Category Archives: Environment

Entries regarding the environment

Ignorance & Stupidity vs Environmental Literacy

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Ignorance: 1. the condition of being uneducated, unaware, or uniformed;

2. willful neglect or refusal to acquire knowledge which one may acquire and it is their duty to have.

Stupidity: 1. the condition of being slow to learn or understand

2. a tendency to make poor decisions or careless mistakes;

3. describing actions or decisions marked by a lack of intelligence or care

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The five pillars of Environmental Literacy are:  Awareness, Knowledge, Attitudes, Skills, and Action. In order to be environmentally literate, one must be very well informed, able to see the patterns that connect, and able to ruthlessly fact-check. The sources used for assembling that knowledge must be legitimate practising, peer reviewed, and published – the 3Ps. Otherwise we will get garbage in, garbage out.

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Which begs the question, dear adult voters living in Dufferin-Caledon: Why would we re-elect Kyle Seeback? Why, after knowing that the last MP who actually did anything significant for us was when we were represented by farmer Murray Calder, a Liberal MP who held the position from 1993 to 2004 when our riding was rearranged to become Dufferin-Caledon. Then a conservative lawyer, David Tilson was elected. Tilson was a former Progressive Conservative MPP who had joined the anything but progressive Conservative Reform Alliance Party. David Tilson served as MP from 2004 to 20019, spending most of that decade warming his political briefs on the backbench. He did virtually nothing for Dufferin-Caledon.

Mr. Tilson was succeeded in 2019 by Kyle Seeback, another conservative lawyer who has also warmed the backbench, again doing nothing significant for Dufferin-Caledon and Canada as a member of a hostile, divisive opposition party.

Yes, Dufferin-Caledon needed a change all right. We are entering an era of economic and political threats from the USA President, we are entering an era when the old spectre of western separatism is being stoked by far right conservatives, and we are already immersed in an era of global social and environmental upheaval. We needed someone who would fight for our security and sovereignty, not another bench warming Conservative Reform Alliance Party lawyer.

The way I see it.

 

The Morning After the Night Before

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Dawn rose on a new Canada this morning. Instead of the Conservative majority predicted by pollsters at the start of the campaign, Prime Minister Mark Carney wins his seat and the government of Canada will be Liberal. One of the greatest reversals of fortune in Canadian political history. To add insult to injury, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre loses his seat and a place in the House of Commons. Didn’t see that one coming.

New Democrats lose their Party Status, and Jagmeet Singh also loses his seat and graciously gives up his leadership as soon as a successor can be chosen. Elizabeth May, so-leader of the Green Party wins her seat and a place at the table. While votes in close races are still being tabulated it appears at this point that we have a Liberal minority that will need every vote from the few NDP, Green, and Bloc seats to advance their agenda.

We are going to need a united front to deal with the Trumpian threats from the south, yet it appears unlikely that a bitterly disappointed Conservative Party will be anything but the obfuscaters and obstructionists they have been for the last ten years. If you look closely enough you may see that the “lost decade” as Mr. Poilievre calls it, really had nothing to do with ten years of Liberal governance. There were global financial crises, global health pandemics, and the rise of far right politics that gave the stamp of approval to nasty, divisive behaviour.

The Conservatives frequently liked to state that because of Liberal policies, Canada was ranked last of the G7 countries in terms of GDP. True, but what they didn’t clarify was that Canada also has the smallest population of the G7 countries. When you look at the rankings, each country’s place in the list corresponds exactly with its population.

So, when we calculate how Canada is doing using GDP per capita as our guide, lo and behold, Canada comes out in #1 spot at $38,000 per person. The USA and UK are next at $35,000, Germany at $34,000, Japan at $33,000, France at $31,000. and Italy at $29,000. Gee whiz, Conservative Reform Alliance Party, you’ve been lying to us for the last ten years! Shame. Canada is actually #1 in the G7. Not last, NUMBER ONE.

And you never told us that the real reason that house prices and inflation went out of control was caused by a global financial crisis, and greedy developers, land speculators and real estate agents who all got richer while most us us got quite a bit poorer. Very little to do with our government. Dear Conservative Party, please tell all those young Gen Z people who flocked to the size of your rallies, your seductive sloganeering, and your rabble-rousing rhetoric that you’ve been pulling the proverbial wool over their eyes.

When the forces from the South come looking to plunder the richness of our lands, and when the next election comes, we are all going to need to see very clearly.

The way I see it.

Weaponizing Research by Pierre Poilievre

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This article is NOT by Pierre Poilievre. It is about how Poilievre took a Government of Canada research paper on predictions of possible changes in the course of our lives over the next few decades and turned it into a “create a crisis” moment, His weaponization of the Policy Horizons Canada Report proved once again why he is unfit to lead this country.

You may have seen the usual media suspects trumpet Poilievre’s panic about a “dystopian society” report released by the Liberal Government that proved everything little PP warned us about would be coming true by the year 2040. Unless, of course, we elect a Conservative Reform Alliance Party government in four days. “It’s the countdown to Armageddon,” squawked Chicken Little.

Except it isn’t. First, the Horizons Canada  Report is issued by the Canadian Government which is composed of Bloc, NDP, Conservative, and Liberal MPs. It is not a report issued by any particular political party. Secondly, The Report, Parts 1 and 2, is titled Future Lives: Exploring Life Course Transformations.

It clearly states in the preamble: “Policy Horizons Canada does not represent the views of the Government of Canada …. readers are encouraged to use this report to test their assumptions about the future.” Pierre, please read the report as an intellectual exercise in futures possibilities for your life course. And make sure your brain is informed before putting your mouth in gear.

The researchers who write the report use nine Forces of Change intersecting with six Life Course components and make a futures projection to the year 2040. The nine Forces of Change include categories like longer lifespans, data and AI systems influence, economic insecurity for most but economic security for few, and rising anxiety due to existential threats like accelerated climate change. They get meshed with Life Course components like education, living arrangements, reproduction and labour to create a possible future.

I’ll bet Pierre Poilievre didn’t see Donald Trump’s terrible tariffs attack derailing his Life Course plans, or the ascendancy of Mark Carney taking away his favourite Liberal target. When the Conservative Party recently replaced Poilievre in their commercials with former leader Stephen Harper, did Pierre suddenly see his own dystopian future unfolding?

 

Let’s hope that Canadians can see that their decisions in the upcoming federal election will transform everyone’s Life Course plans. We are living in interesting times. If we choose wisely on April 28, 2025, we could still be living in Canada the next day.

The way I see it.                                                             

 

The Full Moon in March

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Image result for The Wind Moon

The last few nights and early mornings have been illuminated by a brilliant full moon in the March sky. The media world has alerted us to watch for the “Worm Moon” as it is known in the Farmer’s Almanac. However, few among us in southern Ontario would expect any self-respecting robin to be out looking for worms in the frozen snow and ice covered ground that now blankets most of our landscape.

This March moon got it’s current name from the colonists who had imported both the robin and the earthworm from Europe. But before the arrival of these invasive species, the First Peoples on this northern portion of the continent had named this moon the Snowcrest Moon, or the Wind Moon depending on the geography of the local community. It marked the slow end of winter and the gusty entry of spring when the bark beetles began to emerge from their winter tree trunk shelters.

Our indigenous Turtle Island explained it all, with 13 large scutes surrounded by 28 smaller scutes on the turtle’s shell. Thirteen moons with 28 days each equals … are you ready for it … 364 days! Each full moon was named by the local community according to the geography of their habitat and marked a seasonal  shift based on the local climate.

Unfortunately, that intimate knowledge of the land did not match with the puritanical Christian colonists worldview that 13 was an unlucky, even evil number. This primarily western concept led to the development of the Julian calendar which took their “perfect number” 12 and tried to divide it into 364.25 natural days of the year. And so we now have 12 months divided into 28/29/30/31 days depending on the month and year.

That’s what happens when you try to impose an artificial patriarchal world order over the natural cycles of life. Thirteen moons, twenty-eight day cycles. Fittingly, this exquisite full March moon coincided with International Women’s Day. The grandmothers knew what they were talking about. The way I see it.

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kid Crease, Caledon

Success and Failure at COP 27

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Car fumes are killing us. So why isn't anyone telling us not to drive? | Susanna Rustin | The Guardian

 

The 27th meeting of the Council of Parties, or COP 27 as it is commonly known, was grinding down to a slow stop on Friday, November 18, 2022.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the delegates, “Ever-rising greenhouse gas emissions are supercharging extreme weather events across the planet. These increasing calamities cost lives and hundreds of billions of dollars in loss and damage. Three times more people are displaced by climate disasters than war. Half of humanity is already in the danger zone. We must invest equally in adaptation and resilience. That includes the information that allows us to anticipate storms, heatwaves, floods and droughts. To that end, I have called for every person on Earth to be protected by early warning systems within five years, with the priority to support the most vulnerable first.”

Success came when the wealthiest nations on Earth, capable of hosting distractions like World Cup sporting events, finally declared financial support for the severe weather event damages affecting some of the poorest countries on Earth. The establishment of an international Loss and Damage Fund was seen as a major breakthrough, although who would pay and how much each nation would pay was left to future negotiations.

Failure came when the delegations could not reach agreement on emissions reduction targets. Mark Campanale, Director of Carbon Tracker, issued the following statement at the conclusion of COP 27: “While critical that the goal of 1.5C survives, as reaffirmed by G20 leaders, we cannot ignore the challenges it faced in Egypt from the fossil fuel lobby which turned out in force, viewing COP 27 as an opportunity to dress up “natural gas” as a climate solution.”

It is easy to blame the international fossil fool lobby for their economic insensitivity. “Greed is good” right? “It’s not personal, it’s just business.” We’ve heard the same arguments since 1988 when the accelerating climate change crisis was first announced to the world. However, it struck closer to home as I was walking my dog in the pre-dawn hours last Friday morning. We live in a typical residential neighbourhood, and on this typical cold, snowy November morning almost every vehicle in every driveway that we passed was idling, spewing out petrochemical emissions into the air. The stench was so intense from some of the bigger trucks that we had to circle upwind around them.

Some driveways of small semi–detached homes had up to four vehicles parked. Some had super-sized pick up trucks jammed in the driveway and onto the lawn. Many were sitting idling with no one in them – the curse of the remote electric starter. Start up the truck from bed, make a coffee, have breakfast, idle the engine for half an hour, and our air quality be damned.

This is Canada. We should simply put on some warm clothes and a parka, get out our snowbrush/scraper, and clean off our vehicles! We don’t lounge around inside for half an hour waiting for our idling truck to reach an internal temperature of 22C as all the exterior frost, ice and snow melts off. It’s time to Canuck up!

Almost every community in Ontario has idling by laws. Here are some examples:

The Town of Caledon‘s idling bylaw states: No person shall cause or permit a vehicle to idle for more than two (2) minutes total in a sixty (60) minute period in an outdoor environment.

Vaughan: No person shall cause or permit a Motor Vehicle to idle for more than five (5) consecutive minutes.

Toronto: The idling Control By-law limits idling to no more than one (1) minute in a sixty (60) minute period

There you have it. Any mechanic will tell us that a two minute idle is all we need to get the engine warmed up. Anything beyond that is wasteful and can damage our engine components. We can just go out to start up the car, brush and scrape off the snow and ice, and head off on our daily rounds. We don’t need an international agreement. We just need to think globally and act locally.

We may not be able to shake some sense into the profit filled skulls of corporate fossil fuel executives, but at least we can follow our own community’s guidelines for being part of the solution to a global climate crisis. If we truly want to cut global emissions, it might be good to remember that charity begins at home. The way I see it.
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Skid Crease, Caledon