On Retirement Part I: Being

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

For the last part of June and most of July, every day a big bumblebee arrived at the livingroom window and buzzed around for a while – not bumping into the glass like the foolish houseflies, but just checking it out, floating. I thought of Muhammad Ali. “Float like a butterfly” – and do what a bee does. The big window is my favourite in the house, a place to daydream now that I am retired, overlooking, as it does, the lush yard, the swamp beyond, and further beyond that the Green Mountains of Vermont. The bee arrived each day as K. and I watched world tragedies without end unfold in vivid colour on the BBC news.

I know it was the same guy. Scoff not: I recognized him. Like all sentient beings, bees live according to their biological patterns of course, but at the same time, they are individuals like our cats, our dogs, our chickens, and ourselves.

In any case, I have seen this on PBS, in a documentary by Martin Dorn, who stayed home during the pandemic and studied and filmed the bees in his garden for a year. (1) He showed that they have habits, traits – you could even say personalities – and that they keep individual travel and visitation schedules, according to whatever whims are driving them, beyond their biological predispositions and imperatives. This strikes me as a good way to live: to follow a schedule that comes not from without, but within. Just like me, now. After seventy years, I have a personal schedule that is free of the relentless overlay of outside demands.

It begins with grade one at King George school. Six-and-a-half-years-old, I have lucked out and missed the calamity of kindergarten, newly introduced in Northern Ontario. Still, there I am: having been free and wild on the streets and alleys of our small town, I now find myself expected to go to the same place every day, to the same dull room, to sit unmoving in the same confining desk under the hostile eyes of the sadistic Miss Scott.

Miss Scott: she is the first among a number of bad bosses. In the first few days of class, she has us come up to her desk one at a time and sing Oh Susanna or such, a cappella, standing in front of her: excruciating enough. Then, based on what she hears, she divides us into Canaries, Robins, and Crows. I am a Robin. The poor Crows probably never sang again, not even in the shower. What sort of person does that to children?

Years later I mentioned her to a cousin who is ten years older than I am, but who also had Miss Scott. He flew into a tirade, sputtering and cursing. He had never forgotten her either.

Seventy-five percent of Americans name a bad boss as the number one stressor in the workplace. (2) But despite Miss Scott, and later Kenny and Frank, I don’t really think it was only bad bosses that made me not want to get up and go to work – but they coloured that world, to be sure.

Kenny and Frank are drill operators and hence my bosses when I work as a helper during summers as a university student. Kenny has spent thirteen years in the Kingston Pen for manslaughter after jamming a broken beer bottle into the forehead of a barroom opponent. He is okay most of the time, but you don’t want to rile him, if you follow me. A year after I work with him, I hear that his clothing gets caught and he is dragged into the business end of a big auger machine, breaking every bone that could be broken in a human being, before the helper could turn the machine off. I don’t hear how he fared after that.

Frank, on the other hand, has not been to jail, but is a wife-beater and drinks twenty beers a day. He can single-handedly pick up the two-hundred-and-fifty pound drop-hammer and place it on the equipment trailer – not that much if you consider the world dead-lift record, but still. At one point he rushes at me with fists clenched vowing to kill me after I drop a drill rod down a three-hundred-foot borehole. Terrifying to have that raging hulk come at you: I can still feel the adrenaline. He only stops when I threaten him with the thirty-six inch pipe-wrench, which I cock like a baseball bat. He comes to his senses and just curses me out; a good thing, as the pipe-wrench would not have been enough to stop him. No doubt these guys contributed to my having a bad – or at least a sceptical, you might say – attitude early on toward the supposed pleasures and benefits of the workplace.

Fortunately the work and the bosses got better after this, and once I became a boss myself, I improved a lot on my first role models: low bar, I know. Lest I create a completely negative impression here, I must say that management and working conditions improved dramatically over the years. I worked for terrific people and excellent organisations. 

Early bad bosses aside and given great improvements in the nature of the work that followed, it remains something of a mystery that I don’t remember ever really wanting to go in to a place of employment. I preferred to stay home and do things I wanted to do, by myself, probably with a coffee pot and the radio playing in the background. I suspect this feeling is common enough. It is true that you hear of people describing how they can not wait to get to the office in the morning, to accomplish this and that, and see the gang, etc. However, the reluctance of Covid-era remote workers to return to the office surely indicates something different for many of us.

I have thought that perhaps I am just lazy, but that seems unlikely. I have degrees aplenty, which certainly required work, and I did accomplish things in years of community mental health work and in teaching that I am most contented to remember. I know that in my way I made the world a better place. And I was a decent boss. Yet, the mental health work was trying; it wore me out. At the time I was studying Zen Buddhism and so I tried to emulate the scholar warriors (3) and to take heart from the teaching of the bodhisattvas: “Remedy suffering wherever it is, whatever form it takes and whoever causes it.” (4) This helped me, and then the years of teaching were easier. I experienced failure of course, but overall, I found success at both. And so now I retire happy, perhaps with some not-unusual regrets over missed opportunities or paths not taken, but with the knowledge that I did my best.

Not wanting to go into work might simply have been a result of my introversion. In any case, I can say I don’t miss it. I’m happy to stay home, and like the bee, figure out each day what I want to do. I have no empty feeling, no existential panic in face of blank canvases of days.

Nor does it bother me that I have no role and no status. I had a foretaste of this. In 2010, after some trials in my personal life, I decided to change how I was living. I wanted to stay home, to live more creatively, to write some and take a few pictures – and to move back to Canada. With few prospects, and no money to speak of, I resigned my tenured professorship. I recall the feeling, after I moved, of sitting on a park bench in Toronto on a cold November day, the wind whipping in from Lake Ontario, known to no one around me, with no persona, no role, no position – just another bozo on a bench, with no place to go and nothing to do. It was absolutely exhilarating.

Of course, I had to eat and pay the rent, so I built a late-season career as an online adjunct professor, with a couple of courses at my old college and some from other institutions. “Full-time work for one-third the pay,” an ex-colleague joked. True enough, but I loved it. I woke on my own time and read awhile with coffee and classical music on the radio. Sometimes I would go out on the balcony of my high-rise apartment and watch the homo sapiens racing to work on foot, in cars, on the busses and streetcars. I watched with satisfaction – not with schadenfreude, although there was something comical to all the intense hotfooting around, something that I can’t quite name. Mainly I felt empathy for these people along with immense gratitude that I no longer had to do this. After all the decades, I finally got to stay home.

I still had demands: course sites to build, clever assignments to create, tests to post, emails to answer, and useful feedback to give on submissions. Enjoyable enough tasks, but now I am glad to be without them. I am relieved not to wake up each Tuesday morning and to log on to sixty or a hundred essay assignments waiting in the mailbox, all begging timely review and grading. I liked my work very much, and especially liked working on my own, but I’d had enough. A clear example of Cameron’s Second Law: Good things go on too long.

By the way, it says something about human nature that although students had a full week to submit assignments, almost all of them came in about a half-hour before the time limit. Also, despite there being 167 other hours to take an online test, most were completed in the hour before the deadline.

In any case, in online teaching, I had gone as far as I could go. As a professor – never mind the formal “course assessments” that have been foisted off on teachers – when the semester ends, every educator worth his or her salt thinks “how could I do better?” After my last semester, this spring, my answer was: nothing. I could do no better. Time to go, then.

Although it is not the case so far, I expect I will miss the students more than some other things. You won’t hear me complaining about younger people. Some, of course, were happily illiterate or worse: resentful participants, just putting in time. But most wanted to accomplish something, wanted to learn, wanted to make something of themselves. And they cared about this world, about climate broiling, about racism and sexism and institutionalized inequity, and most wanted no part of these and other injustices. They helped me to feel optimism, to believe there was some hope for the human race.

Optimism is important when you have retired and are getting older, when your bones ache inexplicably and these warty things start growing on your bulgy, once-svelte body, and all the musicians and singers and great people who populated your world start dropping dead – and as well, you have all the time you could want to ruminate about the television news.

It must be said: it is critical not to end up being that old codger in his nasty recliner, Keystone beer can in hand, sitting in the corner of the room jawing at loved ones about the deplorable condition of the world and the decline of civilization as we know it. These things are true of course: the world is in deplorable condition, and civilization is in decline, but that is no excuse to sit around and allow yourself to develop OBD – Old Bastard Disorder. OBD, by the way, is not gender-typed; you may be a man or a woman, or in keeping with fashionable ideology, anything in between or outside of those categories, and still succumb to OBD.

No, you have to stay optimistic and carry on, even while, for example, a dreadful little psychopath slaughters the good people of Ukraine, or given climate change, when it looks like your grandchildren will live on a planet much like the one in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road – or while the whole country of Canada is on fire (and, to boot, firefighters say that people are stealing their equipment when they are not looking, as CBC reported about the Kelowna fire).

And the whiners: oh my God, the whiners! These people complain when the cell signal is poor – meanwhile, I remember that my parents, for decades after the Great Depression, saved string out of fear of not having any in the future. It is hard to think that civilization has not gone down the pipe when a Yellowknife story described people complaining about the (successful) evacuations. Days before the fire reached the town (the fire never made it, in fact, due to the diligence of the firefighters), 95% of the population had been evacuated hundreds of miles by air, or guided down the one two-lane highway, with the government providing free gas from tankers along the way – brilliant! Yet the paper quoted a person complaining that the government had acted too slowly, that the evacuation should have been done sooner, even though the fire had not reached the city. In the preceding days, she could smell the smoke in her office even with the “HEPA” filters going full blast, and it was “uncomfortable,” she reported, with a straight face. Perhaps she also was put off that the civil servants did not offer fresh trays of sushi and avocado-on-toast as well, along NWT Route 3 as she headed south. Another evacuee, safely ensconced at a paid-for motel hundreds of miles south of the fire, complained that there was “nothing to do.” One wonders why the news providers give these people any air time, but that is another problem, I suppose.

So, yes, it is hard to stay optimistic knowing these knuckleheads are out there, and I am not even talking about the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world – this one, an actual American Congressional Representative elected by real citizens eligible to vote, who believes the California fires were caused by Jews firing lasers from outer space. On purpose. No, I say I won’t even talk about these people.

But enough! Remember: OBD. In retirement, with time and space to think, you have to navigate this and other similar things. One immediate solution is to limit how much you watch the news, which is what K. and I have done: hence, the half-hour of BBC with the visiting bee.

As for the rest – what to do with your freedom from schedules, tasks and bosses? If your health is decent (that’s another story: more later), it isn’t that hard. Take a walk down the dirt road and check out the wild turkeys. Plunk yourself in the yard and read The Consolations of Philosophy that has been gathering household fallout on your bookshelf. Like K., get out the watercolour kit and paint a picture. Play your vinyl version of Sticky Fingers, or stream the Queen’s Own Highlanders piping The March of the Cameron Men on your phone, if you really must. Grow some tomatoes or sunflowers. Dust off the disused Yamaha and play My Wild Irish Rose. Write a mystery, however crappy, or a letter to the editor. Volunteer, if you are up to it, to take a person even older than yourself to a doctor’s appointment. Send a few bucks to the local fire company or the U.N. Refugee fund. Meditate and find compassion in your heart for the Miss Scotts and the Kennys and Franks of the world, for surely they must have suffered, as did their victims. Sit on a rainy September day, when the leaves are just beginning to change from green to yellow, and stare out the window. Step outside into the air and sniff it. For God’s sake, avoid OBD, although I think it is good to stay a tad crusty. Probably the best advice I’ve ever read that applies to retirement is to “chop wood, carry water.” (5)

But I take inspiration from my visitor: the free, black and orange insect who, for a while, came by regularly during news time, and reminded me of the inimitable Muhammad Ali and his counsel. “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” Right. Got it.

     Next: On Retirement, Part II: The End Game.

1. Dorhn, Martin. My Garden of a Thousand Bees. Passion Planet, 2023.

2. Abbajay, Mary. What to Do When You Have a Bad Boss. Harvard Business Review, September 7, 2018.

3. Deng, Ming-Dao. Scholar Warrior: An Introduction to the Tao in Everyday life. HarperCollins Publisher, 1990.

4. Marchese, David. Talk (Matthieu Ricard). New York Times Magazine, August 20, 2023.

5. Fields, Rick. Chop Wood, Carry Water: A Guide to Finding Spiritual Fulfillment in Everyday Life. Penguin Publishing Group, 1984.

 

It Makes Ya Stop and Think, Don’t It! (3)

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

      A CBC online news feed article (in the “Science” section, no less) entitled Why Air Conditioners Can Be a Problematic Solution to Extreme Heat (1) reported the startling news from Statistics Canada that household air conditioning can be one of the “most effective adaptation strategies to reduce heat-related mortality and morbidity,” but that – surprise, surprise – this is not sustainable because air conditioning use contributes to global heating!

     Well, blow me down!! Who could have seen that coming??

     In a perhaps related article, the news feed reported the story – one that probably should be filed under the category of We Are All Doomed – of a father and son who drove all the way from Virginia to Niagara Falls, Ontario, in their vintage army jeep, in order to buy forty bags of Lay’s Ketchup Chips, which they love and are not available in the U.S.A. Depending on how you go, and your starting point in Virginia, that is about 530 – 690 miles (853 – 1111 kilometers). Let’s choose a mid-number, say 600 miles, and very generously allow the aforementioned vintage army jeep twenty miles per American gallon. That’s sixty gallons, round trip.

At twenty pounds per gallon, that is 1200 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere, in order to obtain these ketchup chips.

Naturally, I hate to be critical — but better get an air conditioner, it is gonna get hot. The chips are probably bad for their health, too. Anyway, I prefer the salt and vinegar variety.

(1) Chung, Emily. Why Air Conditioners Can Be a Problematic Solution to Extreme Heat. CBC News. July 24, 2023. https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/air-conditioners-sustainability-heat-1.6914054

(2) Hristova, Bobby. Father and Son Drive for 2 Days from Virginia to Niagara Falls to Load Up on Ketchup Chips. CBC News. July 24, 2023. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/father-son-road-trip-ketchup-chips-1.6913941

 

Our Gun Fetish: A Letter to the Editor

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

(This is an updated and expanded version of the letter printed in the Granville Sentinel, May 25, 2023. Given that this is a U.S. piece, partially published, I have eschewed my usual practice of using Canadian spellings.)

Dear Editor:

I read in the May 11 Granville Sentinel that Matt Simpson, the State Assemblyman for our District (114), applauds New York’s “updated language” that permits concealed-carry in the Adirondack Park and other State lands. I also read in the Albany Times-Union that he supports a proposed “stand-your-ground” law for the State. Ironically, the Sentinel article appeared alongside an update on the bail appeal of Kevin Monahan, who senselessly shot and killed young Kaylin Gillis in rural Hebron, New York, where I live. With all due respect to the Assemblyman, the last thing we need is wider concealed-carry, or any carry for that matter, and we certainly do not need a stand-your-ground law. New York’s “Castle Doctrine” and other standards already provide for reasonable self-defense.

Let me qualify: I grew up in a small town surrounded by wilderness, where hunting and long-gun ownership was taken for granted. I hunted when I was young. I am not against reasonable gun ownership per se, and I am certainly not against hunting. What I am against is the killing of young children in their classrooms. I am against someone using an assault rifle to murder ten people and wound three more at a Buffalo supermarket. I am against shooting a young man who mistakenly rings your doorbell, and against shooting two cheerleaders who get into the wrong car. I am against my neighbor taking pot shots at a group of retreating young people – killing one of them – who mistakenly had entered the wrong driveway.

More and more guns in more and more places do not make Americans safer and safer. If that were true, the U.S. would be the safest place in the world. But it is the opposite: compared to similar Western democracies like Canada, Britain, and Germany etc., the per capita rates of murder and gun violence are off-the-scale. Here, there are simply too many guns, too many handguns, too many military-grade guns, too many places we can carry them, and we are too free and too quick to use them. The result is a horrifying number gun-related deaths. As of May 8, 2023, there already had been 202 mass shootings in the United States for the year – nearly two per day. And as repugnant as it is startling, gun violence is now the leading cause of death for children – excluding infants – in this country. If this does not make one want to stop and reconsider what we are doing, how we are living, what would?

It seems obvious, but apparently must be said, since people do not appear to understand: States with more restrictive gun safety laws like California and New York have significantly lower rates of gun violence than states with weak or permissive laws, like Texas and Florida (Everytown Research). (1) These facts do not lie.

Further, stand-your-ground laws only make people trigger-happy, so that, for example, a movie theater argument and thrown popcorn result in a pulled gun and a death – and the killer walks, as happened in Florida. Multiple studies, including by the Rand Corporation, have found that homicide numbers go up, not down, after states enact stand-your-ground laws. (2)

I don’t pretend to know all the solutions to American gun mayhem, but a few things are obvious as a start: sensible gun control (that the majority of Americans support), limiting the public carrying of guns, concealed or otherwise, and reasonable self-defense standards (that we already have in New York State and in Canada) as opposed to stand-your-ground laws.

Enacting gun control legislation is, I admit, notoriously difficult given the funding of the gun-toting diehards, the recalcitrant Republican opposition, and a Supreme Court that has been acting rather unwisely in its recent interpretations. But there are practical ways to start, as Nicholas Kristof has so well outlined in his New York Times editorial. (3) He advocates an incremental harm-reduction approach, including stronger background checks, moderate limits on the types of weapons (automatic) that can be bought, and so on – regulatory efforts that are similar to those that have been used with success in reducing smoking deaths and making driving safer.

Of course, regulatory efforts run into the problem of that devilishly-phrased Second Amendment to the Constitution. Something from another time, an old notion written with confusing grammar: debating its true meaning stands between us and sanity. I will skip that. A constitution should serve a people, not people serve a constitution. And enlightened social policy should not be determined by consulting the likes of militant second-amendment supporters such as The Proud Boys, Ammon Bundy of Idaho, or Greg Abbot of Texas.

Start the struggle to change the damn thing! Amend it, or repeal it. Naïve, you say? Perhaps, but what is the alternative? 125 +/- gun deaths per day as it is now? 150? 250? 500? What is the number, exactly, that will inspire us to action? Amendments can be, and have been, changed or repealed (at least the misguided 18th).

Yet we must go further; it is not just the second amendment and laws that are the problem. It is the culture itself: a propensity for violence coupled with the “gun culture.” Over time. the belief in owning, carrying and using guns has become a American fetish, a form of cultural neurosis, complete with puerile notions of manliness and immature patriotism. One writer (Ed Pilkington) has called it a fatal attraction – a “fatal gun attraction,” that is. (4) He is correct. It is time for  a program of cultural psychotherapy with the goal of putting guns back in their place as hunting weapons, not as something symbolizing freedom or manhood, not something to brandish, not something to carry around in public places, not something used to menace your neighbors, and certainly not something used to settle disputes – or for that matter, to be used as weapons of despair by alienated people, slaughtering innumerable others as they commit public suicide.

Which brings up the issue of mental health: services for the mentally ill have been touted as a solution. They are not. The United States does not have higher rates of mental illness than comparable countries. In addition it is a fallacy to say that the mentally ill have higher rates of murder and gun violence than the so-called “normal” population. They don’t. So one can’t say that mental illness is the problem. Proposals to fix gun violence with more mental health services are nothing but misdirection: a way to avoid facing the problem.

Addressing all of this, and the gun fetish particularly, will require a considerable cultural self-examination and public conversation. It is not impossible to do this, even with the likes of Fox News and Twitter as obstructionist forces. It has happened before: after World War Two, the populace, in public discourse, attempted to figure out what to do about mental illness and the practice of psychiatry. That conversation culminated in the establishment of the National Institute of Mental Health and later the very successful Community Mental Health Act, signed by President Kennedy in 1963. We can do this again with guns. Nothing less is required as part of the solution to the calamitous public health gun crisis that we are experiencing.

An Albany Times-Union article on May 14 discussed the intention of some Capital Region schools to restrict student smart-phone usage during school hours. Prominent among student concerns was they would be without their phones in a school shooting situation.

It shames us all to read this. It makes one ask: how could we allow things to get to this?

What sort of people are we? This last question, really, is the one we have to answer.

Yours sincerely,

Peter S. Cameron
____________________

1. Gun Safety Laws Save Lives. Everytown Research, 2023. https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/

2. Effects of Stand-your-Ground Laws on Violent Crime. Rand Corporation, January 10, 2023. https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/stand-your-ground/violent-crime.html

3. Kristof, N. A Smarter Way to Reduce Gun Deaths. New York Times, April 11, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/opinion/gun-death-health.html

4. Pilkington, E. How America’s Fatal Gun Attraction Turned Schools into War Zones. The Guardian, May 12, 2023.  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/13/mass-shootings-schools-guns-violence

NEWS FLASH II!!

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

The Guardian reports that American CEO compensation has risen to 351 times the pay for workers in recent decades. Said compensation has gone up by 1,322% since 1978. One-thousand, three-hundred and twenty-two percent, that is. i

     The rise in worker’s pay for the same period: 18.9%.

     CEO compensation has even outdistanced the rest of the top 0.1% by six times (note: not the “One Percent,” that we talk about, but rather the point one percent).

     At the same time, right now CEO’s and other pundits are decrying the so-called “labour shortage,” and are blaming the Covid-related unemployment benefits for people not returning to work. Although all labour is of course honourable, it could be that in addition to benefits, the pandemic has resulted in people reconsidering their crap jobs and despotic bosses, the same jobs that pay starvation wages, and so they are understandably resisting the return.

     The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, which translates to a whopping $290 a week before taxes. Good luck trying to live on $290 a week in the U.S. in 2021. It is a little-recognized fact, obscured by right-wing ideology and propaganda, that the majority of officially poor households in North America have at least one member working full-time, full-year.ii

     Another fact: had the minimum wage kept pace with inflation and worker productivity since the late seventies, we would have a $24 per hour minimum wage, rather than fighting over a paltry $15/hour. It would not be hard to get to $24/hour – just take it out of the CEO compensation, and also have us, the consumers, pay what – a dollar more? – for our poison-burgers and side of death-fries at McDonald’s.

     There is an upside. As compensation for this ongoing trickle-up (or torrent?) of wealth from the lower to the highest economic classes, we can at least be entertained by watching billionaires using the fruit of their workers’ labour to race into space in their phallus-shaped rockets.

iOliver, Indigo. “American CEOs Make 351 Times More than Workers. In 1965 It was 15 to One.” The Guardian, August 22, 2021.

iiCarl, John D., and Marc Bélanger. Think Sociology. 2nd Canadian ed., Pearson, 2015.

 

It Makes Ya Stop and Think, Don’t It (2)

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

One in five Americans think that the Covid-19 vaccinations carry a chip used by the government for tracking purposes.

At the same time, 70% of Americans believe they have become smarter during the pandemic.

_____________________

Sources:

The Economist/YouGov Poll, July 10 – 13, 2021. Representative sample (stratified by gender, age, race, education and region) drawn from the 2018 American Community Study. Retrieved from: https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/w2zmwpzsq0/econTabReport.pdf.

“Harper’s Index.” Harper’s. Vol. 343, No. 2055, August, 2021.

NEWS FLASH!!

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

Republican-led States Move to Limit Public Health Measures in the Name of Freedom!

At least nine Republican-governed states in the U.S. have passed laws, or are in the process of passing laws, that limit the ability of public health departments to impose measures to limit the spread of contagious diseases like Covid-19 in health emergencies, such as a pandemic. Currently, six other Republican states are considering such limitations.

It appears that they are taking the motto on New Hampshire’s licence plates – Live Free or Die – quite literally.

No state governed by the Democratic Party is imposing or considering such laws. If you are planning to move, this could be used as a handy way to discern which state to consider moving to, depending on which side of the continuum you come down on: Live free and die from Coronavirus and other epidemics, vs. Temporarily give up a little freedom for the good of the community and to live another day.

Montana has barred quarantines by local health authorities for anyone “exposed to or infected by a contagious disease.” Thus, an extremely effective public health practice used since plague times, specifically the “Black Death” of the fourteenth century, is now illegal. Remind me not to visit Montana again.

North Dakota has banned health authorities from “requiring a face covering for any reason.” Remind me…oh, yea, said that already.

Florida has given the governor the power invalidate any local health emergency order. That means the person who can decide what is in the public interest in the case of a major outbreak or other public health emergency, is, ah…Ron DeSantis. Uh, oh.

Perhaps, though, we should not be concerned about this; after all, this could be a textbook example of Darwinian selection at work. But no, please allow me to take that back: that notion is without human compassion, especially for all the poorer or disenfranchised people in those states who lack the resources to protect themselves.

Please! Remind me!

Source: Glenza, Jessica. “Republicans Bid to Limit Health Officials Could Cause ‘Preventable Tragedies’ – Experts.” The Guardian, July 23, 2021.

It Makes Ya Stop and Think, Don’t It

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

The Great Barrier Reef

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has agreed to delay placing the Great Barrier Reef on its list of “in danger” sites after heavy lobbying from the Australian government.

The reef is the world’s largest coral reef. Like many of these reefs the world over, it is in imminent danger from the effects of climate change. Other kinds of water pollution (plastic etc.) and human over-use may also be factors in the die-off of the coral.

However, the Australian government was concerned that officially designating it as “in danger” would result in a decline in tourism, especially for snorkelling.

__________________________________________

Source:

Readfearn, Graham. “World Heritage Committee Agrees not to Place Great Barrier Reef on ‘In Danger’ List.” The Guardian, July 23, 2021.

My Covid Trauma

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

Covid-19 is in retreat here in North America, where populations are vaccinated. After more than a year of staying home, holding Zoom meetings without bothering to wear pants, and streaming shows on television until brains are leaking out our ears, most people are glad to return to crowd activities: eating in restaurants, attending musical performances, ambling around street fairs and flea markets, heading out to the theatre. 

     Not me. I am reticent. I want to see my closest friends and family members, most of whom I have not seen for sixteen months. But I do not want to join groups of people that I do not know.  I am reluctant to go to the folk concert at the playhouse. I do not want to attend the talk on old barns hosted by the county historical society. I do not want to join fans at the stadium to cheer on the beleaguered minor-league baseball team. You won’t see me at the Raspberry Fest. nor the Balloon Fest. I expect not to join the crowd to see the Rockin’ Old Codgers on the outdoor stage down at Lake Desperation. You will not find me soon at the clam-bake at the firehouse.

     There have been many articles written about mental health strains arising from the isolation of Covid. Obviously, people react to isolation in different ways, and many have experienced severe loneliness. In my case, I am by temperament a satisfied introvert, not normally prone to feelings of loneliness, and so staying home during the pandemic has not been hard on me, and anyway, I’ve had a stellar companion. I will even say that in some ways it has been a pleasure. So, it is possible that I have just reverted to a more natural form as a result of not going out.

     My reticence is not worry about catching Covid. The vaccinations have proven to be very good, and I am confident in the data. I know there are unvaccinated people in the stores in the village taking advantage of the mask-optional guidance, wandering around, spreading their germ and virus-laden emissions with absolute disregard, but so what. Those creaturely emissions, coming from both upper and lower regions of the human body, although not always thrilling, do not worry me any more than they did in my previous life.

     Another possibility: an article in The Guardian discusses the idea of how our brain, the hippocampus, needs to be reset.[i] The brain’s ingenious plasticity helps us to adjust to changing situations. In this case, neuronal networks that we use to engage in social activity shrink during periods of isolation. We arrive at a new homeostasis in order to cope with less social connection. Then, once isolation ends, we again have to adjust, and initially interaction produces anxiety, until we achieve another homeostasis wherein these networks are restrengthened. Fair enough, though this strikes me as more of an extravert’s narrative than solid science. Regardless, I am not so sure that is the case for me. After all, I felt no anxiety at staying home in the first place.

     My own theory is simpler. What I think is that that the comforts and serenity of being home for sixteen months have become linked by contrast with the external political and social trauma of these last years. Mix that in with intrinsic introversion, and perhaps an excessive amount of time to think about the insanity of the larger world in absentia, and I have ended up not wanting to be part of that world. From afar, I have lost trust in people.

     I said to my daughter recently, in jest: I am suspicious of most people I don’t know, and the rest I don’t trust. There was a time when I thought that human beings were mostly good, mostly creative, mostly thoughtful – with shortcomings: warfare, exploitation, prejudice, zero-sum competitiveness, indifference to the plight of others at least, and stunning cruelty at worst.

     But these last years have eroded even that understanding that I had. Needless, unjust wars rage everywhere – Yemen, Ethiopia, Syria. Oppressive regimes proliferate: Belarus, Myanmar, China. Dangerous idiots run countries: Bolsonaro in Brazil. Islamists kidnap school children in parts of Africa, especially girls. The Taliban is taking over Afghanistan again, after twenty years of fruitless warfare. Half the population of the U.S. remains loyal to a defeated demagogue. A large number of American legislators, supporting the lie of a “stolen election,” attempt to subvert the American Democracy. Hooligans, misfits, conspiracy theorists and “ordinary” people storm the American Capitol in a deadly riot based on…nonsense. All the others: Xi Jinping and the ruthless suppression of Hong Kong’s democracy activists; deranged Q-Anon believers; the preposterous militias – Oath-Keepers, Proud Boys, Three Percenters, New York Lightfoot Militia; the yahoos in our nearby village charging around in their giant, gas-guzzling pickups with big Confederate and Gun flags mounted in their truck beds; the crypto-militia people from Connecticut, in their compound behind our house, flying their huge flag upside down on the hilltop for a month after Joe Biden was elected;[ii] the “Don’t Tread on Me” flags mounted on garage roofs; the Fox Propaganda network being the most-watched “news” network in America; the shameful exhibition of the now dead Rush Limbaugh receiving the Medal of Freedom. The climate -change deniers.

     The anti-maskers, the anti-vaxxers, the Covid-deniers: I expected that we would pull together in the face of our life-threatening pandemic, but no, not at all.[iii] Looking with a sociological eye, if society is a tapestry made of good-willed cooperation for mutual survival, then that tapestry is careworn and very frayed.

     No. I say to you that the big world of people is not to be trusted, thank you very much. It is not fear; it is aversion.

    

I sit outside at the table with its big blue, yellow and orange umbrella; the sun shines high-hot overhead, but the air is cool because of the just-passed thunderstorm that left the Ostrich ferns sparkling with heavy drops that make them tremble. The yellow yarrow plants and the pink bee balm are dripping too, as are the purple coneflowers, the white Shasta daisies, the delicate blue hollyhocks, and the pink joe pyes. Swallows are soaring and diving, eating their requisite 850 mosquitoes a day, with my approval. I have a new book in one hand, a freshly lit cigar in the other, my Panama hat on, and snazzy reading sunglasses dangling at the end of my nose. All set.

     K comes out in her bush-whacking outfit of old jeans, beaten flannel shirt, and red bandana, sickle in hand, and socks over pant legs to ward off ticks. She is off to thwack some underbrush in the back. I turn my old mug to gaze in wonder at her beautiful face, which is the same age as mine – wonder at the grace that has been bestowed upon us. We are old, old friends, and lovers twice: this time the second, last, and only time now forever.

     I still look for our small white dog who used to come to lie on grass as I read. Sandy died last spring of nothing in particular: old age, her body just stopped working. It was a sad day. It is possible she was the sweetest dog in the world. She was a rescue from Kentucky, who had lived her first six years at the end of a cruel, short chain and been abused there: beaten, one supposed. She was wary of most men other than myself; one assumes her abuser was a man. Who the hell does that to a little white dog?

     One of the cats, Dudley, is in the yard – I think he’s a tabby, although people here call him a Maine Coon Cat. What do I know, I’m from Canada. He is black and brown and tan and silky and so very friendly; it is a pleasure when he comes to sit on your lap. I call him “Big,” to honour his large front paws with the extra toes. He is crouched beside the shimmering Japanese willow tree that K and I planted as a Tree of Peace.[iv] Rather than burying a hatchet underneath the plant, we laid in a homemade, partially-bent pipe shillelagh made by one of K’s wackier Irish uncles. A ghastly-looking weapon, we buried it, followed by a short ceremony, and the newly planted willow over it has flourished ever since.

     I keep an eye on the cats – they are as loveable and funny as cats can be, but they are both hunters, and when I can, I interfere. I scare off the chipmunks, robins, and the brown rabbits – who this year have come into the yard in numbers larger than ever. Wild turkeys – strutting and confident and yakking to one another – cross the road in front regularly. Now and then a turtle: this year I have seen both a painted and a small snapping turtle. They cross from the pond and swamp behind us, passing through the yard – the cats are no threat to them, but the gravel road that they have to traverse to get to the second pond has danger. I have known of people who run over them intentionally. I wonder why they take this journey from one pond to the other – to see relatives, perhaps? The woodchucks: I love their rolling, musical gait – the cats might try to bother them, but I think the woodchucks would hold their own. Still, I am watchful.

     We had a comical possum who for a time made a sojourn every day about noon, coming down out of the field behind us, crossing the yard from the north-west corner, inspecting the compost pile, rolling down to the front of the house through the thicket of bishop’s weed, and then to the road. I loved his saunter. There was no trouble with either of the cats. He would walk along the side of the road – heading east toward Vermont, one might think. He made it back later, because the next day, there he would be, repeating the journey – until one day he didn’t. Alerted by a big, black turkey vulture, I found him on the road, halfway down the hill. He had been hit; his head squashed. I dragged him off the road and into patch of orange daylilies, muttered an apology for the human beings to the Animal Master, and left him for the vulture, who all the while had circled, riding the air streams, in no hurry, a picture of ancient patience.   

     The black cat Golly, the better hunter, recently caught a young rabbit, early in the soft evening. I saw him carrying it, and ran after him, hoping that it was not yet killed and that I could force him to drop it. A mistake, as it turned out. He deked left, but I went after him, and drop it he did. But the rabbit did not move as I approached, although I could see that its eyes were open, and it was still breathing. As I picked it up, I realized that it was paralyzed; I could tell from the limp, crossed legs, and because it did not wiggle to escape me. Golly had been carrying it by the back of its neck, and obviously the spinal cord had broken. I thought about killing it myself but could not bring myself to do so. All in all, it would have been better to have left the cat and the bunny to their deadly dance. Sadly, I placed it in the tall grass at the edge of the yard. To me, the small being seemed calm, but that could have just been the paralysis or shock. I went out later and it was dead. Once again, I mumbled an apology to the Animal Master, this time noting that it was in the nature of this cat to hunt. Golly cannot do otherwise.

 

Can human beings do otherwise? Is it just as natural for human beings to wage war with one another, to commit atrocities against other human beings? Perhaps it is in our nature also, to believe in crazy ideas, and then act out against one another based on these absurd conceptions, causing no end of harm. Perhaps this is as much part of us as taking more than we need, and purposely denying others as we do so. But if so, we are cruel and unlike the cat, we are capricious in our cruelty. For we do have our frontal lobes that provide us with alternatives, with the capacity to anticipate, to assess, and to judge, and ultimately to act with moral understanding. Normally, unless deprived or abused in childhood, we have reason, and we have a conscience. Compassion is every bit a part of our nature as human beings, as hunting is part of a cat’s nature.

     Yet far too often we turn our backs on these finer qualities and refuse to use them. Or, worse, we mis-use them, as for example, when supposedly for moral and religious reasons, Taliban men stone to death a woman for trying to educate girls, or a self-identified Christian stands outside a gay club with a sign that says, “Jesus hates fags.”

     Our human condition is that we suffer. We must labour for our survival. Women suffer pain and danger in childbirth. We suffer losses and disease. In evolutionary terms, older and newer parts of our brains are in conflict, resulting in ongoing psychological distress, as Freud described. Most of the time we desire more than we have, and our wanting pains us. We experience love and beauty, yet all the while knowing that someday we will die and lose all. But the worst of the human condition? It is the suffering that we humans intentionally inflict on one another.

     I want no part of the latter. This is what my time alone during the pandemic has brought to consciousness. This is my Covid trauma. In solitary thinking, I have come to understand that I remain a naïve idealist, as I have been since I was a fresh-faced student. Thus, I am often disappointed with human behaviour. I find it impossible to blow this stuff off and just live.

     Yet, we must be in the world, if not of it. Nobody lives outside society and culture, just as nobody lives outside nature. And so, what to do?

     Keep the lights on, at least, in the museum of human compassion. Stand and speak and act for what is good. We must choose kindness whenever possible. And of course, personally, I know I have to just get over it: starting by taking small steps to be in that world. Go to a diner and have a toasted club sandwich – with fries, of course. Go to a Sunday afternoon chamber music recital at the old music hall. Take a drive with K and a camera to Burlington, Vermont. Look forward to the possibility that we see good old Bernie Saunders on the streets of that town.

     Above all: remain calm. Meditate. Tend my own garden. Be in the world but keep part of myself separate and sacred from that larger world.

               Know the personal

               yet keep to the impersonal:

               accept the world as it is.

               If you accept the world

               the Tao will be luminous inside you

               and you will return to your primal self.[v]

____________________________________________________________________

[i] Clark, Kareem. “The Neuroscience Behind Why Your Brain May Need Time to Adjust to Un-Social Distancing.” The Guardian, July 9, 2021.

[ii] In American flag protocol, the flag flown upside down means: Dire distress: Imminent threat to life and property.

[iii] I was naïve to have been surprised at the lack of thoughtful civic cooperation. It has been no different previously. See, for example: Barry, John M. The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. Penguin Books, 2018.

[iv] The “Tree of Peace,” the Great White Pine, is the symbol of peace-making in the traditions of the Haudenosaunee.   See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_Peace

[v] Mitchell, Steven. Tao Te Ching, New English Version. HarperPerennial, 1988.

 

The Pandemic is Ending: I’m Disappointed

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

Here in the U.S., the Covid-19 epidemic is winding down as more and more people are vaccinated. Canada is somewhat behind, but after the country’s faltering start in vaccinating, things are going well, and rates of infection are coming down there, too. This is wonderful news, and I am so very grateful. I hope to see my Canadian family and friends. And I am glad that people I know and love, and so many other people, are more-or-less out of danger. Vaccines are our way out of this, and they are working.

     World-wide, things are less rosy. India is in trouble. Rates of infection are sky-rocketing in South America; Brazil, led by a fool, has a total death number second only to that of the United States, and the situation is worsening. African countries, despite remarkable competence learned from previous dealings with epidemics, are struggling with no vaccine supply to speak of. Still, even for these areas, there is reason for optimism; we, the wealthy and privileged, are starting to share vaccine supplies and help with cash and supplies for medical infrastructure, and our leaders including Uncle Joe and Justin are showing a taste to do exactly that.

     And so, we can look forward to a time in the not-so-distant future when this terrible pandemic will be under control, at least, if not entirely wiped out. Most likely, just like the flu, we will get our annual shot, and go on our merry way. We will return to normal life.

     Yet, I am disappointed. It is “normal” life that concerns me.

    I had hoped – naïvely, perhaps – that the pause, as difficult as it was, and as much hardship as it caused, would give us a chance to rethink how frenetically we live, and about our relationship with the planet. (See my earlier posts: Imagine, Parts I and II in July and August, 2020.) I had hoped that we would consider the benefits of a more settled life, with more space and time to be human beings. More important (since what you do with your time is not my business), I had hoped that we would use the the experience of clearer skies, fresher air, and the uncluttered streets as an opportunity to change our behaviour and reduce our carbon output permanently.

     But no. It is apparent that this is unlikely to happen. It seems that we can hardly wait to get geared up and carry on, with even greater intensity, a way of life that is devastating earth. I know: Debbie Downer.

     A good friend, who is a New York State employee, has been working from home for well over a year. It has gone well. Productivity has been high, and life has been easier. Yet, it seems the department, and his bosses, cannot wait to get him and his hundreds of fellow cubicle-dwellers back under direct scrutiny. I can’t think of another plausible reason for it. The petite Mussolinis of bureaucracy and commerce cannot tolerate the thought of not having their charges back in the cubicles under “panoptic surveillance,” to use Foucault’s term, even though electronic monitoring could rather easily satisfy the neurotic compulsion[i]. And so, consequently, with that will come the stalled traffic, the time lost and the oppressive frustrations of commuting, along with the wasteful burning of fuel and the emissions of carbon dioxide and all that this entails.

     It appears that we just can’t wait! We can’t wait to drive all over the continent. We can’t wait to cram ourselves into airplanes and start flying all over the place. We can’t wait to herd ourselves onto cruise ships, all the while burning shocking quantities of fuel (28 thousand gallons of fuel per hour, in the case of the ship, Freedom of the Seas).[ii]  We can’t wait to pack ourselves into tourist cities like Barcelona and Venice, stampede into museums and cafés, and while we are at it, once again make these cities unlivable to the people who reside there. It would be comical, really, if it were not so destructive.

     The great writer and editor E. B. White penned an essay in 1956 entitled Sootfall and Fallout, which focused on his concern, even then, about environmental degradation, but especially, at that time, radioactivity that was being put into the atmosphere by nuclear bomb testing. (The fact that we no longer do this is evidence that we can stop doing harmful things if we decide to.) In that essay, he talks about “forms” – meaning the standard, habitual way we do things, often despite all the evidence that these forms have failed us and continue to fail us. Here is what he says with reference to the end of WWII and the era (the fifties) that he was writing in:

     “Are we for ‘new forms,’ or will the old ones do? In 1945, after the worst bloodbath in history, the nations settled immediately into old forms. In its structure, the United Nations reaffirms everything that caused the Second World War. At the end of a war fought to defeat dictators, the UN welcomed Stalin and Perón to full membership, and the Iron Curtain quickly descended to put the seal of authority on this inconsistent act.” [iii]

     This is exactly what we are doing. Before the pandemic, our form was that we trapped ourselves in stalled traffic, crammed into cubicles, crowded onto cruise ships, packed into airplanes, and swarmed tourist cities like locusts – all maintained by alarming levels of resource consumption and emissions that threaten to make the world unliveable.

     During the pandemic we had some respite from this. We experienced a new form. We had time to come back to ourselves. We travelled less, or not at all. Those whose work permitted it, did it at a distance, and commuted less or not at all. Monstrous cruise ships were docked. Airplanes were parked alongside the runways. Cities and other spaces suddenly became liveable once more, and quiet. Streets were free of cars. Oil and gas consumption reduced; there was a noticeable decline in the production of greenhouse gases. We slowed down and were in our world as human beings. Relatively speaking, it was a return to the Garden.

     But are we keeping this form? Quite apparently: no. We are determined to go back to the old form – with a vengeance. It is reported that after declining during 2020, carbon dioxide levels have rebounded, and in May carbon dioxide emissions rose to 419 parts per million, “the highest such measurement in the 63 years that the data has been recorded.” [iv]

     This looks like it will be an opportunity lost, and that is a great shame.      

     Many expect that technology will save us. Indeed, technological improvements are coming, and we need those badly. But the problem cannot be solved by technological fixes alone – and every new technology comes with its own, new set of problems. (Gas-powered buggies solved the problem of horse-manure pollution in nineteenth century cities.) Now, electric cars are touted as the fix-all so we can keep driving as we wish: but surprise! – they require power (coal? gas? solar? nuclear?) and their battery materials will necessitate mining on a scale that I doubt we have ever seen before. I know what mining is: I grew up in a gold-mining town.[v] Kirkland Lake was built in the nineteen-twenties on the side of a large, beautiful lake. I have a picture of my father rowing on it in the nineteen-thirties. By the fifties, when I was growing up, the lake was gone. It was filled in with a shiny greenish sludge that we called “The Slimes,” and that we, as children, played on: a mucky swill of crushed rock, chemical-laden tailings, cyanide, arsenic, and God knows what else. There are other such Slimes all over Northern Ontario and Quebec.

     No: in addition to technological improvements, we need to change behaviour if we are going to fix this problem. We need a new form: a form of doing less and consuming less, a form of sustainable economics and sustainable life.[vi] As many have pointed out, it is not possible to obtain infinite growth from a finite system (earth). And so, what to do?

     We can start by buying less stuff, and when we do buy stuff, acquire things that last longer and that can be repaired. We can travel less. Zoom to work; Zoom to out-of-town business meetings. If your recalcitrant employer resists, fight hard for the right to stay home. If we have travelled twice a year for breaks or vacations, make it once a year. I would say park the cruise ships, but if we must cruise, make it a biannual trip rather than an annual one. And we know the rest. Simply drive less. Combine trips. Don’t idle our cars while Suzie dashes into the 7-11 for a Big Gulp. Take the train. Go to into twenty-eight-day rehab, if necessary, to recover from our addiction to monster-sized SUV’s and pick-up trucks; drive smaller, more efficient vehicles. At home, if we mow our lawns once a week with a gas mower, make it every week and a half, or even two weeks. If we eat beef twice a week, make it once a week…and so on. It is not about denying ourselves. It is about moderating.    

     Canadians – and I know this will be painful – could get rid of their second fridges, those beer fridges in the basement, and recycle them.  It is a lot to ask, I know, but we could hold ceremonies to assuage the grief.

     While we are at it – if you are a person with an actual investment portfolio – dump the fossil fuel holdings and put your money in renewables or ask your mutual fund managers to do the same. And it goes without saying that we need to support and pressure our politicians to move aggressively on renewable energy infrastructure and climate improvement targets.

     It is not easy to change habits; I more than understand this. It is all about human “wanting.” We all want to get ours. It is a trait built into us, and one that is cleverly exploited by marketers and the corporate colonizers of culture. Part of me (if I had the money) could jilt my trusting and faithful seven-year-old Subaru and trade it in on a hot, gas-guzzling, 800 horsepower Saleen “Black Label” Mustang and drive the beast at over a hundred-miles-an-hour all the way to Texas. A ’68 GTO with that saucy ram-air 400 cubic inch V-8 and the four-barrel carb would do also. Well, no wait – not Texas: too many gun-toting, Covid-denying, anti-masking, voter-suppression knuckleheads there, so no, never Texas. California, then. Yes! – a big road trip to California: I’ll roar across the Golden Gate and then I’ll floor it all the way back via Oregon and the Dakotas, thereby burning up a few hundred gallons of gas. Fun!

     But in truth, I expect that I would feel no better after the binge. No doubt I would call up my Subaru and ask if I could come over, hat in hand, to see if we could reconcile and get back together.

     In any case, if we want to save ourselves and the planet, those times are over, or ought to be over. Time to find other ways to have fun, closer to home.    

     There is a fatal flaw in our culture. It is that we share this tacit belief that if an individual wants to do something, and is able to do that thing, then that person should do that thing, or has a right to do that thing. But this is faulty logic, because it leaves out a very fundamental component: the consequences, intended or not, of the action. So, if you can afford a Lincoln Navigator, then by all means, get it. If you are billionaire Bill Gates and his soon-to-be-ex, Melinda, and want a 66,000 square foot home (Xanadu 2.0!) for two people, go for it! If you are smiling Jeff Bezos and want to fly yourself into space in your own rocket, do it! There is no thought at all for the social and environmental consequences of these actions. Of course, it is not just the wealthy and their extravagances; I include myself. We all do this, all the time, and salve our consciences by telling ourselves the consequences are small or don’t matter because we have a right to “ours.”

     And so, it is a moral matter; but it is also a spiritual matter, a matter important to our simple human wellbeing.

     We really know in our hearts that materialism and the acquisition of things, beyond an essential level of comfort and security in our lives, do not make us any happier.[vii] That is old news. We never run out of desire but satisfying every want does not necessarily benefit us. The Buddhists point out that desires are inexhaustible, and their practice is to vow to put an end to them, knowing that the best we can do, in fact, is to steward these. The great Yogic teacher, Paramahansa Yogananda said to “put a hedge around your wants.” However, we do not have to look to Eastern cultures for this wisdom; in the Western tradition, from the Stoics on, the philosophers have recommended not necessarily the abandonment of desire, but rather the regulating of it. [viii]

     A moral matter: going forward, we must think of consequences not just for ourselves, but also, consider our children and grandchildren and beyond. In the aboriginal cultures of North America, a common precept when considering a course of action is to reflect on not just ourselves, but the “seven generations” that will follow. [ix]

     We do know what we need to do, where we need to go. It is only a question of will, of whether we will do it. Many are doing this: people who are already moving ahead on this good path. I invite myself, and one and all, to accompany them.

______________________________

Notes

[i] Meaning, in its simplest terms, a state of constant monitoring. Foucault, Michael. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Pantheon Books, 1977.

[ii] De Santiago, Edward. “How Much Fuel Does a Cruise Ship Use?” Love to Know, www.cruises.lovetoknow.com /wiki/How_Much_Fuel_Does_a_Cruise_Ship_Use. Accessed 5 June 2021.

[iii] White, E. B. “Sootfall and Fallout.” The Golden Age of the American Essay, edited by Phillip Lopate, Anchor Books, 2021, pp. 171-182.

[iv] Gammon, Katherine. “Global Carbon Dioxide Level Continued to Rise Despite Pandemic.” The Guardian, 6 June 2021.

[v] McDonald, Joshua. “The Island With no Water: How Foreign Mining Destroyed Banaba.” The Guardian, 8 June 2021.

[vi] Victor, Peter A. Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster. 1st ed., Edward Elgar Publishers, 2009.

[vii] Long-term happiness studies, such as the Harvard study begun in 1938, have confirmed this repeatedly. As material wealth increased over the decades, median happiness stayed the same, and was related to other factors, such as quality of relationships, etc., not wealth and spending. Noethen, Robin. “A Study Lasting Over 80 Years Might Change Your View of Happiness.” Curious. https://medium.com/curious/a-study-lasting-over-80-years-might-change-your-view-on-happiness-33a28cdc6611. Accessed 9 June 2021.

[viii] Loori, John Daido. The Eight Gates of Zen: Spiritual Practice in an American Zen Monastery. Dharma Communications, 1992, p. 249.

Yogananda, Paramahansa. The Science of Religion. Self-Realization Fellowship, 1982, p. 28.

The idea of “moderation in all things,” is attributed to the Greek poet Hesiod (c.700 bc).

[ix] I first heard this in a workshop with Jake Swamp-Tekaronianeken, a Mohawk Chief, an ambassador for peace, and the founder of the Tree of Peace Society. It is a simple idea changes how one think about the consequences of one’s actions in the world.

______________________________

Resources

– 350 Org. https://350.org/. Founded by Bill McKibben and colleagues with the hope that knowledge and campaigning, we could limit carbon dioxide emissions to 350 parts per million. As noted in the essay, we are now at 419 parts per million.

– David Suzuki Foundation. https://davidsuzuki.org/. Suzuki is a scientist and a naturalist; his foundation educates, and advocates for sensible environmental policy. Suzuki himself, over 80, is a Canadian national treasure.

See “Ten Reasons to be Hopeful About Climate Action.” David Suzuki Foundation. https://davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/ten-reasons-hopeful-about-climate-action/. I am not as optimistic as Suzuki is, but then again, he is smarter than I am! 🙂

– Gates, Bill. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need. Alfred A. Knopf, 2021. Ideas on technological fixes to help avoid catastrophic climate change.

– McKibben, Bill (Ed.). A Global Warming Reader: A Century of Writing about Climate Change. OR Books, 2011.

– Kolbert, Elizabeth. Field Notes from a Catastrophe. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006. A “boot camp” primer on the real situation we are in. Of course, it is now 15 years later.

– Norgaard, Kari Marie. Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life. MIT Press, 2011. Concerns the mechanisms that contribute to denial of the situation.

– Rosen, Julia. “The Science of Climate Change Explained: Facts, Evidence and Proof.” The New York Times, May 12, 2021. A terrific summary.

– United Nations Climate Action: Climate Reports. https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/reports. These reports are ongoing and updated regularly.