Morning Coffee

Reading what comes in via email reflects the world we live in precisely. First one. Several are responding to a letter and a report designed for the same audience. I wrote one them. The purpose of both is to ask for more money from the organization’s supporters and they differ in how to do it. The matter needs action and a further discussion will determine the direction. One view is that a more folksy and emotional approach works better. Another is that maybe we shouldn’t be too forward in asking for money since we will want to do it again later in the fall. Meanwhile the organization is surviving by drawing down its shrinking endowment. The meeting happens tomorrow night,

A second comes from the admirable George Monbiot of the Guardian. The newspaper’s online communications arrive for free and I generally support them occasionally. There is always an ask - and today’s suggestion is that it could start at as little as $2 a month or a one time donation. That’s a rather good way to put it. Is it time to send through the $25 that I occasionally give, with a reminder that I value this organization each month about the same as I do as one cup of my morning coffee. Can do both without sacrifice is a bit ridiculous? Monbiot’s article surrounding this appeal notes the same thing that I did in my previous post. The weight and seriousness of the climate emergency competes with lots of trivia about an affair of a British film producer with 10,000 recent new items - contrasted with five for a serious science report - trivia always wins. The media world is not the real world, but we believe it is. As he says, celebrity gossip is always more important than existential risk,

Third there’s Gas Busters. This is a group that wants to ban gas powered leaf blowers. Most people complain about the noise - and I join them there. I think much less about the air pollution they cause. The Toronto City Council voted to pursue a ban - not pass it even yet. At least that is better than doing nothing, but I am now asked to do more writing to City Councilors and staff. Anther item for the task list.

Then there is the organization of seniors working on climate action - now. They have a coming meeting that conflicts with one of my own. A report of a subcommittee focuses on the allocated number of members, and says that a person who recently volunteered will be excluded because of lack of experience with this spsecific organization. What if that person was one that turned up unexpectedly once in my world - who had just retired as chief geologist for the provincial government. We’ll never know - being a current member matters more. There is also a complaint about more men than women on the committee - six to four. A financial report indicates $65. in new memberships. That means 15 of them, because one of them at $5 per year was mine. Even for a very new organization, Five dollars a year isn’t enough to make it go anywhere,

What comes through is how easily we are distracted by incoming news all with the organizational appeals - and all arguing the side issues, which saves us from having to act on matters we think are important or support them. And the health of the institution or group always ends up at the forefront, not the causes they espouse. How do create our personal priorities? They matter. I might need a second coffee to sort out my own.

Importance

We’re influenced by what we read. We certainly know that newspapers are biased and we are likely to choose ones that correspond to at least some of our values, as well as hoping for a degree of objectivity in actual news items. I’m glad that the ones I read make it clear whether an article is news or opinion.

But what about items that appear as actual news? The Washington Post sends me a daily summary of the seven top stories of the day, They appear below:

1.Ukraine has started firing a controversial U.S. weapon at Russian forces.

2. We are living through Earth’s hottest month on record.

3. A nationwide UPS strike appears increasingly likely.

4. Seven big tech companies agreed to alert people to AI-generated content.

5. Ancient soil from Greenland suggests some of its ice could disappear

6. The U.S. plays its first game at the women’s World Cup tonight.

7.The biggest movie weekend of the year is here: It’s time for Barbenheimer. (Barbie plus Oppenheimer).

And here are some questions about the ordering:

• Which ones have implications for our long term future? What would that order be?

• Which ones show the priorities of our culture?

• How would I number these in order of importance? I’ll let you decide for yourself. To do so says much about what we value as we skim over the realities of our universe.

Normal?

We have seen some encouraging return of audiences to arts events and other places where people congregate. During the pandemic there was a lot of hope for things to go “back to normal” - as though life in the twenty-first century ever had a degree of stability. Recent years were not without abnormal events - in New York in 2001, or 2020 with an insurrection in Washington, or the discovery of mass graves near Canadian residential schools. The world before the 1950s wasn’t exactly normal either, but the 50s remain a dream world to return to for many.

We are hearing “normal” preceded by “new” in descriptions of climate change now. There’s a deception in feeling that the heat, flooding and fires will stay at the same level as they are now. We just have to accept that and deal with it and that will make it OK.

What a cop-out. It shows how we resist facing the reality that there is only a now - and that a future that depends on what we do today. Doing the same things will not create normality, however dysfunctional. It will only make things worse.

An App for That

The other evening I sat on my balcony watching planes circle and appear to be going east when the airport was to the west - but it was a pattern that allowed them to form a line to come in as others could be seen heading out to the east until they disappeared at higher heights. New planes coming in dotted the evening sky and suddenly their landing lights appeared in a kind of fairy tale illiumination - until one thought of how much energy all this was taking as their passengers landed to consume even more as they boarded their cars, buses and taxis.

A better choice might be using apps to explore nature - even in an urban environment. Here are some:

Search your app store for a bird identifier software. You will find several of them Try E-Bird or Merlin from Cornell labs designed to answer the question, What’s that Bird? Most of us as children could name several - and now we can’t - either because we have forgotten. or because they are not around any more. Becoming conscious of other forms of life around us matters more for our future than watching planes come in. It’s a great story about citizen science,

PlantNet and Picture this does similar things for plants. There’s another one for trees. We need to become much more aware of our surroundings - and remind ourselves that technology is a means to the ends that we actually value.

Hot Enough Yet?

We are featured today in Bill McKibben’s New Yorker Article - we being Canadians and he’s asking the question about our politicians. You can guess the answer. While the temperature breaks all records, how are we responding?

• Polls show 75% of us are anxious about climate change - and we are a liberal democracy, so that should help.

• The Arctic is warming faster than any other place and we have a front seat to watch that.

• Wildfires have burned the most forest ever.

• Air quality related to fires made ours the worst in the world.

This should result in some good political action. What is happening?

• We’re building a natural gas exporting terminal - and we may count exports as part of the carbon tax.

• Politicians say we are making progress - but we don’t want anything to change locally because that would upset too many people and mean not get re-elected.

• We’re not alone. But we are absolutely the poster child for how these things work. Will any radical solution break through even with democratic societies who suffer the least?