Climate Change Denial

http://www.desmogblog.com/2012/11/15/why-climate-deniers-have-no-credibility-science-one-pie-chart

is not credible. In any way.

Helen Boyd

Don't know Helen Boyd?  Check out:

http://www.myhusbandbetty.com/

From her recent posts:

 (3) you hate yourself because you don’t do anything, and (2) what you are inside only matters because of what it makes you do, and of course (1) everything inside you will fight improvement.  #2 especially. Being a good person doesn’t count for shit unless you engage it and can actually do things that people need done.


IMHO, most white people are clueless and in denial about their own racism, and like gender discrimination, racism is a problem for all of us – not just black people. So let’s get our act together, shall we?




How cool is this? University of Victoria has an archive of transgender materials - from Reed Erickson, Ari Kane, Virginia Prince, and other people who collected significant trans history.

How can you not love her?  Funny, smart, and suffers no fools. 

Of Course We're Racist

We - we Canadians - see ourselves as open, tolerant, and non racist.

I don't know how we manage to hold on to that view in light of the facts.  

Fact 1:  The Idle No More protests seem to have triggered racist attacks.

"A brutal sexual assault of a native woman in northwestern Ontario that is being investigated as a hate crime has thrown fresh fuel on the fires of discontent being expressed in protests and demonstrations by first nations people across Canada. She has told police she was assaulted, strangled and left for dead by two men who hurled racial epithets and denounced indigenous rights.   The Ontario assault was far from an isolated incident. At least 600 aboriginal women and girls have gone missing or been murdered in Canada in the past two decades. Native leaders say the number of victims actually runs into the thousands.  "

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/thunder-bay-sex-assault-hate-crime-probe-sharpen-focus-on-native-womens-plight/article6885373/

 

"But CBC.ca was so troubled by the extreme racism in comments on stories about the Idle No More movement that it asked readers on its Community Blog for advice. .... CBC.ca’s problem is that unless it takes action, it’s going to become a non-paywalled main stage to which racists flock. "http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1314100--mallick-canadian-anti-idle-no-more-racism-grows-online

 

Fact 2:  The brutal assault on a First Nations woman in Thunder Bay is not an isolated incident. 

"Systemic bias within the RCMP and Vancouver police led to “blatant failures” in investigating the disappearance of dozens of women from the Downtown Eastside who became victims of serial killer Robert Pickton, an inquiry found Monday."

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1303461--robert-pickton-missing-women-inquiry-concludes-bias-against-victims-led-to-police-failures

 

Most of the women Robert Pickton murdered were aboriginal.  Do you think if he had killed middle class white women from Point Grey the VPD and the RCMP would have ignored them?

 

Fact 3: Many  First Nation communities lack potable water or decent housing.  

Their community sits on a lake that has been the source of Winnipeg’s drinking water for nearly a century, but residents of Shoal Lake 40 First Nation still rely on bottled water brought in from Kenora, Ont.... Now, a proposal by the City of Winnipeg to sell some of the water it draws from Shoal Lake to neighbouring municipalities has the community frustrated and seeking support from the federal government as it tries to challenge those plans.  

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/winnipeg-native-band-battle-over-water/article7206899/

 

Fact 4:  The conditions First Nations are living in are not improving.  Sheila Fraser (remember her?) lambasted the federal govenment.

"I am profoundly disappointed to note ... that despite federal action in response to our recommendations over the years, a disproportionate number of First Nations people still lack the most basic services that other Canadians take for granted," former auditor general Sheila Fraser says in her parting words to Parliament.  "In a country as rich as Canada, this disparity is unacceptable."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/06/09/pol-ag-first-nations.html

 

We're racist.  

 

We don't have to be  racist.  But each of us must work to realize we're racist - and to exorcise that demon.    Have a look at the tools at the webiste below.  

 

http://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/olson.pdf

It's Hot Ouside!

No, not here in Canada.  In Australia.  (Although folks in Toronto might be excused for thinking 8 is a tad warm for a winter day.)

It has been so hot in Australia that the Bureau of Meteorology added new colours and mew maximums  to their predictions.


54 degrees Celsius is HOT!  So Australians are waking up to the alarming possibilities inherent in climate change, right?  Well, not the acting opposition leader.

"Australia's climate, it's changing, it's changeable. We have hot times, we have cold times...
 'The reality is that it's utterly simplistic to suggest that we have these fires                              because  of climate change.'' acting Opposition Leader Warren Truss says.  
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/climate-change-link-to-heat-fires-utterly-simplistic-says-warren-truss/story-fndo317g-1226550415035

Never mind the facts!  Or the government's Climate Commission!

No deaths have been reported from the bushfires, which have flared during extreme summer temperatures, but the unprecedented heatwave has prompted the government’s Climate Commission to issue a new report on the weather event.
It says that climate change has contributed to making the extreme heat conditions — in which record-breaking temperatures in parts of the country have topped 45ºC — and bushfires worse.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2013/01/13/2003552448

Meanwhile, some questions from Global Risks 2013: Eighth Edition.  http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2013/

1.  How will we reconcile climate change mitigation and adaptation with the desire for prosperity given current demographic trends?

2.  How can like-minded municipalities, companies and communites drive forward a new set of climate-smart approaches that avoid cognitive biases?

What are the answers?

Racist Sterotypes

Judging by the comments I've read on the Idle No More protests, we need the reminder.

Chasing Ice

Denial becomes harder and harder to maintain....

Empathy

I’ve been struggling with the concept of empathy lately - empathy as it relates to climate change.  

 I’ve been wondering if I am ethically required to have empathy for climate deniers who tend to be older white straight males vigorously defending their privilege.   Am I required to vicariously experience their feelings?  Will my empathy assist me in changing their actions?

I’m not suggesting yelling at anyone or abusing them in any way :  although, if doing so got action on climate change, I would recommend it!

If I have empathy for the beleaguered and battered earth, does that eliminate a necessity to have empathy for the people who are destroying her?  Lower it?  How about if their destruction is unconscious?  How far am I permitted to go in waking them up?    Especially if they have a tonne of privilege (yes, somewhere there's  a scale that weighs it!) and revel in their privilege......

How do I decide what my actions should be?

Humanity doesn’t seem to be smart enough to take the steps we need to take to survive:  instead, articles in the business pages discuss the profits to be made from oil extraction in an ice free Arctic.

Persistently high oil prices are also making the huge engineering challenges of working in such a hostile environment look more worthwhile. In addition, the climate change that burning hydrocarbons contributes to has pushed back the ice, opening up access to, and markets for, the hydrocarbons there.  http://business.financialpost.com/2012/09/17/shell-admits-arctic-drilling-defeat-for-now/

What the fuck?  Are we mad and suicidal and determined to take every ecosystem with us as we kill ourselves?

Sharon Butula writes about her conviction that we are walking on the mind of a sentient being when we walk on the earth.  (page 127 , The Perfection of the Morning, 1994)  She wonders

What if I am walking inside the mind of a creature - call it what you will - what if the earth really is a living being and my presence here is only on sufference? If I am learning new things about myself and extrapolating from these things to his natural world....then it behooves me to wlak carefully, to pay attention, to show my growing respect in every possible way.  I stopped picking wildflowers; I went around rocks instead of stepping on them...I did not glance at plants or lichens on rocks or on the gound, I studied them. 

What of the rest of us who do far worse than pick wild flowers? 

I have a friend who says:

“No one is perfect, and the fact that some people can’t wrap their head around climate change doesn’t make them any less deserving of being treated with respect ( and empathy).  So yes, you are called to show empathy for all sorts of cretins every day in the world It’s easy to feel empathy for the earth.  The hard part is showing empathy for those destroying her.  But if we show no empathy, we don’t stand a chance at changing their minds.”

Is that true?  Or is showing empathy a way of procrastinating?  A way of demonstrating solidarity - so we don't actually havae to take action on climate change?