Nature

This lesson talks about the climate crisis. Many of you probably already know some of what will be discussed here, but some of you may not have learned about it or thought too deeply about it. This lesson and the Canadian Encyclopedia reading are designed to bring everyone up to the same basic level of knowledge. Some of you will probably know much more than covered here.

All my relations

Nature is one of the most fundamental forces that shape our world. But it is very easy for us to lose sight of this. If you ask a typical Canadian what forces shape their world, they will likely start with economics and technology, and then may mention politics, or - if they are being a bit more critical - maybe racism, privilege, or some other human ideological power-structure. Living in cities, focusing on jobs and school, interacting with other human beings and pets but with few other living things directly, and spending so much time consuming unreal images from technology, we are inclined to forget that we're part of nature.

In an earlier lesson I mentioned the indigenous expression "All our relations," which acknowledges our deep connection to the rest of life and the fact that humans are really just one small part of it. Most of us city-dwellers in the Western world are almost wholly detached from that reality in our day to day existence. We may see ourselves as human beings, separate from and above nature.

If you would like to disrupt this blindness, I can recommend an entertaining and eye-opening book by science broadcaster Ziya Tong, The Reality Bubble (2019). Tong's book is a science-based onslaught on how delusional many of our ways of perceiving reality have become. Those of us in the developed world live in cities; our food comes to us packaged and processed, our garbage magically disappears once a week, our shit goes down the drain and we never have to think about it again. And of course, we spend a huge amount of our attention on distracting media and the seemingly inescapable work and economy that our technology has created for us and that our institutions - including Humber College - largely insist are the central focus of human existence.

But in fact - and the pandemic has helped some of us to grasp this - we are animals: vulnerable, mortal, physical - desperately dependent on the rest of life on earth, on the oceans, on the weather and the oxygen we breathe, on fresh water, on microorganisms within us and in the environment that even scientists don't fully understand - and all this is mostly hidden from us by the lives we have chosen to lead (perhaps we have chosen this way of living so we can avoid as much as possible the reality of what we actually are). The COVID-19 pandemic has been a wake-up call about some of this. Our lives are at risk not because we don't have a good enough paying job but because we're animals, and an invisible microorganism can change everything. In an effort to avoid the loss of human life and the collapse of our man-made health care systems, the economy can be drastically slowed down and we are forced to change our way of living because of this nasty little bug. I think there's a valuable lesson here about the basics of life, which privilged people in the wealthy nations of the world have largely been able to lose touch with.

Before the coronavirus and continuing alongside it we have the climate crisis. Most people are now aware that this poses a huge threat to our way of life, if not to our whole species and certainly other forms of life on earth. We are not machines or computers; we are part of life, animals that are intimately connected to the rest of life on earth in a network of interdependent relationships. All our relations. Arguably this truth about us trumps invented human ideologies such as democracy, capitalism, technocracy, religions, and all the rest. All our relations. We need to see the rest of life as our family with whom we have to live, not as something unlike ourselves that we can control and use as we see fit without any consequences.

We will now take a closer look at how we can all address the climate emergency, if we choose to. I will not discuss in detail the science or the ways human activity has presumably brought about the crisis. You should read the article from the encyclopedia, especially if you have never studied this phenomenon before. The most urgent and well-documented aspect is that the "greenhouse gases" (above all, carbon dioxide and methane) released by human activity are creating a "greenhouse effect" in the planet's atmosphere causing global temperatures to rise. The rise in temperature impacts all sorts of aspects of the world, from weather systems to species extinctions, from rising sea levels to crop failures, and so forth.

If you would like to understand the background science a little better, you can start with the Canadian Encyclopedia article on Climate Change that is this week's reading, or if you don't have that much time you could at least watch this 4-minute video by popular science broadcaster Neil deGrasse Tyson.

What's wrong with global warming?

With the harsh Canadian Winter (a comparatively mild one again this year!), global warming can sound like a positive thing. But it is as certain as science can be that if temperatures warm globally the way scientists are anticipating they will if we don't make changes, then the delicate balance of life on earth will eventually be catastrophically impacted. Scientists speculate (and already have some good evidence) that warming will lead to an ecological "domino effect" that makes parts of the world uninhabitable, destroys agricultural environments we currently rely on for food, drowns out coastal cities, entirely submerges small island countries, devastates animal and plant species, and throws us into an ecological crisis in which many human beings will suffer and die. (Leaving aside the suffering of all our relations.)

If you wonder how you, a citizen of Ontario, will be affected, the answers are speculative but certainly still frightening. Assuming no radical action is taken and that you are still a citizen of Ontario in 2050 much will likely have changed (in all things, obviously, but also in terms of the natural world, unless we slow or stop our greenhouse gas emissions). Ontario taken in isolation may be able to prosper from global warming. Our winters will be warmer, more of the land up north will be able to be farmed or inhabited by Canadians, etc. In terms of survival, if the Ontario of 2050 is similar to the Ontario of today only warmer, then Ontarians should be able to feed themselves and generate energy and enjoy the beach for longer. Assuming the rest of the world stayed the same as it is now and only Ontario warmed up, that is.

But Ontario is not an isolated island in the world. Other parts of the world could be finding agriculture impossible. Many people there will be struggling or dying. Many of the foods and other goods we are used to enjoying in Ontario may become unavailable, or too expensive for any but the wealthiest citizens. We must hope that our national borders are still respected, but I wouldn't count on that. Huge populations from countries around the equator where it is no longer possible to grow food will be streaming northward, looking for asylum. They will probably be desperate enough to by-pass legal immigration systems. A major military power may decide to invade Canada to get our relatively liveable land and still comparatively plentiful natural resources. We have a lot of water, a lot of farmable land, a lot of forests, fossil fuel reserves, and a comparatively small human population. We may not be able to maintain our soverignty in the face of critical problems like famine elsewhere in the world. Much of the world will probably be suffering and hungry. Some of it is heavily armed.

And of course, if one cares at all about those other human beings who aren't Ontarians, and other species who aren't human beings, then the results may seem ugly and wrong even if they don't affect us comparatively lucky Ontarians as much as they do others.

These scenarios are all speculation, a kind of science fiction really. But it is science fiction based in science fact and on the best guesses and computer projections that very smart people have been able to come up with. Environmentalists like David Suzuki are still hopeful that humanity can be proactive, and fight against this potential crisis before it happens, rather than waiting until the eco system we have known for most of human history collapses and we decide that we have to do something because we are starving and dying, and killing each other for habitable land and food.

3 ways global warming can be slowed or stopped (plus one way in the future, maybe)

I am now going to discuss what we can do about this imminent danger if we choose to recognize it. (If you don't believe it's important, you can just use this as another exercise in understanding how other people think and thinking about it critically yourself.)

There are four serious strategies humans have thought up so far for dealing with this "climate emergency." Three of them are things we can begin doing right now, the fourth is more of a dream for the more distant future. Debra Davidson in the Canadian Encyclopedia article talks about these as "mitigation strategies" - ways the damage can be mitigated (made less severe or destructive).

1. Reducing our greenhouse gas emissions

This is the traditional solution, and the one we are already in a position to implement, though it will be hard and costly and really requires global cooperation that the world is not prepared for right now. The basic idea is this: we will use less energy, consume less. and switch as rapidly as possible to using energy that involves little to no carbon emissions. This is something individuals can do in smaller ways that would add up (drive less, consume less) and that governments and corporations will need to make happen (no more fossil fuel burning; reduced packaging and transportation, etc).

2. Carbon capture

The idea of this approach is that everywhere that carbon is released (cars, factories, etc) we install technology that captures the carbon and then we bury it, like other waste, so that it never gets into the atmosphere. The focus here is particularly on our power plants, many or most of which currently burn fossil fuels to generate our electricity. The carbon capture approach is being tried in some power plants, including one in Saskatechewan. The problem with it is that the method is expensive, and most governments (and voters) are still reluctant to commit the massive resources necessary to make it happen on a large scale. In some other major fossil fuel-burning countries it is not even being explored yet.

3. Reabsorption strategies

Forests, plants in general, and the planet's oceans naturally absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Thus, reforestation is an important step that can be taken to keep natural "carbon sinks" in place. On the other hand, something like the burning Amazonian rainforests are both actively creating carbon and destroying natural carbon absorbers. Hence the concern about that situation. There is some exploration into creating artifical carbon-absorption processes through technology, but these are probably still far in the future. In the meantime, planting trees and other carbon absorbing plants is a good step everyone can take, and that governments may explore on a more extensive level. In Toronto, home owners have long been obliged to let the municipal government plant trees on their property in order to add to oxygen production and carbon absorption in the city. This is one of the few cases where I find the government forces us to do stuff we might not want to do, but I am personally in favour of what they are forcing us to do. (They wrecked my front garden taking out a dead tree and then planting a new one months later, but I don't mind the way it is growing now.)

4. Geo-engineering (not a real option at this time)

In addition to those three strategies, which could be implemented now if enough of us demanded it and were willing to make some sacrifices, there is hope that in the future technology will give us forms of geo-engineering that will allow us artificially to create massive environmental changes through technology that would lower the carbon in the atmosphere or lower temperatures in some other way. Such techniques are still merely speculative, and like all human technological advances there are risks of unintended negative impacts that might be felt on the global scale. We'll return to such concerns about the impossibility of predicting consequences of technology in the lesson on biotechnology in week 13.

We can voluntarily reduce our carbon impact today by significantly cutting back our individual consumption and changing our lifestyles (see below); as well and - more importantly - if we believe in the science and want to be proactive we need to influence our governmental policy-makers to make this a top priority, enforce carbon emissions reductions on manufacturing and other large-scale industries, and start converting to non-fossil-fuel sources of energy immediately.

What can you personally do about climate change

Assuming you believe that climate change is real, that it is caused by humans, and that it is dangerous for our future (and much of the other life on the planet) do you have any sense of what you personally could do if you wanted to fight against it?

When we've polled students in the past, the number one answer is often recycling. Unfortunately, recycling in its present state - though it is a good idea for other reasons - will do little to combat climate change. There are many other things we can do that are more likely to have a larger impact.

The Canadian broadcaster and environmentalist David Suzuki, co-author of a reading we will look at in a couple of weeks, has a foundation whose web site discusses a number of actions worth taking. They can be broadly divided into political action and lifestyle/culture changes.

Political action is the more urgent, and involves signing petitions, public demonstrations, writing to your representatives, and sharing information about such activity on your social media. Finally, if you care about making the climate safer, you should be voting for parties that prioritize this issue.

Lifestyle changes involve things like consuming less, reusing things, repairing things, driving less, and eating less meat. Some of these are discussed in more detail below. A single individual's lifestyle changes may have little impact by itself, but combined with millions of other single individuals changing, they will. An important aspect of changing your lifestyle is normalizing these lifestyle changes. The more people who shop thrift stores instead of fast fashion, the more people who go vegan, the more people who ride bikes, the more normal and "right" these activities will seem to others, and the more it becomes the standard for our society, instead of a seemingly crackpot fringe.

It is no exaggeration to say that our hyperconsumption habits in the "First World" and the ever-increasing manufacture of unnessary consumer goods in the developing world are major contributors to the current emergency. Most of our consumer goods in the contemporary world involve terrible impacts on carbon levels. Natural resources are destroyed; manufactuing burns coal or uses power that comes from carbon-releasing sources; we transport the products over incredible distances (all the way from China to Canada, for example); and the products are generally over-packaged in non-biodegradable plastic or paper that should either be composted or recycled but often isn't. The next time you buy a bag of candies, in which each candy has been individually wrapped in plastic, think about how much processing had to go into it and how much waste is involved - for what is also probably an unhealthy and unnecessary consumer good. (Does it even really taste all that great?) It may be good for the economy, but it is terrible for the ecology.

Thus, one of the 10 best things you can do on the list provided by David Suzuki's web site is Consume less. Of course, we have little else but consumption to bring meaning to our lives in the Western world, and we have been told that our consumption is necessary for the economy and that everyone will get richer the more we consume. This may be partly true for a time in a limited economic model, but as we'll see David Suzuki insists that it is no longer a sustainable model for our species.

Some of the best ways you can act against climate change as an individual

Suzuki is a world-famous Canadian scientist, broadcast personality, and environmentalist. If you grew up in Canada, it would be surprising if you had never seen him on tv, probably hosting a nature show. Along with Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough he is one of the international "poster boys" for action on Climate Change. On his web site, you can find a list of ten things you can do to act on this problem. I encourage you to read it:

https://davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/top-10-ways-can-stop-climate-change/

But since you are probably not that likely to do that, I am going to quickly summarize a few of his suggestions here. There is much more information and many useful links on the site.

1. Urge government to take bold, ambitious climate action now
One often hears talk of a "Green Recovery." The recovery is from the COVID pandemic and its impact on our societies and economies. The idea is that since the government is going to have to spend a lot on economic recovery, we should be urging it to spend that money in the creation of green jobs and climate action, and definitely avoiding any further support for the fossil fuels industry. The Liberal government under Trudeau says it is concerned about the climate, but at the same time has put resources into pipelines. Many elements of the conservative governments in various provinces also want to double-down on fossil fuels for the sake of the economy. Environmentalists say we must start making the hard decisions right now to transition from these carbon-emitting industries, and that the government should focus its power and resources on working toward climate recovery in conjunction with economic recovery as we move (hopefully) out of the COVID crisis. Environmentalists consider the current government's plan to be nowhere near bold enough.

Sign the online petition to demand that our federal government invests in “solutions that will create good jobs, improve equity, enable more vibrant and healthy communities, reduce carbon pollution and help us build resilience to crises through planning and investment now.”

Sign the petition!

At all levels, we need to urge the government to make environmental rights a top priority, probably above the general economy and on a level with human rights.

This is the single biggest action we can take. Elect a government that makes the climate crisis one of its number one priorities.

[see the web site for ideas 2 and 3]

4. Eat differently

The factory production of meat and dairy has a huge impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Cattle produce enormous amounts of methane; forests are destroyed to create grazing land, removing natural carbon sinks; and meat and dairy are processed and transported large distances in ways that add to the carbon footprint.

I am going to spend a little more time here on the "cheap meat" industry because it strikes me as a very clear example of humanity out of control - but out of sight from the average citizen. In the book The Reality Bubble that I mentioned above, Ziya Tong takes the reader through a dizzying and nauseating survey of how the meat industry works so that everyone in a wealthy country like Canada can have cheap meat at every meal if they want to. I'll leave it to you to decide whether you want to know about the horrors that the animals endure - most of us would rather not know - but even just the scale at which meat production happens worldwide is monstrous:

Today, there are over one billion domesticated pigs on Earth, one and a half billion domesticated cows, and, according to annual slaughter numbers by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, almost sixty-six billion chickens. What this means, as George Musser, an editor at Scientific American, put it, is that “almost every vertebrate animal on earth is either a human or a farm animal.” Including horses, sheep, goats, and our pets, 65 percent of Earth’s biomass is domestic animals, 32 percent is human beings, and only 3 percent is animals living in the wild. (Tong 2019)

In other words, most of the animal weight on earth at present (97%) is human beings and the animals we have domesticated, mainly in order to eat them! This is one example of how radically humans have changed nature and diminished biodiversity.

A 2021 study publicized in The Guardian indicated that meat accounts for nearly 60% of all greenhouse gases from food production. Cattle release huge amounts of the greenhouse gas methane in their burps and farts, and the factories and transportation that make make meat comparatively cheap are large contributors to carbon release.

The entire system of food production, such as the use of farming machinery, spraying of fertilizer and transportation of products, causes 17.3bn metric tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, according to the research. This enormous release of gases that fuel the climate crisis is more than double the entire emissions of the US and represents 35% of all global emissions, researchers said.

“The emissions are at the higher end of what we expected, it was a little bit of a surprise,” said Atul Jain, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois and co-author of the paper, published in Nature Food. “This study shows the entire cycle of the food production system, and policymakers may want to use the results to think about how to control greenhouse gas emissions.”

The raising and culling of animals for food is far worse for the climate than growing and processing fruits and vegetables for people to eat, the research found, confirming previous findings on the outsized impact that meat production, particularly beef, has on the environment. (Oliver Milman, "Meat accounts for nearly 60% of all greenhouse gases from food production, study finds," The Guardian Mon 13 Sep 2021)

The desire to provide everyone on the planet with a steady diet of meat protein has led to grisly overexploitation of animals and a mammoth impact on the levels of greenhouse gasses. We now find both environmentalists and animal rights activists encouraging everyone to reduce our meat consumption, avoid "cheap meat" (processed and/or mass marketed meat, such as is used in fast food, frozen and canned food, and generally in supermarket meat) and cheap dairy (which is also an industry full of cruelty with a significant impact on carbon levels). The ideal, according to environmentalists, would be for us to embrace veganism, or hugely reduce our dairy consumption and eat meat at most once or twice a week.

• Eat less meat and dairy; go vegan when possible
• If you do eat meat or dairy, buy local, organic, naturally raised products whenever possible
• Don’t waste food; consume more carefully
• Grow your own (I've done it; it's fun and really makes you appreciate what goes into the food we eat)

5. Talk about climate change
Discuss climate change, especially with those who don’t think it’s an important issue. Normalizing climate consciousness is an important aspect of the fight – maybe ultimately the most important. When the culture changes, the society changes, and then the world changes. Don’t be afraid that people will treat you as a boring cuck. Suzuki’s site links to an interactive Facebook Messenger chatbot that teaches you how to have conversations about the climate crisis: Give it a try! Launch the chatbot

6. Green your commute
“In Canada, transportation accounts for 24 per cent of climate-polluting emissions, a close second to the oil and gas industry.”

• Take public transit
• Ride a bike or advocate for bike lanes in your community
• Car-share
• If you have a large, inefficient vehicle, retire it and switch to an electric or plug-in hybrid vehicle

7. Consume less
Green living is more imaginative and may even be more satisfying than hyperconsumption of unnecessary new consumer goods. Instead of consuming more products, consider other ways you might find happiness and meaning: “Focusing on life’s simple pleasures — spending time in nature, being with loved ones, making a difference to others — provides more purpose, belonging and happiness than buying and consuming.”

When you do want or need something, consider buying second hand, upcycling, making things yourself, repurposing something you already have, fixing something that is broken, sharing ownership and cost with someone else. All of these can actually be quite satisfying and are more creative and compassionate than endless selfish consuming of new junk. You will also save money. Fast fashion is out; thrift hauls are in.

[see web site for point 8 if you are interested in knowing more]

9. Work on a local level
"In Canada, municipalities have influence over about 50 per cent of our emissions. And with about 80 per cent of Canadians living in cities, it’s important — even crucial — that we focus on their potential to help stop climate change.." David Miller, the mayor of Toronto from 2003 to 2010, was deeply committed to environmentalism and spearheaded many municipal initiatives to make Toronto greener. In 2020 he published the book Solved: How the World’s Great Cities Are Fixing the Climate Crisis, which goes into detail about many changes city governments are implementing around the world. The Suzuki site has created a comprehensive online resource that will support you to work with your local government on climate action.

Engage in climate activism.

10. Get politically active and vote
Elect leaders and representatives who will make government take climate change seriously. Neither of Canada's two major political parties has made the climate a priority the way it should be. The Green party is a growing force in Canada. In general, the Left considers climate change more of a focus than the Right. There has been a movement (that has so far gone nowhere) to encourage the Green and NDP parties to form a coalition on account of the Climate Emergency. Register to vote, and if you don’t have any other political concerns that you want to promote, vote for the environment.

Normalization

The things individuals can do on their own or in small local groups are not completely insignificant, but they would probably never be enough to halt the crisis, unless everyone got on board with them.

However, to begin practicing these things (less consumerism, eating less meet, driving less) can also be important because it shows other people that these things can be done and are not even necessarily negative experiences. Thus, living more sustainably begins to become common in society and seems more normal.

Normalization is the cultural process through which new social norms evolve and become established. Norms change, and we can help them change. For instance, when I was a child in the 1960s, there was a huge number of people who smoked cigarettes. Smoking was considered "cool" by many people, cigarettes were advertised on television, and rarely would anyone even complain about second hand smoke.

Over the course of my life time, though, the norms around smoking evolved. Nowadays, comparatively few people still smoke cigarettes in Canada, people take seriously the health hazards of smoking and second-hand smoke, and the the government has restricted advertising of tobacco and made smoking look unappealing through packaging. People who smoke nowadays are often ashamed of it, try to hide it, sneak out, and avoid bringing second-hand smoke into the environments where other people could be affected by it (or even aware of it). In other words, the norms around smoking changed. Partly through the efforts of ordinary people and partly through more education and public messaging about the dangers of smoking.

The same thing could be done with things like hyperconsumption, over-consumption of cheap meat, driving gas-burning cars, and so on. These things could begin to seem yucky, and the norms could be changed, partly through some people adopting new norms around those things and showing people the way.

 

Environmental Rights

The idea that environmental rights should be declared and pursued seems to be a relatively recent notion, but it is already well-known and even enshrined in the laws or constitutions of some countries, as well as being endorsed by the United Nations, of which Canada is a member. Environmental rights are not usually conceived of as the rights of the environment itself - such as the right of polar bears to have a place to live or of a specific coral reef not to be destroyed etc - but rather as an extension of human rights involving the right to a safe and stable environment. The Canadian Blue Dot Movement, for example, speaks of it this way:

Over the past 50 years, the right to a healthy environment has gained recognition faster than any other human right. The rights protected by a right to healthy environment include breathing clean air, drinking clean water, consuming safe food, accessing nature, knowing about pollutants and contaminants released into the local environment. (Blue Dot Environmental Rights statement)

The UN's definition is broader, not just about nature but also about the society in which one lives, but it includes both the basic right to "health, food and an adequate standard of living" and also "collective rights affected by environmental degradation, such as the rights of indigenous peoples."

The ways this concept relates to Climate Change should be obvious. The idea would be that if people in one part of the world are losing the ability to grow crops or are having their city submerged by rising sea water levels, it could be said that their environmental rights are being infringed upon or ignored. The same argument can be made - and has been - about situations where, for instance, overfishing of treaty waters by multinational fishing conglomerates makes it impossible for the indigenous people who supposedly have rights to those waters to sustain their lives in the traditional way.

Some universal human rights are widely accepted by most people in Canada. People should not be incarcerated without a trial; they should not be discriminated against on account of race or gender; they should not be turned into slaves, and so forth. These rights can be treated as distinct from environmental rights because they are more social and political - they are about how human beings treat one another. Nature is often thought of as a separate sphere, and Acts of Nature are usually considered to be outside of human control. But if humans in the form of individuals, corporations, or government are having an effect on the environment at large that makes life unsafe or untenable for people, perhaps this should now be seen as a human rights violation.

The conflict between different human rights can be well illustrated by the disagreements we have seen over how the COVID pandemic should be dealt with: arguments about restrictions, lockdowns, masking and vaccination, for instance. A virus like COVID-19 most definitely raises concerns about environmental rights. One student of GNED in a previous semester explained this well in their test answer:

Overall, it is essential to have environmental rights form a more prominent aspect of human rights legislation. It might be difficult because many people have thought of human rights as only relating to individual rights. However, we need to truly think about the benefits for everyone in the world. Like how COVID-19 has forced many people and governments to think about other people in other parts of the world, the climate crisis should do the same. Finally, the most important part is to understand how the whole world benefits when we are not greedy. One of the best solutions to COVID-19 is sharing vaccines fairly around the world to avoid variants from spreading and to avoid continuing this pandemic. We should think of the climate crisis similarly. If every person in every country, especially the rich people in rich countries, does their part, then the world would be a much better place and we can fight climate change successfully. We need to really change our thinking and make sure that this planet is healthy for everyone. (Nirojan Jeyarajah, GNED test answer, 2021)

Unfortunately, there is no global authority for the protection of any human rights. Human rights, including environmental rights, tend to be decided at the national level. That means, for example, that just as vaccination decisions in one country can affect virus transmission in others, so the the actions of a company headquartered in Canada can be directly responsible for terrible working conditions in another country, conditions that would be human rights violations in Canada. Similarly, actions being carried out by multinational companies in India - or by consumers of energy in Canada - could in fact have negative effects on the enviroment in other parts of the world, and thus on the lives of the people living in those countries.

For those who are interested in promoting human rights, environmental rights now loom very large, and there is an urgency to have them acknowledged and made a priority both at the national and the international level.