It’s been a while since Sue of Dreamwalker’s Sanctuary and I started following each other’s Blogs and from time to time Sue sends me an email with something for Learning from Dogs. On the 20th March, I published a guest post from Sue called the Winds of Change. If you didn’t read her wonderful poem then do go there and read it.
Anyway, just a couple of days ago Sue sent me an email with a link to a YouTube video. Put aside a few minutes and be entranced.
So you have just watched the video. How do you feel? I bet that your feelings are not a million miles from the realisation that, like Fiona the dog, being ‘lost‘ is an uncomfortable, unsettling but necessary step along the journey of being ‘found‘. As I wrote in the concluding part of my story Night messages, “The message from the night, as clear as the rays of this new day’s sun, the message to pass to all those he loved. If you don’t get lost, there’s a chance you may never be found.”
When the bond between a human and a dog is expressed as deep love, as it so often is, we relearn the most important lesson of all creation. That mankind’s only hope for the future comes from the pool of love.
No better portrayed than by the photograph below that I presented in a Post on the 17th March, Change out of Hope.
The power of love.
“The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog.“ Samuel Coleridge
An interesting reflection on the rearing of cattle and an ‘Anti-Meat pill! No kidding!
I was vaguely aware of the contribution of cattle towards the overall rise in greenhouse gases. A very quick web search found this news item from the United Nations which included,
29 November 2006 – Cattle-rearing generates more global warming greenhouse gases, as measured in CO2 equivalent, than transportation, and smarter production methods, including improved animal diets to reduce enteric fermentation and consequent methane emissions, are urgently needed, according to a new United Nations report released today.
“Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems,” senior UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) official Henning Steinfeld said. “Urgent action is required to remedy the situation.”
But what prompted me to look a little closer at this was a recent article on the Big Think website that was entitled, The Anti-Meat Pill: Human Engineering to Combat Climate Change.
Let me quote a little from the article, presented on the Big Think website by Daniel Honan.
NYU Bio-ethicist Matthew Liao has caused a stir recently with a forthcoming paper that explores the biomedical modification of humans in order to stop us from consuming red meat.
and a paragraph later continued with,
In a forthcoming paper to be published in Ethics, Policy and the Environment, Liao suggests that humans might take pills to bring about mild nausea to rid ourselves of our appetite for red meat. This would have a mitigating effect on climate change, he argues.
Liao refers to studies such as a widely-sited UN report that estimates 18 percent of greenhouse emissions come from livestock, which is a higher share than transportation. Another report, from 2009, estimates livestock emissions are significantly higher, at 50 percent. Fact of life: cows fart. Other negative impacts of increased livestock farming includes deforestation and a drain on water supplies.
The Internet rapidly found Matthew Liao’s website and from there the paper referred to above, which is introduced thus,
Professor Matthew Liao of New York University
Anthropogenic climate change is arguably one of the biggest problems that confront us today. There is ample evidence that climate change is likely to affect adversely many aspects of life for all people around the world, and that existing solutions such as geoengineering might be too risky and ordinary behavioural and market solutions might not be sufficient to mitigate climate change. In this paper, we consider a new kind of solution to climate change, what we call human engineering, which involves biomedical modifications of humans so that they can mitigate and/or adapt to climate change. We argue that human engineering is potentially less risky than geoengineering and that it could help behavioural and market solutions succeed in mitigating climate change. We also consider some possible ethical concerns regarding human engineering such as its safety, the implications of human engineering for our children and for the society, and we argue that these concerns can be addressed. Our upshot is that human engineering deserves further consideration in the debate about climate change.
Now if we go back to that UN article, we can see that emissions from cattle and livestock in general is not a minor issue.
When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 per cent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 per cent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.
And it accounts for respectively 37 per cent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 per cent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.
With increased prosperity, people are consuming more meat and dairy products every year, the report notes. Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tonnes in 1999/2001 to 465 million tonnes in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tonnes.
But modifying humans, frankly, misses the point.
That is unless we wholeheartedly embrace the need to change, to sustain the only planet we can call home, and do it because we care, Planet Earth will do the bioengineering for us – engineering us into extinction. For example, just cut back on eating meat! And if you don’t want to do it for the planet, do it for the health of your children as this Health Petition underlines in spades.
So I’m sorry Professor Liao but this seems like a step too far – by a long way.
A reflection of our unconscious minds – and the potential perils ahead.
Last Monday, March 12th, the BBC aired a programme under their excellent Horizon science series. This programme was entitled, Out of Control? Here’s how the programme was introduced,
We all like to think we are in control of our lives – of what we feel and what we think. But scientists are now discovering this is often simply an illusion.
Surprising experiments are revealing that what you think you do and what you actually do can be very different. Your unconscious mind is often calling the shots, influencing the decisions you make, from what you eat to who you fall in love with. If you think you are really in control of your life, you may have to think again.
The whole 60 minute programme was fascinating right from the start when Professor Nobre introduced the secret world of our unconscious mind. Professor Anna Nobre heads The Brain & Cognition Laboratory, a cognitive neuroscience research group at the Department of Experimental Psychology in the University of Oxford.
For starters, how much of your mind do you think is your conscious mind as opposed to your unconscious mind? Watch this clip and be amazed!
“Are you in control of your unconscious, or is it in control of you?”
So let me link how our mind works to something more relevant today than possibly any other aspect of life.
I’m thinking of the fundamental question that bothers me and, perhaps millions of others. That question being: “Why, with the overwhelming scientific evidence that man is critically threatening the planet’s biosphere upon which we all depend, is there not an equally overwhelming global commitment for change to a sustainable way of life?”
Take, for example, this compelling story.
Last Saturday the BBC News website published a report by Richard Black, the BBC’s Environment correspondent, that opened thus,
An eminent UK engineer is suggesting building cloud-whitening towers in the Faroe Islands as a “technical fix” for warming across the Arctic.
Scientists told UK MPs this week that the possibility of a major methane release triggered by melting Arctic ice constitutes a “planetary emergency“. [my emboldening]
The Arctic could be sea-ice free each September within a few years.
and later goes into this detail (do please read it all, it’s only a few minutes of quiet reading),
On melting ice
The area of Arctic Ocean covered by ice each summer has declined significantly over the last few decades as air and sea temperatures have risen.
For each of the last four years, the September minimum has seen about two-thirds of the average cover for the years 1979-2000, which is used a baseline. The extent covered at other times of the year has also been shrinking.
What more concerns some scientists is the falling volume of ice.
Analysis from the University of Washington, in Seattle, using ice thickness data from submarines and satellites, suggests that Septembers could be ice-free within just a few years.
Data for September suggests the Arctic Ocean could be free of sea ice in a few years
“In 2007, the water [off northern Siberia] warmed up to about 5C (41F) in summer, and this extends down to the sea bed, melting the offshore permafrost,” said Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University.
Among the issues this raises is whether the ice-free conditions will quicken release of methane currently trapped in the sea bed, especially in the shallow waters along the northern coast of Siberia, Canada and Alaska.
Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, though it does not last as long in the atmosphere.
Several teams of scientists trying to measure how much methane is actually being released have reported seeing vast bubbles coming up through the water – although analysing how much this matters is complicated by the absence of similar measurements from previous decades.
Nevertheless, Prof Wadhams told MPs, the release could be expected to get stronger over time. “With ‘business-as-usual’ greenhouse gas emissions, we might have warming of 9-10C in the Arctic. That will cement in place the ice-free nature of the Arctic Ocean – it will release methane from offshore, and a lot of the methane on land as well.”
This would – in turn – exacerbate warming, across the Arctic and the rest of the world.
Abrupt methane releases from frozen regions may have played a major role in two events, 55 and 251 million years ago, that extinguished much of the life then on Earth.
Meteorologist Lord (Julian) Hunt, who chaired the meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change, clarified that an abrupt methane release from the current warming was not inevitable, describing that as “an issue for scientific debate”.
But he also said that some in the scientific community had been reluctant to discuss the possibility.
“There is quite a lot of suppression and non-discussion of issues that are difficult, and one of those is in fact methane,” he said, recalling a reluctance on the part of at least one senior scientists involved in the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment to discuss the impact that a methane release might have.
Reams of other factual evidence shows that mankind may have only a few years left to stop the planet going into a runaway condition that would then extinguish much of the life on Earth!
So what’s stopping us?
Dr. Sharot
Well back to that Horizon programme. In the programme, Dr. Tali Sharot of University College London explains how we are all optimists despite the risks. I.e. our unconscious mind deliberately prevents negative information from affecting our conscious mind, our conscious judgment.
In an experiment, an individual is asked to guess the likelihood of a whole range of outcomes, 80 in all. Ergo, you see a gentleman guessing the likelihood of cancer as 18%, of a bone fracture as 10%, of Alzheimer’s as 2%, and so on.
In some cases he guessed a pessimistic probability, in others an optimistic probability. After each guess he was shown the correct probability. E.g. cancer 30% vs his estimate of 18%, for a bone fracture 34% vs his guess of 10%, and the risk in reality of Alzheimer’s is 10% versus his instinct of just 2%. I’ve just quoted his optimistic guesses, in many questions his guess was a pessimistic view, i.e. he guessed a higher likelihood than the statistical reality.
Then he was asked all 80 questions again, having seen the accurate probability compared to his intuitive guess.
So here’s the fascinating outcome.
Where his instinct was a negative guess versus the statistical probability then he adjusted his mind and was able to quote a more accurate figure the second time around. But where the reality was more pessimistic than his first guess, then that adjusted knowledge wasn’t retained. In other words, our beliefs only change when we can adjust to a more positive view of the future.
I just hope I have made that clear. Readers may like to view an article written by Dr. Sharot published in TIME Magazine in May, 2011, called The Optimism Bias or read the introduction to a lecture given in Seattle in June, 2011; “A sunny outlook doesn’t just make you a more pleasant companion: Tali Sharot argues that optimism is a tool for survival and happiness that gets us through hard times—even an economic recession. Sharot, author of The Optimism Bias, uncovers myths about optimism, illuminates the ways it can affect our lives, examines why optimism is necessary for us to function, and illustrates how the human brain is extremely adept at turning lead into gold.”
A summary of a publication, Sharot, T. (2011). The optimism bias. Curr Biol 21(23), R941-R945, reads,
The ability to anticipate is a hallmark of cognition. Inferences about what will occur in the future are critical to decision making, enabling us to prepare our actions so as to avoid harm and gain reward. Given the importance of these future projections, one might expect the brain to possess accurate, unbiased foresight. Humans, however, exhibit a pervasive and surprising bias: when it comes to predicting what will happen to us tomorrow, next week, or fifty years from now, we overestimate the likelihood of positive events, and underestimate the likelihood of negative events. For example, we underrate our chances of getting divorced, being in a car accident, or suffering from cancer. We also expect to live longer than objective measures would warrant, overestimate our success in the job market, and believe that our children will be especially talented. This phenomenon is known as the optimism bias, and it is one of the most consistent, prevalent, and robust biases documented in psychology and behavioral economics.
Our bias towards an optimistic future is a “tool for survival and happiness that gets us through hard times.” But if that ancient bias is preventing mankind from recognising just how close we may be to some form of ‘tipping point’ then this tool for survival may be our undoing.
But if on the other hand, we now unite in changing our ways, first by community then by town then by country our future is incredibly optimistic.
“A single candle may light a thousand others and they in turn many thousands more” – Buddha
Don’t worry, this is not going to be some chest-banging Post! I leave those for Monday to Friday. 😉 No, I just wanted to offer a couple of examples of the power of goodness and how making a positive difference is no more than wanting it. As Perfect Stranger commented last Tuesday, “A single candle may light a thousand others and they in turn many thousands more” – Buddha
The first example is about how a group of upstanding citizens rescue a school of dolphins that became stuck on a beach in Brazil.
The second example comes from closer to home. Ginger I. is a Board Member of the Humane Society of Central Arizona and is based at Payson. Jean has been a volunteer at the Society’s Thrift Store for some time and has got to know Ginger well.
Ginger recently emailed me this; it has already done the rounds of the WWW, and quite rightly so. It reminds me of the book Dogs Never Lie About Love, written by Jeffrey Masson, from which comes the following,
This ambiguity, which includes a certain ambivalence as well, has been memorialized in our speech, in our sayings, and in our tributes to and about dogs. Sir John Davies, in his epigram In Cineam (written in 1594), observed:
Thou sayest thou art as weary as a dog,
As angry, sick, and hungry as a dog,
As dull and melancholy as a dog,
As lazy, sleepy, idle as a dog.
But why dost thou compare thee to a dog?
In that for which all men despise a dog,
I will compare thee better to a dog.
Thou art as fair and comely as a dog,
Thou art as true and honest as a dog,
Thou art as kind and liberal as a dog,
Thou art as wise and valiant as a dog.
Ever since Madame Roland said in the eighteenth century “Plus je vois les hommes, plus j’admire les chiens” (The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs), generally what has been written about dogs tends to be positive. Sometimes it is even wonderful, as in William James’s statement “Marvelous as may be the power of my dog to understand my moods, deathless as is his affection and fidelity, his mental state is as unsolved a mystery to me as it was to my remotest ancestor.” Or it may be delicious, like Ambrose Bierce’s definition in his Devil’s Dictionary, “Dog, n. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world’s worship.” Samuel Coleridge, in Table-Talk (May 2, 1830), was one of the first to note that “the best friend a man has in the world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter … may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to him … may become traitors to their faith…. The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog.”
Just read that last sentence again from Samual Coleridge as you look at the photograph below, “The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog.”
A plea to those who understand climate science so much better than I do!
Background to this Post.
Among my friends, two go way back. One of them, Dan Gomez, a lively, ebullient Californian, was indirectly responsible for me and Jean meeting in Mexico back on December 17th, 2007. I first met Dan at a dealers’ conference in Boston way back in the early days of Commodore Computers. That was the Spring of 1979 and I had flown to Boston as the owner of the 8th Commodore Computer dealership to be appointed in the UK, based in Colchester, Essex. Later, I became the global distributor of an English word processing program known as Wordcraft, written by Pete Dowson in the UK, and appointed Dan as my US West Coast Wordcraft distributor. It gave me a wonderful reason to come out to Southern California several times a year; on business, of course!
Dan and I therefore go back 33 years! Dan’s sister Suzann has a house down in San Carlos, Mexico. Suzann invited me out to Mexico for Christmas 2007 which is where I first met Jean and, bingo, Jean and I then fell in love with each other! How life flows! (Two years ago yesterday, Jean and I moved into our house in Payson with our, then, 13 dogs and 6 cats!)
Paul & Dan Jan. 15th 2008
OK, to the Post!
Dan has been a climate change skeptic, as in caused by man, for many years. Regular readers of Learning from Dogs will know I see things very differently. But Dan and I agree fundamentally on getting to the truth. This Blog proudly claims to seek “The underlying theme of Learning from Dogs is about truth, integrity, honesty and trust in every way.”
So when the other day Dan sent me a number of links supporting his view that “My point remains that climate change is an enormous, complex process that no computer model is going to predict and no human activity modify significantly. Big money is now at stake here and as the article shows, even trusted scientists will produce fraudulent information to further their goals as well as fill politician’s coffers.” I found my faith in my own views slighted dented. Dan is a smart guy, a good thinker and not beholden to any firm or organisation with a vested interest in denying anthropogenic global warming.
IPCC Scientist Admits Fake Data Used To Pressure World Leaders
A scientist responsible for a key 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warning Himalayan glaciers would be completely melted by 2035 has admitted that the claim was made to put political pressure on world leaders.
Such was revealed by the British Daily Mail Sunday in an article destined to further reduce the credibility of the world’s so-called leading authority on manmade global warming.
As NewsBusters reported Saturday, the IPCC acknowledged earlier this week that its claim concerning these glaciers was based on junk science.
Anthropogenic (Human Caused) Global Warming – Is This The Greatest Scientific Myth of our Generation?”
January 25th, 2012, Portland, Oregon
First Speaker – Gordon Fulks, PhD Physics, University of Chicago
[Extract]
Dr. Fulks said: “My thesis tonight is simple: virtually ALL of what climate alarmists put forth as science is not. Some is half correct, some is incorrect, and too much is just plain nonsense or worse.”
This led him into what he called “one of the central problems with Anthropogenic Global Warming,” “the integrity of the data.” He discussed a variety of temperature data from land surface data that shows various manipulations and biases to the best global data from NASA satellites to the excellent ice core temperature proxies going back 450,000 years.
Second Speaker – Chuck Wiese, Meteorologist – Oregon State University
[Extract]
Mr. Wiese finished his presentation with the following conclusions:
1. There is nothing in the REAL atmospheric record that supports the recent temperature rise of the last century to carbon dioxide induced anthropogenic warming.
2. The tropospheric water vapor optical depth is remarkably stable but has declined recently over the last 70 years of record as carbon dioxide rose substantially in the atmosphere during the same period. This is a consistent outcome as expected by the first principle founding physics and inconsistent with atmospheric climate models.
3. Without water vapor acting as a positive feedback ( growth pattern ) to increasing carbon dioxide concentrations, the projected radiative forcing on the earth’s surface is but a grossly exaggerated calculation of what the earth’s temperature will actually do in response to carbon dioxide.
4. The earth’s “greenhouse effect” is NOT controlled by atmospheric carbon dioxide. It is modulated and governed by atmospheric water vapor and clouds, where the warming modulation is controlled by the amount of vapor and optical depth. Clouds with the hydrological cycle act to trim out water vapor into a hydrostatic, convective equilibrium. The stable atmospheric optical depth likes the earth mean temperature of 59 deg F without further solar or planetary modulation.
5. The Anthropogenic warming hypothesis by atmospheric CO2 is falsified by the real record and radiation physics.
Third Speaker – George Taylor, former Oregon State Climatologist
[Extract]
His presentation finished with his conclusions:
1. Human activities DO affect climate, in a variety of ways. Greenhouse gases are just one parameter.
2. Natural variations affect climate. I believe that they have been more significant influences on climate because they do a much better job of explaining observed variations.
3. Effects of future changes in CO2 are likely to be modest and manageable.
4. Many aspects of climate remain poorly understood.
The full transcripts and supporting materials may be seen here.
Then, in stark contrast, this week’s edition of The Economist has a leader about the problem of overfishing. “Of all the sea’s many problems, overfishing should be the most fixable. ” What jumped off the page at me was how that leader article started,
ACIDIFICATION, warming, the destruction of coral reefs: the biggest problems facing the sea are as vast, deep and seemingly intractable as the oceans themselves. So long as the world fails to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases, cause of the global warming behind these troubles, they will grow.
So a newspaper of the standing of The Economist is clear, “So long as the world fails to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases, cause of the global warming behind these troubles”
So if, dear reader, you can offer good supporting evidence as to why the Oregon Chapter of the American Meteorological Society seems to contradict what so many now believe, that mankind is changing the Earth’s climate, please comment or, better still, consider writing a guest post.
About a week ago, via the blogsite Paleo Works, a couple of comments brought me into contact with Amy. Of course being an Englishman any woman with the name of Amy Johnson is going to cause a double-take on the name. This Amy shared the same name as the English pioneering aviator Amy Johnson, albeit from an earlier era, the aviator that is!
An exchange of emails between Amy and myself revealed an experience that Amy had when she was very young, and I asked Amy if she would like to write a guest post. This, then, is Amy’s story about overcoming a fear of dogs.
Amy J.
I have a cousin who is about the same age as me. My cousin’s mom, my aunt, used to babysit me and the dog in question, a big female, reddish golden retriever was always around and like any retriever was a loving, and lovable, happy-go-lucky dog.
The event goes back to when both my cousin and I were about four-years-old, maybe just five. For some inexplicable reason the dog attacked my cousin. I grew up believing the dog may have been frightened, startled, but I don’t think it was provoked. Certainly, the dog didn’t have any history of biting.
Anyway, that attack on my cousin caused a ton of stitches, 15 or 17, and scarred us both. Physical scars for my cousin and emotional scars for me. As an aside, I don’t remember the dog ever being around again so am fairly confident the dog was put to sleep.
Thus ever since that event, I’ve moved through life with this crippling fear of dogs. Throughout the remainder of my childhood and into my teen years I masked my fear pretending not to be afraid of dogs. It seemed like the whole world loved dogs, and my fear made me feel oddly isolated.
Of course, dogs always sensed my fear and they would usually bark like crazy around me – or jump. I ended up equating dog barking as screaming or yelling, and it was quite disturbing. I would tense up frozen in fear.
Dogs, like humans, come with all kinds of personalities, from one extreme where they are so calm and laid back you wonder whether they even have a pulse to the another extreme of being so ferocious sounding with snarly barky faces and totally tensed bodies.
When a dog was approaching me on the sidewalk, just minding his own business and ignoring me, I would walk far away into the street or grass to be at a safe distance. I avoided dogs at all costs, because like any human, I tried my best to avoid negative emotions; anxiety, fear, worry.
Thus I avoided dogs my whole life, that is, until my niece Emma came into the world. Emma loves dogs, all dogs. Barky dogs, jumpy dogs, big dogs, little dogs, scrappy dogs, arrogant dogs. If you had a dog, Emma would literally stalk you until you allowed her to pet and offer love to your dog.
Barking and jumping dogs never ever deterred Emma; she lights up with love and openness to all dogs. And via her openness and pure love, compassion and joy for dogs Emma has helped me understand that most dogs are a-ok. They aren’t barking screaming, they are barking excitement! They aren’t jumping to chomp my cheek, they are jumping to lick my lips – eewww, but oh what a light bulb that was turned on in me! I feel immense gratitude for Emma helping me move beyond this debilitating fear and for me being open to accepting her help.
It is so true that we can learn from dogs, indeed we can learn from everyone and everything, if we are open to learning and absorbing new information, open to reflection and inner stillness, open to course-corrections along our way.
Thank you Amy, I have no doubt that will reach out to many readers.
A wonderful enlightened approach to the challenges facing our beautiful planet.
Rob Hopkins is a remarkable fellow. In so many ways he is the most unlikely person to have kicked off almost single-handedly, a gathering world-wide revolution.
I am as guilty as the next person in promoting ‘doom and gloom’ when it comes to what mankind is doing to this planet. I devoted a couple of thousand words to that theme in a guest sermon that appeared on Learning from Dogs a week ago. That’s not to say that unless mankind, in the millions, changes in significant ways then avoiding a catastrophy to our species, and many others, is going to be hugely difficult.
But motivating us all to change is far better undertaken from a position of positive guidance and inspiration, than out of fear!
So when Jean and I listened to a recent BBC radio broadcast by Rob as part of the BBC Radio 4 Four Thought series we were blown away by the guidance and inspiration that Rob presented.
It’s 15 minutes of hope, and you too can listen to it from anywhere in the world by going here or by going here.
This is how the BBC introduces the programme,
Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the Transition Culture movement, believes that “engaged optimism” is the best way to face the global challenges of the future, be it climate change, oil supplies running out or the economic downturn. He believes initiatives enabling people to produce their own goods and services locally – from solar powered bottled beer to micro currencies like the Brixton pound – are the best way to build community resilience. Four Thought is a series of talks in which speakers give a personal viewpoint recorded in front of an audience at the RSA in London.
Producer: Sheila Cook.
So do listen to the programme and then click across to the Transition Culture website where Rob has posted a transcript of his talk. Please, whatever your plans today find time to listen to the programme and read the transcript. Here’s how Rob closes his talk,
I often end talks I give with Arundhati Roy’s quote “another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day I can hear her breathing”. I think we might adapt her quote, so that, in the context of this bottom-up drive for more resilient communities, communities better prepared for uncertain times, it is not only a case of hearing another world breathing, but being able to see her around us, already setting up local businesses, reviving her local economy, setting up bakeries, breweries, food hubs, mentoring scores of young people with business ideas, attracting inward social investment finance, creating the models whereby people can invest in their communities and see them being strengthened and supported.
That’s why I get out of bed in the morning, because I feel that the potential in our getting this right is so exquisite that it’s all I can do, and because the grim predictability of what will happen if we do nothing is just unthinkable, especially in relation to the challenge of climate change. If we are able to turn things around on the scale we need to turn them around on, to replace vulnerability, carbon intensity and fragility with resilience, it will be an achievement our children will tell tales about, sing songs about. I hope I am there to hear them. Thank you.
When I started writing Learning from Dogs, way back on July 15th 2009, I didn’t have a clue as to the world I was entering, figuratively speaking. But there have been many unanticipated rewards including the great pleasure of the way that this strange virtual world of the Internet brings people together. One connection recently made was with a young Bangladeshi living in the city of Dhaka, more of his background here.
Nakib recently published a powerful and moving Post and has been gracious in allowing me to republish it, as follows:
The vulture that waited for the child to die
Given below is the 1994 Pulitzer price-winning photograph taken by Kevin Carter during the Sudan famine of 1994.
The photo shows a famine-stricken child crawling towards a United Nations food camp, which was located at least one kilometer away from the place shown. The vulture on the other hand is waiting eagerly for the child to die so that it can devour it.
I do not know what message the photograph revokes on your head but every time I look at it I feel blessed that I have been provided enough at least to satisfy my hungry stomach and keep me energetic enough to write blogs. I feel small and humble when I think of all the people suffering out there— homeless and starved— yet trying their best to make some sense of the complex notion known as life. It tells me that I have been blessed for a reason, for a purpose, and whatever I have been provided with should not go in vain. I can infer that my powers should be used well, at least for that little kid on the above photograph for whom Fate had sealed a quicksand of reality too hard to acknowledge for many of us hedonists out here.
Most importantly, to me the photograph conveys an emotion; a reality that many of us are too blind to grasp. I think of how people throughout the world are suffering to no ends yet amidst everything trying again and again to find the silver lining associated with the black cloud. I realize that there is a lot happening outside my comfortable apartment and Biology textbook that needs looking after, that there is a lot of people who strive hard yet achieve nothing in return. It amazes me when I try to ponder God’s sense of justice and egalitarianism.
So is it okay for the blessed 25% of the population in this world to waste everything that life has given them while the the rest 75% live amidst severe poverty, oppression and inequality? Is it okay to go overboard with New Year parties while exactly at the same hour millions of people across the globe are suffering from the fangs of social deprivation? Is it okay to let things be as they are and forget about everything so as to harmoniously embrace useless ambitions and lustful desires?
Have we all truly forgotten to share our wealth and about the latent human being that exists inside everyone of us? Have we truly gottten rid of all those emotions that make us human beings? Is this what the world is for: for some to live lavishly while for the rest to suffer endlessly?
Three months after he took the photograph Kevin Carter, after suffering from several periods of depression, committed suicide.
Dated on the day the photo was taken, the following note was found from his diary:
Dear God, I promise I will never waste my food no matter how bad it can taste and how full I may be. I pray that He will protect this little boy, guide and deliver him away from his misery. I pray that we will be more sensitive towards the world around us and not be blinded by our own selfish nature and interests. I hope this picture will always serve as a reminder to us that how fortunate we are and that we must never ever take things for granted.
As for the child, no one really knows what happened to him; not even the South African photographer who had left the place immediately after the photo was taken. I try to appease myself by saying that the child never existed in the first place. God simply intended to provide us with a glimpse of the truth of life, to remind us how blessed we are. I hope this is true.
The National Preach-In held the week-end of February 11th/12th.
Some while ago, I signed up for a week-end organised by the Arizona Interfaith Power & Light. It was part of a national programme inviting faith leaders from across the country to give sermons and reflections on climate change over the weekend of February 10-12, 2012. My interest was simply to learn more about the week-end.
Then I quickly discovered that Father Dan from our church, St. Paul’s, had also signed up. In my innocence I offered to help in any way which was quickly met by a response that bowled me over, “Well, you can be the homilist and give the sermon!” Thus it came about that at yesterday’s 8am and 10am services yours truly rather uncertainly delivered the sermon. John H., who with my dear wife Jeannie, did so much to turn my rambling thoughts into a coherent theme, encouraged me to publish the sermon as today’s Post on Learning from Dogs. It now follows.
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St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Payson, Arizona
The 6th Sunday after the Epiphany
Year B
February 12th, 2012
2 Kings 5:1-14 X Psalm 30 1:13 X 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 X Mark 1:40-45
It was just a photograph. OK, one taken 43 years ago but, so what! Well, the late Galen Rowell, the famous Californian wilderness photographer called it, “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.”
We are talking about the photograph called ‘Earthrise’ taken from Apollo 8 on December 24th, 1968 during the first manned mission to the Moon. Each of you should have a copy of that picture close by. Look at it now and let your imagination be carried back to that Apollo 8 capsule and that momentous experience.
As the Earth rose above the horizon of the moon, NASA astronaut Frank Borman uttered the words, “Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! Here’s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty.” Bill Anders then took the ‘unscheduled’ photograph.
Then recall that evening, Christmas Eve 1968, when the three NASA crew members took turns reading from the book of Genesis to what was probably the biggest audience ever in the history of television, Frank Borman finishing with the words, “God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good.”
Our planet is good, and so beautiful, and so precious to life. Life that arose in just a fraction of time after the Solar System formed 3.7 billion years ago; the oldest traces of life have been found in fossils dating back 3.4 billion years. That miracle of life.
Who hasn’t gazed into a clear, Arizonan, night sky and been lost in the beauty above our heads. Or felt the wind, flowing across ancient lands, kiss our face. We stand so mite-like, so insignificant in all this immensity of creation; God’s creation.
Our dreams, our hopes and failures, everything we are, have ever been and ever will be, nothing more than a swirl of dust across a desert track.
Jeremiah was called to be a prophet in 626 BC, some 2,638 years ago. In Jeremiah 12:4 he wrote, “How long will the land mourn, and the grass of every field wither? For the wickedness of those who live in it, the animals and the birds are swept away…”
Words from so long ago! But Jeremiah would, surely, have gasped with disbelief had he realised how, some 2,600 years later, ‘the land now mourns and the grasses so wither’.
Jeremiah reveals much that we all could learn about ourselves. The other prophets couldn’t be accused of hiding behind their work but Jeremiah, out of all of them, allowed us to see the evidence of his own spiritual condition. He was a man of deep feelings and sensibilities and in his book there are five laments over the serious spiritual and moral condition of God’s people. That’s us, by the way!
In that time of Jeremiah, the world population was 100 million persons; slightly less than the population of Mexico today.
Some 1,350 years later, 1,000 A.D., the global population was 265 million.
But by the year 2,000 A.D., our population had increased to 6,000 millions! Put another way, that’s an increase of 5.7 million people every year for a 1,000 years !
Any guesses on the increase in the last 12 years, since 2,000? Well, the global population has increased by 990 million. About 90 million every year!
It is utterly unsustainable at present levels of Western consumption, let alone with poorer nations trying to ‘catch up’.
Last September, our House of Bishops issued A Pastoral Teaching. Our Bishops believe those ancient words of Jeremiah describe these present times. They call us to repentance, to change.
That Pastoral Teaching, in part, says, “Christians cannot be indifferent to global warming, pollution, natural resource depletion, species extinctions, and habitat destruction, all of which threaten life on our planet. Because so many of these threats are driven by greed, we must also actively seek to create more compassionate and sustainable economies that support the well-being of all God’s creation.”
Our bishops refer to The Anglican Communion Environmental Network that calls to mind the dire consequences that our environment faces, again I quote: “We know that we are now demanding more than the earth is able to provide. Science confirms what we already know: our human footprint is changing the face of the earth and because we come from the earth, it is changing us too. We are engaged in the process of destroying our very being. If we cannot live in harmony with the earth, we will not live in harmony with one another.“
Let those words enter our souls: “If we cannot live in harmony with the earth, we will not live in harmony with one another.” Planet Earth mirrors our souls! Nothing new about that. In 1975, Berkeley physicist Fritjof Capra wrote in his book The Tao of Physics, “we can never speak of nature without, at the same time, speaking about ourselves”.
Fr. Dan reflected in his January 22nd sermon on the questions, “Am I really free? Can I really change?” ….. and continued with the words from Jesus, “The time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God has come near, Repent.” Fr. Dan reminded us that the word ‘repent’ indicates that we can change. We can change, we must, and we will.
Otherwise we will learn the truth of that Cree prophecy, “When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money.”
OK, from out of the mouths of North American Braves to out of the mouths of English babes.
The ‘eat money’ phrase reminds me of a story I heard years ago, back in England. You need to imagine a dilapidated, rural Anglican church with a dwindling congregation. A young boy was given a five pound note to put in the collection plate. When the offering came around, he didn’t put it in. However, after the end of the service, he went up to the vicar, shook his hand and gave him the five pound note. The vicar asked him, “Why are you giving me this money? Why didn’t you put it in the collection plate?”
The young boy answered, “Because my Mummy told me you’re the poorest vicar we’ve ever had!”
Let me stay in Britain. Martin Rees is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist and has been Britain’s Astronomer Royal since 1995.
Sir Martin Rees, indeed Lord Rees as he is now, has been Master of Trinity College, Cambridge since 2004 and was President of the Royal Society between 2005 and 2010.
In a presentation in 2005, he said this, “We can trace things back to the earlier stages of the Big Bang, but we still don’t know what banged and why it banged.”
Lord Rees continued, “But the unfinished business for 21st-century science is to link together cosmos and micro-world with a unified theory. And until we have that synthesis, we won’t be able to understand the very beginning of our universe. You want to not only synthesise the very large and the very small, but we want to understand the very complex. And the most complex things are ourselves, midway between atoms and stars.”
Hang on to that word ‘midway’ as I continue reading from Rees’ presentation.
“We depend on stars to make the atoms we’re made of. We depend on chemistry to determine our complex structure. We clearly have to be large, compared to atoms, to have layer upon layer of complex structure. We clearly have to be small, compared to stars and planets — otherwise we’d be crushed by gravity.
And in fact, we are midway.It would take as many human bodies to make up the sun as there are atoms in each of us. The geometric mean of the mass of a proton and the mass of the sun is 50 kilogrammes (110 lbs), within a factor of two of the mass of each person here. Well, most of you anyway!”
Back to me! Just reflect on the magnificence of that fact! Science and poetry so beautifully woven together. We, as in humankind, the poetic manifestations of God’s unbelievable creation. Our relationship with the atoms perfectly balanced with our relationship with the sun. Brings a whole new meaning to seeing starlight in the eyes of the one you love!
It is all so beautiful, so magical, so spiritual, so God-like. It is also so fragile and vulnerable.
There is a copy of that Pastoral Teaching available for you on your way out of Church. I implore you to read it, nay more than read it, hold it close to your heart. Within that teaching all of us are invited to join our Bishops in a 5-point commitment for the good of our souls and the life of the world, our beautiful planet; the essence of those 5 points being:
That we, as brothers and sisters in Christ, commit ourselves:
To repent all acts of greed, over-consumption, and waste;
To pray for environmental justice, for sustainable development;
To practice environmental stewardship and justice, energy conservation, the use of clean, renewable sources of energy; and wherever we can to reduce, reuse, and recycle;
To uproot the political, social, and economic causes of environmental destruction and abuse;
To advocate for a “fair, ambitious, and binding” climate treaty, and to work toward climate justice through reducing our own carbon footprint and advocating for those most negatively affected by climate change.
As our Bishops wrote, “May God give us the grace to heed the warnings of Jeremiah and to accept the gracious invitation of the incarnate Word to live, in, with, and through him, a life of grace for the whole world, that thereby all the earth may be restored and humanity filled with hope.”
I started with the taking of a photograph 43 years ago that forever changed our view of our planet. Now is the time to change our relationship with our planet, to love it and cherish it; it’s the only one we have. Otherwise, we may not have another 43 years left.
Or in the words from today’s Psalm, “O LORD my God, I cried out to you, and you restored me to health.”
Learning from Dogs 