Category Archives: 2023 Grand Finale Tour

My Buddy David Boyd knows the score

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Capitalism, Decline of the west, Ecocide, New Attitude to Nature

 

A few years ago, I listened to a lecture by David Boyd at the University of Manitoba Law School’s Robson Hall.  Boyd is the writer of some excellent books on environmental law and policy.  After that lecture I was talking to him and he mentioned he needed a ride to his hotel so I offered him a ride. We had an interesting chat on . I mentioned to him how much I enjoyed his books. So, I call him “my buddy” even though we only met once.

Recently he has been appointed special rapporteur on human rights and the environment by the UN. According to the Guardian, as part of his new job he has warned of the creation of pollution “sacrifice zones across the world where tens of millions of people are suffering needlessly from strokes, cancers, respiratory problems, and heart disease as a result of toxic contamination of the environment.  Nature is fighting back to the onslaughts inflicted upon us by humans.  There is a war against nature which humans seem to be winning, but I am reminded as the saying goes, that “nature always bats last.” As The Guardian said,  “Nature can strike back at repetitive injuries foisted upon it.”

Boyd also mentioned physical health issues, including cancer, heart disease, respiratory illness, strokes, and reproductive health problems as well as “incredible mental health problems associated with living in these places because people feel exploited, they feel stigmatized.”

Boyd pointed the finger at modern businesses in particular as culprits in this nasty war. He called them “the main culprit, with most willing to overlook social and environmental costs in favour of their bottom line.”

This compliments my claims that capitalism, in many respects is predatory. In fact, I would say, capitalism, or the modern economic system really, is a serial predator. At least is it is left unharnessed.

 

Humans are Sleep walking towards the edge of a cliff

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Anthropocene, Decline of the west, Ecocide, Environment, Environmental Apocalypse, Extinction, New Attitude to Nature

 

It doesn’t take much thought to realize that nature is the basis of all life on the planet. And everything we have constructed is built out of the building blocks of nature. Without nature we are done.

Yet there is little evidence that we understand that. Our actions indicate that we do not understand this simple fact or we just don’t care. Either way it is clear that we are dismally ignorant.

Our current attitude to nature stinks. That’s why we urgently need a new one.

In recent years the World Wildlife Fund (‘WWF’) has reported on the astonishing effect that our species has had on all other species. As reported by Damian Harrington of The Guardian, recent study by the WWF reached this uncomfortable conclusion:

“Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world’s foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation.”

Let that statement sink in please. In other words, since Chris and I met in 1970 humanity has wiped out more than half of all mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles.[1] That conclusion was reached in a major report produced by the WWF and 59 scientists from around the world. They also say the cause is the enormous and growing massacre of wildlife as a result of humans expanding consumption of food and resources that is destroying the web of life that nature took millions of years to produce. We are destroying “the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else.” We are destroying what we most need!  As Mike Barrett the executive Director of science and conservation at WWF said,

“We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff. If there was a 60% decline in the human population, that would be equivalent to emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. That is the scale of what we have done. This is far more than just being about losing the wonders of nature, desperately sad though that is he said…This is actually now jeopardising the future of people. Nature is not a ‘nice to have’ – it is our life-support system.”

It is astonishing that we are  doing this. But we are.  We could do something about this, but we have chosen to ignore it. This reminds me of the people at Easter Island that kept cutting the trees on their island which they desperately needed for their survival until the trees were all gone. They actually did that. Is that what we are doing on a planetary scale? It sure looks like it. How can we deny that our society is declining? Is it surprising that I call my current tour “the Grand Finale Tour”?

 To say that we need a new attitude to nature seems hopelessly understated.

[1] I should mention that the numbers are little more subtle and not quite as grim than this suggests as Ed Yong demonstrated in a fascinating article for The Atlantic in Oct. 31, 2018

Insects are important pollinators

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Decline of the west, Ecocide, Environmental Apocalypse, Extinction, insects, New Attitude to Nature

 

One of my first bosses,  Al Boily, my supervisor at Manitoba Hydro where I worked while going to university  taught me two very important lessons. First, he taught me how to work. The said the company paid us fairly so we had to work hard to earn that money. Until then, I thought money should fall into my laps just because I was a nice guy. I was as lazy as grass and needed to learn that lesson.

Secondly he taught me that ‘what is bad for insects is bad for people too.’ He was referring to the Vapona No-Pest Strips that caught flying insects on sticky paper and killed them. I thought they were great. I hated biting insects. He taught me differently. Again, a valuable lesson.

I realize that a lot of people have no sympathy for insects. Insects be damned is their attitude. Who cares about insects? Does that really make sense.

Without insects most foods could not grow. How would we survive without foods? Yet many farmers, and citizens too, believe we ought to be destroying as many insects as possible. I know I feel that every time I venture out into the forest or bog on years in which mosquitoes are in abundance. I must remember—as must you—that insects are vital to our food chain. About two thirds of foods require insect pollinators.

We already have a serious problem producing or harvesting enough food to feed the people on the planet/ Do we let 2/3 of them disappear?  Is that a rational solution?

Notwithstanding that, most people and many farmers believe pesticide use is essential for feeding the growing human population. As George Monbiot reported in The Guardian:

“A recent study in Nature Plants reveals that most farms would increase production if they cut their use of pesticides. A study in the journal Arthropod-Plant Interactions shows that the more neonicotinoid pesticides were used to treat rapeseed crops, the more their yield declines. Why? Because the pesticides harm or kill the pollinators on which the crop depends.”

 

Why are so many people so wrong about insects?  Monbiot explains that this way:

“Farmers and governments have been comprehensively conned by the global pesticide industry. It has ensured its products should not be properly regulated or even, in real-world conditions, properly assessed. A massive media onslaught by this industry has bamboozled us all about its utility and its impacts on the health of both human beings and the natural world.

The profits of these companies depend on ecocide. Do we allow them to hold the world to ransom, or do we acknowledge that the survival of the living world is more important than returns to their shareholders? At the moment, shareholder value comes first. And it will count for nothing when we have lost the living systems on which our survival depends.”

 

We should not allow ourselves to be hoodwinked by the pesticide industry. After all, our lives depend on it!

We have declared war on nature. Insects in particular. It is an ugly unjustified war that is leading to our own destruction. As the Indigo Girls said, “we are gluttons for our doom.” That is most unwise. Here is what Monbiot says we should be doing instead:

“To save ourselves and the rest of the living world, here’s what we need to do:

1 We need a global treaty to regulate pesticides, and put the manufacturers back in their box.

2 We need environmental impact assessments for the farming and fishing industries. It is amazing that, while these sectors present the greatest threats to the living world, they are, uniquely in many nations, not subject to such oversight.

3 We need firm rules based on the outcomes of these assessments, obliging those who use the land to protect and restore the ecosystems on which we all depend.

4 We need to reduce the amount of land used by farming, while sustaining the production of food. The most obvious way is greatly to reduce our use of livestock: many of the crops we grow and all of the grazing land we use are deployed to feed them. One study in Britain suggests that, if we stopped using animal products, everyone in Britain could be fed on just 3m of our 18.5m hectares of current farmland (or on 7m hectares if all our farming were organic). This would allow us to create huge wildlife and soil refuges: an investment against a terrifying future.

5 We should stop using land that should be growing food for people to grow maize for biogas and fuel for cars.”

I admit I would have a problem going vegetarian or vegan. I like my burgers.

This is the problem. Humans have declared war on nature, particularly insects,  on the false basis that this is needed to feed the world. This is a crucial mistake. It is time for us to smarten up. We need nature. Even insects! We need to change our attitude to insects. If we don’t give them respite from our assaults we probably won’t get through this century. And in the meantime we will make life here very difficult and dreary.

 

My Bad: Insects are Important

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Decline of the west, Ecocide, Environmental Apocalypse

 

I don’t know about you but I have never been that fond of insects. I tend to have an aversion to them.  My bad. That is a bad attitude. Insects are very important and if we fail to recognize that we have been taking bad advice.

Yet, even though insects are important we have not been treating them kindly. In fact, we have been treating them badly.

The English environmentalist and Guardian correspondent George Monbiot asked a very intriguing question:

“Which of these would you name as the world’s most pressing environmental issue? Climate breakdown, air pollution, water loss, plastic waste or urban expansion? My answer is none of the above. Almost incredibly, I believe that climate breakdown takes third place, behind two issues that receive only a fraction of the attention.

This is not to downgrade the danger presented by global heating – on the contrary, it presents an existential threat. It is simply that I have come to realise that two other issues have such huge and immediate impacts that they push even this great predicament into third place.

One is industrial fishing, which, all over the blue planet, is now causing systemic ecological collapse. The other is the erasure of non-human life from the land by farming.”

  

One that is not on this list is soil loss which is also incredibly important, is soil losses According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization because of poor farming practices we have only 60 years of harvests left. If that is true, my granddaughter will not be as old as I am now when the world runs out of the ability to produce most foods because of soil disappearance and degradation. Yet that problem does not make Monbiot’s top 3.

 The missing problem is this: “Insectageddon: farming is more catastrophic than climate breakdown.”

 As the Monbiot said,

“The shocking collapse of insect populations hints at a global ecological meltdown.” That global meltdown won’t just affect humans either, it will affect everything on this planet. In fact, Monbiot said that global productivity is already declining on 20% of the world’s cropland.”

 

Here is what a scientific study discovered a few years ago:

“flying insects surveyed on nature reserves in Germany have declined by 76% in 27 years. The most likely cause of this Insectageddon is that the land surrounding those reserves has become hostile to them: the volume of pesticides and the destruction of habitat have turned farmland into a wildlife desert.”

We are turning farmland into a wildlife desert! Monbiot pointed out that scientists who are studying ways to kill insects more efficiently find themselves showered with grant monies, while those scientists who are studying what the impact of this war on insects might be get almost no funding at all.

Yet insects are, as Monbiot said, insects are “critical to the survival of the rest of the living world.” Insects are critically important, yet we only spend money on figuring out how to kill them. Without insects “a vast tract of the plant kingdom, both wild and cultivated, cannot survive. The wonders of the living planet are vanishing before our eyes.”

We are destroying precisely what we need for human life to thrive on this planet. Is this not ecocide? That is why we need a new attitude to nature.

The Long and Winding Road to Extinction

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Decline of the west, Extinction, Indigenous People before Contact, New Attitude to Nature

 

Humans have been damaging the world and its biodiversity for thousands of years. Can we change what we do? Only if we change our attitude to nature.

Phoebe Weston of The Guardian saw a long and ignominious trail of corpses and decided to investigate the crimes.

The first cold case she investigated was the case of the disappearance of the huge mammals from North America—mammoths. They seemed invincible because they were so big. But they had vulnerabilities and one creature on the planet was able to take advantage of the opportunity. That was us. As Phoebe reported in the Guardian:

“The story of the biodiversity crisis starts with a cold-case murder mystery that is tens of thousands of years old. When humans started spreading across the globe they discovered a world full of huge, mythical-sounding mammals called “megafauna”, but by the end of the Pleistocene, one by one, these large animals had disappeared. There is no smoking gun and evidence from ancient crime scenes is – unsurprisingly – patchy. But what investigators have learned suggests a prime suspect: humans.”

 

The Pleistocene, was the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, which covers the Earth’s most recent period of repeated glaciations covering large parts of the world.

Weston also looked at Genyornis, which was one of the world’s heaviest birds. It inhabited Australia and was more than 2 metres tall. Can you imagine encountering a bird as tall as a basketball player?  North America used to have beavers as heavy as fridges. It also had a glyptodon which was about the size of a small car. It went extinct 12,000 years ago. About 178 of the world’s largest mammals went extinct between 52,000 years ago and 12,000 years ago. Scientists used to believe their extinctions were caused by changes in the environment. Now they believe the primary killer was—again—us. So much for ancient humans living in harmony with nature!

But hunters were not actually the main cause of extinctions. That dubious achievement was made by farmers. Farmers who also claim to be working in harmony with nature. Sorry, they are killers too.

In particular, farming is the primary reason to eliminate the habitat of animals. As a result, now the UN has estimated that of all the mammals on earth 96% are livestock and humans.  Instead, 1 million species on the planet are now on the verge of extinctions. They need to make room again for more people and more livestock. Isn’t that sick?

Indigenous people who were both hunters and farmers, lived more sustainably on the planet, though they were not entirely innocent either. After all they drove those large mammals to extinction I talked about earlier.

Weston discovered that Professor Mark Maslin from University College in London said one of the driving forces that led humans to domesticate animals was their own unsustainable hunting practices. They killed all their food, so they turned to farming. As Weston said,

“Although the debate is far from settled, it appears ancient humans took thousands of years to wipe out species in a way modern humans would do in decades. Fast forward to today and we are not just killing megafauna but destroying whole landscapes, often in just a few years.”

 

It is now widely accepted that humans were in fact serial killers. The evidence is in. The jury has spoken. Humans are guilty. Pogo was right; we are the enemy.

That’s why we have to change our attitude to nature. The current path is mad.

 

 

Serial Killers of the Planet

2023 Grand Finale Tour, New Attitude to Nature

 

Early on in this journal of our trip to the Southwest of the United States in 2023 I mentioned that I wanted to talk about 2 themes on the trip that are closely related. One is the decline of western civilization and the other is our need for a new attitude to nature.  [see https://themeanderer.ca/2023-grand-finale-tour] I have not been posting much about the need for a new attitude to nature. I intend to start remedying that deficiency now.

In that earlier post I talked about a Professor at the University of Manitoba who influenced me a lot, even though I never took a course with him. A friend of mine did and I was jealous of that. In a video tape of one of his lectures in Ireland many years later, I heard him opining about humanities’ dysfunctional relationship to nature. This was professor John Moriarty and he likened humans to a virus on the planet.

Years later in Phoenix on another trip a few years ago, one day, when days when the weather was bad (there are very few of those here) we hang around reading or do something inside. Like going to an Aquarium. Phoenix has a wonderful one called “OdySea”.

We saw many sharks that day. We learned that they are not as dangerous or as vicious as legend would have it. They are not humans after all.  The word “vicious” should likely be reserved for humans, not sharks. More people die from exploding champagne corks or falling out of bed than from shark attacks. In some years only 1 human was killed by a shark attack in the whole world. Who should be scared of whom? Yet it is sharks that we fear.

We also learned that sharks, like so much of life in the natural world are declining. We learned that shark fining accounts for the death of 75% of all sharks that are killed each year. Shark fining is the process whereby the fins of sharks are cut from their bodies while the sharks are alive because the harvesters do not want to bother transporting their heavy bodies. So usually they discard the sharks, which more often than not die a horrible death. They die of suffocation and blood loss in the water. Our species does not just kill sharks, we torture them! What other species does that?

The fins are used in shark soup. Mainly Asians enjoy such soups. In some cultures they are believed to have medical qualities. Others, like me, suspect that it is mainly superstition. Many Asians think eating something strong will make them strong. 75% of shark deaths each year are because humans think eating the fins will make them strong. And usually the death is horribly painful.

Where sharks are found they are apex predators Scientists have started to realize that apex predators are very important for ecosystems. They help maintain a balance with other predators and this helps to maintain biodiversity.

Some species in ecosystems are considered “keystone species.”  That means that they are necessary to maintain the health of the ecosystem. Without the keystone species the entire ecosystem can collapse. Sharks keep smaller predatory fish under control and this helps to balance the biodiversity by preventing over population of any species. Mother nature usually knows best. Humans not so much.

Even though sharks have been around for 400 million years many species of sharks might be extinct within the next few decades. They can’t seem to live with us!

Of course, this is entirely consistent with the loss of all kinds of life. A recent Living Planet Index compiled by researchers at the WWF and the Zoological Society of London from scientific data, shows vertebrate populations are set to decline by 67% of 1970 levels unless urgent action is taken to reduce humanity’s impact. We are destroying life on the planet. And doing very little about it. That is the long and short of it.

That day at OdySea we also learned things about the ocean. Although we enjoyed watching the penguins (who wouldn’t) they posted information that  like most other birds, penguins are in serious decline. The main causes are a decline due to a loss of nesting places and a loss of suitable food due to overfishing and pollution.  In other words, we are the problem. The old story keeps coming back. As the cartoon character Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

In the movie called Dirt: The Movie a speaker pointed out that the biggest pest was us. He asked an amazing question, “If there was a United Nations of Organisms would we be voted off the planet?”  Would earth reject our species as a virus just like our bodies reject viruses? It does seem appropriate doesn’t it?

Humans are the serial killers of the planet.

 I think it is obvious. We need a new attitude to nature. The old one is bankrupt.

An investment in Coyotes

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Books, desert, Nature

 

 

 

Late one afternoon in early January, soon after arriving in Arizona, I went for a lovely walk in San Tan Mountain Regional Park after purchasing an annual pass that allows unlimited walking through the desert. I bought the annual pass for about $70 even though we won’t be here for more than 3&1/2 months, it won’t take long for me to recoup my investment.

On my walk I listened to the incredible irrational exuberance of the coyotes. That is the true sound of the wild. I did not see them on this walk, but I did on others.

Edward Abbey is one of the finest interpreters of the Southeastern United States. His book, Desert Solitaire, about this region is a masterpiece. Everyone who wants to understand this place should read it. And then read it again. I will be referring to that book that I read before my second trip to this wonderland on this voyage of discovery.

Edward Abbey appreciated the wild. That meant he appreciated coyotes. This is what he said about them in that wonderful book:

“I have been honored by the serenade of a den of coyotes—a family perhaps—somewhere about a mile to the west of my camp. Weird unearthly song—like the legendary wail of banshees…Occult music is but a part of the coyote’s repertoire: they vary the program with more conventional howls, yelps, and barks when it pleases them to do so. Usually, they stop their singing and retire to the rocks, out of caution, soon after the sun comes up…We need coyotes, need them badly…As does the nation as a whole, for that matter. We need coyotes more than we need, let us say , more people, of whom we already have an extravagant surplus, or more domesticated dogs, which in all fairness could and should be ground up into hamburger and used as emergency coyote food, to raise their spirits and perhaps improve the tenor of their precious howling.”

Rather harsh words, but not entirely without merit. If you want to learn about the deserts of the American Southwest as I do, I strongly recommend Abbey’s book. And a walk in the desert. If you hear the coyotes your soul will be filled.

 

Extremism: Alive and Not well in America

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Decline of the west, Extremism, Hate, terrorism, Trumpism, violence

 

Driving through a large part of the United States from the northern State of North Dakota south to Texas and then west to Arizona, as we did this year, it did not take long to realize that extremism is alive and not well in this country. While there is ample extremism on the left and the right, it clear that most extremism lives and thrives in the right wing.

I heard an interesting interview with Cynthia Miller-Idriss an award-winning author and scholar of extremism and radicalization in the US.  She is the founding director of the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) at the American University in Washington, DC, where she is also Professor in the School of Public Affairs and in the School of Education. She has testified a number of times before the US Congress on issues relating to extremism. She has also been a frequent commentator on these issues for various media outlets. She is a member of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Tracking Hate and Extremism Advisory Committee and the author of a number of books including recently Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right.

One of the problems that Miller-Idriss alerts us to is the fact that American federal law does not yet have a crime of domestic terrorism. As a result, American law enforcement has to try to squeeze the charges they want to lay against an accused into boxes that really are not the best fit.

The fact that in the new American Congress there were participants in the insurrection on January 6th ,  means that American democracy is still in jeopardy. Michael Fanone who was a police officer engaged in resisting the violent insurrection on Capitol Hill that day said we need political leaders who will clearly denounce political violence.

When the January 6th insurrectionists invaded the  Capitol Hill police officers and 60 Metropolitan police officers were injured resisting the political violence, that was clearly an act of domestic terrorism. They were resisting a violent attempt to impose a political goal, namely, to stop the election of Joseph Biden.  Many of them were chanting “Stop the Steal,” or, even worse, “Hang Mike Pence” while engaged in violence against the police authorities who were defending the Capitol and the elected political representatives. By any definition of “terrorism” these violent acts would qualify as domestic terrorism. They were using violence for a political end. That is what constitutes terrorism. Clearly their political aim was to support the case of Donald Trump with whom the rioters and Trumpsters were aligned. Yet many Republican leaders have not denounced that violence of the far right.

The future of America still seems clouded with violence. And that comes mainly, though not exclusively on the right. All political leaders of all stripes ought to object strongly to any political violence, especially from their own side. If we can’t do that the future is grim.