Civility

Is it even possible in politics? The new game is, “Be as nasty as possible toward the OTHER”. As I watch our American neighbour I am struck by how it always has to have something or someone to be against to affirm its own identity. When that stopped being Russia, it turned inward and was against gays and then moved on to trans-sexuals. But now it is anyone in the other party. And politicians say it is ok for a presidential nominee to denounce the military just because the other party is equally nasty. Has it really come to this?

As observers of events in other parts of the world, some Canadians perhaps are less judgmental but we have not the same history as many others who live here. That’s why I would highly recommend a book I came across recently with the title The Wall Between, What Jews and Palestinians don’t Want to Know About Each Other. The authors, who represent both faiths turned their own conversations into a useful book that details history that most of us have neither lived through nor understood. What they have tried to share is a principle of justice. We’re at a very early stage of awareness let alone judgement. It’s a place to start.

Two visions

There are a lot of articles about the two American parallel universes that we are going to have to live with for the coming months. I’m already trying to wean myself from any political articles on this without total success. I was nevertheless impressed by another duality that Tom Friedman talks about in the the New York Times this morning - These are networks of nations with opposing battlefronts. He calls them “resistance” and “inclusion”.

They also have some common elements, One tries to bury the past. The other tries to work toward a more connected and balanced future. Russia and Ukraine are one pair. The Middle East is more complicated but also has opposing forces. The same alternatives might be seen in the United States.

Life is not quite that simple, of course. There are elements of the past that we are discarding and immediately adapting the new thing - like an acquaintance who thinks AI can solve all kinds of things that it clearly can’t. We have abandoned some of the civility that creates a greater degree of trust. On the other hand we hang on to things that don’t seem to please anybody in a new and changing world. But perhaps “either-or” needs to give way to “both-and”.

The Funniest News of the Year - So Far

Things have changed since my high school days and those before that. My father could recite all the counties in Ontario because that was deemed important yo know when he went to school early in the twentieth century.. I learned the main features of Canadian Federation with the acronymn, LACEFUR, because in Grade Ten we were supposed to understand the country we lived in. I no longer know what these letters stand for of course. Nevertheless if I needed the terms of Confederation again I could look them up - perhaps in an encylopedia. I still keep an Oxford Dictionary on the shelf to shed light to an unfamiliar word.

It’s just as well I don’t live in Escambia County, Florida - the state’s, westernmost and oldest county - because they have taken book banning to a whole new level, according to a favourite columnist pf mine in the Washington Post. They temporarily pulled Webster’s Dictionary from school shelves of along with other books, including the Guinness Book of World Records, much loved by young grandsons some years ago.

Horrors - think of all the words some kid could look up - perhaps, “black”, “white” - or even “they”. Sixteen hundred books were on the list - including two children’s Bibles. The good news is that a lawsuit against the ban brought by some publishers and writers’ groups is allowed to proceed.

Ann Patchett, an author I like, has protested the banning of one of her early novels, The Patron Saint of Liars. It’s not perfidy that is the objection here, but something she thought the book banners might actually applaud - like unwed mothers delivering their bobies at full tem giving them up for adoption.. You can meet her at her own bookstore- and on her Instagam account. Try the link here.

Anyone who thinks history can go away might be surprised.

Promises?

I’ve been away from writing here for some time since I am working on other projects. Nevertheless I feel compelled to share some things to watch at the coming COP28 Climate summit from an article in the Guardian. the Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, is the CEO of the UAE’s state oil company, Adnoc. He contends that only someone in the fossil fuel industry can call the others to account.

He is also head of a renewables company. But here are some of the problems:

• Adnoc has a terrible record in reducing emissions. They have huge expansion plans.

• The United Arab Emirates also fail to report methane emissions for almost a decade.

• The industries spend their profits on new exploration. It is clear that new resources become much more challenging to find - and getting them out of the ground costs energy in the process. That means our costs will rise to help them stay in business.

• Renewables can’t come fast enough to save us, if they don’t change to renewables themselves.

So we can watch this rather bizarre scenario and see what happens!

Doing it Right

The Washington Post recently published an article about a poll that asked the best ways for our individual actions to tackle climate change. It states that most of us get it wrong.

These were the items in order that people polled in the USA thought were the best ones:

• Installing solar panels

• Recycling

• Driving an electric car

• Taking fewer plane trips

• Using a heat pump for air conditioning an heating

• Choosing an electric stove over a gas one

• Living in a smaller house or apartment

• Not eating meat

• Driving more slowly

• Not eating dairy

I wanted to see how I scored.

• Estimating the value of recycling: I do it, but I know that most of the things discarded end up in landfill. I’m trying to reduce my use of plastics by paying more for containers in glass, but I still have far too much garbage. I live in an apartment with a gas stove installed so I can take no credit there. I drive slowly in town only and not often, though the grandchildren borrow the car for trips Nevertheless, the experts say these are not climate solutions in any case, and they don’t make much difference.

• The best steps were flying less and cutting out meat and dairy. I win on the first flying only twice since the end of 2019 - but I lose on the second two = perhaps I eat less of both than previously, but that is more a factor of age than choice. The article says, “Project Drawdown estimates that if three-quarters of people around the world adopted a plant-rich diet by 2050, they could avoid the release of more than 100 gigatons of emissions.” What is noticeable here is how small individual actions have a huge collective impact - but they do have to be collective.

• The winner for both the experts and the people is solar panels. I don’t have a choice on that one personally, but I can be an advocate for them.

• Some of the other items are proportionate to size. If everyone did an energy audit and responded. there would be some true benefit.

• Our most important action is at the ballot box to vote for climate friendly policies and monitor them in between elections. I get a B plus, I guess, for writing to the premier of Ontario to protest his opening up environmentally protected land for housing. Our combined protests have at least led to the firing of a chief of staff and a resignation of a cabinet minister. Our task is not over.

But neither is our need to reduce our carbon footprint when it is one of the largest in the world. Every choice we make enhances that world or diminishes it.