Turning up the Heat

People throughout the world are baking in the heat and occasionally there is a faint recognition that this has something to do with climate change. The country that puts the most carbon emissions into the atmosphere is nevertheless stymied by one key player.

• One politician, Senator Joe Manchin, says he will not support his party’s climate change initiatives

• The US Supreme Court has limited the ability of the government to curb emissions from power plants

• The opposition party is against any climate legislation.

• The US loses its ability to influence other major emitters, like China. India and Brazil.

• The US is not on track to meet its goals for the Paris Accord. It doesn’t provide a great example to other countries.

• One man’s action has severely limited the role of the party in power leaving it dysfunctional in a democratic system.

  It’s no wonder that E. M. Forster suggested only two cheers for democracy. He expressed his concern for the individual in a world facing totalitarianism, as well as extremism from both the left and the right. He claimed at the time that the title was a joke when his writings included material going back to 1936, the year of my birth. One writer evaluating the collection suggests that it has worn well. He was looking ahead at the time to the rise of Nazi Germany.

  Leadership demands morality for the public good. We need it now more than ever.

Livable Cities

I’m glad to live in one. Here they are according to the Economist

Vienna, Austria
2)  Copenhagen, Denmark
3)  Zurich, Switzerland (tie)
3)  Calgary, Canada (tie)
5)  Vancouver, Canada
6)  Geneva, Switzerland
7)  Frankfurt, Germany
8)  Toronto, Canada
9)  Amsterdam, Netherlands
10)  Osaka, Japan (tie)
10)  Melbourne, Australia (tie)

And the other interesting part - not one American City made it . . . .

An Elder Paves the Way

So many messages don’t receive an audience. Jane Goodall could teach many of us who want to communicate about a cause to think of the channels used by the receivers rather than the senders. She founded Roots and Shoots to speak to the coming generation about the three crises we currently face - biodiversity loss, climate change, and environmental inequality.

“Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help, we shall be saved.” she says. She notes that we have been stealing the futures of the young at least since the industrial revolution. But the young are interesting what she has to say - and they have influence over their parents and grandparents and the way they think. Those adults may be CEOs or senior government officials and the influence of the young reaches others with decision making power.

She founded a global institute in 1991 - and it now has a Canadian chapter here. In a recent interview with Fast Company, she spoke about partnering with a comic book publisher to tell the story in a meaningful way for its readers. Starting as a book called Rewriting Extinction, the formats are monthly cartoon videos - webtoons - with scripts read by celebrities. What we can do alone is wonderful, she reminds us - but what we can do with at least one other person can be even better. The cartoon reading platform has 72 million global readers. You can become another one and share it with kids you know.

Mimicking Four Footed Friends

Something stolen from the late Robert Genn when he was talking about inventiveness and creativity.

Researchers conclude that animal activities are based on both inherited traits and observational learning. Further, creative and inventive tendencies run in families and species. For example, the comprehension records for dog vocabularies — 400 words or more — are held by Border collies, a breed traditionally involved in sheep management, where continued employment depends on the accurate hearing of a master’s commands. These dogs learn words quickly — ball, stick, keys, doll, Frisbee — and fetch the object called for. Alert and cooperative, they can be called upon to identify dozens of individual humans by name.

and there is more:

Creativity is closely related to invention. Other factors include the love of play and the ability to use tools. Studies of animal behaviour are constantly finding new evidence of play and tool activities. Creativity is not just the property of Homo sapiens. Apes select from a supply of different lengths of prepared sticks to dig grubs from crevices. Dolphins leap for joy and perform self-motivated tricks in unison. Invertebrate octopi toy with plastic bottles by squirting them with jets of water. Closer to home, kittens and puppies show innate tendencies to play..

Playfulness helps us to deal with solving wicked problems. It takes some of the pressure off taking ourselves so seriously - and as Jane MxGonigal says in her new book - only available in digital format so far but still well worth a buy - it is one of the best ways to start to imagine our future.

Attention

I’m disheartened to see another shooting on the front page of my morning newsletter in the country to the south. Disheartened because it is a country where I lived some years ago. Disheartened when all the columns say that nothing will be done about it. Disheartened even when an article about the lack of progress in meeting the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission - who dealt after all with even more deaths that the current tragedy - has only addressed a small percentage of them, and token ones at that. And that article appears on a back page because it doesn’t sell newspapers.

But I felt more positive after a comment made by a man in a discussion group later this morning - that if there is to be action, it has to come from mothers. That’s who made things better in Ireland. Mothers on both sides of the Troubles complained to their own leaders that what they were doing was unsustainable. Today is where those mothers need to get to work.

There are only two places where guns have any legitimacy that I can think of. One is hunting for food. The other is as a last resort in a time of war. A second amendment right in the US Constitution related to a particular time and place. To pretend that it has validity in 2022 is a twisted sense of logic that ought to belie belief by any sensible person. But it’s cleverly retained by appealing to greed and fear.

But I am wrong in thinking that all Americans love their guns. This is what Pew Research Centre said earlier this year:

• A third of Americans own at least one gun. 40 % say they live in a household that has one. If you do the math, that means that the majority don’t. Men are more likely to say they own one (39%) as opposed to women (22%).

• People say the reason they own a firearm is for protection.

• 48% of Americans see gun violence as a problem. This includes 82% of Black adults, 58% of Hispanics but only 39% of whites.

• 52% would like to see stricter guns laws - but that number is declining. They are divided as to whether lower ownership would lead to fewer mass shootings. They are also seriously divided politically.

When society has changed dramatically throughout histroy, it has almost always started from the ground up - though sometimes with tacit agreement from the top until support grows. Women know about waiting nine months to bring new life to fruition. The cost of remaining silent is too high. Let’s get started.