Category: Health

Sanity out of insanity

Dogs are such a great metaphor!

There’s no question that when one stays very still and closely watches a dog’s behaviour you see an amazing level of awareness.  Even when they appear to be deeply asleep anything sensed by their ‘being’ is registered immediately.  A small tale, by way of example.  Many years ago when Pharaoh and I lived in the Devon village of Harberton, we  frequently shopped in the town of Totnes, just 3 miles away.  Many times, I would be walking up the High Street with Pharaoh nicely to heel being passed by many people walking the opposite way on the same pavement.

Totnes High Street

Every once in a while, during the fraction of time that it took for someone to pass us by, Pharaoh would utter a low, throatal growl without even slowing his pace.  I always presumed that something, way beyond my level of consciousness, had disturbed Pharaoh during that instant of time.

Real awareness, or if you prefer, consciousness is not some touchy/feely concept but a true understanding about just what the heck is going on.

So do watch the following video of Peter Russell discussing Rediscovering Ourselves; it’s very relevant.

Then have a read of a couple of items on Peter’s website.  The first is about runaway climate change, and here’s an extract,

Runaway Climate Change

The most dangerous aspect of global warming.

Global Warming is bad enough. Over the last hundred years, average global temperatures have increased by 0.75°C, one third of that rise occurring in the last twenty years. The 2007 report by The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) forecast that, by 2090, temperatures will have risen between 2 and 6 degrees.

Even a two degree rise in temperature would be disastrous. Changes in climate will lead to more intense storms, longer periods of drought, crop failures in many developing countries, the destruction of nearly all the coral reefs, the melting of much of the polar ice, the flooding of many low-lying urban areas, the possible collapse of the Amazonian rain forest, and the extinction of 20-30% of the planet’s species. The IPCC projects that this could happen by 2050.

If the temperature were to rise by six degrees, the prognosis is extremely bleak. At this temperature, the entire planet will be ice-free. Sea levels will rise by 70 meters. Many species of tiny plankton will cease to exist, and the problem would echo up the food chain, bringing the extinction of many fish, sea mammals, and the largest whales. Much of the land will now be desert. Hurricanes of unimaginable ferocity will bring widespread ecological devastation. If, as is possible, the ozone layer were destroyed, the burning ultraviolet light could make life on land impossible. Evolution would have been set back a billion years. It would be a planetary catastrophe.

Read the rest of that essay here.  Now on to the next extract, from here,

The Under-rated Approach to Carbon Reduction

As critical as it is to reduce future carbon emissions, it is equally critical, perhaps even more critical, to get much of the CO2 that as already been released—and which is responsible for the current warming—out of the atmosphere and back into the ground where it belongs.

This approach, known as carbon capture and sequestration, has until now been largely ignored, and for several reasons. The atmosphere is so huge, it would seem to be an impossible task. There are possible technologies, but they are not nearly so well-developed as alternative energy sources. Many are still only ideas on paper. Where technologies of carbon capture have been developed they are mostly for capturing CO2 from smokestacks. Valuable as this may be, it is still dealing with the problem of future carbon emissions. What we need are technologies that will remove from the atmosphere the carbon that we already emitted, and then sequestrate it (put it away) in a stable form.

It is to this end that Sir Richard Branson announced his $25 million prize (Virgin Earth Challenge) for technologies that could capture a billion tons of carbon a year from the atmosphere (about one tenth of what we now release each year). Nor is it just Richard Branson who believes we must make this an equally important approach to the problem. His team includes Al Gore, James Lovelock, Sir Crispin Tickell (former UK ambassador to the UN), and James Hansen, the head climate scientist at NASA).

Again, the full article, a ‘must-read, in my opinion, is here.

It is really about awareness!  Dogs have so much to teach us!

TomDispatch – The Great American Carbon Bomb.

A powerful and insightful essay from Bill McKibben about our love affair with carbon-based energy.

Introduction

I subscribe to a number of Blogs and one of them is TomDispatch.  Here’s how Tom describes what the writings are all about.

Tom Engelhardt launched Tomdispatch in November 2001 as an e-mail publication offering commentary and collected articles from the world press. In December 2002, it gained its name, became a project of The Nation Institute, and went online as “a regular antidote to the mainstream media.” The site now features Tom Engelhardt’s regular commentaries and the original work of authors ranging from Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben, and Mike Davis to Chalmers Johnson, Michael Klare, Adam Hochschild, Robert Lipsyte, and Elizabeth de la Vega. Nick Turse, who also writes for the site, is associate editor and research director.

Tomdispatch is intended to introduce readers to voices and perspectives from elsewhere (even when the elsewhere is here). Its mission is to connect some of the global dots regularly left unconnected by the mainstream media and to offer a clearer sense of how this imperial globe of ours actually works.

I read the TomDispatch essay from Bill McKibben on the 14th.  It caught my eye, not only because of the power of Bill’s conclusions, but also because I was deeply impressed with Bill’s book ‘eaarth’, which I reviewed on Learning from Dogs here and here.

Tom Engelhardt has given written permission for that TomDispatch to be re-published in full on Learning from Dogs.  It now follows.

First the introduction by Tom Engelhardt,

The Great American Carbon Bomb

These days, even ostriches suffer from heat waves.  More than 1,000 of them reportedly died from overheating on South African farms during a 2010 drought.  As for American ostriches, the human variety anyway, at the moment it should be increasingly hard for them to avoid extreme-weather news. After all, whether you’re in sweltering heat, staggering drought, a record fire season, or a massive flood zone, most of us are living through weird weather this year.  And if you’re one of the lucky few not in an extreme-weather district of the USA, you still won’t have a problem running across hair-raising weather stories, ranging from the possible loss of one out of every ten species on this planet by century’s end to the increasing inability of the oceans to soak up more atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Then, of course, there are those other headlines.  Here’s a typical one: “As Water Rises, Florida Officials Sit on Their Hands” (a former member of the just abolished Florida Energy and Climate Commission points out that, thanks to Republican governor Rick Scott and the legislature in the part of the country most vulnerable to rising sea levels, “there is no state entity addressing climate change and its impact”).  And here’s another: “Economy Keeps Global Warming on the Back Burner for 2012” (American climate-change “skeptics” are celebrating because “the tide of the debate — at least politically — has turned in their favor” and “political experts say that… concerns over global warming won’t carry much weight in the 2012 election”).   And then there are the polls indicating Americans are confused about the unanimity of the scientific consensus on climate change, surprisingly dismissive of global-warming dangers, worry less about it than they did a decade ago, and of major environmental issues, worry least about it.

It’s true, of course, that no weird-weather incident you experience can definitively be tied to climate change and other factors are involved.  Still, are we a nation of overheating ostriches?  It’s a reasonable enough conclusion, and in a sense, not so surprising.  After all, how does anyone react upon discovering that his or her way of life is the crucial problem, that fossil fuels, which keep our civilization powered up and to which our existence is tethered, are playing havoc with the planet?

TomDispatch regular Bill McKibben, author most recently of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, is a man deeply committed to transforming us from climate-change ostriches to climate-change eagles.  Perhaps it’s time, he suggests, for the environmental movement to get one heck of a lot blunter. Tom

Here’s the essay from Bill,

Will North America Be the New Middle East?
It’s Yes or No For a Climate-Killing Oil Pipeline — and Obama Gets to Make the Call 
By Bill McKibben

The climate problem has moved from the abstract to the very real in the last 18 months.  Instead of charts and graphs about what will happen someday, we’ve got real-time video: first Russia burning, then Texas and Arizona on fire.  First Pakistansuffered a deluge, then Queensland, Australia, went underwater, and this spring and summer, it’s the Midwest that’s flooding at historic levels.

The year 2010 saw the lowest volume of Arctic ice since scientists started to measure, more rainfall on land than any year in recorded history, and the lowest barometric pressure ever registered in the continental United States.  Measured on a planetary scale, 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest year in history.  Jeff Masters, probably the world’s most widely read meteorologist, calculated that the year featured the most extreme weather since at least 1816, when a giant volcano blew its top.

Since we’re the volcano now, and likely to keep blowing, here’s his prognosis: “The ever-increasing amounts of heat-trapping gases humans are emitting into the air put tremendous pressure on the climate system to shift to a new, radically different, warmer state, and the extreme weather of 2010-2011 suggests that the transition is already well underway.”

There’s another shift, too, and that’s in the response from climate-change activists. For the first two decades of the global-warming era, the suggested solutions to the problem had been as abstract as the science that went with it: complicated schemes like the Kyoto Protocol, or the cap-and-trade agreement that died in Congress in 2010.  These were attempts to solve the problem of climate change via complicated backstage maneuvers and manipulations of prices or regulations.  They failed in large part because the fossil-fuel industry managed, at every turn, to dilute or defang them.

Clearly the current Congress is in no mood for real regulation, so — for the moment anyway — the complicated planning is being replaced by a simpler rallying cry. When it comes to coal, oil, and natural gas, the new mantra of activists is simple, straightforward, and hard to defang: Keep it in the ground!

Two weeks ago, for instance, a few veteran environmentalists, myself included, issued a call for protest against Canada’s plans to massively expand oil imports from the tar sands regions of Alberta.  We set up a new website, tarsandsaction.org, and judging from the early response, it could result in the largest civil disobedience actions in the climate-change movement’s history on this continent, as hundreds, possibly thousands, of concerned activists converge on the White House in August. They’ll risk arrest to demand something simple and concrete from President Obama: that he refuse to grant a license for Keystone XL, a new pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico that would vastly increase the flow of tar sands oil through the U.S., ensuring that the exploitation of Alberta’s tar sands will only increase.

Forget the abstract and consider the down-and-dirty instead. You can undoubtedly guess some of the reasons for opposition to such a pipeline.  It’s wrecking native lands in Canada, and potential spills from that pipeline could pollute some of the most important ranchlands and aquifers in America. (Last week’s Yellowstone River spill was seen by many as a sign of what to expect.)

There’s an even bigger reason to oppose the pipeline, one that should be on the minds of even those of us who live thousands of miles away: Alberta’s tar sands are the continent’s biggest carbon bomb.  Indeed, they’re the second largest pool of carbon on planet Earth, following only Saudi Arabia’s slowly dwindling oilfields.

If you could burn all the oil in those tar sands, you’d run the atmosphere’s concentration of carbon dioxide from its current 390 parts per million (enough to cause the climate havoc we’re currently seeing) to nearly 600 parts per million, which would mean if not hell, then at least a world with a similar temperature. It won’t happen overnight, thank God, but according to the planet’s most important climatologist, James Hansen, burning even a substantial portion of that oil would mean it was “essentially game over” for the climate of this planet.

Halting that pipeline wouldn’t solve all tar sands problems.  The Canadians will keep trying to get it out to market, but it would definitely ensure that more of that oil will stay in the ground longer and that, at least, would be a start.  Even better, the politics of it are simple. For once, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives can’t get in the way.  The president alone decides if the pipeline is “in the national interest.” There are, however, already worrisome signs within the Obama administration.  Just this week, based on a State Department cable released by WikiLeaks, Neela Banerjee of the Los Angeles Timesreported that, in 2009, the State Department’s “energy envoy” was already instructing Alberta’s fossil-fuel barons in how to improve their “oil sands messaging,” including “increasing visibility and accessibility of more positive news stories.” This is the government version of Murdochian-style enviro-hacking, and it leads many to think that the new pipeline is already a done deal.

Still, the president can say no.  If he does, then no pipeline — and in the words of Alberta’s oil minister, his province will be “landlocked in bitumen” (the basic substance from which tar-sands oil is extracted). Even energy-hungry China, eager as it is for new sources of fossil fuels, may not be able to save him, since native tribes are doing a remarkable job of blocking another proposed pipeline to the Canadian Pacific.  Oil, oil everywhere, and nary a drop to sell. (Unfortunately that’s not quite true, but at least there won’t be a big new straw in this milkshake.)

An Obama thumbs-down on the pipeline could change the economics of the tar sands in striking ways. “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.

Faced with that prospect, Canada’s oilmen are growing desperate. Earlier this month, in a classic sleight of hand, they announced plans for a giant “carbon capture and sequestration” scheme at the tar sands. That’s because when it comes to global warming, tar sands oil is even worse than, say, Saudi oil because it’s a tarry muck, not a liquid, and so you have to burn a lot of natural gas to make it flow in the first place.

Now, the oil industry is proposing to capture some of the extra carbon from that cooking process and store it underground.  This is an untested method, and the accounting scheme Alberta has adopted for it may actually increase the province’s emmissions.  Even if it turns out to work perfectly and captures the carbon from that natural gas that would have escaped into the atmosphere, the oil they’re proposing to ship south for use in our gas tanks would still be exactly as bad for the atmosphere as Saudi crude. In other words, in the long run it would still be “essentially game over” for the climate.

The Saudis, of course, built their oil empire long before we knew that there was anything wrong with burning oil. The Canadians — with American help, if Obama obliges the oil lobby — are building theirs in the teeth of the greatest threat the world has ever faced. We can’t unbuild those Saudi Arabian fields, though happily their supplies are starting to slowly dwindle. What we can still do, though, is prevent North America from becoming the next Middle East.

So there will be a battle, and there will be nothing complicated or abstract about it.  It will be based on one question: Does that carbon stay in the earth, or does it pour into the atmosphere?  Given the trillions of dollars at stake it will be a hard fight, and there’s no guarantee of victory. But at least there’s no fog here, no maze of technicalities.

The last climate bill, the one the Senate punted on, was thousands of pages long. This time there’s a single sheet of paper, which Obama signs… or not.

Bill McKibben is Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, founder of 350.org, and a TomDispatch regular. His most recent book, just out in paperback, is Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.

Copyright 2011 Bill McKibben

Final note from yours truly.

Guess what I read about on the BBC News website on the 15th, the day that I put this article together?  I read about a fabulous new ship about to start construction at the Samsung Heavy Industries shipyard in South Korea.  When launched and loaded, at 600,000 tonnes, it will be the world’s largest ship.  Wow that’s impressive!

Now read here as to what is the purpose of this ‘ship’.  Here’s a flavour of that BBC news item,

Shell has unveiled plans to build the world’s first floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) platform. The 600,000-tonne behemoth – the world’s biggest “ship” – will be sited off the coast of Australia. But how will it work?

FLNG project in figures

Deep beneath the world’s oceans are huge reservoirs of natural gas. Some are hundreds or thousands of miles from land, or from the nearest pipeline.

Tapping into these “stranded gas” resources has been impossible – until now.

At Samsung Heavy Industries’ shipyard on Geoje Island in South Korea, work is about to start on a “ship” that, when finished and fully loaded, will weigh 600,000 tonnes.

That is six times as much as the biggest US aircraft carrier.

By 2017 the vessel should be anchored off the north coast of Australia, where it will be used to harvest natural gas from Shell’s Prelude field.

Yes, it’s more technology to enable us to use more carbon!  As the article (just) touches on,

But there has been opposition from environmentalists. Martin Pritchard from Environs Kimberley says he is concerned about the potential for “oil leaks and spills”.

WWF Western Australia, [my inserted link, Ed.] meanwhile, argues that the underwater wellheads and pipelines will harm the tropical marine environment, and estimates the project will emit more than two million tonnes of greenhouse gases per year.

Sort of reminds me of that old Devonshire saying (and you need to imagine hearing it in that wonderful dialect that just still exists in this far part of SW England)

“All the world’s a little queer except thee and me …. and I have me doubts about thee!”

We are all very ‘queer’ indeed!

And more on consciousness!

Two recent videos highlight the mystery and fascination of determining what, exactly, is consciousness.

Before I get started, it crossed my mind that some readers on Learning from Dogs might struggle finding any link between the the title of the Blog and such esoteric topics as consciousness.  Let me try and explain.  On the home page of this Blog is written,

But 10,000 years of farming the planet’s plant and mineral resources have brought mankind to the edge of extinction, literally as well as metaphorically.

Dogs know better!  Time again for man to learn from dogs!

Here’s a recent comment I made to an article on Naked Capitalism,

In a much broader sense, it feels to me as though we have been partying on the edge of a global volcano for years and years. Greece is surely a metaphor for the craziness of so many countries.

Continuing that broader sense, the period that we are in, from political, economical, societal, environmental and ethical perspectives, seems bust. Good will eventually come out of this transition, of that I have no doubt, but what a fascinating period in which to be alive!

I firmly believe that the period we are presently living through is a transition between the last, say 30 years (in a sense, many more decades than that) and a more aware, sensitive period where mankind embraces a deeper, sustainable, relationship with the planet that is home and life to all of us.  Frankly, there is no choice!

Thus the nature of consciousness, our awareness of self, is a crucial element of the future.  The greater our self-awareness, the greater our self-understanding and from that better self-understanding comes all hope of recognising our attitudes and knowing that it is our attitudes that drive our behaviours.

So here follow two videos.  Settle back and be entranced!

The first is the last episode in a brilliant BBC series broadcast in 2007, probably one of the best TV series on psychology and neuroscience ever produced.  The full series is on Top Documentary Films but the last episode called The Final Mystery is all about consciousness.  Beware you are going to never see the world in quite the same way!

Here it is, The Final Mystery presented by neuroscientist Susan Greenfield.

The second video is from Season Two of the Through the Wormhole series.  It is called Is there Life after Death? and also explores the deeper aspects of consciousness.  As the introduction to the video says,

In the premiere episode of the second season of Through the Wormhole, Morgan Freeman dives deep into this provocative question that has mystified humans since the beginning of time.

Modern physics and neuroscience are venturing into this once hallowed ground, and radically changing our ideas of life after death.

Freeman serves as host to this polarized debate, where scientists and spiritualist attempt to define what is consciousness, while cutting edge quantum mechanics could provide the answer to what happens when we die.

Here’s the film; same health warning applies!  You are going to see the world differently after watching this!

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

The Trap, Adam Curtis

This coming next couple of weeks is going to see me reflecting on some of the powerful messages that flow from three one-hour documentaries by Adam Curtis during a series of programmes for the BBC in 2007.

For today, just enjoy the BBC trailer. (Assuming ‘enjoy’ is the right expression!)

More on the unconditional love of dogs

Another example of the astounding bond between dog and man.

Regular supporters of Learning from Dogs will be aware that yesterday I wrote, under the heading of Paws of Love, about two examples of the most amazing bond that develops between the dog and man, one of them a very personal account.

Moving on.

We subscribe to the website, Top Documentary Films, and the other night we watched a 48-minute program about The Grim Reaper Dog.  The link to the TDF programme is here.  (It includes three separate films.)

Scamp

The Grim Reaper Dog is about Scamp, a little Schnauzer who resides at The Pine nursing home in Canton, Ohio. Like many live-in pets at nursing homes, Scamp brings companionship to the residents but he also does more than that. Scamp seems to have a gift that tells him when the end is near for one of the residents and he loyally stays with them during their final hours.

So if you want to watch the film in full within the TDF website, then go here.

If you want to watch it directly from YouTube then the three parts of the film are below – prepared to be amazed!  Or perhaps those of you who live emotionally close to a dog will just find the film as confirmation of what you already know!

and then here’s part 2

and concluding part

Paws of love

They are such wonderful, amazing creatures – man’s longest and best friend, the dog.

A couple of events caused me to be reminded about the preciousness of our relationship with the dog.  The first was coming across this article in The Boston Globe.  It is entitled, A friendly paw to a veteran and is all about how therapy dogs bring relief and joy to veterans.  Incidentally, the story was written by good friend to Learning from Dogs, Daniela Caride who has her own blog, The Daily Tail.  Here’s how that article opens,

NORTHAMPTON — Carter the Chesapeake Bay retriever, Sassy the Pomeranian, and Spyder the German shepherd spend most of their time playing, begging for treats, and getting belly rubs just like other pet dogs. But their unconditional love gains a purpose every time their owners take them to the hospital to visit veterans.

They are therapy dogs — canines trained to give affection to strangers — and they are becoming more popular in veteran facilities. An increasing number of dog owners are willing to volunteer at VA homes and hospices, where 6 million veterans get treated for acute and chronic health conditions. The service they provide is invaluable, health care specialists say.

Read the rest of it here.

The second event was coming across something that I wrote nearly three years ago.  Here it is in full.

The knowing eyes of your best friend

Pharaoh

(Based on an article sent to me, unfortunately from an unknown author, and modified to reflect the special relationship that I have with my 4 year old German Shepherd, Pharaoh. Paul Handover, 14 September, 2007.)

I am your dog and have something I would love to whisper in your ear. I know that you humans lead very busy lives. Some have to work, some have children to raise, some have to do this alone. It always seems like you are running here and there, often too fast, never noticing the truly grand things in life.

Look down at me now. While you sit at your computer. See the way my dark, brown eyes look at yours.

You smile at me. I see love in your eyes. What do you see in mine? Do you see a spirit? A soul inside who loves you as no other could in the world? A spirit that would forgive all trespasses of prior wrong doing for just a single moment of your time?  That is all I ask.  To slow down, if even for a few minutes, to be with me.

So many times you are saddened by others of my kind passing on. Sometimes we die young and oh so quickly, so suddenly that it wrenches your heart out of your throat. Sometimes, we age slowly before your eyes that you may not even seem to know until the very end, when we look at you with grizzled muzzles and cataract-clouded eyes. Still the love is always there even when we must take that last, long sleep dreaming of running free in a distant, open land.

I may not be here tomorrow. I may not be here next week. Someday you will shed the water from your eyes, that humans have when grief fills their souls, and you will mourn the loss of just ‘one more day’ with me. Because I love you so, this future sorrow even now touches my spirit and grieves me. I read you in so many ways that you cannot even start to contemplate.

We have now together. So come and sit next to me here on the floor and look deep into my eyes. What do you see? Do you see how if you look deeply at me we can talk, you and I, heart to heart. Come not to me as my owner but as a living soul. Stroke my fur and let us look deep into the other’s eyes and talk with our hearts.

I may tell you something about the fun of working the scents in the woods where you and I go. Or I may tell you something profound about myself or how we dogs see life in general. I know you decided to have me in your life because you wanted a soul to share things with. I know how much you have cared for me and always stood up for me even when others have been against me. I know how hard you have worked to help me be the teacher that I was born to be. That gift from you has been very precious to me. I know too that you have been through troubled times and I have been there to guard you, to protect you and to be there always for you. I am very different to you but here I am. I am a dog but just as alive as you.

I feel emotion. I feel physical senses. I can revel in the differences of our spirits and souls. I do not think of you as a dog on two feet; I know what you are. You are human, in all your quirkiness, and I love you still.

So, come and sit with me. Enter my world and let time slow down if only for a few minutes. Look deep into my eyes and whisper in my ears. Speak with your heart and I will know your true self. We may not have tomorrow but we do have now.

There is no question that one of the important aspects of life that we can surely learn from dogs is the ability to stay in the present as much as we can.  Easier to write than accomplish, of course.  But letting go of the past (because it’s gone) and making the best of today as opposed to worrying about the future (because that interferes in the joy of today) is still a powerful reminder of that we would do well to keep close to our heart.

The inadequacy of words

Alice and Mabel

Think you have had a bad day/week/month/year/life?  Want to see your life in perspective? Go here and reflect.  This is one very brave and incredibly inspiring young woman.

Those of you who see this and are in the UK, do read Alice’s Bucket List and help if you are at all able.  If not, just hold Alice and all her family, and Mabel, in your prayers.

Earth’s climate

Where’s it going?

Last Friday (10th) I wrote about a recent article that appeared in the Newsweek magazine of June 6th and mused about there seeming to be a growing awareness of the changing of the Planet Earth.

I just wanted to add a few other important elements (pardon the pun) of the current awareness.

First, at the time of writing this (June 2nd) the website that shows the monthly level of CO2 in the atmosphere was still showing the figure for April.  Here it is,

CO2 in the atmosphere

Go here and check out what it is for May 2011.  We all know that it won’t be below 393.18, which is already over 12% above the maximum safe level that scientists have determined.

UPDATE (June 7th): The figures for May are now on the website CO2 Now and they are 394.35 up, as predicted, from the figure of 393.18 for April, 2011.

Then go and watch this, from Bill McKibben,

Then go to the CO2 Now website and read, and ponder and think about what is becoming increasingly obvious to us all.

Finally, read a article that Bill McKibben has recently written that seems to have been widely published.  Here it is on the TomDispatch website.  It starts thus,

Three Strikes and You’re Hot
Time for Obama to Say No to the Fossil Fuel Wish List 
By Bill McKibben

In our globalized world, old-fashioned geography is not supposed to count for much: mountain ranges, deep-water ports, railroad grades — those seem so nineteenth century. The earth is flat, or so I remember somebody saying.

But those nostalgic for an earlier day, take heart. The Obama administration is making its biggest decisions yet on our energy future and those decisions are intimately tied to this continent’s geography. Remember those old maps from your high-school textbooks that showed each state and province’s prime economic activities? A sheaf of wheat for farm country? A little steel mill for manufacturing? These days in North America what you want to look for are the pickaxes that mean mining, and the derricks that stand for oil.

Yes, it all seems ‘doom and gloom’ around us at present but then consider that the only way we, as in mankind, can change to a truly sustainable relationship with this Planet is through better understanding and a global realisation that the time for change is now!  That is a very positive message!

The BBC

A remarkably fine institution

Having now been living in Arizona for 18 months, I can say with some degree of certainty that there are few British things that I miss.  One of them is draft English beer, of course, but another one is the BBC.  Luckily modern internet technology means that quite a few of the great BBC television programmes ‘leak’ outside the UK.

The BBC Horizon science series has been one such example of a really well-produced programme.

Recently, a BBC Horizon programme about genetically modified (GM) foods aired by the BBC found its way onto YouTube and thence to the website Top Documentary Films.  Not only is it an interesting programme but it also reveals how the facts of new advances in science are often difficult to understand by us; the general public.

The link to the film on the TDF website is here but if you want to watch it directly from YouTube then here it is.

“Weather panic” courtesy Newsweek

Is it me or does there seem to be a shift in overall awareness of our ‘new world’?

On the 30th May, I mentioned the concept of a new Anthropocene era for the second time, based on The Economist of the 28th May having it as a lead story.  (The first mention was on the 16th May.)

Then a couple of days later, friend John H. here in Payson, drops off his copy of Newsweek for June 6th.  Here’s the cover page.

Newsweek, June 6, 2011

This is how the article runs, written by Sharon Begley,

Are You Ready for More?

In a world of climate change, freak storms are the new normal. Why we’re unprepared for the harrowing future.

Joplin, Mo., was prepared. The tornado warning system gave residents 24 minutes’ notice that a twister was bearing down on them. Doctors and nurses at St. John’s Regional Medical Center, who had practiced tornado drills for years, moved fast, getting patients away from windows, closing blinds, and activating emergency generators. And yet more than 130 people died in Joplin, including four people at St. John’s, where the tornado sucked up the roof and left the building in ruins, like much of the shattered city.

Then just a couple of paragraphs later, this pretty blunt summary,

From these and other extreme-weather events, one lesson is sinking in with terrifying certainty. The stable climate of the last 12,000 years is gone. Which means you haven’t seen anything yet. And we are not prepared.

Just read that again very carefully, “The stable climate of the last 12,000 years is gone.”  Do take a few moments off and go here and read the full article.  The last paragraph of which reads,

So what lies behind America’s resistance to action? Economist Sachs points to the lobbying power of industries that resist acknowledgment of climate change’s impact. “The country is two decades behind in taking action because both parties are in thrall to Big Oil and Big Coal,” says Sachs. “The airwaves are filled with corporate-financed climate misinformation.” But the vanguard of action isn’t waiting any longer. This week, representatives from an estimated 100 cities are meeting in Bonn, Germany, for the 2nd World Congress on Cities and Adaptation to Climate Change. The theme is “Resilient Cities.” As Joplin, Mo., learned in the most tragic way possible, against some impacts of climate change, man’s puny efforts are futile. But time is getting short, and the stakes are high. Says Daniel Sarewitz, a professor of science and society at Arizona State University: “Not to adapt is to consign millions of people to death and disruption.”

It’s a powerful article that can be read in full on the Newsweek website.

So, perhaps one might say at last, the notion that mankind’s impact on the Planet is real and capable of affecting practically all of us living on this beautiful Planet is becoming a ‘mainstream’ accepted idea.

More musings about this next Tuesday, 14th.