Power & Energy

We in the west are the beneficiaries of the development of energy originally produced by the burning of coal. I am old enough to remember the arrival of the coal man who provided fuel stored in the basement of my house - a scary person, because he was necessarily covered in soot. Later the oil truck arrived to deliver fuel. Still later, my father had a heat pump installed in a newer house - in the late 1970s. His motivation probably had little to do with saving the planet, but saving money.

Canada is blessed with much electricity produced by hydro electric power and my province has more resources than others. But it is human power that also plays a role. There is news this morning that young people in Montana have been successful in suing their state government asking for the right to “a clean and healthful environment” through a provision relating to energy projects. It’s the first successful case following a number of others started by young people. The impact on climate has to be a consideration in approving projects, and more rulings will now have a better chance of success. The suit was brought on behalf of the Children’s Trust and it involved 16 young people aged 5=22.

The oldest of these will be 49 in 2050. I have a friend who is now in his 102nd year and he has said that he thinks 144 would be a good age for a lifetime. He is a retired professor and when he retired at 75 as a University professor, he thought working five hours a day on academic research would be a good aim. He still does - without either a TV or a computer - but attends both opera and Blue Jays games as a fan. His environmental impact is much lower than mine - and since he has never driven a car, it undoubtedly is.

The likelihood of his making age 144 is small. But the politicians who want to slow down the use of climate change might think about how old they will be in 2050. The premier of Alberta will be 79 that year. I’m in a better position than she is to imagine what life will be like for her then. She won’t have her current job. She may have health issues relating to climate change or be affected directly by floods or fires. But basically she will have left the problem of pausing the support of renewable energy for a bit - as she has just done- to the current five and 22 year olds. I wonder how she will feel then.

What we generally lack is imagination and a realistic picture of human nature - the latter with its combination of strength and limitations. Politicians start with the best of intentions - to make the world the better place. After a term of office the intention becomes to stay in office. They like power after having a taste of it. Companies are good at telling us that climate change depends on us as individuals so they can keep doing what they do, which is to make a profit. They like power too.

That doesn’t mean that individual actions don’t count. I continue to recycle in the hope that at least some of my trash gets re-used. I send letters to my premier urging him to reconsider his original promise to retain the Greenbelt. Individuals matter - but governments and movements matter even more. Young people are teaching us that the law matters. What if all these elements converged? That’s a story that imagination could start to tell.

Local & Global

This morning’s parish newsletter arrives as usual with a reminder of a coming Community Dinner. This is a project going back more than twenty years. Once a month we feed 80-100 urban poor - some occasionally homeless, but most with some kind of permanent shelter. What they don’t have on a welfare income is the ability to buy enough wholesome food. We try to provide that. It is the least we can do for these regular guests that we have come to know over the years - and sometimes they tell us their stories.

Stories count in the world of climate change and too often they are horror stories. The fires in Hawaii have hit home and in a recent Zoom meeting, people talked about the places they had been - now completely devastated. Being there in the past made it matter. They understood the loss.

What is difficult is the stories we don’t hear. I’ve been reading the book, Not Too Late, which is full of stories of parts of the world with which I have no direct connection. Many are heartbreaking as the people affected suffer the climate degradation caused by mining, deforestation and other forms of exploitation that lay waste their world, while we ignore them. What if it were mandatory for any community like mine to adopt a far off island where the people face the disappearance of their land through erosion and flooding and hear their stories regularly in their own words? It might knock some sense into us as we recognize what we are doing to our island home and its effects on our siblings.

Holiday Pursuits

When I looked at two books on a coffee table, I was amused at the common titles with the same words. After years of never reading fiction, I am doing so at a furious pace now. It took me a while to discover the Canadian writer Louise Penny - and even more time to get a copy of the first one on the public library app, since it begins a series - and everyone wants to read the novels in sequence. While it took her five years to write this first one, I devoured it in about six hours. Luckily she has speeded up to produce far more. There are crime writers who like to create deeply flawed characters, but I am happy with Gamache - and the chief detectives of writers Donna Leon and Susan Hill. None of them are perfect but they and their accompanying families and cohorts live for me through dozens of books and become friends.

Drawing is also something I have pursued for years - sometimes in classes and for this month, just on my own. The library book has projects in pencil, pastel, watercolour, acrylics and oils - and I have plenty of supplies of all but the last - not a good choice for an indoor environment in any case. It’s not about creating masterpieces, but learning to see.

Insights from novels and paints - a good way to spend a staycation.

Productivity

In reading 4000 Hours again - a common practice, because I rush through books and then often re-read to absorb more of the details rather than the main argument - the author spends a good deal of time debunking our notions of productivity and our lack of control over our work and our inability to focus - and thus our fritter away our lives.

I was reminded of an interaction with a grandson about 12 years ago now. I was called into action as a sitter for two small boys on an afternoon when I had a tight deadline. I thought I had come up with a clever idea to keep them busy for the next hour so I could finish my assignment. I presented them with two large sheets of plain paper and a collection of markers and crayons. My instruction was to keep busy- and use the entire sheet of paper - while I got on with my work. “This will keep them occupied for a good long time”, I thought. I was wrong. The younger one returned within five minutes with the assignment completed - even with some decoration. There are many kinds of productivity.

Finitude

I have a new word in my vocabulary. It comes from a book that attracted my attention when I escaped from being too involved with a project, walked some final letters to the post office - because there are still people without email - and crossed the street to my neighborhood independent bookstore. Book City combines a large range of magazines, new books and remaindered ones in a relatively small space. I tend to head toward remaindered, after looking at the new releases.

But this time a new one published in 2023 appeared to have my name on it. Four Thousand Weeks, Time Management for Mortals. by Oliver Burkeman. Its cover reads Embrace Your Limits, Change Your Life. My life needed a change. Being burned out as a retiree ought to be an oxymoron.

Four thousand weeks is what you get if you live to be 80 years old. I’m already beyond half way to 4700 weeks if I make it to 90. The introductory chapter is headed, In the Long Run, We’re all Dead. Time Management seems like a solution and I have read all the books for years. This one does take a different and salutary direction.

The author is quite witty and well read - he has lived through both Trump and the Pandemic nad like me, still here. Perhaps the kernel of what he says comes from - of all people, Martin Heidigger, who defeats all students of philosophy by being more obsessed with the subject of finitude than any other. An d there is the addition of the two strikes of being a member of the Nazi party for ten years, and being almost impossible to read. Burkeman though, helps us through Heidigger by pointing to the question, somewhat like Hamlet, :What does it mean to be”? He says the only real question is whether we are willing to confront that one or not. The answer is that we are mortal. We are born here, we live here, we die here. All we can do is live our one miraculous life - a gift that never depended on us.

I’ve also been reading a report this morning of the results of some consultations - with one group of people saying, “If only we could get back to the past when everything was the way we wish it were now, it would be so wonderful” - and another group saying, “What do we have to do to make the future exactly the way we want it to be - which will be so wonderful”. I tend to join the second group with all its worry and anxiety. But the truth dawns. The only life over which I/they have any control is the one I/they have right now. It’s not as if we can manage time. Our life is our time - with limits.. It’s not as though our choices don’t matter because clearly they have consequences. But to pretend that we can fully control the future by our actions or recover the past is crazy. Learning finitude is important before it’s too late - both for me and everyone else.