"Conformists may kill civilizations"

Well, duh! It shouldn't take a whole lot to realize that. Still, this article raises interesting points.

Hal Whitehead of Dalhousie University ... and Pete Richerson of the University of California, Davis, have modelled how different learning strategies fare in different environments. They found that conformist social learning - imitating and emulating what the majority are doing - may also cause the demise of societies....

Behaviour that is genetically determined can adapt to environmental change by the slow process of natural selection, but only when that change is also slow. Rapid change puts a premium on the capacity of individuals to learn through exploration and experience, and to adapt their behaviour accordingly.

Figuring things out for yourself can be time-consuming, however, and a waste of time when others around you have already acquired the relevant knowledge....

"[1] Societies should promote individual learning and innovation over cultural conformity, and [2] the models for social learning should be individuals who have demonstrated that they understand how to live with the current environmental trends," says Whitehead. [my emphasis]

Translation of the second point: If you must follow someone else's example or be instructed by them, then make your role model a present-day environmentalist. That is, adapt your behaviour and learning to our changing environment. If enough of us do that, then we MIGHT yet save our civilization.

Alternatively, carry on as you are; the planet will do just fine without us.

Regarding the second point, post-secondary institutions must look seriously at what the hell they've been doing. "Higher learning" has become an industry and post secondary institutions little more than diploma mills whose aims are to provide a labour force to big business.

Moreover, far too many graduate students have discovered that conformity is THE ONLY WAY they'll be permitted to climb the academic ladder. Innovation and originality are taboo, given that these challenge the academics already in power. Modern post secondary institutions effectively discourage, weed out and reject non-conformists. It wasn't always this way and is anathema to the way education should be.

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So, You Wanna Eat Meat?

Our long evolution from primate to man has shown that humans are herbivors. And the science is there to prove it. Our bodies are not equipped with large fangs to rip flesh from bones, our hands are not (and never have been) designed to catch and kill prey and our large intestine does not provide for easy passage of ingested flesh.

Don't take my word for it. Read what the professionals have to say.

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine President Dr. Neal Barnard says in his book, The Power of Your Plate, in which he explains that “early humans had diets very much like other great apes, which is to say a largely plant-based diet, drawing on foods we can pick with our hands. Research suggests that meat-eating probably began by scavenging -- eating the leftovers that carnivores had left behind. However, our bodies have never adapted to it. To this day, meat-eaters have a higher incidence of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other problems.”

In fact, our hands are perfect for grabbing and picking fruits and vegetables. Similarly, like the intestines of other herbivores, ours are very long (carnivores have short intestines so they can quickly get rid of all that rotting flesh they eat). We don’t have sharp claws to seize and hold down prey. And most of us (hopefully) lack the instinct that would drive us to chase and then kill animals and devour their raw carcasses.

We seem to be hung up on the idea the we HAVE to eat meat! This is learned conditioning which is continually reinforced in our society.

Top nutritional and anthropological scientists from the most reputable institutions imaginable say categorically that humans are natural herbivores, and that we will be healthier today if we stick with our herbivorous roots. It may be inconvenient, but it alas, it is the truth.

Be brave, folks, break through your conditioning; do some research; get out the alternative cookbooks; enhance your health and that of our little blue planet by eliminating flesh from your diet today.

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Bury me Green

No, it's not the title of a song.

It is Friend's request. I'd never heard of a Green Burial, so went into research mode and found a cemetery that caters to those who want to be kind to Mother Earth, even after death.

More research brought me to "Green to the Grave". I'm impressed.

More people are turning to natural burials, typically much simpler than traditional ceremonies. Bodies are preserved with refrigeration or dry ice rather than embalming; cotton shrouds and biodegradable coffins replace metal or ornate wooden caskets; and the body is placed in a shallow grave instead of deep inside a concrete vault. Burials take place not in a traditional cemetery, but in a natural area destined to be protected and preserved for posterity as a woodland or nature reserve

Alas, for those of us contemplating cremation the options are not good.

Cremation, with its discharge of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and other airborne pollutants, including a few nasty ones like mercury vapor from teeth fillings, is not especially kind to the environment either.

Talking these options over Friend is enlightening. And an affirmation that even as death approaches, there is all that is Life to consider.

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Meat = Meat

I often hear people say they are eating a healthier, more environmentally conscious, animal friendly diet by omitting "red" meat from their diet.

Eating an animal's flesh is eating meat. Period.

All aspects of large scale animal farming degrade the environment and debase the lives of animals raised as food for humans.

On the issue of global warming, all animal agriculture is a nightmare, relative to producing grains and beans. In a 400 page report from the United Nation's Food and Agricultural Organization, Livestock's Long Shadow, scientists conclude that the business of raising animals for food is responsible for about 18 percent of all warming -- in fact meat causes about 40 percent more warming than all cars, trucks, and planes combined.

That is in part because turning animals into meat requires many stages of (energy intensive and polluting) production (i.e., transporting feed, animals, and meat; running feed mills, factory farms, and slaughterhouses; refrigerating carcasses during transport and in grocery stores -- chickens are at least as energy consumptive as cattle for all these stages), compared to plant foods.

Environmental Defense calculated that if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads. Imagine if we dropped all meat from our diets altogether.

And it's not just global warming, of course: In a story about chicken waste pollution, the New York Times reported in November that "[a]lthough the dairy and hog industry in states near the bay produce more pounds of manure, poultry waste has more than twice the concentration of pollutants per pound." I assume that's in part because poultry are given a lot more drugs than pigs and cattle -- because they're kept in even worse conditions and thus require more drugs.

The benefits of eating meat to our health are dubious, at best.

...the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health leads the "Meatless Mondays" campaign, which is supported by 28 other public health schools. Their goal is to cut Americans' meat-consumption, in order to lessen our risk for heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, and so on. And of course, they rightly impugn all meat, not just "red" meat.

The choice to end eating meat from our diet will help the planet recover, enhance our health and reduce animal cruelty.

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One Day Wonder: Without Meat

Kathy Fretson complied a list of statistic showing the benefits of choosing to leave meat out of our diet for one day only.

According to Environmental Defense, if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads

And if Canadians did the same thing?

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"Baffling" Finding not so Baffling

In a study of Swedish children, intended to ferret out connections between allergies and indoor pollutants, researchers came upon a "baffling" link between autism and vinyl flooring, which emits phthalates. Had the scientists studied their own conclusions, they'd not have been baffled at all.

Experts suspect that genetic and environmental factors combine to cause autism, a neurodevelopmental disorder that has increased dramatically in children over the past 20 years....

The researchers found four environmental factors associated with autism: vinyl flooring, the mother's smoking, family economic problems and condensation on windows, which indicates poor ventilation.

Notice anything about that list of four factors associated with autism? Anyone familiar with the social determinants of health (SDOH) would spot it immediately.

Family economic problems lead to living in poor conditions. Which means living in environments with cheaper floors; poorly sealed, typically single glazed windows; and addictions such as smoking which parents worn out by the stress may use to ease the strain of day-to-day survival.

In other words, this is further evidence that one of the key SDOH - income - results in poor parents being more likely to have children with autism (also allergies) than more affluent parents. It's really that simple, that stark. Inequality is bad for your health.

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Lights Out !

Earth Hour tonight.

We are being asked to turn our power off for one hour between 8:30-9:30 pm.

More than a billion people and 1,000 cities around the globe are expected to turn their lights off for Earth Hour 2009 on Saturday in a collective call to combat climate change.

That single hour reduced power consumption in Sydney by 10 per cent and reduced carbon dioxide emissions by some 25,000 tonnes.

While this collective action alone won't solve worldwide climate woes, it has brought an awareness of what can be done when we work together.

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Want to Downsize, Get Back to Basics?

Then you may be interested in this new online journal which focuses on the "small living" movement. I subscribed to its feed the moment my eye fell upon this adorable brick house tucked away in a meadow.

Until very recently, the concept of living in a space 500 sq. feet or less was definitely contrary to the American mainstream in all but the most dense of cities. In fact, from the 1950’s onward, the American home seemed to be ever increasing in size and grandiosity with little regard to the costs to either individuals or the environment....

It wasn’t until the recent decline in housing values, failure of the sub-prime housing industry, and subsequent impact to the broader U.S. and world economies that most people were willing to consider any solution out of the norm when it came to housing options. Now, however, there is an increasing amount of media attention on any form of cheap housing solution. Older inner city homes, yurts, tiny houses on wheel, houseboats, RV’s, log cabins and the like are now featuring on the evening news and regular pieces in the New York Times.

... [T]he small shift in mainstream mindset toward more modest housing options has been exciting to many members of the small home movement. But we realize that there’s a long way to go in terms of right-sizing the “American Dream”. In the meantime, the group of us on SLJ thought it would serve a useful purpose to have a website where we could regularly release articles that might prove useful to people interested in downsizing their lives to more manageable proportions.

Jump over to the Small Living Journal and have a look.

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Shell Dumps "Unprofitable" Renewable Tech

... in favour of biofuels, which environmentalists say impact global food supply.

Shell will no longer invest in renewable technologies such as wind, solar and hydro power because they are not economic, the Anglo-Dutch oil company said today. It plans to invest more in biofuels which environmental groups blame for driving up food prices and deforestation.

Executives at its annual strategy presentation said Shell, already the world's largest buyer and blender of crop-based biofuels, would also invest an unspecified amount in developing a new generation of biofuels which do not use food-based crops and are less [but still] harmful to the environment.

The company said it would concentrate on developing other cleaner ways of using fossil fuels, such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. It hoped to use CCS to reduce emissions from Shell's controversial and energy-intensive oil sands projects in northern Canada.

The company said that many alternative technologies did not offer attractive investment opportunities.

Time for a boycott of all Shell products: for motorists, businesses and residences.

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Local Forestry Leader with a Conscience

Rick Doman is the former President and CEO of Doman Industries Ltd. A good man and a local hero, he is one of the few business owners in forestry whose dealings in business, in the community and with his workers were guided by a strong social conscience.

An article written by Mr. Doman appeared in our local paper today. He talks of solutions and the need to correct mistakes of the past, including the "very poor softwood settlement" rushed through by the Harper Conservatives.

In 2003 the government also introduced new forest policies that have caused significant job loss in the B.C. forest sector. These policy changes included allowing forest companies to leave pulp logs in the woods. This caused pulp and paper companies to have to import pulp logs from as far away as Alaska at above market prices, along with importing wood chips from Washington and Oregon.

Poor policies also caused the increase of log exports, and in some cases we were importing wood chips back into B.C. from the very same logs we exported. Also the 20 per cent takeback from all coastal tenure holders with more than 200,000 annual allowable cut [AAC] was a mistake.

It would have been better to takeback AAC from forest companies that exported logs and did not operate manufacturing faculties in coastal B.C. in line with the AAC they held. This would have allowed companies who did not wish to operate manufacturing operations in coastal B.C. equal to their AAC, to give up any AAC they did not match.

Companies that did wish to operate their manufacturing operations, like Doman Industries, could have retained their AAC, thus not having to shut down operations that were efficient and would retain and create jobs in coastal B.C.

The government was advised prior to 2003 about this, it ignored the advice and its policies have caused long-term damage to forest workers, environmental standards and sustainable forests.

The crown owns about 94 per cent of B.C. forests. It is important government does not try to semi-privatize crown forests or the B.C. taxpayers will suffer even more than they have....

B.C. has been blessed by a lot of timber. If it is harvested in a sound environmentally and sustainable way, using proper stumpage systems that are fair and equitable, we can restore our forest industry.

The government was advised as early as 2001 [that] they would fail forest workers, communities, and also forest companies that wanted to grow and build a business in B.C.

It is time to correct those policies so both current and future generations of forest workers, forest dependent communities and B.C. taxpayers can once again benefit from our forests.

Advice well worth listening to.

(Hmm... wonder if Mr. Doman would consider a new career, one in politics.)

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NDP About-Faces Another Position

Anyone who has studied traffic congestion knows that if you build a highway, the cars will come. And come. And come. Until you get what the highway was designed to prevent: traffic congestion.

Once upon a time, it appeared that the NDP knew that fundamental truth too. Well, not anymore. At least not enough to protest the replacement of Vancouver's Port Mann Bridge with a ten-lane, $3.3 billion "super-sized" highway.

In a phone interview, the Straight asked [BC NDP leader Carole] James if she was in favour of B.C. transportation minister Kevin Falcon's recent announcement that the bridge will be replaced by [the proposed] structure that will be financed through a public-private partnership.

“Yes,” James confirmed from Victoria. “You have to have a bridge. You have to have a crossing across there. It's very clear that the traffic is high enough that you need to have a bridge there.”

James is equivocating. "You need to have a bridge there" doesn't logically entail "you need to have THIS bridge there." Moreover, James has reversed the position she stated in a presentation to the Union of BC Municipalities in 2007.

Two days before the arrival of former U.S. vice president and environmental celebrity Al Gore in Vancouver, she was in opposition to the then-planned $800-million twinning of the Port Mann span that Falcon had announced in 2004.

At the time, she said: “If the objective is to reduce the traffic congestion that drives commuters crazy and reduce greenhouse gases that are ruining our planet, then transit, not blacktop, has to be the priority.”

People have noticed this bewildering reversal.

Opponents of the provincial Gateway program say they are disappointed that James has done a political about-face.

“It's definitely disappointing,” Eric Doherty of the Livable Region Coalition told the Georgia Straight by phone. “But it also raises questions about whether they [NDP] are serious about tackling climate change, and also whether they are really serious about creating jobs in B.C. Jobs in the automobile sector are about exporting jobs out of the country and out of the province.”

This reminds me of the NDP's Axe the Tax campaign which so infuriated environmentalists. That was a NDP position which surprised - and failed - too.

The article is a full page. I suggest reading the whole thing, also the follow-up piece.

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A Bummer on the Environment

Who would have thought that the lowly toilet paper could cause such damage to our environment? The fluffy, luxurious, designer TP that is sold is derived from old growth trees.

"This is a product that we use for less than three seconds and the ecological consequences of manufacturing it from trees is enormous," said Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defence Council.

The processing alone adds immensely to the degradation of our planet, to say nothing about the waste systems that must contend with it after use. And Americans use far more than our share.

Americans already consume vastly more paper than any other country — about three times more per person than the average European, and 100 times more than the average person in China.

Time to clean up our act, to use less and purchase, exclusively, TP made from recycled, non-bleached paper.

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Braidwood Taser Inquiry: It gets more and more sick

Another changed testimony. From a second RCMP officer.

Constable Bill Bentley, wearing a bulletproof vest, and armed with gun, pepper spray and baton was accompanied by three other officers. As he approached Dziekanski, Bentley thought he

seemed calm and initially co-operative, but when Const. Kwesi Millington began talking to him, "he threw up his arms and began walking away from us," Bentley said.

The officers had been warned that Dziekanski couldn't speak English.

I don't blame the man for walking away! He couldn't understand a damn thing anyone was saying and that had been the case for ten-plus hours. In his position, I'd likely have done the same thing.

Bentley took Dziekanski's body language as being defiant. "That means someone doesn't want to listen to you."

How could he listen to you, you idiot?! What was the point in hearing a bunch of noises which had no meaning to him?

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Tag-Team Tars Canada's Image Further

If the Alberta tar sands aren't bad enough we have the tag duo of Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and "Environment" Minister Jim Prentice further tarring Canada's reputation with their flawed logic.

Ignatieff: "National Geographic is not going to teach me any lessons about the oilsands.... This is a huge industry. It employs Canadians from coast to coast. We have oil reserves that are going to last for the whole of the 21st century. We are where we are. We've got to clean it up, and we've got make it a sustainable place to work and live."

Rather than questioning the social and environmental value, and so ultimately the economic value, of this dirty industry and applying forward-thinking to exploring new, innovative industries which could also "employ Canadians from coast to coast," we have business as usual.

Meanwhile, Prentice blew off the National Geographic feature as "just one article," and declared the tar sands a "strategic asset" for Canada.

Apparently, "strategic" refers only to immediate, short-term gain. Clearly, our leaders have learned nothing about the severe consequences which can follow from such paucity of vision.

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The Rail Alternative

Twice a day I hear a whistle announcing the train's passage through my community. As the sound carries over the lake I wonder, once again, why is it going the wrong way.

Ever since I arrived on the east coast of Vancouver Island in the late 70's, the E&N Line hurtles one lonely passenger car from Victoria to points north in the morning, returning in the early evening. It has been a source of puzzlement and frustration for many who would ride the daily train to work in the province's capital region, except that it runs from south to north, catering mostly to tourists.

A group of dedicated volunteers have offered many solutions over the years. But at long last, two NDP MLA's, one Liberal MP and a number of Capital Region mayors have come together to support an upgrade to the E&N Line.

Several capital region mayors joined forces with New Democrat MLAs Maurine Karagianis and John Horgan and Liberal MP Keith Martin, who called transforming the E&N into a viable commuter line one of the most pressing infrastructure needs in the area.

Federal and Provincial funding is available for infrastructure, although the E&N wasn't specifically mentioned in either of the budgets.

What better way to stimulate the economy? Everyone would benefit, through increased employment to a dramatic decrease in traffic congestion as commuters and freight take to the rails.

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Conscientious Meat Eating? BAH!

Whether an animal has been raised on a farm in your community or by multi-national corporations in the Agri-business, butchering an animal for human consumption is unnecessary, a detriment to the environment and overall human health. Trying to justify killing animals for food makes no sense when we can easily survive eating a plant based diet.

.....almost all support the idea that cruelty to animals is wrong and that factory-produced meat is unjustifiably bad for the environment. However, they are not opposed to meat in and of itself, they are simply opposed to industrial meat.

.....more and more, people are also realizing the troubling connections between human starvation and eating animal products. It takes approximately 16 pounds of grain and 2,500 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat (thus feeding one or two people on meat versus approximately 16 people on grain). Much of this grain is grown in developing countries, where a large percentage of their land is used for cattle-raising for export to the United States, instead of being used to grow staple crops, which could feed local people directly. In a world where a child starves to death every 2 seconds, it seems impossible to justify such waste.

Slandering the minority of people who have chosen a meat free diet is common.

.....the words "animal rights," "vegetarian," and "vegan" are some of the most mocked and emotionally loaded terms in our language, even in very liberal circles. One has to wonder if a multibillion dollar meat industry hasn't had a part in making these words and the ideals behind them seem so laughable to so many people.

Soy has become the new evil food, and it is often said that vegans and vegetarians are hypocrites because they eat processed foods that are bad for the environment, and their diets are pretentious.

In fact, many of the studies that show negative effectives of soy are funded by the meat industry, and it is often ignored that the reason soy is so damaging environmentally is because the vast majority of it is grown to feed factory farm animals -- this is the soy that is destroying the rain forest.

As a vegan, I am appalled and amused at the same time when I encounter arguments from meat eaters that some animals can be killed more 'humanely' than others. BAH!

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Dairy Industry Going Tits Up?

Dairy cows are being done in as the demand for milk and cheese drops off.

Dairy farmers say they have little choice but to sell part of their herds for slaughter because they face a perfect storm of destructive economic forces. At home, feed prices are rising and cash-strapped consumers are eating out less often. Abroad, the global recession has cut into demand for butter and cheese exported from the U.S.

Prices for milk now are about half what it costs farmers to produce the staple, and consumer prices are falling. Unless the market can be bolstered, industry officials project that more than 1.5 million of the nation's 9.3 million milking cows could be slaughtered this year as dairy operators look to cut costs and generate cash.

"This could destroy our dairy infrastructure," said Mike Marsh, CEO of the United Western Dairymen trade association.

This may be bad news to the dairy industry but not to vegans and animal activists who decry the wont for dairy in the human diet. Our overall health would improve vastly, as would the environment, should we find ourselves adopting a dairy free diet.

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BC NDP float plan for Environment Savings Bonds

... but there are less expensive ways for the provincial government to raise the funds for environmental refits.

The NDP's campaign to "axe the tax" flew in the face of BC and other environmentalists' recommendations. Placing a price on carbon is one key method of reducing carbon emissions. There are others but for any environmental plan to have credibility, a carbon tax must be included.

Since the NDP disagrees, then voters are unlikely to find such an important ingredient in the party's yet-to-be-disclosed full environmental plan.

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Squeezed into Budget Implementation Bill

... are among the following choice items - courtesy Macleans, courtesy LeDevoir.

Competition law. "The last profound reform of this law was more than 20 years ago and resulted from years of consultation," Manon writes. "The government's current project is nearly as substantial. The amendments cover 31 pages and are highly complex....”

Wage equity in public service. Twenty-eight pages of amendments, which change the threshold at which employees will be able to seek an evaluation of the pay levels for their group.

Foreign investment. New, high and rising threshold for investment review, with government given a veto over acquisitions in cases of "national security."

Relaxing or eliminating the requirement for environmental-impact review before proceeding with certain infrastructure projects.

'Tis no surprise. We were all expecting the HarperCon cons to sneak stuff into the budget, right? So either the Liberals were a) unaware of these amendments or b) they agree with said amendments or c) they don't give a damn either way. My guess is number 2 or 3.

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Don't Eat Meat !

In North America, the great prairie grasslands have been plundered over the past decades in aid of raising beef cattle, rendering the natural pastures desolate.

Today, bovine products are raised on huge tracts of land in the USA and Canada, polluting and poisoning the earth with no thought to the long term effects of this constant degradation to the earth.

In Brazil, Agri Businesses are chewing up great chunks of the Amazonian rain forest to make grazing areas available for their stock.


The bottom line is profit.

The cost to the environment will be enormous and more likely than not, irreparable.

The cost to the health of individuals who eat the cow will also have a hefty price to pay in the long run.

Solution? Stop eating meat. Wean yourself away from eating animal flesh. Embrace a vegetarian, or better yet, vegan way to eat.

The whole world will profit.

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