BioBlitzing to Help Us Fall in Love with the Rest of Nature

I'm taking a bit of a break this weekend as I'm hosting some international students from the university where I teach. In fact, this is part of the group I taught a course called Introduction to Sustainability to in the winter.

They're here in my island community to participate in Parks Canada's BioBlitz. According to their website, a bioblitz is a race against the clock to find and identify as many plants and animals in the park as we can in 24 hours. In this case, it's the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve in south coastal British Columbia. We'll be listening for birds and bats, looking for intertidal creatures, and checking the lake for freshwater species.

I'm really looking forward to our weekend of camping together (these students come from all over the world) where every conversation will probably bring up a sustainability topic or issue. But it also means I won't be here to blog about compassionate climate action.

So, let's use this as an opportunity to remember to relish and spend time in the natural world that we're working so hard to safeguard.

Happy bioblitzing in your part of the world! Make as many new nonhuman friends as you can.

Get Outside!

Perseid shooting star

Get outside. Whether it's midwinter or the middle of summer holidays where you live, get outside!

Spending time outdoors is vitally worthwhile because it will remind you that:

• you're infinitesimally insignificant in the universal scheme of things -- and therefore so are your woes and your worries

• you're alive! and therefore, even though you and your problems are like one grain of sand on a never-ending stretch of beach, you've been given a gift that you share with every other living thing on this whole precious planet

• if we don't %$#@ it up with our blinkin' greenhouse gas emissions and black carbon (soot), the Earth will continue to provide us with everything we need

Last night, several of my students and their families and I spread out our blankets and sleeping bags and giggled and snacked well into the night, oohing and aahing as the Perseid meteor showers performed their fireworks. 

The last to leave, I was overcome by a sense of well being. The Milky Way suddenly became a colossal eagle in flight, its wings spread open to envelope me. The Big Dipper, having swung through the sky as the evening wore on, now was dripping honey and nectar on me. Certainly, the mosquitoes reassured me that I was not alone in the world. ("Okay, guys. Guys, really, you can go to bed now." But no, they stayed up to watch the sky show as well. Right next to my left ear. Friendly little fellas.) 

(p.s. The Perseids continue until August 26, 2016 and come every August.)

I remember writing longing poetry long ago as a teenager about the difference between being alone and feeling lonely. Last night, as the whole night sky kept me company after my gaggle of students went home to their comfy beds, I didn't feel alone or lonely. 

I am part of the Great Story of Life unfolding, and even though I am but an extra playing a bit part, I am playing my part with joy, with love, and with care and compassion in my heart for all the children ... of all species ... for all time. (Thank you, Bill McDonough.)

Get outside, folks. Soak in some of the gifts freely given by this precious planet of ours. And then send out your heartfelt thanks and appreciation.

*******

This post is dedicated to a dear young friend who, despite an agonizingly sad medical diagnosis and uncertain prognosis delivered this week, has cheerfully told us all, "It's not how long you live that counts, it's how joyfully you live the time you've got." Thank you, special angel, thank you. Love you!

Inspiration Versus Cynicism (Which One's Winning?)

Abandoned car in Toronto's flooding, July 2013

The last few weeks have been downright Biblical, haven't they? Killer wildfires. Persistent droughts. Flooding that took two major Canadian cities by surprise. The deadly wreck of an oil-transporting train in a small town in Quebec with a blast so big, it could be seen from space. Ireland is dealing with another potato crop failure after Europe's terrible winter. And, last but definitely not least given their importance, the pollinators (bees and butterflies) are missing from a friend's native flower garden.

Train explosion,
Lac Mégantic, Quebec

If a movie started like this, what the heck would the climax look like?

We're heading into it, folks. The climate change shit has begun to hit the fan. In local ways and global ways. In big ways and small ways. In frightening ways and imperceptible ways. Either way, it no longer feels far away. 

While I've been feeling fearful for the children and their future for many years (check out my early blog posts), I'm now starting to get a bit viscerally scared for myself and my family and community — a community that still doesn't understand the chaos that climate change will inflict on our food security. 

(For the same price, we could purchase a 200-acre farm or a 1.5 acre oceanfront property with chocolate lilies growing on it. Guess which one we're fundraising for? Next, we'll have a choice between buying that 200-acre farm or building a seniors home. Guess which one has captured the imagination of the mostly oldsters living in my community? For heaven's sake, they've already HAD their future! We truly are a culture that eats its children and grandchildren, to paraphrase Tom Brown, Jr.)

Anyway, all of this just to share some thoughts with you about inspiration versus cynicism. 

To start, I've been wondering how to stay "up" enough to not give up my work on behalf of the children. This video by John Marshall Roberts on the science of inspiration gives a clue or two:

Note the very last thing he shares: "Cynicism is undigested pain." So there's a clue, eh? Feel the pain, "digest" it, understand it, let it, um, pass through you. Let the pain come out the other end (to take the metaphor to its natural conclusion) not as cynicism but as resolve. 

How's this for inspiring? Not.

Then I read that fracking has dramatically increased the number of "manmade" earthquakes in North America. And then I read in the Guardian that climate scientist/hero James Hansen and colleagues have projected runaway global warming if we don't decarbonize. 

(By the way, for a good explanation of why Obama ≠ (does not equal) hope and optimism, check out The Obama Carbonized Climate Plan. His new "action" plan (ha!) encourages innovative new fossil fuel exploration and extraction ... old-fashioned devastation is not good enough for him. "Yes we can" lead the world to oblivion seems to be Obama's motto these days.)

It's like a seesaw, isn't it? Up then down, up then down. 

Then I saw something that really perked me up, because it suggests something that people CAN DO. (People often ask me, "What can I do?"* as though they really have no ideas of their own.) David Suzuki and Faisal Moola, writing in the Toronto Star following the fantastical rainfall and flooding of July 8th, suggested a strategy that can play out at several levels, from private homeowners to towns and cities and all institutions in between.

"So, knowing there will be dark, costly clouds on the horizon, how can we get ahead of the storm? One of the best strategies for dealing with severe weather events is to steal a page from Mother Nature’s playbook: bring nature home to the city through green, living infrastructure."

Yeah! That really resonated for me. Retrofitting yards and neighbourhoods and school playgrounds and city infrastructure will give us something to do to keep us from getting cynical while the climate change shit continues to hit the fan. But at least we'll be busy buffering ourselves from the worst of the increased natural disasters.

Suzuki and Moola explain that modern urban areas are almost entirely covered with impermeable concrete and asphalt. So when big storms and flooding surges hit, these cities (all built near water) are inundated (in more ways than one). 

"Nature doesn’t play this way. Natural ecosystems — like forests, fields, marshes and wetlands — are built to absorb rainfall and slow the flow of water as it passes through vegetation and soils and into waterways. Thus, incorporating natural systems into the built urban environment can effectively mitigate the intensity of storm surges. Interventions that bring together natural and built environments can range from large networks of interconnected green spaces to small-scale engineered systems, like green roofs, permeable pavement and green walls."

Indeed, one of Nature's most important gifts (or ecosystem services) is flood and erosion control. 

And lest you think this green retrofitting is pie-in-the-sky dreaming, check out Franke James's visual essay, Paradise Unpaved.

So, which is winning, inspiration or cynicism? It's rather like the weather in San Francisco. Wait 10 minutes and I'll have a different answer for you. 

* or some variation:
What can I do?
What can I do?
What can I do?
What can I do?
Usually this question, in any form, means "I'm not really interested in doing anything." Perhaps apathy is the greatest form of cynicism.

Earth Day Musings 2013

Earth Day Canada poster, 2013

Earth Day 2013 is tomorrow. I used to be a huge fan of Earth Day, organizing events wherever in the world I found myself at the time. But then, I used to be a huge fan of Christmas, too. The sheen has worn off a bit. 

So, as my Earth Day gift to you, here's a selection of random ramblings.

*****

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature. — Joseph Campbell

Ha! How many of us even think in terms of Nature anymore? Years ago, when I was in an ineffective relationship (did I express that delicately?), I read every self-help book about love that I could get my hands on. One author suggested that women should try to match their breathing to the rhythm of their husband's breathing. I tried that (I was desperate!). I nearly suffocated. It was a horrible feeling. The strategy made no sense! But I love the thought of this ... matching my heartbeat to the heartbeat of the universe. The First Nations drumbeat here in Canada is said to be the heartbeat of the world. This Earth Day, let's listen for the heartbeat of the rest of Nature, of this Earth, of our Universe.

*****

Dave Roberts at Grist wrote an article the other day called "None of the world’s top industries would be profitable if they paid for the natural capital they use." In it, he said, "The notion of 'externalities' has become familiar in environmental circles. It refers to costs imposed by businesses that are not paid for by those businesses. For instance, industrial processes can put pollutants in the air that increase public health costs, but the public, not the polluting businesses, picks up the tab. In this way, businesses privatize profits and publicize costs."

Roberts goes on to summarize a report by "environmental consultancy Trucost on behalf of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) program sponsored by United Nations Environmental Program." The results are shocking, but not a shock.

"Of the top 20 region-sectors ranked by environmental impacts, none would be profitable if environmental costs were fully integrated. Ponder that for a moment. None of the world’s top industrial sectors would be profitable if they were paying their full freight. None!"

People who don't get that we need a radical, transformative, complete revolutionary overhaul of our economic system just don't get it. Paul Hawken (quoted in this article) puts it this way: "We are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it GDP." And we think we're soooooo smart.

*****

The Ecological Society of America (ESA), representing 10,000 ecological scientists, made a recent statement that's quite pertinent. They believe that as the world attempts to recover from the latest financial crisis, there's an opportunity to "rebuild the economy for long-term sustainability. The key, these scientists say, is to take natural capital—ecosystem services such as clean water provisioning—into account.  Because they lack a formal market, many of these natural assets are missing from society's balance sheet and their contributions are often overlooked in public and private decision-making."

The ESA has laid out four strategies for moving towards sustainable economic activity:

• Create mechanisms to maintain ecosystem services
• Require full accounting for environmental damage
• Manage for resilient ecosystems
• Enhance our capacity to predict the environmental costs of investments

You can read more about their statement here.

*****

A friend who's an investigative reporter made me want to throw up with her latest article. Guess what? You know those tar sands pipelines I've been protesting against? They're a red herring. The "rich people" have been buying up rail capacity and that bitumen is shipping by rail. Needless to say, I'm more than a little miffed that I allowed "them" to "keep the greenies busy in the bushes," as another activist friend used to say. 

Here's a quote from Cory Morningstar's latest piece, in Counterpunch:

Barack Obama is a charismatic smokescreen for the oil industry. Utilizing his charisma, he safeguards his toxic neighbor to the north, Canada, protecting it from US public scrutiny. For its part, Canada has quietly played a vital role in tar sands expansion via rail utilizing the corporation Canadian Natural Resources Ltd board of directors, which includes Gordon D. Griffin, former US Ambassador to Canada (1997-2001), director of CIBC, Transalta Corp., Canadian National Railway, and registered US lobbyist for Nexen Energy Inc., part of Syncrude.

For a moment, try to imagine the progressive greens if this same scenario was unveiling itself under the (Republican) Bush administration. Organizations such as 350.org would be having a field day. Yet, with a Democratic administration and a Black American president in the White House, the dominant left organizations have never found it so easy to protect capitalism and white privilege via strategic discourse. The native peoples who live on much of the poisoned land and endure much suffering, are used for beautiful "Stop KXL!" photo-ops all while oil mining, refineries and fracking continue to flourish and expand at an unprecedented rate. 

An important question that must be asked is this: Why do people continue to believe that NGOs such as 350.org/1Sky that are initiated and funded by Rockefeller Foundation, Clinton Foundation, Ford, Gates, etc. would exist to serve the people rather than the entities that create and fund them? Since when do these powerful entities invest in ventures that will negatively impact their ability to maintain power, privilege and wealth? Indeed, the oligarchs play the "environmental movement" and its mostly well-meaning citizens like a game of cards.

*****

Well, what can I say? Despite a century of Mother's Days, people still abuse their mothers. And despite decades of Earth Days, people still abuse their Mother Earth. So there's not a lot of good news these days, and my ramblings aren't very upbeat. Nevertheless, I hope you can find some time today or on April 22 to contemplate whatever blessings the Earth still affords you. Happy Earth Day, my friends. Let's try to make the Earth happy, shall we? 

Is Mother Nature Really Starting to Get Pissed Off? And Who's Paying the Price?

Or is it just my imagination?

A cougar had to be shot in downtown Sidney, British Columbia (here in Canada) the other night. Cougars are so dangerous (to humans and other prey) that the conservation officer was afraid to take any chances with tranquilizing and relocating it.

Strange orange-backed bees are attacking people here in my rural community. One young man I know couldn't see for days after a sting swelled his eye closed.

Rodents of all sizes are moving into residential neighbourhoods en masse. And coming out in daylight hours — a bad sign!

The deer are hanging out in the middle of the road. (As if to say, Hey, maybe this will slow those humans down.)

Our weather has gone all wonky. It's dark and dreary here in the middle of summer (which really hurts this week because I'm running my Nature Daycamp, though I suppose the upside is the complete lack of sunstroke possibility).

Alas, it's been crossing my mind lately that perhaps Mother Nature isn't going to take it all lying down. Maybe she's thinking, "Exterminate your species all you want, but you're not taking the rest of us."

I continue to scan the news on climate change and the whole situation is becoming quite surreal. It appears we are indeed trying to exterminate our own species. The United States Department of State Official Blog has this to say about the worst drought in the Horn of Africa in 60 years:

Here at the port of Djibouti, thousands of metric tons of food assistance are ready to be shipped as part of the U.S. response to the massive drought currently ravaging the Horn of Africa. USAID is mobilizing nutritious split peas, along with vitamin-fortified corn-soya blend and other commodities, from warehouses around the world to assist the more than 10 million people in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia most affected by the drought.

The USAID-funded Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWSNET) began warning of the possibility of this crisis as early as summer 2010. Today, it has developed into the region's worst drought since the 1950s. Consecutive seasons of poor rainfall have resulted in failed crops, dying livestock, and sky-high market prices -- the cost of staple cereals are 40 to 240 percent higher in some areas. Malnutrition has reached emergency levels: one out of every two Somali refugees arriving in Ethiopia and one out of every three arriving in Kenya is acutely malnourished.

Does anything jump out at you? Once again we are, with ever increasing finesse and detail, documenting the impacts of global climate disruption on the world's most vulnerable — but doing nothing to prevent these impacts. An early warning system for famines? Do these people not realize their foreshadowing? Do they not see that what is befalling these African nations serves as an omen for the future of our children here in "western" developed countries?

What Giant Uncontrolled Experiment Are We Performing on Kids?

"Doing an uncontrolled experiment on your own child is otherwise known as parenting."

I read that on a blog somewhere (sorry to the author, can't remember your name), and it's an apt opening for what I want to talk about this week. What we're doing to our kids.

Now, right up front I need to admit that I've already crossed the threshold into "Old Fogey." But I still love kids in general and my own students (this does not apply to them) especially ... and I worry about all the children in the world. So today's rant is brought to you from a place of concern and compassion.

If you think I'm going to talk about the impacts of the global climate change emergency on the youngest and all future generations, nope. Here's what's on my mind (and weighing heavy on my heart):

I took some students from the local school camping this week. (Long story ... part of their directed independent study on "survival," which they've been studying for weeks now, an hour and a half each Tuesday morning.)

I only had one rule. No technology allowed (you know, iPods, cell phones, etc.). I figured it would help them connect with the natural world.

Turns out they were bored. And boring.

It was a short trip of 24 hours, from noon to noon, with a rugged hike in and out. Aside from the complaints, all these kids could talk about was how much they missed their music and texting their friends. And which friends they'd be texting right now if they could. And how late they stay up texting their friends at night. And which songs they have on their iPods.

Let's go for a hike along the beach! They talked about their technology and how much they missed it.

Let's do a scavenger hunt for edible wilds! They talked about their technology and how much they missed it.

Let's cook dinner together! They talked about their technology and how much they missed it.

Let's make "Secret Santa" gifts from natural objects and exchange them! They talked about their technology and how much they missed it.

Let's walk along the ridge to that lookout and catch the view! They talked about their technology and how much they missed it.

Let's do a mini-solo. Ha! Then they wouldn't be able to talk with the other campers about their technology and how much they missed it.

They were so bored and boring, I thought I was going to die of boredom. How can kids be so uninteresting — and disinterested — for so long?

What have we done to our kids that they can't live in the here and now? That they can't just "be" in the natural world without an invisible umbilical to their techno gadgets? That these technologies — present or not — disconnect them almost entirely (see comment above re complaints) from the rest of Nature? That they can't be alone even for a few moments (even when they are alone!), revelling in the sea, the birds (eagles, osprey, geese with goslings), the fresh spring greenery?

I came home tired from the fresh air, with sore muscles from the hike, but with a heavy heart. We have placed another wall between kids and their True Mother, and made that wall an addictive one. That means this young generation has even less of a chance of producing those who love the rest of Nature and are willing to work hard to safeguard it.

We are doomed.

p.s. I know, you might be thinking that I could have done a better job of entertaining the kids. Ah, not my job. I was the supervising adult, not a hired clown.

125 Days Left - We Have Become Nature Voyeurs

I live in a beautiful seaside place where we get to see killer whales go past from time to time. Orcas are magnificent animals, and over the years, we've had some very moving experiences with them.

This morning, the rocks by the beach were covered with human animals, waiting to catch a glimpse of these powerful black and white creatures. As we watched the orcas spyhop and blow and slap their fins, I heard someone say, "It's like the paparazzi here, with all the cameras clicking."

And that's when it struck me. In our culture, we tend to "do" Nature, like voyeurs or like athletes, rather than experiencing the rest of Nature as parties to it, as a part of it.

It reminded me of a teenaged tourist about to go off on an Africa safari in Kruger Park, South Africa. "Dad," she complained to her father, "if you've seen one giraffe, you've seen them all."

Actually, no. Spend any time with giraffes — or any other creature on Earth — and you will soon see all the differences between individuals within species and between species that seem quite similar. You'll also discover all the similarities that unite us as living beings on one planet. But we have to take that time.

Part of safeguarding the future is going to entail a slowing down, a rebonding, a relearning of the ancient connection between all living things. 

And the longer we just sit, observing our neighbours of other species, or falling asleep in the sun, or chewing on some grass, the less we're driving about spewing greenhouse gas emissions!

My husband and I have been greeted — eye to eye — by whales, have sung to whales, have watched whales push a sick pod member to the surface, have witnessed a baby whale nursing. We would have missed the privilege of all these fantastic shared moments had we not just slowed down a bit and gotten past the notion that Nature is a "show."