I took this with my phone yesterday while walking around High Park. A thought occurred to me once I got past the predictable melancholy attached to the relative little chance I get to spend time among the trees. The idea was that I usually relate such a scene to strength and health and all-around goodness when that could be far from the truth.
There’s nothing in particular to say that our possibly deadly future has to be ugly or vast and empty. There could be pathogens, bacteria, poisons or chemical changes that threaten us while at the same time appearing colourful and pristine. It might be overgrown with fast-growing trees and wildflowers that resist the effects that we might not.
Not exactly a cheery thought. But, I am glad to have made the connection. I think people respond to visual proof. So, when proof is abstract or hard to take a close look at, we imagine it’s not immediate. That’s primitive and I hope we can develop past that.
Article: Trouble with Canada’s Rivers
World Wildlife Fund Canada has released a report detailing risks to many of Canada’s most integral waterways. The combination of human impacts like irrigation or hydro-electric projects and (the creeping effects of) global warming is dooming wildlife that depend on the natural seasonal ebb and flow of the rivers. Pollution aside, water levels play a big part in maintaining ecosystems and disrupting and even permanently changing them creates problems from which all will be slow to recover.
The article mentions the political troubles with creating useful regulation. There are too many jurisdictions involved with exponentially more bureaucracy to wade through. That bodes well for developers and corporations with mining or forestry interests. While everybody is arguing and stalling they can just keep on keeping on until the damage is done. Absolutely done.
I think that progress has pushed us further away from the determination of our own futures than any time in human history. Governments play their own games. They can’t be expected to accomplish objectives in the real-time of the natural world. That isn’t what they do. I think it’s important that we stop looking to Obama or any political leader, anywhere, to sort all this out for us. There is no saviour. There is nobody at the wheel. There is no guiding mind to appeal to and convince. There are only the billions of individuals with their own needs and agendas who largely sit patiently waiting to be told what’s next.
There’s so much to be done, probably most within the confines of Canadian law, that doesn’t require government intervention. I find evidence of inspiring people doing their thing every day. I typically blame my lack of funds for my inability to join their ranks but that’s just easy and obvious. Rather than wasting time assigning blame, as the great leaders of the world expertly do, we should recognize and act on the premise that every single thing we do HAS an effect. Every person taking responsibility would be more than enough.
More reading:
Infernal Landscapes – Lu Guang, winner of the Eugene Smith Grant
VII Panel – Why Photography Still Matters
It’s late August. This little blog needs a little love.
I’ve admittedly had troubles settling on a vantage point for this platform. Couldn’t do in-depth. Big picture got unruly quickly. I get the impression there is NO authority on big picture (Earth) issues. Just louder voices. And that brings us to local/little picture. So much is said/blogged about Toronto that it never feels as though I’m filling a gap. So, here we sit, 2/3’s of the way through the year with maybe half a dozen posts to my name.
I’ll just say that I’ve spent most of the summer concentrating on the planet in one way or another. I planned and more or less executed a backpacking trip to the great Ontario wilderness of Killarney Provincial Park. It wasn’t as extensive as I’d have liked but it was fantastic to be enveloped in the rocks, trees and waterways, if even for a short time. The rest of the summer I’ve spent my time fighting back weeds and Virginia Creeper in the back yard in order to give some perennials and my first vegetable garden a chance. Many weekends of digging and scraping and lifting.
What do I have to show for it? Well, I have about 14 cucumbers in my crisper. I’ve been eating the vegetables from the garden for about a month now. I’m still waiting on the tomatoes, corn and chilies, but the potatoes, peas, lettuce, radishes, carrots, beans, herbs and obviously the mighty cucumbers have all been excellent. The work has definitely struck a chord and managed to calm some of the general tension I was feeling about the world. If you look, you will easily find so much wrong. Ultimately, I don’t feel particularly empowered to change much about our collective trajectory. But, some practical knowledge and actual labour in the sun and rain at least made it feel as though I was not participating so much in the problems.
I already have plans for next year culled from the naive decisions made this year. If I’m lucky, I won’t have to shop for vegetables at all in July and August!
The picture below is from a brief day trip I took to Elora Gorge a couple of weeks ago. I can’t even imagine living in a town where you could ride your bike down the road and then just wade into a river surrounded by all this life! It was a good few hours.
The strike by city of Toronto workers is very much in the news recently. I considered simply documenting the growing mess on the streets but I think that story is left perfectly well up to your imagination. Temporary dump sites have been set up all over the city so that residents can avoid attracting rodents with their overflow of household waste. While that is a helpful measure by most counts, it isn’t a solution.
Most of the temporary dumps are city parks. So, in addition to the superficial inconvenience of gagging from the odour of hot garbage while walking your dog or playing some frisbee, there are real concerns about leakage into surrounding areas. I understand the concerns of the union and by all means, they should be able to stand firm on their demands. But, I think that this kind of service is absolutely necessary for a civilized society. The effects just keep coming. The price for their bargaining position is far too high.
Watch the actual film.
This is a pretty popular story around Toronto. I get bogged down by reading stories about the hopelessness of big picture environmental issues. Sometimes, you just need to take some solace in small steps. Ms. James’ story spoke to me because I already had a problem with all the interlocking brick and cement driveways/front yards in my area. It’s largely Italian and Portuguese and there seems to be a cultural affinity for wrought iron gates and cement pavement that covers the entire area a front lawn or garden could occupy.
Hopefully, people giving this a bit more thought by reading the story and reaction here might reduce the thousands and thousands of homes around Toronto who have “paved paradise and put up a parking lot”.
On a related note, I’ve wanted to do a simple photo essay of people downtown watering their sidewalks for some time. The fact that most of these ridiculous offenders are little old Portuguese women makes the confrontational nature of the photo taking a little unseemly. Maybe I can think of a softer approach.
From Monbiot.
This story is quiet and small because the people are quiet and small. A few thousand peaceful islanders who live from the land are forced to find another home due to rising sea levels. As George Monbiot mentions, they are the first to be displaced by man-made climate change.
The interviews with the people are touching. This is a couple of years old and they were still holding out hope that a rich country would come to their rescue. It makes sense that since industrial countries caused the rising sea levels, that they should want to protect those who suffer from its impact. But, of course, nobody is going to take on responsibility like that when there are so many directions they could point the finger.
This is sad but this relocation will likely go relatively smoothly. They don’t want to go. But, they will certainly be able to pick up their lives in a similar place. What we should really be thinking about is the time when the place that can no longer support a people is larger and full of angry and armed people with ideas of nationality and blame. That is coming and that will not be so quiet.
P.S. – Tibet is in trouble.
Political Upset
Logging
After the cyclone.
So, Madagascar had something of a hostile coup and some young and seemingly inexperienced guy took over, with the considerable military support, from the democratically elected leader. The country is very poor and depends very heavily on outside investment and tourism. The violence associated with the change in power and the general unrest have kept both away.
Park conservation authorities have abandoned their posts due to armed loggers and poachers infiltrating the forests to take, amongst other things, the Rosewood trees. The locals, fearful and poor, have helped these hired guns find the best places to rape the land and wildlife.
Now, with the most recent cyclone ousting 60 thousand from their homes and destroying much of the indigenous crops the people will have little choice but to help with the destruction of one of the richest ecosystems on Earth. China is among those financing the loggers. I hope that we can muster the fortitude to divert our attention from our own precious economy and never-ending wars and figure out a way to help restore, if not a democratic government, then at least the conservationists.
I’ve been continuing to absorb as much as I can regarding our collective fate on this planet. Most news follows the economy now. Job losses are a big deal. Immediate concerns about taking care of your family tend to supersede those of a larger and more abstract scope. This is what we’re facing. These disasters will soon not just be happening concurrently but will be feeding off of each other and slowing any solution that isn’t interrelated. I’ve included some of the most important things I’ve read, heard or seen in the past couple of weeks.
Item 1
Climate Wars (3 part audio documentary)
This is a tough pill to swallow. Not only because Gwynne Dyer, with his heavily affected, gravelly and tremulous narration, dramatizes the facts to a certain extent but mostly because it doesn’t make it seem like things will be fine.
Item 2
Contraction and Convergence (C&C in menu)
This concept is brought up in the final installment of Climate Wars; the only light of hope. It boils down to the fact that equality among nations will not bring about the necessary changes and that humans care more about fairness than equality, ultimately. So, rather than all countries having to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by the same amount, some that have more need to will emit more than others and have to pay the lesser emitters. There’s an overall maximum emission cap that all would have to abide. This was devised in the early nineties by the Global Commons Institute.
Item 3
The Age of Stupid (feature release)
This documentary, which hasn’t been released yet, talks about Contraction and Convergence and looks at a world projected 46 years in the future. The main idea is, of course: Why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance? Whenever it becomes available in your area, I think you should see it.
Item 4
National Geographic exposes Oilsands Holocaust (from THIS magazine)
This article points out that an international magazine with the reach and respect of National Geographic calling the Alberta oil sands a “dirty-oil holocaust” makes for a game-ending PR nightmare for the Alberta and Canadian energy industries. The photo essay is of the beautiful and terrible variety.
