The Cold, Hard Truth

Another storm with high winds caused a 24-hour power outage this weekend for my community. My beloved and I spent that time in the cold and the dark (why we didn't build a fire in our woodstove and stay cozy and warm is a longer story). 

I had a fun novel on hand (thanks to a friend) and lots of marking (done by flashlight, candlelight, and then sunlight) to keep me occupied. Peter is reading Matthieu Auzanneau's Oil, Power, and War: A Dark History — the perfect book when the power is off and the lights are out.  

All this to preface what I realized yesterday, curled up in bed with a toque and mitts on. I am overwhelmed. Well, I'm feeling overwhelmed (and realizing that we ain't seen nothin' yet). Between schoolwork and housework and trying to hang on to friends and trying to keep up with all the climate change happenings (but definitely not succeeding), I'm not doing anything well. 

Not only is the climate change emergency going to continue to shower us with [pick your region's worst nightmare: storms, floods, droughts, sea level rise, food shortages, water conflicts], but while we're dealing with those crises, life has to continue. We have to continue to make meals (sometimes without power and, in the not-too-distant future, without ingredients that used to be widely available). We have to keep getting the kids ready for school (until schoolyards are taken over for food production and the children are growing it). We have to continue to do our jobs (until societies break down and jobs are useless because everyone's labour is needed just for survival). 

In 2018, the world experienced 39 weather disasters that cost over $1 billion. (We're talking hurricanes, flooding, wildfires and severe weather.)

The U.S. had the most billion-dollar weather disasters in 2018 of any country, with 16. That's its second-highest total on record, behind the 20 billion-dollar weather disasters of 2017. NOAA has not yet released its final list of billion-dollar disasters for the U.S. in 2018 due to the government shutdown. China had seven billion-dollar weather disasters in 2018.

The combined economic losses (insured and uninsured) from all 394 weather and earthquake disasters catalogued by Aon in 2018 was $225 billion (2018 USD), which is 33 percent above the 1980-2017 inflation-adjusted average of $169 billion. The great bulk of the 2018 total came from weather-related disasters ($215 billion of the $225 billion).

And yet, I still read comments like:

"CO2 is fine the way it is, without need of 'fixing.' Plants in greenhouses with fortified CO2 do much better of course." [Ooh, ooh, I love that one. Because of course the real world of agriculture is just like a giant experiment in a greenhouse. With no pests, no storms, no floods, no droughts, no heatwaves to worry about. No sirree.] 

"While flooding and more severe weather events are bad consider the alternative if nature takes it's [sic] course." [I think she's taking her course and it's obvious she's miffed.] 

"We still haven't returned to the Medieval or Roman Climate Optimum. Until then, I am not worried. :)" [That's someone who doesn't get the "global" in global warming.] 

"So, you're afraid of the havoc wrought by milder winters and nights?" [Sigh, yeah. Some people just have zero ecological literacy. Milder winters = less insect kill = an increase in vector-borne diseases + huge swathes of trees killed by bark beetles. Oh, and milder winters also = less snowpack lasting for a shorter time in spring = lower drinking water supply + water shortages by summer.]

I would love to know who created this ... it's brilliant.

You know what? I've just realized what's overwhelming me. It's the inertia. It's that there only seem to be 37 people (and that feels generous) in the whole world fighting against Big Money, Big Oil and Stupid Government in order to safeguard the future. Talk about tilting at windmills. The Don Quixotes of the world are still being laughed at by armchair "experts," excoriated by fake news pundits, fake-scienced by paid trolls, and ignored by the millions (or is it billions) of people who are too overwhelmed with their own lives to share a care for the future. 

Okay, well, now that I understand my overwhelm, I think I'll be okay. I think I'll be able to become Person #38 again, and get back into the fray. Thanks for listening and helping me sort this out. And if you ever need the same sort of help sorting through the cold, hard truth, my hearing is still pretty good and I've got strong shoulders. Send me a message!

Declaring—and Advertising—the Climate Change Emergency Closer to Home

Did that get our attention? Back in 2014, for a Climate Emergency Countdown, I wrote:

DEMAND THAT GOVERNMENTS DECLARE THE CLIMATE CHANGE EMERGENCY

... And in every way we can think of, let's urge all government representatives and negotiators at UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Climate Summit 2014: Catalyzing Action to declare the emergency.

Once governments declare that we are "beyond dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system" (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change), things will start to happen. This declaration would be an automatic trigger for the bureaucrats who work underneath politicians and within governments to start working on climate change solutions. Scientists say that determining whether climate change is an emergency is a value judgement that society must make. So let's make it! We're society. Let's get the CLIMATE EMERGENCY DECLARED!

Have we? No. Every time I (metaphorically) come running from my burning house, stumbling through the smoke and blaze with my beloveds (and my laptop, if I'm lucky), I find a ring of firefighters sitting on the front lawn in lawn chairs, discussing the need for more study of fire safety rules. Although I remember that they did publish another report on more serious fire safety rules just a few weeks ago, so things are looking up (or down?).

 

And among the lookie-loos on the street are those who say, "Fire? There's no fire at my house, so I don't believe in housefires." The more erudite and learned among the deniers will point to my house and say, "Sure, your livingroom's got some smoke and flames coming out of it, but look at your kitchen windows. Nothing. You're cherrypicking the data and exaggerating the risk." Ah heck, they're probably afraid the burnt-out shell of my house will lower their property values. Or they just can't face the possibility that a house fire can happen to anyone with a house.

 

Well, there's a sort of solution to the lack of global and national urgency on the climate crisis front. Municipalities are declaring the climate change emergency and doing what they can locally. Let's hear it for:

• Oakland​, USA
• Berkeley, USA ​
• Byron Shire Council, Australia 
• Darebin, Australia
• Colorado Democrats
• Richmond, USA​
• Montgomery County, USA

We'll see if Tuesday's election in the United States brings more attention and voice to the issue, state-wide and federally. 

Near my home in Canada, we're working to have two local cities declare the climate change emergency. The Climate Mobilization offers a city-by-city campaign toolkit. We all live somewhere with some sort of local governing body, so this is something we can all do!

Here in BC, one of the province's best-known and loved environmentalists, Guy Dauncey, has launched The November Offensive in which he asks British Columbians to write to the province's governing (NDP and Green Party) MLAs (Members of the Legislative Assembly) to ask that 12 policy requests (inspired by the urgency of the IPCC's special 1.5ºC report) be included in BC's upcoming new climate action plan.

"The second goal is that people will step forward to seek a meeting with their MLA, to impress the same urgency and solutions in person. The concise, specific, actionable request is that the MLA you meet with will convey your concerns, hopes and recommended 12 Actions in person to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy and to the Premier of BC."

"Actionable." If people want action on the climate change emergency, they have to TAKE ACTION. Which leads me to ....

 

Finally, I'm just reading The Climate Truth, an essay by Climate Reality presenter and psychologist, Dr. Joe Silverman. In it, he almost agrees with my take on cognitive dissonance:

"In some ways, action on climate change seems caught in a Catch-22. Politicians don't act because the voting public does not demand it. And much of the public is not fully engaged on the issue because their individual actions are a drop in the bucket that will do little to solve the problem."

(To me, the problem is that politicians are waiting for the public to demand climate action, but the public is waiting for politicians to take the lead and tell them it's urgent.) 

 

Dr. Silverman suggests that what's been missing in climate change problem-solving is "the need for engaging and motivating the public on this issue using a multi-dimensional [and, I would add, multi-media] publicity campaign." 

 

He's calling for a Climate Truth Campaign. "Despite all the efforts to communicate the urgency of global warming, this approach [a publicity campaign on the climate crisis] has never been tried" [his emphasis].

 "Advertising routinely sells the public on a number of unhealthy products (e.g., drinking soda, eating junk food), so perhaps it's not unreasonable to think that an advertising model could 'sell' a message about a healthy environment and sustainable future."

 

Give his essay a read. His idea is something that we can all contribute to and get going on, whether on/in local media or further from home.

We can't wait any longer for our elected officials to declare the climate change emergency. Many of them have only one aim, and that's to get re-elected. 

So let's declare the climate change emergency ourselves, in every possible media available to us. Let's do a GoFundMe®, a Kickstarter, an Indiegogo campaign, or just pass the hat at local events to raise funds.

 

And then, let's advertise it! 

 

Let's tell the world in, as Joe Silverman recommends, short, vivid, eye-catching, visual ways (even on radio!) that we're in a climate change emergency, and we all have to wake up, get out of the burning house, and start hosing it down together!

We Are Witnessing the Great Unravelling

In 2004, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman authored a book called The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century, which chronicled "how the boom economy unraveled." As an economist, Krugman writes about economics. 

Today, we are witnessing an even greater unravelling. This time it's all about that other "eco" word: ecology. Even as the climate change deniers, skeptics, ignorers and delayers are still out in full whacko force (just check the comments under any movie about the climate crisis), the Sixth Mass Extinction is playing out all around us. 

Timeframes (for things such as predator / prey relationships) that we've come to depend on and take for granted are getting all screwed up. For example, our local pods of resident orca whales have hardly been seen around here this summer because their food source — chinook salmon — has all but disappeared.

Seasonal weather and temperatures that we've relied on for our agriculture are no longer dependable: unprecedented heat waves, major wildfires, severe droughts, biblical floods, crop-damaging rainfalls ....

Homes and homelands that we thought were safe are collapsing, flooding or being swallowed up by the sea.*

What we have known is coming undone and becoming unknowable. We are bearing witness to (and many people and many other living beings are already experiencing) catastrophic climate disruption and deadly climate chaos. 

It is time for deniers — and anyone else who isn't willing to help hold the fraying edges of this delicate biosphere together — to be called out as the pariahs that they are.

* My heart goes out to the 41 million people affected by devastating monsoon rains and flooding in South Asia, and to those in Texas and Louisiana impacted by Hurricane Harvey. There but for the grace of ....

Climate Change — and Baseball — Deniers are Just Afraid of Their Feelings

from Slate.com

Remember I talked last week about being called names for wanting to safeguard the future? Well, the latest epithet thrown at me was "drama queen" because, don't you know, humans are resilient and adaptable — to increasing temperatures and heat waves and droughts and floods and storms and pests and crop losses and water shortages? Yeah, sure.

But this little episode of name calling helped me realize something. These so-called deniers must actually be scared witless about the climate change emergency, mustn't they? Otherwise why would they be spending so much of their time reading and responding to articles and social media posts about climate change? If they weren't somehow almost pruriently attracted to slagging climate change activists, they would be doing what normal climate change ignorers do. You know, gardening and jogging and reading novels and parenting and working for a living. 

It's like if I spent all my free time on baseball websites and baseball fan listserves and baseball FB groups calling people who like baseball nasty names and denying that baseball is an actual sport. In order to do that, I'd have to secretly have some attraction to baseball, wouldn't I? Otherwise I wouldn't throw my time at it, would I? I'd be sticking to macramé or gourmet cooking, wouldn't I? 

Baseball deniers probably love the sport but simply don't know how to express their feelings about it. They were perhaps always chosen last to play on a team. Or maybe they're embarrassed that they don't actually understand the rules of the game. It's possible that they dreamed for years of playing in the major leagues but they just weren't good enough. For whatever reason, baseball deniers just can't let baseball go, so they hang out with baseball lovers all the while slagging them and the sport.

So when that climate change denier called me a drama queen for wanting to protect the future for the children of all species, I suspect he was actually asking ... we're resilient and adaptable, right? I don't have to be scared, right? Everything's going to be okay ... right?

Sadly, wrong. We are witnessing the great unravelling of the web of life. If you're not skilled enough, educated enough or courageous enough to face it and to help, that's okay. But please, go play some baseball or do some gardening so that those of us with our fingers in the dike trying to stave off the sixth mass extinction can at least do it in peace.

The Hero of Haarlem

 

There is Nothing Sexy about the Climate Change Crisis

Mr. Mr. called me over to his desk just before bedtime the other evening. "Check out these heatwave maps! Look at southern Europe! And check out this part of Canada!" (You can see some maps below.)

"You really know how to romance a gal," I said aloud. (Let's face it. There is *nothing* sexy about the climate change crisis.) 

But inside I was crying. Crying for what this means. Crying for all the people (human and otherwise) who are suffering and struggling in this heat, with these wildfires, under these droughts. Crying for all the times I was called an alarmist, too negative, a climate crank, a greenie, an ecoweenie, a doom-and-gloomer — and wishing they were right and I'd been wrong.

Through the orange haze of wildfire smoke from many hundreds of kilometres away, how I wish we could all just wake up and get back to "normal" lives of love and romance, work and fun, raising our kids and paying our bills ... without the stench of the future going up in flames plaguing my sleep with nightmares, plaguing thousands of people in my province with evacuation orders, and plaguing hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of people every year now to loss of loved ones and livelihood, food security and water sources, homes and entire homelands. 

http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/weather/maps/forecastmaps?LANG=en&CONT=namk&MAPS=vtx&LOOP=0&LAND=__&MORE=1&UP=0&R=0&DAY=0

  

https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/firemap/

August 5-6, 2017

Ask (the Deniers) and Ye Shall Be Answered

Isn't synchronicity a wonderful thing? Just a couple of days after wondering, in last week's post, what it will take for climate change deniers to see the light (or should I say, feel the heat?), a book arrived in the mail. This book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer, had been recommended by a friend, and it came as if to answer my question.

The inside front flap explains everything, quite succinctly:

[A] network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views bankrolled a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system. The network has brought together some of the richest people on the planet. Their core beliefs — that taxes are a form of tyranny; that government oversight of business is an assault on freedom — are sincerely held.

I would like to invite these "exceedingly wealthy" people to never again use public services like highways and hospitals that were built and paid for by a government (that is, by your taxes). I know that lots more things are privatized in the United States than they are in other countries, but you can't tell me the US Government does nothing with the tax money it receives. Mind you, if Americans had health care and public schooling like the rest of us in the developed world, they wouldn't be complaining about taxes. Instead, they have crumbling infrastructure, the most costly health care system in the world and one of the worst education systems in the OECD. And they (well, some of them) will fight to the death to maintain their rights to crumbling and costly and lousy. (I have to admit that I keep wondering why they feel they have to spend over half of their taxes on their military — to protect what? Crumbling, costly and lousy? And the illusion of freedom? That's some weird arithmetic!)

I was asking what it would take to change the minds and hearts of climate change deniers, but I see now that the problem is an extremely deep and viscerally felt sense of disconnectedness and insecurity that (they believe) only greed ("intense and selfish desire for something"), mammon and "winning" can fill. This philosophical illness even has a name: pleonexia.

My sense is that only extreme shock therapy will ever have any hope of transforming greedy, insecure people who feel no connection to the future, to other people or to the rest of Nature. Perhaps it's a game to them ... let's see how close to the edge we can go.

Data visualization by Rosamund Pearce for Carbon Brief

Well, is this enough of a shock for them? Is four years close enough to the edge? A look (Analysis: Just four years left of the 1.5C carbon budget) at carbon dioxide emission numbers for 2016 shows that we only have 4.1 years left (at current levels of emission) if we want to stay below 1.5ºC of global temperature increase. You've seen the havoc wreaked by 1ºC — how much more of this before even "exceedingly wealthy" people will start to be impacted? (If one single denier ever has the nerve to say, "Why didn't they warn us?" I will not be held responsible for socking them in the mouth!)

This CarbonBrief paper finally mentions something that my hubby and I have been promoting since 2014 when the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report came out. RCP2.6 is a "representative carbon pathway" (I call it Really Cool Plan 2.6) described as:

[a] "peak and decline" scenario where stringent mitigation and carbon dioxide removal technologies mean atmospheric CO2 concentration peaks and then falls during this century. By 2100, atmospheric CO2 reaches around 420 parts per million (ppm) – about 20 ppm above current levels. In this scenario, global temperatures are likely to rise by 1.3-1.9ºC above pre-industrial levels by 2100.

Note that RCP2.6 is the only scenario that will keep us below a 2ºC global temperature increase. And if that doesn't sound like much, remember that +2.0ºC, before it became bandied about as though it's a target we're aiming for, was suggested as a safety guardrail. 

Now consider this: Once you've hit the guardrail, it's almost always too late — you're already spinning out, caught up in a catastrophic accident. 1.5ºC is those little bumps that wake you up when you fall asleep at the wheel and start swerving — oftentimes disastrously, sometimes luckily not. A 1ºC rise in global average temperature is the equivalent of all the lines painted on the road that we need and ought to stay within. And we're there already. If we keep veering all over the road, we're all going to die. Including the climate change deniers and the "exceedingly wealthy."

Photo by Roger Gendron

Experiencing Censorship in All the Wrong Places

Censorship. A simple definition might be "the examination of material (such as books, movies, news, and art) and official suppression of any parts that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security (adapted from my computer's dictionary). It is closely related to censure, which means harsh criticism or to criticize harshly.

We used to think of censorship merely in terms of what happened to books and movies that hadn't yet been released. Next came book banning and even book burning. Then some (of the very people who liked to ban and burn books) started equating political correctness with censorship. (I've always considered political correctness to be society's fancy way of labeling what mothers everywhere used to urge: "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.") And with the election of T**** in the United States, saying nasty things about "others" is now considered freedom of speech, so any talk of censorship is seen as unconstitutional — almost tantamount to treason. (Sheesh.)

But lately, censorship seems to have gone wonky in other ways, too ... some consternating and some downright dangerous. Within the last three days, I have experienced censorship in conversation with three different friends.

First, I was telling a friend about a disturbing incident that I'd read about in the paper. "Does this have a sad ending? If so, I don't need to hear it." The story was a cautionary tale about her field of work, but it did, indeed, have a sad ending. So with that, I was shut down. 

And I felt shut down — censored. But mostly I felt sad that there are people who won't (can't?) allow themselves to feel the sadness of others. Have some of us become so fragile that there's no strength and no room left for empathy? How are we going to face the extreme sorrow of the climate change emergency if we can't even share a story about a sad incident in a next-door city?

I don't just tell stories willy-nilly. There's a point to a story that I choose to share — sometimes it has a connection to the other person, but sometimes it's simply something that I found interesting or edifying. In the second incident, I recounted a short TV show that I'd watched on Netflix and found instructive for my own career. I'll admit that my menopausal brain might have made the story more meandering than it needed to be. But my friend, instead of engaging with the story, said (I'm paraphrasing), "You know how people who watch TV will talk about shows they've watched and bore you to tears? You just did that."

Ouch. Obviously her mother never instructed her to say nothing if she didn't have anything nice to say — that was my first thought. But then I began to mourn the lack of patience our society has developed. Can't we just talk about "stuff" with friends anymore? If we don't have the time and patience for everyday — uncensored — conversations, how will we ever have the time and patience to listen to how serious the climate crisis is, the science behind it, and the solutions we needed to implement yesterday?

On my way to tea with a third friend, I kept chanting, "Don't talk about T****, don't say anything negative. Don't talk about T****, don't say anything negative." This friend is (what I think is being called) a progressive. I'm simply someone who likes to get to the bottom of things, so months before the American election, I'd been reading up on T****'s growing popularity. My friend and I had a falling out because I wanted to talk about it (the rise of T****) and she didn't. I've been self-censoring around her ever since. (In fact, it didn't even cross my mind until just now that I could have said, "I warned you.") 

Positive thinking does not stop evil and greed. It just doesn't. It doesn't get the good people elected. It certainly hasn't mitigated climate disruption. Talking about how Big Money and Big Oil are killing the future, what their strategies are, and how we can beat them — that's how we will, well, beat them. Not by pretending that everything is goodness and light. 

If we're going to fill our lives with censorship, I'd like to suggest some Censorship for the Planet. Let's stop giving column inches in our newspapers and blogs to climate change deniers. Let's stop watching news and other shows that give air time to climate change deniers. Let's stop "sharing" the dangerously misleading drivel and "alternative facts" of climate change deniers on our social media channels. 

Folks, let's stop censoring ourselves, our friends and our loved ones (and our climate scientists) and start really listening to them. If we're going to censor at all, let's censor (and censure) those who are committing the greatest evil and the greatest ever crime against humanity: climate change deniers who have delayed urgent action on this emergency for decades, causing millions to lose their lives or their livelihoods, their food security and water sources, their homes or entire homelands. 

Let's be very clear that freedom of speech and expression should not, does not, cannot include the freedom to commit progenycide.

Why Are We Losing the Climate Change Battle?

We've spent this weekend with a wonderful new climate change activist friend who's collaborating on a writing project with my hubby. It's such a comfortable treat to spend time with a like-hearted soul.

One of the questions all three of us have been asking ourselves lately is how it is we've come this far and the deniers are still winning. In an email I received recently, Avaaz put it this way: "Just as we thought that crazy climate deniers were fading into history, they're back, with their hands on the levers of power in the country that emits 14% of the world’s carbon!"

Three answers to why this is so came my way yesterday. 

1. Canadian blogger Rolly Montpellier wrote: "Claiming that we can take effective action on climate change and ramp-up fossil fuel production at the same time is delusional. But for the most part [our prime minister Justin] Trudeau has been able to convince Canadians that this is a wise and a prudent course for Canada to pursue. He has lulled his followers into a deep sleep while climate change makes its ugly consequences felt around the globe."

According to science historian, Naomi Oreskes, "a new form of climate denialism is at work … one meant to persuade the public that fossil fuels are necessary and renewables unreliable…. Alternatives to fossil fuels are disparaged by a new generation of myths."

Rolly continues: "Trudeau is an artful practitioner of public messaging intended for mass consumption by a receptive but naive Canadian public. We Canadians want to believe that we are acting quickly on the climate problem. But we are not. So if you think that climate deniers are finally irrelevant, then think again. Deniers have found more creative and sneaky ways to support the strong interests of the fossil fuel industry. It would be dangerous to imagine that the era of climate denialism is over. Because, it’s simply not so!"

2. My response to Rolly's post helped me realize what we're up against: "We are going to extinguish most life on this precious planet because of a failure of imagination. Besides all the small addictions (alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, cleaning) we suffer from as individuals, there is just one big culture-wide (and increasingly globalized) addiction that is killing us: money. The reason money is winning out over life itself is that people don't have (or aren't using) the creativity to imagine a world powered differently. So they fall back to the 20th century default ... money, profit, greed and fossil fuels."

3. The other answer came from an article in a(nother) new rightwing, depressive (is that the opposite of progressive?) online rag (the quote is so, um, stupid, that I can't even share it here), which showed that "the other side" is still quoting denying dorks with no credentials, trotting out years-old denial bullsh!t, slinging insults without apology, stating misfacts without flinching, and uttering nonsense without the slightest hint of embarrassment. And they somehow always out-time us, psychologically projecting by calling us the names we ought to have called them. But as usual, our side is too nice (after all, we're the ones who care about the climate change emergency), so they get away with it. 

And if you want a free trip into the Twilight Zone, just visit the comments section. You will read (if you can stomach it) the most illogical, irrational, unreasonable, unsound, groundless, incorrect, fallacious, preposterous, specious and disingenuous arguments ever presented on any topic, I'm sure. Yet it would take you a day or two to counter all their lies and mistakes and non sequiturs, so you won't do it. (The last time I tried, I was hung out to dry in a local newspaper so I don't blame you for not even attempting to set the other side straight.)

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that climate change deniers don't follow any rules, respect any rules, have any rules. They literally say whatever they want, even if it's totally cracked or untrue or irrelevant or debunked. The truth does not matter to them. They don't care enough about their children to check out what the current state of climate change is. They're too stupid or un(der)educated to realize that they're applying no critical thought to what they're (poorly paraphrasing from some denier website somewhere and) spewing.  

I feel for these people. I really do. But how can we possibly counter their deceit, their greed and their nonsensical rubbish when they're a moving target and our feet are stuck in the truth? My brain wants to explode just thinking about it.

It's Time to Grow Up

I want to talk with you today about an interesting incident on social media this past week, in which a friend of a friend (a used-to-be trusted term that has completely lost its meaning due to Facebook) totally miffed me by conflating her ideological beliefs with what was actually said in a video that my real friend had posted.

This person called the actions of the character in question in the video "illegal" and "despicable" when the video's narrator (a trusted news reporter) explained that, while shocking, the individual's actions were, in fact, legal. My friend's "friend" said it would be unfair to blame the national organization (which, ironically, no one had even mentioned!) that happens to incessantly lobby for and defend to the death this kind of shocking behaviour when it was this one individual's fault. Even when that one individual was only doing what the national organization has convinced society is completely normal and legal behaviour. 

(To make this story easier to understand, I'm talking about the going-viral video of a 13-year-old American boy (an undercover actor) who tries to buy beer and is not allowed, then tries to buy cigarettes and is not allowed, then tries to buy an adult magazine and lottery tickets and is not allowed -- but then walks into a gun show and easily buys the first .22 calibre rifle he picks up.)

I pointed out to this "friend of a friend" the illogicality of blaming the individual gun seller when what he did is legal and accepted in his culture. I did this by quoting the narrator word for word -- the same words she had heard in the video. That's when she became defensive and wondered why I was picking on her. 

Picking on her? Hmmm, picking on her. Let's see. Because I drew attention to the exact quote in the movie that contradicted her sweeping statement that individuals rather than culturally accepted norms should be blamed? 

I unfriended my real FB friend (sorry, friend!) in order to stop bumping into this woman's comments (this wasn't the first thing she'd said that made my blood boil). Who wants to "socialize" with friends of friends like that? I know I don't. And if you think that makes me narrow-minded or something, well ... here you go (literally).

Her reaction reminded me of three things. First, a crazy spoof video on White Fragility Training in the Workplace (link). "Ooh, you just called me out when I did something racist, but I don't think I'm racist, so you're mean and you hurt my widdle feewings." The article White Fragility, by Robin DiAngelo, explains "White Fragility" quite clearly and graphically -- as does the going-viral video I mentioned.

Second, this FB person's reaction reminded me of an old movie I watched recently. Gentleman's Agreement, starring Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire, is the 1947 story of a reporter assigned to write an exposé on anti-Semitism in post-war New York City. Short version? He is blown away by all the different ways he is discriminated against when for six months he pretends he is Jewish. But what really hurts (and I thought Peck did an admiral job of depicting the pain) is the lack of awareness in people around him who don't see themselves as anti-Semitic yet remain silent in the face of it. 

Finally, having to go through the video again to pull out the exact quote to point out how this woman's comment was illogical and incorrect (note: I said nothing about the woman herself) reminded me of all the time that has to be spent by climate change activists, reporters and scientists to caerfully and completely accurately explain and correct wild claims, false information and cherry-picked data spewed by climate change deniers, skeptics, ignorers and delayers. It's. so. wearying. And then they, too, sometimes claim to have their "widdle feewings" hurt.

I do what I do for the sake of the children. My compassion is in short supply these days, so I'm saving it for the children -- of all species. I'm sick and tired of people abusing their adult power in any way that threatens the viability of the climate, the health of the biosphere, and the day-to-day or future safety of the children. If someone's "widdle feewings" are hurt by having some truth, logic or laws of physics pointed out to them, then they can just grow up.

The Wrath of Grapes - An Experiment in Denial

I like a good thought experiment every once in a while. But I discovered they can be a bit scary as well as instructive.

My favourite thought experiment was when I tried to picture being a big-time capitalist, someone for whom profit and money (and greed) are everything. It was fascinating. After I (in my imagination) let go of all the things I -- and many other so-called progressives, or lefties -- care about (you know, children, other species, future generations, just some small things), I was left with visceral excitement at the thought of making money. Truly, my imaginary profits made me feel like the winner in a game.

The thrill was an addictive feeling! Suddenly I understood why people who don't have a deep bond with the rest of Nature, who don't give much of a flying leap about their children's future, who wouldn't understand when I say "I love the butterflies" act the way they do. Because what the hell else do they have to live for? To them, life is a game, and if life is a game, then they might as well be winners rather than losers. And big winners, too. Sadly, this globalized attitude is making losers of all of us, but at least I understand it now.

Imagine my shock when I was the subject of an unintended thought experiment -- and learned viscerally what it's like to be a denier of a new truth. And I'm not talking about paid shills, touts, ringers, abettors and accomplices of the fossil fuel industries. No, I mean the people who deny the climate is changing (or that we're changing the climate) because they cannot abide the thought (it collides with what they've always known to be true -- I mean, things have been going along pretty tickety boo their whole life, haven't they?). [They probably don't even know that the climate has indeed been stable for the last 10,000 years, allowing the invention of agriculture to take hold and the population of humans on the Earth to increase dramatically.] They cannot allow in the possibility (it's too scary, for heaven's sake; just don't even go there; if we ignore it, it'll go away, right?). Nor do they use their critical thinking skills when presented with the evidence (that's because many of people never develop critical thinking skills or scientific literacy).

So here's what happened to me. We were enjoying a birthday lunch with a wonderful friend earlier this week. Somehow the conversation moved to the epidemic of food waste around the world and what some countries are doing about it. From there, we made our way to the topic of organic food and the notion that there are some fruits and vegetables one should never buy and eat unless they're organic. 

"Like grapes!" I piped up. I can proudly say, with visions of Cesar Chavez in my head, that I haven't eaten an un-organic grape in decades. 

"Grapes aren't on the list anymore," said my friend. 

That was it. As my stomach lurched, I went into a kind of out-of-body experience, watching myself go into full-body visceral denial. "Yeah," he continued, "the magazine Consumer Reports created a chart of which conventionally grown fruits and veggies we can eat if they're from certain countries." 

Najlah Feanny/Corbis

Yeah, sure, I thought to myself. Grapes? Those luscious orbs of sweet, delicious juiciness not dripping with pesticides? No way. If Cesar Chavez taught me nothing else (and there was much he had to teach), he taught me not to trust produce grown and harvested by oppressed, underpaid, gassed and poisoned farm workers. Chavez and the United Farm Workers (UFW) union ... that was all happening during my most sensitive and absorptive years, my childhood and early teens. Something that was so inculcated -- that conventionally grown grapes poison not just the eaters but the planters and the pickers and their children, too -- well, it had to be true. 

And how could something that was so true then not still be true now? (See the acrobatics my mind and soul were going through to defend myself against this attack on a deep-rooted knowing?)

"Hmmph," was about all I could splutter. "Where's the evidence?" He made a copy of the chart for me, but my eyes couldn't focus on it. My mind was racing back through those years of not eating grapes when I could have. How long ago did this situation change? Worse, how could it have changed without me knowing? When did Cesar Chavez and the UFW win and I didn't notice? OMG, I didn't know if I was embarrassed, saddened, bittersweetly happy -- I just knew I felt challenged to my very core, er, pips. 

It took me days to work up the nerve to finally take a good look at the chart. Yup, according to Consumer Reports, I can trust the safety of conventionally grown (why is it "conventional" to spray poison on our food?) grapes as long as they come from Chile, Peru, Mexico or the United States. Peaches, nectarines, tangerines, apples (except from New Zealand), strawberries and cranberries; green beans, peppers (sweet and hot), sweet potatoes and carrots -- that's the list of ten foods to "always buy organic" no matter where they come from. This is produce you're better off not eating if you can't eat organic. And grapes are not on that shortlist. (By the way, the chart is found in a special report entitled Eat the Peach, Not the Pesticide: A Shopper's Guide.)

Please note: Organic food growers are not paying me to promote organics or to feel yucky about eating produce that used to kill farm workers. So I'm a garden variety denier -- with some critical thinking skills. I therefore decided to dig a bit deeper. I came across a USDA Dirty Dozen list that rates produce on a scale of least to most pesticide residue. I've known about this list for ages -- and always just assumed that grapes were on the list. Well, it turns out they are on the list: #11 - imported grapes. What? I can trust Californian grapes? Really?

"Why are some types of produce more prone to sucking up pesticides than others? Richard Wiles, senior vice president of policy for the Environmental Working Group says, 'If you eat something like a pineapple or sweet corn, they have a protection defense because of the outer layer of skin. Not the same for strawberries and berries.'"

Well, grapes are pretty thin-skinned. Okay, maybe not like berries, but still. (See what my denier mind is doing? Bargaining! One of the stages of grieving. Yikes.)

"Remember, the lists of dirty and clean produce were compiled after the USDA washed the produce using high-power pressure water systems that many of us could only dream of having in our kitchens."

Ha! There, see? (I'm cherry picking from a PBS blog there, looking for evidence to shore up my belief system.) Ooh, I would have made a good climate change denier, had I not spent the last quarter of a century living with one of the world's holistically sharpest minds on the climate science.

Anyway, folks, I just wanted to share with you that I have new empathy and compassion for deniers (of the unpaid ilk). It's tough, eh, when a new truth comes along that upsets the (organic or conventional?) apple cart of what you knew to be foundational truth. 

I think I'll probably keep paying the premium for organic grapes (who does it hurt?), but I'd like to encourage climate change deniers to hop on the apple cart and simply start learning and talking about climate disruption and what it is going to mean for your children and grandchildren -- and their food security.

And don't feed your loved ones peaches this summer unless you know they're organic!

from Consumer Reports Special Report: Pesticides in Produce