Category Archives: Decline of the west

A David Attenborough Witness statement

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Anthropocene, Bio-Diversity, Decline of the west, Environmental Apocalypse, Extinction, New Attitude to Nature

 

David Attenborough prepared a documentary film which I watched with great interest on PBS while I was in Arizona this year, that he called, A Life on this Planet. In that film he departed from his usual approach of demonstrating wonderful aspects of diverse life on our planet without editorial comments. This time he explored some of the same issues I had been exploring recently as part of what he called a witness statement—a personal statement about some of the issues that had been concerning him for quite some time and what he has learned over 93 years of an extraordinary life on this planet.  I wondered how his philosophy would diverge from mine.

The film started off showing a scene of him walking through a large abandoned building. I recognized it immediately. It was the town near the Russian nuclear facility at Chernobyl. The town was called Pripyat and it is now located in Ukraine.  This town was once a modern city of 50,000 people that was filled with all the modern conveniences when on April 26, 1986 the city was evacuated in 48 hours after a accident occurred at the nuclear facility that exploded nearby rendering the city of Pripyat a radioactive wasteland. According to Attenborough, the accident “happened as a result of bad planning and human error.”

No humans have lived there since that day now nearly 40 years ago, though animals never left or returned. Some called the accident the most expensive catastrophe in human history. But that is not true. As Attenborough said,

“Chernobyl was a single event, and the true catastrophe of our time was the global event barely noticeable from day to day and is still unfolding. I am talking about the loss of our biodiversity, the loss of wild life and wild places.”

David Attenborough knew as perhaps few on our planet knew, that the diversity of life on our planet is truly, magnificently, diverse. First, look at the life on the planet in numbers. There are billions of creatures and millions of planet species on our planet providing spectacular diversity, abundance, and variety of life on it. Then, according to Attenborough, we came to realize how those creatures “interlock.” I prefer the word “interconnect.” They work with each other to maintain great ecosystems. Sometimes organisms and creatures in those ecosystems compete, even to the death, with each other. But at other times, as we have now learned, thanks in part to a Canadian scientist and former forestry officer in British Columbia, Suzanne Simard, that contrary to Darwin’s theory of evolution, those creatures and organisms also cooperate with one another, even at times across species lines. This is a remarkable discovery that many are just beginning to understand how significant it is. I will comment on her discoveries in coming days.

As Attenborough said, this system of life on our planet provides a “finely tuned life support machine” for the creatures, organisms, and systems on it. That system of life in turn “relies on its biodiversity.” It relies on nature filled with biodiversity. We rely entirely on that support. Without it we cannot survive on this planet no matter how clever our technology is. It all depends on the support of nature and its vast diverse life. But unfortunately, humans who dominate the planet do not really appreciate this dependency. If they did, they would act differently than they do. As Attenborough said,

“Yet the way our humans live now, we are sending its biodiversity into decline. This too is happening as a result of bad planning and human error and it too will lead to what we see here.”

The film showed images of the abandoned city of Pripyat. No people are left living there now or even within a radius of 30 km. Older structures are decaying or falling into ruin. The structures are falling apart and the town has been largely abandoned.  Although Chernobyl is primarily a ghost town today, a small number of people still live there, in houses marked with signs that read, “Owner of this house lives here”, and a small number of animals live there as well. Animals have been returning. They do not understand the risks, but nature is coming back. Nature always come back, but it comes back different after catastrophes, particularly a catastrophe as drastic as this one. The town is overgrown with trees. Some apartments now have trees growing out of them. I saw a number of photographs taken by a Winnipeg photographer and fine arts professor from the site and they are amazing to behold.

One cannot help but wonder when looking at the images of the city whether or not this is in our future. After all, the doomsday clock has recently been moved to less than 2 minutes before midnight. Clearly, none of us want to live there. There is still too much radioactivity. Is this what the future holds for us—i.e. a world without humans? Now I recognize that some people would cheer this one, but they are still in the minority. Most of us do not want to get rid of humans just yet. But perhaps we are wrong.

Dying Planet Report

Anthropocene, Bio-Diversity, Decline of the west, Epidemics/Pandemics, Extinction, New Attitude to Nature

 

The London Zoological Society produced a sensational report called the Living Planet Report. As one pundit said, “It really should have been called the Dying Planet Report.” It’s claims are actually a bit tricky, but anyway you look at it, deeply disturbing.

 

Ed Yong of The Atlantic clarified the findings of this new Living Planet Report that have been widely mischaracterized but they are still very important and unsettling and grim. Yong put it this way: “they found that from 1970 to 2014, the size of vertebrate populations has declined by 60 percent on average. That is absolutely not the same as saying that humans have culled 60 percent of animals” as some commentators have alleged. The word populations here really means “pockets of individuals from a given species that live in distinct geographical areas.”  I won’t go into the distinction further but suffice it to say humans have caused a lot of death. It would be kind to call it death on a massive scale. To call us “the aids virus of the earth” as Professor John Moriarty did is not really an exaggeration.

Professor Johan Rockström, a global sustainability expert at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany put it this way:

“We are rapidly running out of time… Only by addressing both ecosystems and climate do we stand a chance of safeguarding a stable planet for humanity’s future on Earth.”

 

Damian Carrington of The Guardian reported as follows:

 

 

Many scientists believe the world has begun a sixth mass extinction, the first to be caused by a species – Homo sapiens. Other recent analyses have revealed that humankind has destroyed 83% of all mammals and half of plants since the dawn of civilisation and that, even if the destruction were to end now, it would take 5-7 million years for the natural world to recover.

 I believe he should have said “populations” which is not as drastic, but it is certainly drastic.

The Living Planet Report  produced by the London Zoological Society  for the World Wildlife Fund using data from 16,704 populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians and found that

“Between 1970 and 2014, the latest data available, populations fell by an average of 60%. Four years ago, the decline was 52%. The “shocking truth”, said Barrett [of the WWF] is that the wildlife crash is continuing unabated.”

 

In other words, previous reports of huge deaths has not turned around human attitudes to nature enough to have a profound effect for the better. The deaths are “continuing unabated.”

Professor Bob Watson one of the world’s most respected environmental scientists and at the time the chair of an intergovernmental panel on biodiversity  said this, “Wildlife and the ecosystems are vital to human life …the destruction of nature is as dangerous as climate change.”

We all know that nature contributes to human well being, physically, culturally, and spiritually. The food it contributes to us and facilitates  as well as the clean water, fertile soil, and energy it provides is of vital significance to everyone on the planet. As Watson said, “The Living Planet report clearly demonstrates that human activities are destroying nature at an unacceptable rate, threatening the wellbeing of current and future generations.”

Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF said this as a result of the continued assault on life on the planet by humans:

“We need a new global deal for nature and people and we have this narrow window of less than two years to get it…This really is the last chance. We have to get it right this time.”

Tanya Steele, the CEO of the WWF summed it up very well: “We are the first generation to know we are destroying our planet and the last one that can do anything about it.”

It is abundantly clear: We need a new attitude to nature. No tricky statistics alter that.

Rushing Toward Mass Extinction

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Anthropocene, Decline of the west, Extinction, New Attitude to Nature

 

Scientists currently recognize that our planet has experienced 5 mass extinctions over its approximate 3.7-billion-year history.

 

Some people think extinction is a not a big deal. After all, 99% of all beings that have ever existed have gone extinct. We will like go extinct too. So what?

Well, what are mass extinction events? As the National Geographic has reported,

“More than 99 percent of all organisms that have ever lived on Earth are extinct. As new species evolve to fit ever changing ecological niches, older species fade away. But the rate of extinction is far from constant. At least a handful of times in the last 500 million years, 75 to more than 90 percent of all species on Earth have disappeared in a geological blink of an eye in catastrophes we call mass extinctions.”

 

Mass extinctions are events where from 75 to 95% of species on the planet have died. In those nearly 4 billion years of its history that has “only” happened 5 times. So far.  Many scientists believe that we are moving towards a 6th mass extinction.

The big difference of course is that the current possible extinction event has been caused by one species—Us—Homo sapiens. To think that we are perhaps causing so much loss of life is stunning. It should stop us dead in our tracks!  But it isn’t. We are stopping the species dead in their tracks.

The reason it is not happening is that our attitude to nature is one of not caring. We just don’t care. We think we have the right to do whatever we want on this planet because no one can stop us. We can do with it as we please.

And that is the problem! Worldwide 60% of vertebrate species have been wiped out since 1970! That does not mean 60% of animals but populations. Nonetheless, that is still carnage on a hellish scale. It is a sure sign of the decline of western civilization, since all of civilization depends directly on nature.

And our species is largely responsible for it. Professor Moriarty was right. Humans are like a virus on the earth.

 

What are we waiting for?

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Climate change, Decline of the west

 

Spending 3 months (this year nearly 4 months), living in the USA I get a lot of news and commentary from that country while there. Climate change is of course a hot topic (opun intended) there as it is in Canada.

We can avoid catastrophic climate change if we have the will to do it. Yet many people don’t think this affects them. Many people think this is someone else’s problem. Many think the economy is more important. Many of us don’t realize that most of the solutions to this big problem are “already in our hands.”

Added to that, these unfortunate changes are already affecting us in our homes, food, drinking water, in nature, and even in the economy which we think is so important. We are already paying a hefty price because we have delayed action for so long.  In part that is because some corporations have been spending a lot of money to confuse us and persuade us that the problem is not that bad. We have allowed corporations to do that to us.

For decades, scientists like Katherine Hayhoe, one of the leading scientists on Climate change in the US, have been warning us but we have been ignoring their sage advice and instead listening to business leaders who have been exaggerating the cost of change and minimizing the costs of doing nothing.  That advice from our business leaders has come at an enormous cost. And we are paying it already. And we will have to pay even more.

We already have solutions at hand here today as the impacts of climate change have started to affect us.  As Hayhoe, asked, “what are we waiting for?”

 The UN has been warning that we are headed for temperature rises much more than 1.5ºC and to some people that doesn’t sound like it would be so bad.  Hayhoe asks us to think of it like the human body. The temperature of the climate has been as stable as the temperature of the human body throughout the life of civilization. As Hayhoe concluded,

 “If our body is running a fever of one or two degrees Celsius or three or four or five or six degrees Celsius, that is life-threatening. So we have already, thanks to the Paris Agreement, changed — reduced the amount of change that we expect in the policies that have already been adapted by at least a degree. But we still need more, because every bit of warming carries a cost with it.”

 

It used to be that we could not see the changes in front of us so perhaps that is why we did not act. Now we can see the changes. As Hayhoe said,

“Over the last year, at least one in three Americans were personally affected by the way that climate change is making our extreme weather more severe. We might live somewhere where sea level is rising, where hurricanes are getting stronger, where wildfires burn in greater area, where the summers are now dominated by record-breaking heat waves. Climate change is no longer a future issue. It is right here where we live. It is right now. And the time to fix it is also here now.”

Hayhoe always makes it plain, but we just don’t listen. And our failure to listen and act, in my view, is a symptom of decline.  It is hard to deny the decline of the west.

 

Humanity is on Thin Ice that is Melting Fast

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Climate change, Decline of the west

 

Our future keeps getting more dire, but we keep doing nothing about it.

In March 2023 while we were relaxing in Arizona complaining about the cool wet winter we were having, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, issued one more report, in a very long series of similar reports, warning us, again, that the climate is getting worse and we are not doing anything about it.

The latest report shows that the world is very likely to miss its publicly declared goal to hold global warming to 1.5ºC or 2.7ºF. Remember that is the upper limit most of the countries of the world agreed we should not allow global temperatures to rise beyond, because the consequences would be catastrophic. If that level is exceeded world scientists have agreed our planet will pass a tipping point we will not be able to reverse. The damage will be that serious. Passing that limit will mean dangerous sea levels will be inevitable, many species will go extinct, and millions of people will suffer serious harm and die, including, of course, the poorest who will by and large suffer the most. But it won’t be just the poorest.

Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General is always bluntly eloquent on the subject. He said, we should think of it this way: “Humanity is on thin ice that is melting fast.” In fact, he said,  the rise of temperatures in the last half century, roughly the time in which Christiane and I have been married, has been “the highest experienced by our world in the last 2,000 years!” Added to that, he said, “concentrations of carbon are already at their highest in the last 2,000 years… The climate time bomb is ticking.” The ice we are standing on is melting and the climate bomb is ticking.   These are 2 mixed metaphors but it would be pedantic to worry about that.  And what do we do about it? Do we treat this like the emergency it is?  Not really?  Are we stupid? Yes. Really.

Amna Nawaz the PBS co-host of Newshour invited one of my favorite climate scientists to comment. This was Katherine Hayhoe from Texas Tech University. Besides being a staunch Christian she is one of the most respected scientists on the subject in the US. She began, by saying those dramatic words by the UN Secretary-General were “completely justified.” She did not mince words either.

 

She reminded us that the window of opportunity the world had in which to change its activities to ensure a better future is rapidly closing, yet our emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise steadily. We are not making progress. We are still falling farther behind. She also reminded us that 1.5 degrees was not a magic turning point or threshold. It is a goal that we have set for ourselves, because we know beyond that limit things will get very bad for the human race.  But as she said, “Every little bit that the planet warms carries additional costs with it. So, how much do we need to do? As much as possible. When? As soon as possible. Why? Because we will all benefit from that action.”

That is actually pretty simple:  Every bit makes a difference and we will all benefit from doing the right thing and the sooner we do it the better off we all will be!

 Hayhoe also pointed out that which we can all see already:

We are already seeing the impacts here today in the way that climate change is loading the weather dice against us.

We know we have always had droughts and floods and hurricanes and heat waves. But, in a warming world, they’re getting stronger and more dangerous. And they’re impacting all of us. But they are particularly affecting those who are vulnerable and marginalized the most.

The warmer the world gets, the more it endangers our food supply, our water supply, the safety of our homes, our own health, our economy and supply chains, the natural environment. Every aspect of life on Earth, including our life on Earth, is at risk the warmer this planet gets.

 

The UN has also made it clear that we should cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030, which is now less than 7 years away, and we must stop adding any more carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere entirely by 2050.

Who does not think the west is declining? Declining really is too mild a word when you  are heading toward catastrophe.

Why so much rage?

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Decline of the west, guns, Hate, Mass killings

 

While we were in Arizona this year, before the end of January, there had been 39 mass shootings in the US.  People keep talking about better gun laws (as they should) but really there is a much bigger issue. The bigger issue is why is there so much rage in the country, particularly among young men? The mass shootings are overwhelmingly committed by angry young men. That is a very big question. And there is no simple answer but there are many plausible answers.

The gunman killed 11 people and injured another 9. After the shooting there was a lot of hand wringing and  surprise in the California community.  Their local State Senator said Monterey was “a close-knit community” and “a great place to raise children.”  Really? This is what they call a close-knit community in the US? California has the lowest gunfire mortality in the US probably because it has the strictest gun laws. Yet even in California there is a mass shooting every 8 days! Compared to communities around the world those “strict” gun laws are among the weakest! That’s how Americans like it. They want weak gun laws.

But I am actually more interested in a deeper question: why is there so much rage in America?  We have rage in Canada too but nothing like the US. What is driving young men to such violent fury? It seems to me that this question gets less attention than it should.

Adam Winkler, a professor of law at UCLA said “we can’t stop people from getting angry, but we can make it a little bit harder to get guns when they are in a passionate state.” That is a good idea, but why give up on trying to reduce the rage?  What makes him think that is hopeless? Has anyone actually tried it?

This is the issue the country should be dealing with.  The gun law debate in the US is frankly sterile. Nothing of substance happens. No one, it seems to me, is looking at the issue of that desperate anger. That is the problem Americans need to resolve. Until they do, no one can intelligibly deny that America, the self-proclaimed leader of the free world, is a country in serious decline. In Canada one of our major political parties is determined to follow America. Would that be wise? That rage seems to be coming our way. We should not amplify it.

 

 

Shamelessness is Contagious

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Death of Democracy, Decline of the west, Social Democracy and Trust, Trumpism, Trust and Distrust

 

 

While staying in Arizona this year we wanted to find a television news show that was not as partisan as most of the US stations. Back home we watch CBC’s The National.  Somehow we happened on public broadcastings Newshour and were happy we did.  It appeared to us to reasonable news coverage.

 

David Brooks a New York opinion columnist whom I read regularly, was interviewed on PBS NewsHour and said, “Shamelessness is contagious.” This of course is what we have seen a lot of this year. In particular, the legions of Republicans who have supported Donald Trump’s lies about a stolen election. He has been making these lies without any evidence whatsoever. None! Astonishingly, republicans have fallen in line even though he gave no credible evidence whatsoever about his claims. In fact, his own Attorney General Bill Barr who had continuously supported Trump throughout his tenure, could not support this lie. As he told the House Select committee investigating what happened on January 6 2021, “it was all bullshit” Notwithstanding, that many Republican political leaders have acquiesced in supporting Trump’s lies. This is a great example, of the contagion of shamelessness.

 

I am sorry to report that this contagion has caught on fiercely in the United States.

This is uniquely egregious because democracy needs the trust of the electors or it will not stand. Trump’s lies undermine this essential foundation of democracy and Republican leaders and Republicans in general have been falling in line. That is how a country declines–i.e. when the courages of its leaders collapses and the people are left bereft.

No wonder I am on the grand finale tour.

 

The Left Conservatism of John Dutton

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Capitalism, Decline of the west, Freedom, Left Conservative, Television Shows

Someone using the house we rented in Arizona had recorded some episodes of the latest season of Yellowstone.  They were interesting. I could not watch the entire series because it is no longer offered on our TV. Unlike some of my friends, I am not a huge fan of the TV series Yellowstone, but I do like parts of the shows. It has some diverse and interesting characters.

In Arizona I think most people identify with the patriarch of the Dutton family, John Dutton. He is very conservative and around here that is a very popular ideology. I don’t agree with all of his philosophy either, but I have some sympathy for some of his philosophy which I have called left conservatism, after the philosophy of the novelist Norman Mailer.

At the end of Season 4 of the series Yellowstone, John Dutton decided to run for Governor in Montana and got elected.  His opening statement to the people was interesting and revealed his essential conservatism that is very different from the conservatism of most of the current American right: “I am the opposite of progress. I am the wall it bashes against, and I will not be the one who breaks.”

This is much more closely aligned to what Norman Mailer called “Left Conservatism” than modern Republicanism. Mailer said he wanted to “think in the style of Marx to achieve the values of Burke.” That was the essence of his philosophy.  Burke was the leading conservative thinker in England during the time of the French Revolution. I remember first hearing that expression from Mailer 50 years ago and always thought it was a remarkable political philosophy. I found much attractive in it then, and I still find much attractive in it today.

In season 5 of Yellowstone, in his victory speech, Dutton told his supporters,

“We have a lot of work to do, and a lot to undo.  The question we all have to ask ourselves and one that I will look to everyday, is what will Montana look like in 100 years? Much of that is dictated by the way the world sees us today. Right now, we are seen as the rich man’s playground. We are New York’s novelty and California’s toy. Not anymore. You have elected me to be a steward of the state, and the land, and its people, and that is exactly what I will do. You know environmentalists just love to debate what’s Montana’s most valuable resource. Is it the water? Is it the wolves? Is it the trees? The answer is actually pretty simple.  It’s you! The farmers and the ranchers who live with the land not on it. When protecting you now is how Montana still looks like Montana when none of us here tonight are here to see it.”

 

That’s a real conservative attitude, but no one with which I entirely agree. He wants to protect the land and the people as they are now. He wants to conserve that. That is what conservatism is all about. But we must remember that we don’t just conserve what rich men like. The rich are happy and contented. With their wealth they can buy privileges. They can buy the government that acts in their interests and not in the interests of ordinary people who can’t afford to buy their political leaders. That should not be preserved.

 In the TV series Dutton wanted to conserve the largest ranch in the state. It was worth millions. It was his ranch. Who would not want to conserve that?  But how does that help the single mom on social assistance? How does that help the Uber driver? Or the bar tender at the local bar? Ordinary people are important too. Most conservatives don’t understand that at all. They just think soon they will be one of the rich people.

For a man like Donald Trump the only people that count are his rich buddies and the people who support him in power and then only as long as they continue to support him no matter what he does?  He appreciates only absolute loyalty to himself. Many conservatives are exactly like that. Those  are not my kind of conservatives.

Conservatives also claim to stand for freedom. At least for the freedom to do as they please. They are not as concerned about the freedom of working-class people to get the health care they need. Or schools. Somehow often that does not count. John Dutton said freedom was important to him. This is what he said:

“Freedom. I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately. The word. What it means. The dictionary thinks that it means “the right or power to think, act or speak as one wants without hindrance or restraint.” As governor of the state, I’m sworn to protect that right. Building a city in the middle of the most pristine wilderness strips you of that freedom. It eliminates your freedom to breath clean air and drink clear water. It strains this ability. It strains the ability of our hospitals and our schools and our police. It requires an increase in our taxes which in turn strains our families, forcing you to decide if you can afford to live in a place that you call home. That’s no progress in my mind. It’s an invasion. And today the invasion is over. Today I’m signing an executive order that ceases funding for the paradise Valley development and the Paradise Valley Ski resort.”

 

John Dutton’s philosophy of what I would call left conservatism is far from perfect. It contains in my view many grave inconsistencies, but it does contain some important insights into things that are worth preserving. Like freedom for everyone not just freedom for the wealthy to do whatever they choose whether that is good for most people or not. Left conservatism is an anti-dote to the shallow modernism of so much contemporary thinking. That sort of “freedom” is not worth preserving.