesman said.
Prime Minister Putin said that it would also allow Rosneft to develop fields in the Gulf of Mexico and Texas, according to local media reports.
“New horizons are opening up. One of the world’s leading companies, Exxon Mobil, is starting to work on Russia’s strategic shelf and deepwater continental shelf,” he said.
‘Big win
‘Under the agreement, the two firms will spend $3.2bn on deep-sea exploration in the East Prinovozemelsky region of the Kara Sea, as well as in the Russian Black Sea.
Exxon described these areas as “among the most promising and least explored offshore areas globally, with high potential for liquids and gas”.
The two companies will also co-operate on the development of oil fields in Western Siberia.
Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers told the BBC: “[The Russian Arctic] is among the most promising and least explored regions for oil, that is why we are very interested.
Cynic mode on: “The Russian Arctic is among the most promising and least explored regions for oil …” Well that’s alright then!
If one follows that link in the BBC news item, it goes to the ExxonMobil press release where one can quickly read the following key points,
US $3.2 billion exploration program planned for Kara Sea and Black Sea
Establishment of a joint Arctic Research and Design Center for Offshore Development in St. Petersburg
Rosneft participation in ExxonMobil projects in the U.S. and other countries with a focus on building offshore and tight oil expertise
Joint operations to develop Western Siberia tight oil resources
Companies form partnership to undertake projects in the Russian Federation and internationally
Thus this is not some small sideline – it’s potentially very big business for both partners.
The Kara Sea, an extension of the Arctic Ocean, is located off the coastline of Siberia in far northwestern Russia.
It’s separated from the Barents Sea (in the west) by the Kara Strait and Novaya Zemlya – and the Laptev Sea (in the east) by the Taymyr Peninsula and Severnaya Zemlya. The northern border (shown) is a mapping opinion.
It has an estimated area of 880,000 sq km (340,000 sq mi), an average depth of 128 m (420 ft) and a maximum depth of 620 m (2,034 ft).
Ice-bound for most of the year, the sea is generally navigable only during August and September.
The main ports are Dikson (Dickson) and Novyy Port, and they are heavily used during the two-month (lucrative) fishing season. They will also be distribution points when the petroleum and natural gas discovered here is brought to the surface.
Just look at that map again and see how far North of the Arctic Circle is the Kara Sea.
Dad, where's the ice gone?
Let’s go back to dogs. When dogs were primarily wild animals, really when they were still carrying all the ‘habits’ of the Grey Wolf, from which dogs are genetically descended, they were very territorial, as indeed domestic dogs are towards their domestic area. WikiPedia explains, ‘The core of their territory is on average 35 km2 (14 sq mi), in which they spend 50% of their time.‘ (That’s a great article on WikiPedia about the Grey Wolf, by the way.)
Anyway, the wolves, like practically all other animal species, live in harmony within their territory and only move or amend their territorial boundaries if the survival of the pack is threatened.
So when, oh when, is mankind going to learn that our territory is Planet Earth. We have no other territory to move to. I still remember my form teacher way back in my first English school saying to me, “There are two ways you can learn this lesson, the easy way or the hard way!” Same applies to us all! Let’s urgently learn this lesson from dogs and move on from oil.
Finally, that YouTube video. Less than an hour long, it has some interesting facts about climate change over many thousands of years and a rather interesting conclusion.
(Apologies to all you readers – bit under the cosh at the moment in terms of free thinking time – so have lent on this timely update from CASSE for today.)
From CASSE, the Centre for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy
Why Do So Many People Believe in the Fantasy of Infinite Growth on a Finite Planet?
by Rob Dietz
How do you feel about the economy these days? How about the environment? Do you think we’re sitting in a better spot than we were ten, twenty, or thirty years ago? It’s hard to find folks who are satisfied with either economic or environmental conditions. In the first place, the way we run the economy is producing appalling results. We have a mix of financial fiascos, unacceptable unemployment, and a dismal disparity between the haves and the have-nots. And if you’re not soiling yourself (or at least somewhat concerned) about what’s happening on land, sea and air, then you’re not paying much attention to the omnipresent signs of environmental breakdown.
Each day it becomes more apparent that we are on a misguided mission. Pursuit of perpetual economic growth is not a winning proposition for a lasting prosperity. Building a bigger economy can make sense in some circumstances, but always aiming to build a bigger economy means taking an ever-bigger chunk out of the earth’s ecosystems and the life-support services they provide. Why, then, do so many people believe in the fantasy of infinite growth on a finite planet? Is it because we can’t come up with a better idea? Is it because the rich and powerful have trapped the rest of us in their web of conspiracy? Is it because people are hopelessly greedy and materialistic?
At various times and places we might answer these questions affirmatively, but we can more commonly answer, “No, no, and no.” Putting aside conspiracy theories for the moment, there are three honest (but bogus) reasons why we pursue economic growth past the point of effectiveness and reason.
Bogus Reason #1: We think we have to have economic growth to create jobs.
People, and especially politicians, want jobs. We’ve used the blunt tool of economic growth to create jobs for decades, but do we really need economic growth to have good jobs? It’s true that there are typically more job openings in a growing economy, but there are other, less costly ways to make sure jobs are available. Growth, however, gives corporate elites an easy out. They can point to economic growth as the job creator while doing what they want without considering the impacts of their decisions on jobs.
If jobs are really the priority, then we wouldn’t replace people with machinery. And we wouldn’t eliminate service jobs to shift more and more burden onto people to serve themselves. My friend Chris works as a gas station attendant and provides a valuable service pumping gas for customers. He wouldn’t have a job, however, if he lived elsewhere. He happens to live in Oregon where the law says that only professional attendants can pump gas. In most states, gas station attendants have been replaced by customer labor and credit card readers. This sort of substitution has become commonplace in the name of efficiency — policy makers find it easier (or at least they’ve found it easier in the past) to avoid considering jobs explicitly. Just grow the economy and let Chris find a job elsewhere — that’s just the way it goes if his job is eliminated and the customer is forced to pick up the slack.
The truth is that we can have good jobs without producing and consuming evermore stuff. For starters, we can institute policies to make job-sharing an attainable reality. Many people would gladly trade some salary for more time. We can also stop the process of eliminating jobs through outsourcing and machinery-for-people swaps. Of course stopping this process would require a change in corporate incentives…
Shareholder corporations are severely flawed. In my household, let’s say my overriding goal is to maximize my earnings. What would I do? I would take the highest paying job I could get. I certainly wouldn’t be involved in public policy or a not-for-profit enterprise. I wouldn’t spend much time with my wife or daughter — that would be time away from my career, and it could eat into my earnings (cue the Cat’s in the Cradle). If the goal is so single-focused, the results aren’t surprising. Profit maximization, whether it occurs in my household or in a corporation, produces perverse outcomes.
We know this about shareholder corporations. We know there are better ways to set up productive enterprises that have more worthy goals, but we don’t make the change. The reason is that we are addicted to two things corporations do well. First, we’re addicted to consumer novelty. We’ve gotta have the latest and greatest. People chase after I-phones, I-pods, I-pads, and plenty of other I-wants. Second, we’re addicted to receiving unearned income from investments in stocks or mutual funds. People who can afford it are invested in corporations. Their personal wealth is tied to the ability of corporations to grow. We’ve become accustomed to the idea of passive investment — we put extra money into an account and do absolutely nothing but watch the size of the account get bigger. Are we really entitled to get something for nothing?
Bogus Reason #3: We refuse to pay attention to the downsides of economic growth.
Few people are studying ecology and understanding how economic growth is degrading environmental resources. In fact, a whopping 21% percent of college students are business majors. And as Dr. Seuss noted in his classic book, The Lorax, “Business is business, and business must grow!” While we continue to tempt fate by disrupting and dismantling natural systems that we only partially understand, our attention is locked on the results of reality TV shows, Tiger Woods’s sex life, Jennifer Anniston’s and Justin Bieber’s haircuts, fairytale weddings of figurehead monarchs, and other matters of critical importance.
While we’re failing to pay attention, those who benefit most from growth — the corporate elites — will keep on doing what they do, and they’ll keep on selling it to the rest of us. If we don’t start asking, “why?” real soon, our kids will one day be asking “How did we let this happen?”
I came across this previously unknown, well to me, volcanic eruption during my research on my Vesuvius article for last week. In that article I mentioned that I would discuss this truly giant eruption at a later date.
If your general knowledge is sufficiently good to know exactly what I am referring to, both in the title, Toba, and the sub-heading, then well done! So to those that do know about the Toba volcanic eruption, my apologies. To all you others, read on.
The Toba volcano produced the largest known volcanic eruption on earth during the past 2 million years.
Toba almost wiped out mankind 73,000 years ago. Back then Neanderthal man inhabited our Earth alongside Homo sapiens in Europe, Homo erectus and the recently discovered Homo floresiensis in Asia. It was cold in Europe, the last ice age was in full swing and reindeer, wild horses and giant stag were hunted in our breadths. Alongside the herbivorous nourishment, mammouth and woolly rhinos were occasionally on the menu for humans when Toba, with a diameter of 90 kilometres on the island known today as Sumatra, in the truest sense of the word, “blew up”.
A volcanic eruption with a diameter of 90 kilometres! Ouch! Back to the article,
Alongside gigantic Tsunami waves, there was the unimaginable amount of 2800 cubic kilometres of ejected ash, which, evenly spread throughout our planets atmosphere, should have reduced the total number of humans to just 5000 to 10,000 survivors, as the Australian vulcanologist Prof. Ray Cas explains in an interview: “The suns rays only weakly reached the ground all around the globe, plants received too little light, the average temperature dropped to 5 degrees, so that summer turned to winter and winter became deadly in Verbindung.”
Two thousand, eight hundred cubic kilometres of ejected ash! It’s practically impossible to get one’s mind around that figure. OK, it’s easy enough to look up the volume of just one cubic kilometre – it’s 1,000,000,000 m3 or a trillion litres! Or for those of you in old money, as 1 US Gallon is the equivalent of 3.785 litres, then a trillion litres is 264,200,792,602 US gallons! Approximately 264 billion US gallons! 264 billion US gallons which, in case you missed it, is just one cubic kilometre. Toba ejected 2,800 times that amount in ash!
Back to the article,
Today we know that humans and their near relatives survived this global Armageddon of nature in small groups, mainly in Africa. It is incredible how scientists found all of that out with the help of thousands of DNA studies of todays humans. Mag. Bence Viola from the Anthropological Institute of Vienna University: “We examined the DNA in human mitochondria, the powerhouse of cells, and thereby observed that the genetic composition in samples from humans from all over the world had to have been much more different if Homo sapiens were able to have developed in all parts of the Earth without problems.”
Actually todays humans originate from a few thousand survivors and we can attribute the cause to the eruption of the super volcano Toba around 73,000 years ago. So it is a sort of genetic bottleneck, through which not only Homo sapiens had to have been forced, but also all of his relatives that were still living at that time but who died out later on due to other reasons.
Therefore a volcano in the region of Indonesia was responsible for the near destruction of mankind. From the 60 to 70 volcanoes that are to be found in the area today, a remarkable number have become active again in the weeks and months after the seaquake in December. Yet Toba is dozing today deep and safe under a huge sea bearing the same name in Northern Sumatra. Many people fear that if the suddenly active volcano of Talang that lies 300 kilometres south erupts, it could awaken the deadly giant.
Vulcanologist Prof. Ray Cas
Vulcanologist Prof. Ray Cas: “That could actually happen, but only if Toba were ready to erupt and at the moment there is not the slightest indication of that.” The expert does think that it is probable that one day another huge eruption will take place: “But that can only happen in 10,000 or even 100,000 years. The Earth is despite all efforts not predictable.”
It remains furthermore open to know what would happen to us in the face of such a devastating natural disaster, if a volcanic eruption similar to Toba were imminent. The way things stand today we cannot do anything against it.
Let’s close this reflection on a truly earth-changing event by looking at a picture of Toba today,
The powerful anti-democratic forces that will threaten civilisation.
In one sense this post today carries an underlying political message – and in another sense, it does not. It does in the sense that if every American voter truly understood the risks of a continued relationship with oil then the tar-sands projects wouldn’t have a prayer of a chance of being allowed.
In the other sense, it does not. Because the influence and power of ‘behind-the-scenes’ oil and money is beyond imagination and, just possibly, outside the reach of democracy.
So what’s got me so agitated?
Well first is that I have been quietly reading The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins, he of Transition Totnes fame. Most readers will be aware that Totnes was the first Transition Town in the world and started what is becoming the greatest social movement of the 21st century.
In Rob’s book, on page 51, there is a diagram showing the relative energy returns from the energy invested to produce that energy – hope that makes sense! Let me explain further. For example, for every unit of energy invested in building tidal-range generators, there are eighty-seven units of energy returned. I.e. this is a great investment for mankind in terms of the net benefit.
If we look at the generation of electricity from solar photo-voltaic (PV) panels then the return is about eight units from every unit invested.
The worst return of them all is from Tar sands: just one unit returned from every unit invested. Investment and humanitarian madness!
Then next I came across this item about Tar sands on The Ecologist magazine website,
Emissions from tar sands seriously underestimated
Governments and companies making no effort to quantify the real climate impacts
Greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands operations are being significantly under-reported according to new research by Global Forest Watch Canada.
The report, ‘Bitumen and Biocarbon‘, says oil companies and governments are not accounting for emissions from deforestation. It says that when boreal forest is destroyed for tar sands development, significant amounts of greenhouse gases are emitted.
‘Governments and companies are working hard to downplay the impacts of tar sands operations, but it turns out that they don’t even know the full extent of the problem,’ said Christy Ferguson, Greenpeace climate and energy coordinator.
‘What’s worse, they’re doing nothing to find out. Denial is not a climate strategy.’
In addition, the report shows that biological carbon stored in living and decaying plants is lost when natural ecosystems are disturbed or destroyed through mining of bitumen and construction of roads, pipelines or facilities.
‘Peatlands are one of the world’s most important storehouses of soil carbon. Industrial activity in the tar sands is destroying peatlands, releasing carbon and eliminating a crucial natural mechanism.
‘Even if peatlands are reclaimed, the carbon released through industrialisation won’t be replaced for thousands of years,’ said Ferguson.
Finally, today (25th) I received in my in-box the latest TomDispatch offering. (I am indebted to Tom Engelhardt for, once again, giving me permission to reproduce in full this TomGram.)
Tom’s latest piece is written by Bill McKibben (with an introduction by Tom) and I strongly urge you to read it – the implications are global. If you read an earlier TomDispatch article by Bill re-published on Learning from Dogs on the 18th July, The Great American Carbon Bomb, today’s piece will surely make you sit up and fume; as it did me! Here it is in full.
Tomgram: Bill McKibben, Jailed Over Big Oil’s Attempt to Wreck the Planet
What might have happened if John McCain had won the presidency in 2008? One thing is certain: there would have been a lot more protest from Democrats, progressives, and the left. Take it as an irony of his election, but Barack Obama has proved remarkably effective in disarming the antiwar movement, even as the use of war in American policy in the Greater Middle East has only grown. That Obama, the supposed anti-warrior of the 2008 campaign, has paid less than no attention to his antiwar critics is no news at all. It’s now practically a cliché as well that he seems to feel no need to feed his political “base” and that, generally speaking (and explain it as you will), his base has not yet pushed back.
This has been particularly true of Obama’s wars, especially the disastrous, never-ending one in Afghanistan. Had Afghanistan been “McCain’s war,” you would surely have seen growing waves of protest, despite the way 9/11 ensured that the Afghan War, unlike the Iraq one, would long be the unassailable “good war.” Still, as American treasure surged into the ill-starred enterprise in Afghanistan, while funds for so much that mattered disappeared at home, I think the streets of Washington would have been filling. What protest there has been, as John Hanrahan of the Nieman Watchdog website reported recently, tends to be remarkably ill-covered in the mainstream media.
Obama, only two points ahead of Ron Paul in the latest Gallup Poll in the race for 2012, is a beyond-vulnerable candidate. (Somewhere there must be some Democratic pol doing the obvious math and considering a challenge, mustn’t there?) Fortunately, in another area at least as crucial as our wars, demonstrators against a Big Oil tar-sands pipeline from Canada that will help despoil the planet are now out in front of the White House — you can follow them here — and they haven’t been shy about aiming their nonviolent protests directly at Obama. Will he or won’t he act like the climate-change president that, on coming into office, he swore he would be? Time will tell. Meanwhile, let Bill McKibben, TomDispatch regular, an organizer of the protests, and just out of a jail cell, fill you in. Tom
Arrested at the White House
Acting as a Living Tribute to Martin Luther King
By Bill McKibben
I didn’t think it was possible, but my admiration for Martin Luther King, Jr., grew even stronger these past days.
As I headed to jail as part of the first wave of what is turning into the biggest civil disobedience action in the environmental movement for many years, I had the vague idea that I would write something. Not an epic like King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” but at least, you know, a blog post. Or a tweet.
Heros
But frankly, I wasn’t up to it. The police, surprised by how many people turned out on the first day of two weeks of protests at the White House, decided to teach us a lesson. As they told our legal team, they wanted to deter anyone else from coming — and so with our first crew they were… kind of harsh.
We spent three days in D.C.’s Central Cell Block, which is exactly as much fun as it sounds like it might be. You lie on a metal rack with no mattress or bedding and sweat in the high heat; the din is incessant; there’s one baloney sandwich with a cup of water every 12 hours.
I didn’t have a pencil — they wouldn’t even let me keep my wedding ring — but more important, I didn’t have the peace of mind to write something. It’s only now, out 12 hours and with a good night’s sleep under my belt, that I’m able to think straight. And so, as I said, I’ll go to this weekend’s big celebrations for the openingof the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial on the Washington Mall with even more respect for his calm power.
Preacher, speaker, writer under fire, but also tactician. He really understood the power of nonviolence, a power we’ve experienced in the last few days. When the police cracked down on us, the publicity it produced cemented two of the main purposes of our protest:
Eaarth
First, it made Keystone XL — the new, 1,700-mile-long pipeline we’re trying to block that will vastly increase the flow of “dirty” tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf of Mexico — into a national issue. A few months ago, it was mainly people along the route of the prospective pipeline who were organizing against it. (And with good reason: tar sands mining has already wrecked huge swaths of native land in Alberta, and endangers farms, wild areas, and aquifers all along its prospective route.)
Now, however, people are coming to understand — as we hoped our demonstrations would highlight — that it poses a danger to the whole planet as well. After all, it’s the Earth’s second largest pool of carbon, and hence the second-largest potential source of global warming gases after the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. We’ve already plumbed those Saudi deserts. Now the question is: Will we do the same to the boreal forests of Canada. As NASA climatologist James Hansen has made all too clear, if we do so it’s “essentially game over for the climate.” That message is getting through. Witness the incredibly strong New York Times editorial opposing the building of the pipeline that I was handed on our release from jail.
Second, being arrested in front of the White House helped make it clearer that President Obama should be the focus of anti-pipeline activism. For once Congress isn’t in the picture. The situation couldn’t be simpler: the president, and the president alone, has the power either to sign the permit that would take the pipeline through the Midwest and down to Texas (with the usual set of disastrous oil spills to come) or block it.
Barack Obama has the power to stop it and no one in Congress or elsewhere can prevent him from doing so. That means — and again, it couldn’t be simpler — that the Keystone XL decision is the biggest environmental test for him between now and the next election. If he decides to stand up to the power of big oil, it will send a jolt through his political base, reminding the presently discouraged exactly why they were so enthused in 2008.
That’s why many of us were wearing our old campaign buttons when we went into the paddy wagon. We’d like to remember — and like the White House to remember, too — just why we knocked on all those doors.
But as Dr. King might have predicted, the message went deeper. As people gather in Washington for this weekend’s dedication of his monument, most will be talking about him as a great orator, a great moral leader. And of course he was that, but it’s easily forgotten what a great strategist he was as well, because he understood just how powerful a weapon nonviolence can be.
The police, who trust the logic of force, never quite seem to get this. When they arrested our group of 70 or so on the first day of our demonstrations, they decided to teach us a lesson by keeping us locked up extra long — strong treatment for a group of people peacefully standing on a sidewalk.
No surprise, it didn’t work. The next day an even bigger crowd showed up — and now, there are throngs of people who have signed up to be arrested every day until the protests end on September 3rd. Not only that, a judge threw out the charges against our first group, and so the police have backed off. For the moment, anyway, they’re not actually sending more protesters to jail, just booking and fining them.
And so the busload of ranchers coming from Nebraska, and the bio-fueled RV with the giant logo heading in from East Texas, and the flight of grandmothers arriving from Montana, and the tribal chiefs, and union leaders, and everyone else will keep pouring into D.C. We’ll all, I imagine, stop and pay tribute to Dr. King before or after we get arrested; it’s his lead, after all, that we’re following.
Our part in the weekend’s celebration is to act as a kind of living tribute. While people are up on the mall at the monument, we’ll be in the front of the White House, wearing handcuffs, making clear that civil disobedience is not just history in America.
We may not be facing the same dangers Dr. King did, but we’re getting some small sense of the kind of courage he and the rest of the civil rights movement had to display in their day — the courage to put your body where your beliefs are. It feels good.
So perhaps you understand why every American reading this should make sure your voice is heard. And in the last few minutes – 1.30pm MT 25th August – Reuters have just put out this news release,
Nation’s Leading Environmental NGOs Unified Against Tar Sands Pipeline
Update on Day 5 of Tar Sand Pipeline Protest at the White House
See past update and background.
275 people have been arrested so far and many have been released. Today, the largest environmental groups in the US joined to send a letter to President Obama voicing their unified opposition to the Keystone pipeline and asking him to block it.
Why is this important? “For those of us out there in front of the White House, the best thing about this ringing statement is that the administration won’t be able to play one group off against another by making small concessions here and there”; says protest organizer Bill McKibben.
“There’s only one way to demonstrate to the environmental base the rhetoric of Obama’s 2008 campaign is still meaningful – and that’s to veto this pipeline. Since he can do it without even consulting Congress, this is one case where we’ll be able to see exactly how willing he is to match the rhetoric of his 2008 campaign.”
The letter says:
Dear President Obama,
Many of the organizations we head do not engage in civil disobedience; some do. Regardless, speaking as individuals, we want to let you know that there is not an inch of daylight between our policy position on the Keystone Pipeline and those of the very civil protesters being arrested daily outside the White House.
This is a terrible project – many of the country’s leading climate scientists have explained why in their letter last month to you. It risks many of our national treasures to leaks and spills. And it reduces incentives to make the transition to job-creating clean fuels.
You have a clear shot to deny the permit, without any interference from Congress. It’s perhaps the biggest climate test you face between now and the election.
If you block it, you will trigger a surge of enthusiasm from the green base that supported you so strongly in the last election. We expect nothing less.
Sincerely,
Fred Krupp, Environmental Defense Fund
Michael Brune, Sierra Club
Frances Beinecke, Natural Resources Defense Council
Phil Radford, Greenpeace
Larry Schweiger, National Wildlife Federation Erich Pica, Friends of the Earth
Rebecca Tarbotton, Rainforest Action Network
May Boeve, 350.org
Gene Karpinski, League of Conservation Voters
Margie Alt, Environment America
New York Times Also Opposes Pipeline
In an August 21 editorial, the NY Times took a opposition against the pipeline, citing two main concerns: the risk of oil spills along the pipeline, which would traverse highly sensitive terrain, and the fact that the extraction of petroleum from tar sands creates far more greenhouse emissions than conventional production does.
Building the pipeline would clear the way for Canada to double tar sands production over the next decade to more than 1.8 million barrels a day. To do that, some 740,000 acres of boreal forest – a natural carbon reservoir – would be destroyed.
In addition to the emissions produced by tar sands extraction, would be emissions from the loss of this vast, crucial carbon sink, [editor’s note: not to mention the biodiversity it harbors.] Read the editorial:
Website: here with permission from Sustainable Business
A fascinating and beautiful insight into wild turkeys!
Yesterday, I published a couple of stories that demonstrated that close, loving bonds can form between different species, including an orang-utan and a dog, and a duck and a man.
By chance, Jean and I came across another example of cross-species bonding. This time between Joe Hutto, an American living in Florida, and a brood (is that the right description?) of newly-born wild turkeys. The first thing these tiny birds saw when they opened their eyes after breaking clear of their egg was Joe, and they immediately imprinted him as their ‘mother’.
Joe spent a complete year and more being ‘mother’ to these birds right up to the point where they naturally flew the nest, so to speak. Joe’s experiences led to a book, Illumination in the Flatwoods, and from that to a BBC Natural World special My Life as a Turkey, regrettably not available to viewers outside the UK.
But speaking to someone who did watch the BBC film, it was clear that it was a most beautiful and touching account of how young wild turkeys can bond to a human. Here’s part of the programme review in the British Guardian newspaper,
Joe Hutto’s life changed when a local farmer in the Florida flatlands where he lives left a stainless steel dog bowl full of wild turkey eggs on the porch of his cabin. Joe put them in an incubator, and waited. Some weeks later, cracks began to appear. This is the crucial time: “imprinting” only occurs in the first few moments after hatching. So Joe put his face down to the level of the opening eggs and the first poult emerged, wet and confused. Joe made a chirping, clucky noise, the poult looked him square in the eye, “and something very unambiguous happened in that moment”.
The little turkey stumbled and crawled across to Joe, and huddled up against his face. It recognised Joe as its mother. In the next few hours, Joe became mother to 15 more baby turkeys and remained so for the next 18 months. My Life as a Turkey: Natural World Special (BBC2) tells that story.
Across to the programme details from the BBC2 website (may not be available 26 days after the date of this article),
Biologist Joe Hutto was mother to the strangest family in the world, thirteen endangered wild turkeys that he raised from egg to the day they left home.
For a whole year his turkey children were his only companions as he walked them deep through the Florida Everglades. Suffering all the heartache and joy of any other parent as he tried to bring up his new family, he even learnt to speak their language and began to see the world through turkey eyes. Told as a drama documentary with an actor recreating the remarkable scenes of Joe’s life as a turkey mum.
Behind the scenes image of turkeys and Jeff Palmer (actor) in misty forest in Florida. Cameraman (Mark Smith) on track & dolly shows how some of the beautiful sweeping shots were filmed.
Sam Wollaston of the Guardian continues,
It’s not hard to see how the little birds were taken in. Joe’s moustache does look a bit like feathers, he has a long scraggy neck, an understanding of the forest, and a tentative, birdlike walk. He takes them out, to catch their first grasshoppers; he teaches them how to roost. For Joe, as for any mother, parenthood is an emotional rollercoaster ride. There is the joy of seeing his babies grow, but almost constant worry. Grief too, when one is taken by a rat snake, and another by a hawk, and two more get sick (bird flu?) and die.
Adolescence arrives with all its associated problems. The males start fighting; only the toughest will get to mate. “I had no way of knowing how I was going to be part of this rite of passage,” says Joe. Steady now, Joe, let’s not take this too far, you’re not supposed to mate with any of them. For one, they’re your children. They’re also turkeys. That would be doubly wrong. Sometimes I think Joe spends too much time alone in the forest.
Quite so! However, the film was so beautifully shot that it was very, very easy to forget that this was a re-enactment of Joe’s original experience. That love is all about how you make someone, or in these cases, some other creature, feel. Another couple of pictures from the BBC website,
Lights, camera, action!Jeff Palmer (actor) sat on large felled tree on his cell phone with a dozen wild turkeys.
One final extract from the Sam Wollaston article in The Guardian newspaper,
My Life as a Turkey isn’t simply a wildlife film though. It’s not just about wild animals, it’s about one man’s relationship with wild animals, and that’s what makes it so fabulous. Serious animal behaviourists may not agree, but if you throw a human being in there, it all suddenly becomes a lot more interesting. I’m thinking Ring of Bright Water, Gorillas in the Mist, I’m definitely thinking Werner Herzog’s brilliant Grizzly Man about a man named Tim whose friendship with bears went wrong and he ended up inside one. My Life as a Turkey has something of Grizzly Man about it – a man obsessed, alone in a beautiful place, living with wild animals. But, although Joe was attacked, he didn’t end up inside one of his turkeys thankfully. There would have been a certain irony to that, especially if it had happened at Thanksgiving.
Anyway, it’s a lovely film – beautiful, charming, funny, sad, thought-provoking even. What thoughts did it provoke in me? That I need to go and see my mum.
Unfortunately, as mentioned above if you are outside the UK you are not able to watch the film via the BBC iPlayer system. But you can buy the book.
Joe Hutto's book of his life with wild turkeys.
Available from Amazon, here’s just one of the reviews,
My review is not unbiased because Joe Hutto, author of “Illumination in the Flatwoods,” and I have been friends for almost 25 years.
Joe is the most humble man I’ve ever known. I am honored that he brought me the original manuscript to read. It was so beautiful I could have cried.
With the same graceful writing skills used by conservationists Aldo Leopold (“Sand County Almanac”) and Herbert Stoddard (“Memoirs of a Naturalist”), Joe gives a masterful mix of documentary-style nature reporting and heartfelt thoughts on the meaning of life. As dramatic as that sounds, I think most readers will agree that “Illumination in the Flatwoods” is a life-changing book.
You will never regret the dollars you spend to buy this book nor the time it takes you to read it. . .
A chance email from Dan G. opens up a whole treasure trove.
Here’s what Dan sent to me,
True Friends
After losing his parents, this 3 year old orangutan was so depressed he wouldn’t eat and didn’t respond to any medical treatments. The veterinarians thought he would surely die from sadness. The zoo keepers found an old sick dog on the grounds in the park at the zoo where the orangutan lived and took the dog to the animal treatment center. The dog arrived at the same time the orangutan was there being treated. The 2 lost souls met and have been inseparable ever since.
The orangutan found a new reason to live and each always tries his best to be a good companion to his new found friend. They are together 24 hours a day in all their activities.
Roscoe and Surya
They live in Northern California where swimming is their favorite past time, although Roscoe (the orangutan) is a little afraid of the water and needs his friend’s help to swim.
Roscoe and SuryaRoscoe and Surya
Together they have discovered the joy and laughter in life and the value of friendship.
Roscoe and SuryaRoscoe and Surya
They have found more than a friendly shoulder to lean on.
Roscoe and SuryaLove across the species boundary
Long Live Friendship!!!!!!!
I don’t know……some say life is too short, others say it is too long, but I know that nothing that we do makes sense if we don’t touch the hearts of others…….while it lasts!
So after I had seen the pictures above, it was pretty easy to find this YouTube video.
Then if that wasn’t amazing and wonderful, try this,
Well that’s enough for today. But tomorrow, I will continue with Part Two which recounts the amazing year that Joe Hutto spent in the Florida wildlands with ….. (you’ll have to wait for tomorrow!)
Learning from Dogs 