Birds of a Feather Don't Necessarily Flock Together ... A Lesson for Us Humans

Am I the only person who's ever gone birdwatching without binoculars? I managed to pull that stunt this past week when I joined a small group of bird lovers from my community as we went on a field trip to a nearby area famous for its huge flocks of birds at migration time.

We met up with an equal number of host field naturalists and set out on foot to our first birding stop of the day. There, on the ocean in a bay not far from the shore, were hundreds of ducks and gulls paddling about. From a distance, they were all just ducks and gulls to me. But when I got the opportunity to look through someone's scope, I could see that there were several different species!

The best identifier among us spotted huge flocks of American wigeon, northern pintail and some northern shoveler and mallard. The gulls included glaucous-winged, Icelandic (aka Thayer’s), mew and a California. In the distance were many bufflehead, greater scaup, a dozen or more western grebes and horned grebes, along with the usual cormorants, common loon, and great blue herons.

All. swimming. together. 

Are you seeing where I'm going with this? 

As social discourse grows more and more brutish south of the border, I find myself panicking at the thought of how we're all going to "be" with each other as the climate change $#@! hits the fan more often and more extremely. (My heart goes out to all those who have lost loved ones and beloved homes in the northern California fires this week.) 

A 2015 book by Wen Stephenson showed up in our home this week. It's called What We're Fighting for Now is Each Other. What an evocative title! But it's true ... or at least we ought to be fighting for each other's survival now — and certainly the children's.

Barack Obama said recently, "The character of our [i.e., his] country is on the ballot." On the ballot, and in presidential tweets, and on Fox News, and spattered all over the walls of the scene of another mass shooting in the "Greatest Nation on Earth." (My heart is also going out to all those who lost loved ones to the latest the-NRA-doesn't-believe-in-background-checks-for-people-with-mental-illness-and-a-history-of-violence gun incident, this time in a California bar.)

Folks, if we don't learn FAST how to live together in peace (or at least disinterest, like the ducks), how to support others when they're down so they'll support us when we're down, how to live by the Golden Rule when the world is falling apart around us, well, we can kiss resilience goodbye. 

We need to flock together, whatever the colour of our feathers. Hey, if several species of waterfowl can do it, then why can't we?

With thanks to Collective Wisdom

 

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!

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

Summer Vacation

I'm offline for a few days, folks, while visiting friends. Hope you're enjoying summer (or winter), wherever you are.

My thoughts are with those affected by all the wildfires this season. 

Take care, everyone!

I Went There ... and I Cried

I was trying to ignore the Russian summer. And I was definitely trying to not notice the floods in Pakistan and the drought and famine in Niger. (I haven't "noticed" the landslides in China yet.)

And I certainly did not want to go "there" — there meaning, Russia's deadly fires and heat waves mean they lost a lot of their crops, so they're not exporting any grains this year ... and Pakistan's crops have been washed away while Niger's never came.

The United Nations estimates that over 21 million people have been affected by the floods in Pakistan (killed, injured, homeless, without food, whole villages destroyed). Imagine that! Australia's whole population is less than 21 million. There was a point where about one-fifth to one-quarter of Pakistan's total land area was underwater due to the flooding.

And Niger has experienced a "double whammy" leading to their worst ever famine disaster. According to Christy Collins, the country director for the American charity Mercy Corps, "in most years, even if the country's primary crop failed, at least the secondary crops survived. This year there was so little rain that not only did the fields of millet not bloom, but the secondary greens used for animal fodder also failed." This means that their livestock — their only "insurance" against famine — is also starving.

I didn't want to notice these disasters of epic proportions. But they finally found their way into my life, into my heart. And I cried.

By the way, is it "compassion fatigue" or just downright mean-spiritedness that leads people to make comments like this (truly):

"Who gives a crap?"

"Floods in Pakistan, killer smog in Russia, and famine in Niger. Tragedies all, but sorry, the good old USA is out of $$$$$ and has problems of its own in the Gulf States, in Iowa and in the economy. These people are just going to have to do the best they can, we are tapped out."

"And there are kids starving in every country... and the point is? Isn't that country against US or UN assistance, except when it benefits certain entities? It would be better to put the money into a failed stock than to give it to that country. Same difference. Sorry, those are humans there. But there are humans here. And just about everywhere on this fragile Earth that is being exploited. Let them work out their own problems."

Wow.

p.s. We are going to organize a fundraising event here in our small community. In the short term, it seems to be all we can do to help. In the longer term, we need to stabilize the climate — fast. "There but for the grace of God go I."