VIDEO: Coastal GasLink & Wet'suwet'en

My beloved (Dr. Peter Carter) has done a lot of research and discovered some frightening things about why our provincial and federal governments (here in Canada) are intransigent in their defense of fracking and support for new fossil fuel infrastructure (to the tune of billions of our tax dollars). 

This stands in stark contrast to their irrational criminalization of anyone standing in the way of pipelines — especially the Wet'suwet'en Hereditary Chiefs and the Unist'ot'en land and water protectors. 

These people — politicians, corporate kleptocrats and, increasingly, the police and judiciary — are rigorously (and vigorously) collaborating to hasten the end of our species and the end of most living beings in the biosphere of Earth. (If you think I'm exaggerating, you're not keeping up with the research on the climate emergency and biodiversity loss.) 

HERE IS THE PLAN of the .01% FOR THE WORLD: These destroyers (the seekers of more, more, more — and their sycophants) have 19 more fossil fuel pipelines up their sleeve just for Canada, with 13 of them in British Columbia!

And are these pipelines being built to ship food and create "a community of love where all have enough to eat because you share what you have" (an idea planted in my head by a friend, Judith Rees-Thomas, and her book, Soul Talk)? NO! They are simply to make the uber-rich richer while they foreclose on the future — which doesn't both them because they subscribe to the puerile belief that the guy with the most money at the end wins.

Here is Peter's video, Coastal GasLink & Wet'suwet'en. I found it astonishing. It shows why, as Exinction Rebellion's Roger Hallam has put it, we need to keep up the mass disruption, get even braver about mass sacrifice for the common good (thousands of us getting arrested), and maintain respectfulness throughout it all.

https://youtu.be/QQvwOB8Lf6M

It's Not Just About Us ...

Chris Weston

I'll admit that as a Canadian, I've struggled from time to time with some anti-American sentiment. You can imagine how I'm having to talk to myself these days, eh? That's because this president-elect isn't just going to destroy the US, he's going to destroy the rest of the world. I've written about that before, here. And when I say "the rest" I mean everything else.

Here's the thing. We all know (well, everyone who isn't American knows) that Americans are rather (and I'm generalizing here, for which I'll apologize now), um, insular. Their geographic ignorance is legendary and world-renowned! (Do they know that? I wonder.)

But it's their ecological ignorance that is so dangerous right now. Another study just revealed that "climate-related local extinctions are already widespread among plant and animal species."

Yet, Mr. I-Can't-Bring-Myself-to-Utter-His-Name-on-My-Blog-Anymore is going after the names of anyone in the US Department of Energy who has worked on climate change. Talk about trying to chill US progress on climate change mitigation. [Update: The questionnaire was "not authorized" and has therefore been withdrawn. Nice play, transition team. Way to accidentally on purpose ensure the chill and then get away with it with a simple "oops." Watch for a lot more of this kind of slime.] 

So as the world actually experiences worse and worse impacts of climate disruption, "that man" and his cronies are going deeper and deeper into pignorant (pretend ignorant) denial. 

It's as if he doesn't (I'm sure he does, but he pretends he doesn't — greed can do that to you) understand that we are completely reliant on the Earth, the earth, the biodiversity of this precious planet, and all of Nature's gifts. He acts as though he is a man unto himself, as though he's never breathed a molecule of air he didn't make, never eaten a calorie of food he didn't grow, never drunk a drop of water he didn't magically bring into existence. 

So while he's going about business-as-worse-than-usual, his plan is to make the biosphere uninhabitable. And not just for humanity, but for MOST OTHER SPECIES, too. 

If they could, I think all the other species would revolt in a stampede that would trample a certain red-headed president-elect.

*******

A friend wrote to say that she couldn't get her comment to publish, so I thought I would post it here: 

"Even though you apologize, you discount many, many Americans who are very aware of climate change, want to make changes, but simply can’t with the political voting structure in place, just as we have our problems with our voting system, and we had problems with [Prime Minister] Harper. So, you end up alienating some of the very people who might agree with you and are fighting for change. It just seems strange to see it in writing from you on your blog. Yes, I agree that Trump is going to wreck the world for us, including many, many Americans who didn’t vote for him, and the Americans who did vote for him. We are all in trouble."




To my friend: The last bit of your comment explains why I don't care about the first bit (except that I don't see that I'm discounting anyone). The Americans (and some of them are my friends) who are working on climate change and trying to create change in the US know that ecological ignorance is killing us. And they — and I — know that we have no time left to worry about hurt feelings. Those who know me well will now know how serious the threat is if I'm not worried about being nice anymore.  

196 Days - Helping People Love Where They Live

My action to save the world today was to help a dozen members of my community fall in love with the intertidal zone. A handful of us have been doing this for ten years now, studying four local beaches each summer, and tracking our findings.

People love coming to the beach with us; becoming "community scientists" gives them new insights into the fragility of life - along with its wondrous diversity!! (There is no richer ecosystem on Earth than where the land meets the sea.)

As we input our data, we're starting to notice some trends ... and not happy ones. We might need someone with a degree in statistics to help us figure this out, but we sense that we're starting to see changes — and possibly due to a changing climate. (We haven't had any oil spills or other events that would explain the drop in numbers of some usually abundant species.)

Anyway, every once in a while in the big fight to save the big world, it's important to spend a local day remembering why we love living in this place.

Check out this book I wrote with friends on the intertidal zone in our part of the world — Get Your Feet Wet! Intertidal Notes from the Pacific Northwest.