Our Bodies Our Selves

[readers, this is a post started two months ago that I may never complete but that starts a bunch of interesting thoughts. And what is this blog, if not a catalyst for reflection? So I present to you, for the first time though likely not the last, an incomplete blog entry on motives and agendas:]

29.10.09

the so-called "environmental debate" has some pretty fanatical devotees on both sides. I was recently directed to http://www.noteviljustwrong.com, which [...incomplete]

...critical thinking is key, then. We must always always ask, who stands to gain from this point of view? Of what benefit is it to the involved party to espouse such a radical stance?

...noteviljustwrong has an entire movie that I have yet to watch, but their opening page asserts that "the World Health Organization lifted its ban on DDT in 2006, but Al Gore and his allies will not accept that verdict any more than they will accept the science that discounts theories about global warming. They are determined to blame humans for everything." So I looked it up. And indeed, here is the WHO press release:

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr50/en/index.html

...which is amazing. That said, the Neo-cons seem to put no faith in the relative authority of the UN or the Nobel Prize (to say nothing of their utter disdain for government), so it's funny to say in one breath that government can't be trusted and then turn around and use governmental edicts as evidence for your argument. Can't have it both ways, I don't think.

But this leads me to question, or at least admit, my own motives: why am I so interested in trying to preserve the environment?

1) First and foremost, I am concerned for the future of my own family, of my child (or possibly children, at some point). I want the beautiful world around me to exist and not be deteriorating and falling apart for my daughter when she grows up, and for her own family.

2) As well, ages ago I concluded that suffering is a result of the actions of humankind, so that my actions (yes, good or bad) can have an effect on *your* life, and on the lives of countless people I will never even meet (see http://btbowen.blogspot.com/2007/10/restating-case.html). So for example, cancers and other environmentally-caused sickness are to some degree the result of the poisons we as a species are spewing into our biosphere. God isn't to blame for suffering; *we* are, and so I want to try to diminish my responsibility, such as I can, for the suffering of others. In a similar way, if I buy new clothes from a company that uses sweatshops (e.g. watch the documentary "China Blue"), I'm contributing to the suffering of unknown numbers of people who live in deplorable conditions. So I try always to buy my clothes second-hand: it's not a perfect solution, but it's a good step, I think, and it's within my financial means.

3) In a backwards kind of way, I suppose my motivation could be financial, maybe. I find that being "environmentally conscious" does help save money, and that's useful for our family at this juncture. As well, I occasionally think about going into journalism, so doing all this writing is both good practice and also potentially good for my portfolio. That said, I don't make money from the blog and it does take hours and hours of work.

* * * * *

[flash forward]

4) 09.12.09 - it's two months later and I'm still mulling over this motivation problem. Why are climate deniers really so very interested in "disproving" climate change? Do they think we'll be blown back to the dark ages? Do they resent not feeling like they really have any choices left, or do they feel like they're being told what to do? I, for my part, have begun to conclude that maybe my own interest in the environmental causes stems from the fact that I feel like a bit of a black sheep: I don't totally feel like I fit in, even now, in society as it has been erected, and so maybe my underlying motivation for championing environmental causes is that I think maybe I'd feel more comfortable - like I'd finally found "home" - in those self-same dark ages. Do I eschew technology? I do not. Do I constantly wish that i were doing something other than watching TV or checking my email, and that the people around me didn't buy into a culture I find so repulsive? yes. Our western culture makes me uneasy at best and terrified and nauseated at worst.

...so it seems to me that maybe the battle over the validity of the environmental argument is a battle of identity: namely, that each of us self-identifies either as being successful by society's standards, and therefore welcomed, or a loser, and therefore shunned. What's at stake when we dig down under the threat to our lifestyles that the environmental movement could be, is in fact the very sense of who we are, which has taken us our lifetime to construct.

* * * * *

So what does noteviljustwrong stand to gain? Well, for one thing, they have a big retail section (http://www.noteviljustwrong.com/shop). But - and I think this is the real underlying motivation - noteviljustwrong really represents a particular way of life and standard of living, and a resistance to being forced to change. And that's fair enough, really. But I think the thing they're missing is that no one (and here I'm talking about North Americans, and still only generally) really *wants* to make massive changes to the way they live. Environmentalists, though, I think understand that either we can change now of our own free will, or we can be forced to change when the conditions on the planet make the status quo impossible.

Noteviljustwrong's opening pseudo-manifesto includes the phrase "They are determined to blame humans for everything." Putting aside a discussion of whether or not humans are in fact to blame for everything, this assertion is defensive. It suggests that they feel they are not beng treated fairly, and that their [...and here the entry stopped back in October, when I saved it to my desktop and vowed to come back to it].

the climate change hoax

You may have seen this story somewhere in the last couple days: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/11/26/climate-change-hack.html. Essentially, some very prominent "climate change scientists" from the UK's Climatic Research Unit had their emails hacked and posted online, and those emails seem to suggest that these scientists have been fudging the numbers on climate change to make the situation seem more dire than it may in fact be.

In response, climate change deniers and agnostics are having a triumphant HA moment, and it's not the first time. In December 2007, a number of UN climate change scientists were revealed to have been fudging some of those self-same numbers too.

Bastards!

Eventually, I'll get 'round to posting my article on motivations - who stands to gain from the two sides of this showdown? - but for now, I'd like to make a point:

Nothing - nothing! - changes the fact that a finite planet cannot hold infinite resources. It's against the laws both of logic and of physics, and it's not possible. So... we're still going to run out of oil, whether we've peaked already or we won't do so for another century; it's impossible for there to be an endless supply. Potable water is still under imminent threat: the way we're poisoning our water, we don't have an infinite supply! As the head of the Council for Canadians Maude Barlowe asserts, "the wars of the future... will be fought over water."

We humans are not being kind to the planet, and the validity of climate change science will not change that fact. Just look at the rates of extinction of species, the state of the Great Barrier Reef, the pollutions of the oceans, etc. etc. etc., and you'll have a hard time denying it.

The human species has overreached our carrying capacity, and we can't just keep continuing to grow and grow. It's insane to think that exponential growth using up a finite resource can go on forever - that doesn't make any sense (see Easter Island - our canary in the coalmine). If nothing else, realize that all species go extinct, and that our time will come too.

two new articles

I'll admit it: I like when people do all the work for me. But also, these two articles say what I would try to say in a much more articulate manner. A couple of Facebook friends posted these links today, and I wanted to pass them on.

caveat: Canada's record on the environment is horrifyingly abysmal.

1) http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/12/01/the-urgent-threat-to-world-peace-is-%e2%80%a6-canada/

2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/nov/30/canada-tar-sands-copenhagen-climate-deal

...and here's an infuriating one about Harper. Apparently we're just too naive and idealistic and we should be lowering our standards so we can reach our goals without needing to change...

3) http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/732453--pm-won-t-blue-sky-on-climate

lifestyle update

so... this isn't the same kind of post, because as I said previously I do have a bunch of research-heavy ones in the works but none of them is quite ready. Instead, I thought I'd just give you a little window into things we've been trying to do at our house to be more environmentally responsible:

1. we have started saving our little one's bath water at night, keeping the plug in and using a bucket to fill the toilet tank. It felt wasteful to just let all that water get used for 15 mins (tops) and then to drain it, so we've been thinking about this for a bit, and we finally did it. It's not easy-peasy, but we're getting used to it fast. Next month's utilities bill will ultimately be the verdict
2. we are getting eggs from a local producer, about 2 dozen at a time, every 2 weeks. She's a friend of my mom's and has an organic (chicken) farm, meaning they're grain-fed and free range, and she had too many to eat herself, so she's started selling them. $4 a dozen!
3. we bought plastic wrap for our windows. When we moved in we replaced some of the crappiest windows with new (more) energy-efficient ones, but we still have 3 huge ones that let a lot of heat out. So in the absence of an extra $1500 to replace the windows, we'll try this and see what happens.
4. I'm still trying to hang laundry outside, even when it's less than 10 degrees. Things have been drying surprisingly well, particularly on windy days and when I manage to get everything on the line by 9:30am at the latest. When it doesn't all dry completely, a quick run in the dryer - 10 or 15 mins - finishes it off, which is still better than all of it for an hour on high heat.

...I think that's it. I've been riding my bike more, too, though it's getting cold enough that that's becoming less and less palatable. OH and I've been biking over to the Farmer's Market (less than a 10 min ride) weekly to pick up apples and other produce. Baby steps! Dr. Reese Halter, author of The Incomparable Honeybee, was on The Current yesterday, and said, "...if everybody does one thing different, and we all collectively join hands, that is a Stanley Cup ring; we win!" - it's a little cheesy, but it's more positive than I am generally able to be, and it may even be true. It's worth a shot, certainly.

consumerism

I have said in previous posts that I think the only viable option to the environmental cataclysm we are hurtling toward is population reduction. The reason, however, that population is the big problem as I see it is that, generally, western society (or more broadly, developed and indeed developing nations) does not want to change. The public does not have anywhere near enough will to change our way of life to slow down the course on which we're headed. Concluding that nothing can be done, though, is a little defeatist and fatalistic, I admit.

In fact, with the global economy in its current state, now might be just the time for us to start moving as a society toward a less goods-based way of life. Until recently, North American life has been driven by consumerism - the more you and I buy, the better the economy does, and the wealthier you and I become, basically. After the 9-11 attacks, GWBush infamously asked for "your continued particpation and confidence in the American economy." In other words, if we continue to buy stuff, our economy will keep running as it always has, and we'll be okay, both in terms of our standard of living and in terms of our level of psychological comfort, going on as much as possible as if nothing had happened. Seven years later, though, "business as usual" caused one of the most colossal failures of global markets ever, and inarguably the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression (stay tuned for a future post about the Depression itself).

So far, though, the majority of the effort to recover has been to "get things back on track," trying to return us to the very system (primarily of credit and debt) that crippled us in the first place. We have such short memories!

Common sense (and physics) tells us that we cannot have unlimited resources on a finite planet. Last year sometime a friend of mine sent me a link to this chart which estimates how much of everything we have left on Earth to use before it just runs out. It's conjecture and it's based on some scientific data, but even if have twice as long as it tells us, we're still going to run out, whether it's in our own lifetime or that of our children or that of our grandchildren. And so we need to curb our consumption, one way or another, whether that means each of us consuming less, or fewer of us on the planet consuming the same amount.

Our culture feeds us *so* many messages about the relationship between who we are, what we're worth as people, and what we have, that many of us get hoodwinked into believing it. If we could figure out how to free ourselves from our stuff - to be satisfied with what we have - then we as a species might have a very different, much richer future ahead of us.

coming soon

just to keep you up-to-date

I'm working on a number of different ideas right now, so expect new posts soon:

• religious evangelism vs. environmentalism
• consumerism, the economy, the Great Depression, and the environment
• how the Judaeo-Christian worldview has contributed to our destructive environmental attitudes
• is the environmental crisis being blown out of proportion/ is the environment really doing better now, as some are suggesting?

...lots of meat in there, and lots of reading to do on my part to get things ready. So sit tight; don't touch that (mouse)dial.

i'm a hypocrite

I'd like to share some examples of ways I feel like a hypocrite:

1) I gave up coffee, because according to waterfootprint.org, every cup we drink represents an unconscionable 140L of water used in its production. So I drink tea now - only 30L/cup. Do I feel wonderfully self-righteous about this move? In fact, I do not. 30L/cup is still a waste, and in fact it's probably more like 45L/cup for me because I use 3 teabags per pot instead of 2, which is what I believe the number is based on. And I drink at least four cups a day, so 120L/day (versus the previous 6 cups of coffee or 840L/day). Better, admittedly, but still harmful. Even if we all suddenly drank *only* water - all 6.7 billion of us - we'd still be producing waste and using up water faster than is sustainable.

2) I discovered that using our laptop instead of our desktop PC uses a lot less energy - 90W versus the 700W of the PC +monitor. So we use the laptop as much as we can. Excellent. But we still use it, and occasionally it gets left on when nobody's sitting at it, and occasionally I forget to turn the power bar off at night so it stays idly on. Better for the planet, but still not good for it.

3) Grocery shopping, I often have to choose between local, organic, and cost. But I also want to factor in packaging, processing, chemicals used in preservation, and water used. No matter what, I always lose. Even if we go to the farmer's market and buy straight from the producers, they've still trucked all their stuff in, we often drive the ten blocks because we have my daughter and we'd rather not have a cranky/overheated/cold toddler for an entire return trip. Besides that, though, often things are more expensive! Today I paid $10 for five cloves of "Mennonite garlic" grown locally and organically. Gonna have to use it very wisely (am, in fact, preparing to plant a few cloves thereof and grow my own - only rainfall-fed, mind you).

4) I'm a musician by trade. But I almost never play in Hamilton, where I live. Instead, I drive the 65km to Toronto, by myself, at over 80km/hr (apparently this is the optimal speed for conserving gas. I drive considerably faster than that), both ways. And so that's also easily in excess of the 312kg of CO2 I would produce driving more slowly (based on the MNR's estimate of 2.4kg of Co2/L of gas). I'd love to take the GO Bus, but it doesn't run at the hours I need so I'd never be able to get home the night of a gig, so playing music would always mean at least 12 hours away from my family. I don't use the AC, it's a pretty efficient car, and sometimes I can even carpool with a bandmate, but even with all these things all I can do is occasionally harm the environment less, but I cannot actually do it any good.

...see, particularly in North America, where our culture is built around consumerism, it's all-but impossible not to harm the planet by what we do every day, no matter what it is. We shower, wash dishes, wash clothes, flush toilets, use electricity, drive places, use our computers and gadgets, listen to music and the radio and watch TV, eat stuff grown more than 50km from our houses, some of us eat meat... we're really buggered. Carl Sagan, and now David Suzuki, says that, "if you were to reduce the Earth to the size of a basketball, the biosphere would be thinner than a layer of varnish, and that's it! That's where all life exists, and nothing within that system can grow forever!" (David Suzuki on CPAC, Oct 2008).

And so, more than ever, I am concluding that the only hope for our species' survival is a major push toward population decline. It is completely counter-intuitive and goes against everything our genetics and evolutionary imperatives tell us to do, but it's the only real solution.