Breaking silence

Billl McKibben recently gave up his climate report for the New Yorker, but as he did so he reminded us that those of the silent generation have a voice - as a large proportion of the population, as well as controlling a lot of financial assets and being known for voting. We may become more small “c” conservative as we age but that does not mean that we are unaware of the effect of climate change on our children and grandchildren.

He’s about to form a new organization to add to existing ones such as such as Elders Climate Action and Great Old Broads for Wilderness. He says he doesn’t particularly look forward to the task at hand - after all he was the founder of 350.org - but he knows that the best way to counter the organized money of the big corporations is with organized people.

So if you want to help - you can go here and sign up. I did. And there are Canadian options too.

Climate change and your Canadian vote

There are differences in several analyses of party platforms. Promises are usually aspirational but they do reveal hopes that lead to actions.

You can view the CBC’s analysis here.

MacLean’s Magazine has comparisons here.

The Public Service Alliance has weighed in here

There is one set you can deal with rather quickly. The PPC party doesn’t believe that climate change is caused by humans. Let’s hope members don’t live too close to water, trees, or certain locations with high temperatures.

Fashion Gets an F

With back to school, we are now focusing on marks and grades. When it comes to industries that contribute to climate change one of the worst offenders is the fashion industry.

Here are some of the things Stand Earth has to say:

Few of us would claim exemption from 47 clothing brands that they assessed. None of them are on target to meet reduced emissions and the sector is responsible for between five and eight percent of them. Manufacturing clothing is primarily fueled by coal and other fossil fuels.

The real problem is over consumption. Do we really need 80 billion garments a year? We can start saying no to some of them.

Bad Thinking

I spent an hour on Labour Day attending a webinar presented by The Philosopher, entitled When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People. It was good enough to download Steven Nadler’s Book by the same name. It was a bit less easy to access a philosopher in Plato or Aristotle’s Day but this one came in an instant and was a quick read.

The writer is concerned about current American Thinking - or perhaps the lack of it, which he finds not only perplexing but even dangerous with epidemic proportions. Beliefs like denial of climate change as a hoax, conspiracy theories and a election fraud can’t be blamed just on lack of education - though poor education is a factor. A recent survey revealed that a third did not know that Auschwitz was a concentration camp and about the same number can’t name a single branch of the US government. Yet many who promote these ideas are highly educated from some of America’s best universities. By many criteria, they are good people. But the author believes they have a character flaw - stubbornness. They fail to tailor what they believe to evidence. They hold false beliefs and doing so has consequences/

What can be done about it? If they think badly, the solution is to learn to think well. There are in fact standards of how to think that have come down to us through - no surprise here - philosophy! It relates to knowing how to know. That comes from knowing one’s self - and knowing what one knows and doesn’t know - evaluating the truth of one’s beliefs.

Bad thinking involves refusal to change one’s beliefs in the face of evidence and instead relying on prejudice, hearsay and emotions like hope and fear. Many are averse to science and its methodologies. Some wrong beliefs - like a flat earth - might seem logical when you look at the horizon and holding such a belief is unlikely to cause harm to others. Other wrong beliefs - like thinking the election was stolen - lead to insurrection.

The lecture took me back to first year philosophy and a reminder that logic patterns have rules. It contended that more often than not, the faults in wrong thinking relate to illogical premises and these need to be questioned. The other common one in bad thinking is paying attention to small samples of evidence. Unfortunately even the best media often publish reports of studies with small samples, which bring on hope and fear rather than reasoned response. Retraction of bad studies don’t get the same press. In our own time press coverage of conspiracies enhance their reach.

We may not have time to go back to philosophy class - but the book does present some ways to counter bad thinking. Some beliefs may give us comfort whether we have any proof of them or not and this doesn’t present a danger to others. It’s when beliefs lead to behaviour that harms others where we have to pay attention. And there are plenty of those beliefs currently around us.

New energy creation

As oil and gas companies lobby in the US to do anything to delay changing our reliance on oil and gas, the world around us is full of floods, fires, and droughts - all affected by the climate crisis. Profits might just matter less if we don’t have a world that is habitable.

But in other places, there are attempts at solutions. We are familiar with the large towers with huge blades either from travel or pictures. I saw some of these in upstate New York in wilderness environments and they even had a majestic look as they moved slowly. I can understand why some might object to noise if they lived too close to them - but we are entering a world where costs and benefits are always going to compete.

Nevertheless many of these towers are offshore - and that means they have to be in places where the wind is greater and also where it is challenging to build wind farms. A typical turbine is composed of a pole and three huge blades. The design is based on windmills. It reminds us that when we create something new we tend to model it on something that we know - like the design of early automobiles that looked somewhat like horse drawn carriages. The poles have to be tethered to the seabed - and that has meant that the can’t necessarily be positioned where the wind is the strongest. What if the turbines could float instead?

Enter the Norwegian company, Wind Catching Systems. Starting in 2017, it wondered if there might be an alternative design. Could a collection of smaller turbines do the job as well. They tried out a model on a sailboat. They have now launched a prototype that is 1000 feet high and has 100 small blades. The turbine can be anchored in deeper water and can generate five times as much energy as a current pole and blade model.

It’s good to have some news like this. Let’s hope that prescient investors move away from oil and gas. This means you, governments and corporations!