How Many Scientists Does It Take?

How many scientists does it take to screw in a light bulb? One to screw it in, and another 14,999 to convince us it is actually screwed in.

Like a scientist, the way I can tell if my light bulb is screwed in properly is to look at the results. When I flick the switch, does it  light up? If yes, screwed in. If no, not screwed in.

Speaking of screwed, look at capitalism. Or consumerism. Or the patriarchy. Or war. Democracy, extractive resource industries... the list goes on and on. Look at the results.

Do we like the world we have created? Are things functioning smoothly? How is the health of the atmosphere? The oceans? Is there an absence of poverty, homelessness, and war?

Are global citizens happy and mentally robust? Is there income equity and equality? Is racism increasing, or decreasing? Are we getting smarter? Are we evolving into the best we can be?

Do we respect life? All life? Is it precious, and if so, is that reflected in our behaviour? Do we live in healthy, loving and compassionate communities?

It only takes one person to see that things are not going as well as they could. The results of business as usual are grim to say the least. So scientists are again warning us of the consequences of keeping on doing what we have been doing. Is anybody listening?

If so, are they changing their behaviour in order to move from being the problem to being the solution?

Essentially, the 15,000 scientist said (again):

Dear Human Family,  

Our current ways of doing things have been hurtling us toward the brink for decades. There have been warnings for hundreds of years. In 1992 we issued our own warning. 

Since then humanity has failed to make sufficient progress in solving environmental challenges, and alarmingly, most of them are getting worse. 

Now, in addition to deforestation, pollution, habitat loss, overpopulation and overconsumption, climate mayhem threatens our very existence. 

If we don't act soon there'll be catastrophic biodiversity loss and untold amounts of human misery. Our planet may develop conditions that are not conducive to life, including humanity.

Time is running out. 

We are still here, and we are still warning you of the dangers of your ways, and the dangerous denial you are immersed in. Join us. Help us. Help yourselves.

Signed, 

15,000 Concerned Scientists 

P.S. Please heed our waring this time, and adopt new, more Earth friendly ways of living.  For example, use less fossil fuel transportation, enjoy a plant based diet, adopt 100% organic methods of agriculture, protect our last remaining wild places, consume less, have fewer children, and help build a more equitable, stable, and sustainable planet. Also, please end the infinite economic growth model - it's killing everything.

Or die. 

Thank you for listening. This time. Please don't make us do this again. 

"Hypocrites!"

I would argue that these tailings ponds (and many others) leach toxic substances into the Athabasca River.
Because I use fossil fuels does not invalidate my point. Research has shown toxic leaching is happening.
I would like an "oil activist" to respond to this without telling me, "You're a hypocrite, so shut up".

With Jane Fonda recently conducting a tour of Alberta's tar sands, I was ready for the predictable backlash from oil activists (yes, it's a thing). I was not disappointed.

Often when anyone tries to defend the environment, they are labelled hypocrites. They point out how Fonda arrived in Fort McMurray in a plane powered by the fossil fuels she seems to be speaking out against. They may not realize it, but they are committing a logical fallacy, or error in reasoning.

The logical fallacy of Tu Quoque (pronounced "too kwoh-kway"), Latin for "you too", seeks to avoid responding to criticism by turning it back on the accuser. It assumes the accusers argument is wrong because they "do it too". It attacks the person, not the argument, and it is both wrong arguing and wrong thinking.

Oil activists and other anti-environment types (if you aren't for it, you're against it), often use attacks on the other side involved by making blatant or subtle efforts to sabotage, undercut or demean them. This also is used to make the speaker look good, right, moral, trustworthy or in other ways better than their opponent.

But the whole purpose of an argument, or discussion, is not make yourself look good. It is to address the issue at hand. It is to be involved in a communication process whose goal is the growth of both personal and mutual understanding. Personal attacks are a no-no. Please stick to the argument.

Because the celebrities that speak out against the tar sands consume fossil fuels to get there, does not invalidate their argument that this extractive industry is harmful to life in general.

And it is. The tailings ponds alone are an environmental catastrophe - if birds land in them they die. Thousands have died in them already, and more will in the future, despite all the sound cannons they blast off on a regular basis to prevent birds from doing what comes naturally. The environmental NGO Boreal Songbird Initiative has estimated that some 166 million birds could be killed over the next 30 to 50 years as a result of tar sands extraction.

Another problem with using the "you too" personal attack is that there are currently not any viable alternatives to fossil fuels. So how, exactly, is one to get to the open pit mines of Fort McMurray without burning fossil fuels, in order to have a discussion about fossil fuels?

I wonder if we could successfully remove the opportunity for the tu quoque error in communicating if  we walked to the tar sands wearing "no fossil fuel footwear" and a woollen outfit? And lived caves and grew all our own food? And didn't have computers?

Better yet, maybe when our opponents dismiss our arguments by saying we are hypocrites, we could respond by saying,

"You know, that was a personal attack, so you automatically lose the argument. Sorry.

If you'd like to re-offer your last comment without the personal attack then you may still convince me, but otherwise... thanks for the discussion.

Like Jane, I'll take my win and go home."

Hello Good People Of Earth

Hello good people of Earth, still the nicest planet in the known universe. While my longest break from blogging since 2009 was very relaxing, I really missed writing here. I missed the interactions that we have while sharing thoughts and ideas.

Most of all, I missed sharing our deep desire to live differently upon this planet that we love so much.

Therapist William Glasser writes that humans' deepest desires are: 1) to love and be loved, and 2) to do something one believes is worthwhile.

For Linda and I, maintaining the Not Buying Anything blog fulfills both. Here we express our love for Earth, for nature, and for all of you who visit here. When we read comments together, we feel the love from readers. We like it a lot, and think it is a worthwhile effort.

But an occasional break is nice.

Since our summer sabbatical began there have been oil spills, impassioned pleas to check global climate change, the strangest US election I have ever witnessed, and an over-the-top militarized response to peaceful protesters with legitimate concerns.

But still only crickets from the MSM and most of the general public. Where is the outrage?

20 years ago we had a coffee mug that said, "If you aren't outraged you aren't paying attention."  Two decades have passed, during which time things have continued to deteriorate, and still no outrage.

Linda and I talked recently about updating the slogan for today's situation. We came up with:

"If you aren't outraged you may be a brain-dead zombie."

Except instead of stumbling around saying, "brains!", we say, "More shopping!" "More money!" "More stuff!" "More!"

What does it take to get the attention of consumers across the land blithely pretending that nothing is wrong with the state of the world, and that their actions aren't directly contributing to the whole mess?

Obviously this blog must go on. Thank you for all your encouragement.  It is good to be back.

Electric Vehicles Reduce Demand For Fossil Fuels

The problem with electric cars. I prefer my bicycle over internal combustion or electric vehicles.

When are line ups good news? When they are at electric vehicle charging stations. Good news because these line ups are a sign that our world is undergoing an energy revolution, the likes of which have not been seen since 1970 when crude oil triumphed after 60 years, and achieved #1 status in the global energy mix.

It was Henry Ford and the internal combustion engine that pushed our transition from coal and wood as the major energy sources, to liquefied fuels suitable for the family car. Our insatiable thirst for this new fuel helped create some of the largest, most profitable, and most harmful corporations ever.

Exploitative oil companies think that our fossil fuel future will be pretty much the same as it is now, at least the next 50 years. And their fabricated anti-change propaganda is trying to make sure that this is the case. It is all occurring at a time when the experts are saying we need to transition to a carbon-neutral world right now. Not 50 years from now.

Koch Industries is one such company that has benefited from petroleum production for our car-based society. The Koch brother's father started the company after inventing a way to refine heavy oil into petrol. Now his climate-denying sons are among the richest men in the world, and they like to spend their money obstructing a change that may be slowed, but won't be obstructed.

Meanwhile, line ups are likely to continue until a solar powered infrastructure to support demand is developed. Currently the growth in sales of EVs (electric vehicles) is 50% annually, and this is projected to continue to the end of this decade.

The transportation world is changing, now. We may not hear much about it in mainstream circles, but all over the world people are making choices that are ushering in a new energy era. If electric cars continue to jolt the car and oil industries, there may be a fossil fuel flop in the future.

That would be good news, too. More good news would be if bicycles also figured prominently in the new energy ethos. 

The Olduvai Theory

While I don't have the answers, I like to ask lots of questions about the way things are, or could be.

For example, I often ask myself what all the resource extraction, fossil fuel burning, and shopping will lead to.

The mainstream media does not talk about limits to growth much, but that doesn't mean other people haven't been thinking about how nature is responding to the demands of industrial lifestyles. The questioning started a long time ago, and has persisted to the present day.

Frequently, the answers are not what we like to hear.

Just recently the UN released a climate change report that included "stark warnings" and a recommendation that carbon emissions go to zero soon to avoid further damage. But similar warnings about the dangers of industrial civilization have been given before.

In 1893 historian Henry Adams could envision the American dream of unlimited opportunity and indefinite progress turning into a waking nightmare of the moral dilemmas of a capitalist society. He saw too that though science was making tremendous advances in the conquest of Nature, the odds were growing that a dehumanized mankind might lose the war.

It seemed probable to Adams that the ultimate result of exploiting new energy systems would be the "apocalyptic end of history itself".

Building on Adams' work and the work of others since, Richard C. Duncan came up with the Olduvai Theory in 1989. It attempted to answer questions about where industrial civilization was heading if it stayed on course.

The Olduvai Theory states that the life expectancy of industrial civilization is approximately 100 years: from about 1930 to about 2030.

Duncan believes that the cause of the collapse of industrial civilization, if and when it occurs, will be that the electric power grids go down and never come back up. He concluded that if we continued down the fossil fuel road, and did not implement sustainable strategies that industrial civilization would collapse.

He says, "The overshoot and collapse of industrial civilization was assured once humanity became dependent on the rapid exploitation of nonrenewable resources on a finite planet. Moreover our insatiable appetite for electric power has accelerated the collapse and steepened the decline."

We may still have time to avert an Olduvai situation from unfolding in a worst case scenario, but it will require massive and immediate action from all of humanity of the sort recently recommended by the UN report.

Some say we have until 2022 to take action. After that it is thought that we will pass the tipping point and nothing we do will be able to reverse the damage.

So what is all this leading to?

Will it be an oily Olduvai dystopia of death, destruction and shopping on our way to a post-industrial stone age, or a sun-driven sustainable simple living sensation that takes humanity into a glorious future?

This is what we should be asking ourselves as well as our elected officials, and we should be asking now.

Electric Hogs And Fossil - Fuelled Dinos

Harley-Davidson is introducing an electric-powered motorcycle.

"We think that the trends in both EV technology and customer openness to EV products, both automotive and motorcycles, is only going to increase, and when you think about sustainability and environmental trends, we just see that being an increasing part of the lifestyle and the requirements of riders."  

- M. Levatich, president of Harley-Davidson

I find it interesting that at the same time the dinosaurs in Canada's federal government are giving a green light to the old fashioned notion of the Northern Gateway Tar Oil Pipeline project, a major motorcycle company is announcing their first ever electric motorcycle.

Fossil-fuelled climate change deniers have been put on notice again - your dirty energy era is coming to a close.

The pencil pushers at the Harley company can obviously see something our politicians can't (or at least are refusing to acknowledge). While the rest of the world is going renewable, Harper and the rest of his Petrosaurs are trying to build a petro state.

For example, a forward-thinking individual could ride one of these electric hogs all the way across Canada. Emissions free.

“We want to do the right thing for future generations…change is inevitable as we move toward more sustainable energy choices. There is a readiness among Canadians, an exciting time.”

—C. Misch, vice-president Sun Country

Thanks to a new initiative along the longest national highway in the world, the Trans Canada Highway, a person can ride or drive into electric recharging stations along its 6000 km length. And for now, they are all free.

The innovative folks at Sun Country Highway know the same thing that Harley-Davidson, entrepreneurs, and millions of North American citizens know - the future is in electric vehicles and renewable energy, not fossil fuel pipelines through pristine mountain ranges.

"Canada continues to resist action on addressing its major emissions growth problem - the rapidly increasing greenhouse gas pollution from oilsands production.”  

- Simon Dyer

The Oil Zombies

"The oil zombies are coming, the oil zombies are coming!"

Warning! The zombie apocalypse is nigh.

Look out British Columbia, the oil zombies are stumbling their way west with outstretched festering arms and mumbling, "We need oil, pipelines, LNG terminals, coal exports, nuclear, rail transport of hazardous materials and fracking."

While the living are investing in planet-saving technologies like solar, wind, biogas, tidal and other sustainable methods, the undead are flogging their dying energy source - fossil fuels.

"Never mind brains and tissue, we need pipelines," the piles of pus implore. "Lots of pipelines."

The only way to dispose of the oily undead is to expose them to logic and reality. No environment, no economy.

If we fail to evolve our way out of the impending fossil fuelled apocalypse, there will soon be zombie ghost tankers laden with zombie oil leaking along our fragile coastline.

Say NO to the oil zombies.

What Do We All Have In Common?

Boreal forest in northern Alberta, Canada is sustainable indefinitely if cared for properly

"The Earth is what we all have in common." 
- Wendell Berry

Canadian tar sands where Boreal forest used to be - not sustainable
 Garth Lenz photo

We should take better care of it.