Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Gore & Suzuki on Climate Change

Articles on climate change (CC) tend to focus on drought & floods and extinctions eg. polar bears, but these things are already with us and seem not to be moving people to action. Let's try a new focus.

What could we lose if CC is ignored?

The Maldives government has already pleaded its case to the United Nations, saying, "stop climate change or we will drown."
The maldives are a swarm of small island atolls in 26 groups off the southern coast of India. Their average height above sea level is 6 feet. Every island is surrounded by beautiful white sand, just like the islands in the Caribbean, in the south Pacific. Just like low lying coastal areas everywhere. Focus on the fact that these are the places we all dream of being able to go on vacation. Miami Beach, Waikiki, Jamaica, Fiji, Seychelles, Tahiti.

1) It's a straight line from burning fossil fuels which emit carbon gas wastes, to climate change to global warming to icecaps melting to sea level rise to the end of white sand beaches everywhere.

In short, if you want to keep your gas guzzler the price is no more sandy beach vacations by the ocean.

re: PM Stephen Harper saying on entering office, "we will not meet Kyoto limits on GGs.
David Suzuki seeks to rebut Stephen Harper's claim that fighting climate change will kill Canada's economy by quoting Sweden's success in reducing greenhouse gases (GG) by 8% since 1990 while increasing their economy by 44% (Suzuki's figures) but Canada's economy is many times more resource based than Sweden's. Apples & oranges. Canada's energy corporations must be worried that just as they are becoming major players in the energy market, they are being asked to stop producing oil & gas & coal.

I wonder why is no one asking Al Gore how we are to stop population growth and to reduce world population? Ehrlich wrote the Population Bomb in 1968. Malthus warned of population growth a hundred years before that!
Is no one with a high profile speaking of it because they have too much money at stake? Are they afraid that as PM Harper claqims, if we cut GGs and don't fix the population growth problem we have to give up the luxurious lifestyle we enjoy here in the first world?
If we reduced per capita production of GGs by 2050 but the population grows by 50% by 2050 we will not have gained an inch on climate change, we will have lost ground.

Re-phrase the problem, want to save the white sand beaches? Stop having babies.

How do we get people to want to stop having babies?
1) Educate women. Give it to them free of charge. As in South Korea, educate women so that they have an option in life to support themselves without having half a dozen ofspring at the behest of a man seeking an heir.
2) Change the inheritance laws so that men will not prefer male children over females.
3) Legislate equality between the sexes. Mandate that leaders must alternate gender, whatever, do something to change the crazy desire for male children only.
Remove the incentives to have children, eg, baby bonus cheques, tax deductions for dependents..
Provide free conraception everywhere.
Buy vasectomies from male citizens.
Find surgical reversal technology for tubal ligations and pay women to have them.
Think tank ways to disincentivize having babies.
Stopping the catastrophe of CC is more important than the problem of too few young people / workers down the road.

Change the economical philosophy that growth must predominate. That precept can only work if population growth remains unchecked and that is devastating.
Educate everyone by means of a mandatory school syllabus of climate change and the long term effect of business practices.
Extend this list.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Canadian Politics on the Wet Coast

A snapshot:

We have a Federal minority government that depends for staying in office on playing the separatists, the liberals and the socialists against each other and are doing it very nicely indeed, except that all they have achieved by 5 o'clock when they all go home, is to have stayed on the high wire for another day.
Our PM is on a Trade Mission, read, staying out of trouble by staying out of country.

Provincially, we have an egomaniac with a huge majority who is content to ride the wave of popularity he attained by winning the right to impoverish the province by hosting the winter Olympics.

Can't get rid of the swine and everything is just going to cost more to pay for the parties he is enjoying until the games are over and the bills come in.

I've said for years, that we shouldn't think our politicians are less corrupt than those in the average banana republic, just because they speak English.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Arts Matters

CBC broadcast on the Arts in Kelowna Nov 6th 2009

My comments:
The speaker is mistaken in interpreting the quantity of brain activity as demonstrated by an MRI while listening to singing vs the speaking voice as a superior outcome because the qualitative value of the experiment is not measured.

More stimulus is not necessarily better stimulus. Nature is not a loud, noisy place. Humans did not evolve to thrive in a noisy, highly stimulating environment, but we can beciome addicted to high levels of stimulus with poor outcomes.

Few would agree that a constantly stimulating environment that we cannot shut off but cannot do without is a better environment.