My writings - and those of others.
Thinking about Bugs
Not something we normally do at the end of August. Black flies are long gone and mosquitoes aren’t as evident as they were earlier in the summer. Yet perhaps we should be thinking about bugs the way that writer Dave Goulson does in the Guardian in his recemt article, The Insect Apocalypse - Our world will grind to a halt without them. Here are just a few key points.
Insects have declined in abundance by as much as 75% in the last 50 years.
Three million tons of pesticides are going into the global environment each year - much stronger ones than Rachel Carson warned us against.
Insects provide us with a good deal of service: Goulson notes: “We need insects to pollinate our crops, recycle dung, leaves and corpses, keep the soil healthy, control pests, and much more – but for larger animals, such as birds, fish and frogs, which rely on insects for food. Wildflowers rely on them for pollination.”
They are the largest population on the planet and outnumber humans by a million to one.
We don’t eat them directly in the West. On the other hand, we do regularly consume them at one step removed in the food chain. Freshwater fish such as trout and salmon feed heavily on insects, as do game birds like partridge, pheasant and turkey.
87% of all plant species require animal pollination, most of it delivered by insects.
Insects are also intimately involved in the breakdown of organic matter, such as fallen leaves, timber and animal feces. This is vitally important work, for it recycles the nutrients, making them available once more for plant growth.
Insects are the undertakers of the world, disposing of all types of dead bodies
We are losing far too many of them. Like all aspects of climate change, we start noticing events at the edges - and suddenly they are totally upon us. It’s just another area where we have to consider what we are actually doing to the planet.
Jobs - pay attention to the numbers
In the middle of an election we will undoubtedly hear from the candidates about job creation - and in some cases, caution that cutting out fossil fuels will cause irreparable harm to the economy and create major job loss. Thus it is good to see the results of a new report from Clean Energy Canada which gives some current facts and projections in its modeling report, The New Reality.
Most of us would be hard pressed to guess how many are currently employed in the clean energy sector. There are already 430,500 people employed there right now. That is more than the number of people in the real estate sector for comparison. By the year 2030, the estimate is that there will be an increase to 639,200 under the proposed federal government new climate plan. The fossil fuel sector will drop by 9%. Thus new clean energy jobs will add 208,700 as opposed to 125,800 lost to fossil fuels.
Here is something else that the report says:
“The energy transition, like climate change itself, does not respect borders, and Canada has the ingredients needed to prosper in a future in which oil is no longer its largest export. As the International Energy Agency recently concluded, if the world is to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, no new oil and natural gas exploration and development will be needed going forward.”
We have a major part to play. Politician are far more interested in getting elected than in saving the planet. If you look at the above numbers it is important to see how many are still working in the sector that needs to disappear. It’s not really about jobs - it’s about our future on the planet. We need to pay attention to what the politicians say and vote accordingly.
8 Key Issues
These are the eight key issues for indigenous peoples in Canada according o Bob Joseph’s Indigenous Relations blog. He notes that they are all connected and the challenges seem to hamstring all those in governments at all levels who try to deal with them
Poorer health than that of other Canadians; causes relate to income levels and social factors. People have higher degrees of respiratory problems and infectious diseases. Heart Disease and diabetes are on the rise.
Lower levels of education. These are affected most by colonialism’s sorry legacy of the residential schools and the experience of attempted assimilation. About 36% of indigenous people have not completed high school compared to 18% of the rest of the Canadian population
Inadequate and crowded housing. Close to half those living on reserves live in dwellings that need major repairs.
An income gap. Indigenous people earn about 25% less than other Canadians
Unemployment rates remain high
Incarceration. Nearly half those incarcerated are indigenous, and women are incarcerated more than men.
Higher death rates among children and youth due to unintentional injuries such as drowning. These are three or four times higher than those of other Canadians of the same age.
Higher rates of suicide among youth. “Suicide and self-inflicted injuries are the leading causes of death for First Nations youth and adults up to 44 years of age.” (A Statistical Profile on the Health of First Nations in Canada for the Year 2000, Health Canada, 2003).
What to do? Pressure governments on areas that you know and care about from your own level of expertise or experience. Donate to those organizations working to deal with the issues. Learn historic first nations values that may save us from our own flawed ones.
Out of the mouths of . . .
Young people are not letting us off the hook as Greta Thunberg writes this morning along with other young cohorts. The current generation of adults may not have created the world they live in, but their policies and actions continue its least admirable qualities. We can learn the basics from this selection for kids, who will become more and more the advocates to whom we must answer. Find it here
Choices
“We need character in order to extract the useful.” So said Robert Genn, a visual artist of note, who inspired me to write twice weekly as he did for years. He was born the same year as I was, but is now coming to us from the beyond through the reprints of his original messages since his death, curated by his artist daughter, Sara Genn.
Robert was originally writing about the distraction of haikus coming from other - which he proposed to alter as “eyekus” visual moments. I like that idea, but I also liked the quote I started with here. Robert wrote about life as well as art.
And there is a good deal to extract today. The balance between news and opinion in journalism is at least noted in the better press. I do pay attention to both. This morning’s New York Times, has lots of both from opinion writers that I do follow.
Tom Friedman thinks that Biden could be proved right re Afghanistan. He points out the fallacy of thinking that the Afghans needed to be taught to be fighters when they had resisted invasions by others for decades. He points out “In oft-occupied countries like Afghanistan, many people will actually prefer their own people as rulers (however awful) over foreigners (however well intentioned).” He goes on to say that we shouldn’t make judgments on “the morning after”, but wait for the “morning after the morning after”. We’ll be distracted by the chaos there now, which indeed is appalling, but the outcome cannot be determined immediately.
Then I moved on to The Bad Economics of Fossil Fuel Defenders, by the economist, Paul Krugman - another favorite, who makes economics understandable and relevant. He gives us four reasons not to believe the objectors to climate crisis proposals. First, the economy has always done better under Democratic party leadership. Second, when governments increase environmental protection, the costs never increase as much as expected, because businesses are spurred to innovate. Third, “history strongly refutes the notion that there’s any necessary link between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions”. Last, we don’t need to depend on fossil fuels when renewable energies are growing, while decreasing in cost.
Money is part of the story; he notes “in the 2020 election cycle Republicans received 84 percent of political contributions from the oil and gas industry and 96 percent of contributions from coal mining. Perhaps that’s why it has become part of a culture war. And as Canadians are now in election mode, perhaps I should check on similar patterns in a national party here, that did not allow “Climate change is real” to become part of its platform.
There was a positive story in the Times as well about fighting environmental racism. Community organizers prevented a pipeline to run through predominantly black communities. Environmental spills had been all too common in the company’s safety record. Pollution is higher in neighborhoods inhabited by people of colour everywhere and it has to stop. The story ended on a positive note:
“What happened in Memphis this year is an example of how historically powerless people can work together to interrupt a pattern of environmental racism that has been in place for more than a century and a half. It’s also an example of why everyone else should care.”
These extractions were useful among lots of distractions!