What If?

My capacity to wonder has been damaged recently.  Good thing Rebecca Solnit is still up for it.  Of course, I am a lot older than her.

What if Obama would say what he has to know, what they all have to know, that saving the planet from our slo-mo, unevenly distributed version of Judgment Day requires destroying the status quo and maybe changing everything? What if he’d just learn from Schwarzenegger that you can do quite a lot and still survive politically?

Yes Rebecca.  What if?

There’s much more.

Stopping Bulldozers

A pacifist, which is what I am, can be the strongest resister, and pacifism the most defiant form of resistance. Same with language usage: I mix the old and the new to engage with a debate about protection, preservation, conservation, and respect of the “natural” world. I am aware of the problems these words carry in terms of implying complicity, because I am a poet rather than a speech writer. For me, because of this, poems can stop bulldozers. Not because they just say “stop bulldozer,” but because the intricacies of language challenge, distract, and entangle the bulldozer. I am using a semantics not of analogy, but of opposition. My words are intended to halt the damage—to see what shouldn’t be seen, to declare and challenge it.  

More from John Kinsella’s Vermin: A Notebook here

How Indeed?

From Michael Lebowitz:

Thus, a growing circle — a spiral of growing alienated production, growing needs and growing consumption. But how long can that continue? Everyone knows that the high levels of consumption achieved in certain parts of the world cannot be copied in the parts of the world which capital has newly incorporated into the world capitalist economy. Very simply, the Earth cannot sustain this — as we can already see with the clear evidence of global warming and the growing shortages which reflect rising demands for particular products in the new capitalist centers. Sooner or later, that circle will reach its limits. Its ultimate limit is given by the limits of nature, the limits of the Earth to sustain more and more consumption of commodities, more and more consumption of the Earth’s resources.

But well before we reach the ultimate limits of the vicious circle of capitalism, there inevitably will arise the question of who is entitled to command those increasingly limited resources. To whom will go the oil, the metals, the water — all those requirements of modern life? Will it be the currently rich countries of capitalism, those that have been able to develop because others have not? In other words, will they be able to maintain the vast advantages they have in terms of consumption of things and resources — and to use their power to grab the resources located in other countries? Will newly emerging capitalist countries (and, indeed, those not emerging at all) be able to capture a “fair share’’? Will the impoverished producers of the world — producers well aware of the standards of consumption elsewhere as the result of the mass media — accept that they are not entitled to the fruits of civilisation? How will this be resolved?

Read the whole article here

Apocalypse Now?

My grandmother from Devon was a fey country woman and superstitious as hell.  Broken mirrors were cause for hysteria at my house and salt was always being thrown over shoulders.  Dropping a glove was a disaster and singing Christmas carols in April, a sin – “Singing songs out of season brings sorrow without reason”.  Dreaming of a birth meant a death and boasting could bring cataclysm.

My grandmother’s late conversion to Catholicism added the tales of the Book of Revelation to an already bursting catalogue of superstition.  Many occasions and occurences were evidence of the coming apocalypse and the apocalypse, as explained to me, was not an event I wanted to be around for.  So it was with a great deal of apprehension that I noted snow in late April or cold weather in July:  “And the seasons shall be as one” – a sure sign that the end was near.

I don’t know if that’s in the book but my grandmother said it was and  repeated it as often as the weather was strange.  As I remember, that was often.

I think of my grandmother when I hear people saying that the force of Hurricane Katrina and the extreme heat of the past few summers mean that theories of global warming are right, as evidenced by the current weather report.  I’m as serious about pressing governments to take immediate action to stem global warming but I’m not convinced that these interpretations of daily weather provide evidence that the planet is getting warmer.  A problem with such arguments is that the opposite can just as easily be claimed when it snows in London, England.

I’m not the only one worried about these arguments.   David Adam at The Guardian has this report on the “apocalyptic” claims being made by some environmental scientists and advocates:

Experts at Britain’s top climate research centre have launched a blistering attack on scientific colleagues and journalists who exaggerate the effects of global warming.

The Met Office Hadley Centre, one of the most prestigious research facilities in the world, says recent “apocalyptic predictions” about Arctic ice melt and soaring temperatures are as bad as claims that global warming does not exist. Such statements, however well-intentioned, distort the science and could undermine efforts to tackle carbon emissions, it says.

In an article published on the Guardian website, Dr Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, calls on scientists and journalists to stop misleading the public with “claim and counter-claim”.

She writes: “Having to rein in extraordinary claims that the latest extreme [event] is all due to climate change is at best hugely frustrating and at worse enormously distracting. Overplaying natural variations in the weather as climate change is just as much a distortion of science as underplaying them to claim that climate change has stopped or is not happening.”

She adds: “Both undermine the basic facts that the implications of climate change are profound and will be severe if greenhouse gas emissions are not cut drastically.”

Dr Peter Stott, a climate researcher at the Met Office, said a common misrepresentation was to take a few years data and extrapolate to what would happen if it continues. “You just can’t do that. You have to look at the long-term trend and then at the natural variability on top.” Dramatic predictions of accelerating temperature rise and sea ice decline, based on a few readings, could backfire when natural variability swings the other way and the trends seem to reverse, he says. “It just confuses people.”

Pope says there is little evidence to support claims that Arctic ice has reached a tipping point and could disappear within a decade or so, as some reports have suggested. Summer ice extent in the Arctic, formed by frozen sea water, has collapsed in recent years, with ice extent in September last year 34% lower than the average since satellite measurements began in 1979.

“The record-breaking losses in the past couple of years could easily be due to natural fluctuations in the weather, with summer ice increasing again over the next few years,” she says.

“It is easy for scientists to grab attention by linking climate change to the latest extreme weather event or apocalyptic prediction. But in doing so, the public perception of climate change can be distorted. The reality is that extreme events arise when natural variations in the weather and climate combine with long-term climate change.”

“This message is more difficult to get heard. Scientists and journalists need to find ways to help to make this clear without the wider audience switching off.”

The criticism reflects mounting concern at the Met Office that the global warming debate risks being hijacked by people on both sides who push their own agendas and interests. It comes ahead of a key year of political discussions on climate, which climax in December with high-level political negotiations in Copenhagen, when officials will try to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto protocol.

Sounds right to me.  My grandmother would be suspicious.

Mourning Creation

From Moira G. Weigel at n + 1:

Knut [the polar bear] was not the Berlin Zoo’s first major star. Bobby, a gorilla born in 1928 and also raised under the care of a foster father, drew legions of visitors during the Weimar Era. A hippo named Nautschke enjoyed similar popularity in the postwar period. Still, the extent of Knut’s celebrity is staggering. Knut made 2007 the most successful in the 166-year history of the Berlin Zoo, attracting 30 percent more visitors than the previous year. By conservative estimates he has generated around ten million euros in profit to date, and has inspired numerous product tie-ins. Dresdner Bank offered Knut GoldCards. The Royal Porcelain Manufacturing Company of Dresden came out with a Knut figurine, which the former Stasi-rag Berliner Zeitung then hawked to its readers at €150 apiece. The Zoo Gift Shop still sells hundreds of T-shirts and souvenir teddy bears to tourists daily. The Federal Mint has issued 25,000 silver commemorative Knut and Dörflein coins. By my count Knut has at least 34 acting credits on IMDB. Dörflein has 10.

This proliferation of Knut products not only celebrated the triumph of an adorable orphan over tough odds; it also represented his appeal as synecdoche for a region of the planet under serious threat. Environmental Minister Gabriel’s bid to pit Knut as an international symbol against climate change had clearly succeeded by May 2007, when Vanity Fair put him on the cover of its “Green Issue.” Shot by Annie Leibovitz in Berlin, the cub was digitally edited onto a shard of ice beside a windswept and reproachfully squinting Leonardo di Caprio, who was photographed on the Jügosárlón glacier lagoon in southeast Iceland.

As Leibovitz’s photos confirmed, Knut could offer consumers a winning image of nature in all its fragility, pitched against the destructive forces of global warming. An image more marketable than, say, still-devastated New Orleans or bloated human corpses in the flooded streets of Burma. Knut, the plaything made flesh, presented a vision of Nature defanged, less “other” to us even than human beings from other parts of the planet. Isn’t it telling that the German Vanity Fair, making him a cover-bear a month before their American counterpart, posed him like a biped–or, rather, a domesticated dog obligingly standing on command?

[…]

In the minds of hopeful officials like Sigmar Gabriel, Knut’s noble role was to draw attention to the dire plight of die Kreatur at this moment in history. But in fact Knutmania exemplifies the operations of the forces that have been marginalizing and destroying creatures for centuries. Its compulsive gestures constitute an elaborate mourning ritual. The zoo itself is a kind of epitaph.

Read the rest here

Hoping Obama Will Help

My dreams have been full of the women of the Democratic Republic of Congo for months and months and my heart cracks a little more each time I think of them.  The Bush administration, the U.N., my country and the powerful countries of the world have been unsuccessful in ameliorating he conditions for women in Congo, to the extent that anyone has tried.  These days, I often push thoughts of those women aside out of feelings of despair.

Thus, it was with a sense of relief and great hope that I read the following open letter to President-Elect Obama at The Huffington Post:

On December 5, 2008, a few days before the 60th anniversary of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a group of global and domestic women’s organizations gathered in New York to frame a shared agenda for advancing global women’s rights. Determined to use their collective strength and expertise to work together to advance a global agenda for women’s freedom, safety and agency, they crafted the following open letter to President-elect Obama and committed to working together to see their vision come true in this century.
Dear President-Elect Obama,

As a group of women leaders who have given our lives to the transformation, protection and empowerment of women in the United States and globally, we want to begin by congratulating you. We are honored and proud to have you lead the nation during this historic time. We also welcome your call to action, reminding us of what we have always known — that as global citizens we cannot solely rely on any one administration’s ability to bring about change, but must be steadfast in pushing forward our own vision and agendas.

We represent a historic movement for change: millions of women across the globe with innovative ideas, influential constituencies and collaborative solutions. We are calling on you to ensure that women are equally represented in everything, from your administration’s infrastructure to its decision-making and solution building. We are calling on you to exercise leadership in dismantling the structures that perpetuate gender inequality, impede women’s full participation in society and thwart real progress for people around the world.

As war rages in Gaza, it is clear that the time has come to dismantle militarism as the dominant ideology in world politics. We must ensure that women take the lead in building lasting peace in the Middle East, ending genocide in Darfur, stopping femicide in the Democratic Republic of Congo, fighting the War on Terror in Afghanistan, and ending the war in Iraq.

Though the select-few women who hold leadership positions in this country’s political system inspire us; women represent more than 50% of the population and deserve more than marginal representation. We believe that in order for your vision of change to succeed, women must be in positions of power. While US women gained the right to vote 100 years ago, to date only 14% of the US Congress are women. This must change.

The major economic, security, governance and environmental challenges of our times cannot be solved without the equal participation of women at all levels of society — from the home to institutions of national and global governance. Women’s voices must be central in all major discussions including the economic crisis, overhauling our education system. Long-term investments in women’s education, health and leadership development are equally critical. Economic structures continue to marginalize women. Consider this: women represent two-thirds of the world’s labor yet we own less than 1% of the world’s assets.

In addition, more than 500,000 women die each year because of inadequate medical and reproductive care. Violence against women is a pandemic that determines women’s realities, impeding their access to education and economic self-sufficiency. This global epidemic is undermining the future of the world, as women are at the heart of all communities and families; we literally carry the future in our bodies.

Yet these are not “women’s issues.” In fact, such investments are vital to economic growth and the well-being of all individuals, communities, societies and nations. Consider India’s economic transformation of the past 15 years: The World Bank finds that states with the highest percentage of women in the labor force grew the fastest and had the largest reductions in poverty.

As policy makers, activists, researchers, and grant-makers we have spent our lives investing in women and know that these kinds of investments have immeasurable and fundamental impact for the better. Worldwide, women are uniquely positioned to bring innovative insights and creative solutions to global leadership forums. If we hope to improve existing economic, peace and security, and human development frameworks women must not only be included, but must be at the heart of the discussion.

We are calling on you to be the President who ushers in the time of women. Our vision of the future is one in which women and men are equal partners, standing shoulder to shoulder in confronting the world’s challenges. We welcome, with hope and anticipation, your shared commitment to this vision.  [emphasis mine]

We represent more than half of the world’s human potential. And our time has come.

Sincerely,

Linda Basch, PhD
President, National Council for Research on Women

Mallika Dutt
Executive Director, Breakthrough: Building Human Rights Culture

Eve Ensler
Founder, V-Day

Adrienne Germain
President, International Women’s Health Coalition

Sara Gould
CEO, Ms. Foundation

Christine Grumm
CEO, Women’s Funding Network

Geeta Rao Gupta
President, International Center for Research on Women

Carolyn Makinson
Executive Director, Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children

Kavita Ramdas
CEO, Global Fund for Women

Zainab Salbi
President, Women for Women International

In February, V-Day will be in  five American cities with its “Turning Pain to Power” tour – New York, Washington D.C., Atlanta, San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Dr. Dennis Mukwege will be on the tour with Eve Ensler.  Dr. Mukwege runs the Panzi Hospital in the DRC, offering services to women and girls who have been raped and won the 2008 UN Human Rights Prize.

Check out the V-Day site for more information on the tour and for tickets.  Please!

Bush Deception, Manipulation & Subterfuge

From the abstract of a paper by Stephen P. Gordon, John Smyth and Julie Diehl:

The breadth of deception and manipulation of science by the Bush Administration is quite amazing, cutting across policy on endangered species, climate change, reproductive health, stem cell research, dietary science, and environmental pollution. This is a story of  suppressing and tampering with scientific findings, intimidating scientists, manipulating the membership of scientific committees, and allowing representatives of industry and social conservative groups to write Administration policies or legislative proposals.

From the section of the paper on reproductive health:

Despite evidence that abstinence-only sex education programs do not decrease unwanted pregnancies and may actually increase them, the Bush Administration has insisted that abstinence only programs be the only ones supported by the federal government. The Administration forced scientists from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to attend daylong sessions on the ―science of abstinence, conducted by nonscientists and absent of any scientific evidence. The CDC was forced to remove information on five comprehensive sex education programs supported by scientific studies from its website (Rushing, 2004).

To obscure the fact there is no scientific evidence indicating abstinence-only programs work in reducing unwanted pregnancy, the Administration measures the effectiveness of abstinence programs by tracking only participants‘ attendance and attitudes rather than the birth rate of female participants (UCS, 2004a).

The Bush Administration removed information on the effectiveness and proper use of condoms in preventing sexually transmitted diseases from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) website, and replaced it with a ―fact sheet that emphasized condom failure rates and the effectiveness of abstinence. Also removed was discussion of scientific evidence that sex education does not lead to increased sexual activity (Waxman, 2003).

Research, including a Danish study of 1.5 million women, has concluded there is no link between abortion and breast cancer. However, in 2002, The National Cancer Institute (NCI) removed from its website a fact sheet that reflected scientific consensus and replaced it with one inferring studies in this area were inconclusive (Rushing, 2004). This action resulted in so much outrage from abortion rights and breast cancer advocates as well as the scientific community that in 2003 the NCI was compelled to bring over 100 experts together to reexamine the issue. The experts concluded, again, that there is no link between abortion and breast cancer (Mooney, 2005).

In 2002, Dr. W. David Hagger, a religious conservative who had lobbied for reconsideration of the Food and Drug Administration‘s (FDA) approval of the drug RU-486 and whose scholarship included medical books with conservative religious themes, was nominated to chair the FDA‘s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. Previously, eminent reproductive health scientists had been nominated for this position. Following protests by scientists and others, Dr. Hager was not named the chair but he was placed on the committee (Waxman, 2003). In 2003, the acting director of the FDA‘s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research overturned the advice of two scientific panels and his own staff in refusing to approve the emergency contraceptive ―Plan B as an over-the-counter drug.

This action was taken despite the fact that the FDA is required by law to approve drugs found to be safe and effective (UCS, 2004b). In 2006, after considerable protest from the medical community and women‘s groups, the FDA approved over-the-counter nonprescription sales of Plan B by licensed pharmacists to women 18 or older, with a prescription still required for sales to women under 18.

Read the article here [pdf]

Polar Bears Unite!

Check out

The Arctic Front – an international coalition of cranky polar bears who have come down from Canada’s thawing arctic to raise worldwide awareness about the massive impacts the Alberta Oil Sands are having on our environment.

Arctic Front operatives have been sighted across Canada and all over the world, from India to Australia.

If you’re on Facebook, join The Arctic Front Facebook group where we also be posting updates.

Katrina, Gustav, McCain & Obama

From Naomi Klein at The Nation:

The early results are in: Hurricane Gustav has helped John McCain’s bid for the White House. This is nothing short of incredible.

In the combination of New Orleans and hurricanes, we have the most powerful argument possible for the necessity of “change.” It’s all there: gaping inequality, deep racism, crumbling public infrastructure, global warming, rampant corruption, the Blackwater-ization of the public sector. And none of it is in the past tense. In New Orleans whole neighborhoods have gone to seed, Charity Hospital remains shuttered, public housing has been deliberately destroyed–and the levee system is still far from repaired.

Gustav should have been political rat poison for the Republicans, no matter how well it was managed. Yet, as Peter Baker noted in the New York Times, “rather than run away from the hurricane and its political risks, Mr. McCain ran toward it.” If this strategy worked, it was at least partly because Barack Obama has been running away from New Orleans for his entire campaign.

Unlike John Edwards, who started and ended his nomination bid surrounded by the decay of New Orleans’s Ninth Ward, Obama has shied away from the powerful symbolism the city offers. He waited almost a year after Hurricane Katrina to visit New Orleans and spent just half a day there ahead of the Louisiana primary. During the Democratic National Convention, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden made no mention of New Orleans in their keynotes. Bill Clinton spared just two words: “Katrina and cronyism.”

In his Denver speech, Obama did invoke a government “that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes.” But that only scratches the surface of what happened to New Orleans’s poorest residents, who were first forcibly relocated and then forced to watch from afar as their homes, schools and hospitals were stolen. As Obama spoke in Denver, families in New Orleans were already packing their bags in anticipation of Gustav, steeling themselves for yet another evacuation. They heard not even a perfunctory “our thoughts and prayers are with you” from the Democratic candidate for President.

Read the rest here

Privatisation on Campus

From the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives:

Water fountains are becoming an endangered species on university campuses across Canada. That’s one of the findings of a national on-line survey, Corporate Initiatives on Campus: A 2008 Snapshot, designed to document the commercial and corporate presence on Canadian campuses.

Responses to the survey, which was developed by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the Polaris Institute, paint a picture of rapidly decaying water fountains and a lack of access in educational institutions across the country to clean, potable tap water.

Thirty three percent of respondents noted a reduction in the number of drinking water fountains on campus. Forty three percent of respondents cited delays in repairing existing water fountains. Others said that new buildings are being built without water fountains, that existing water fountains and cold water taps in washrooms are being removed, and that vending machines are blocking access to water fountains. One response from Brock University in St. Catharines explained “there are no water fountains” in new buildings on campus, “only Pepsi machines.”

“Why are University and College administrations limiting student access to potable tap water in new buildings on campus?” asked Tony Clarke, Director of the Polaris Institute. “It seems clear that Canadian universities and colleges are bowing to pressure from Coke and PepsiCo to eliminate competition to their bottled water brands.”

According to the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), bottled water is the tip of a much larger privatization iceberg. “More and more North American cities are getting back to the tap by eliminating bottled water in their buildings. Public (or municipal) water is the safe, affordable and environmentally-sound choice for all public buildings in the country,” said CUPE National President Paul Moist.

The survey covers: the general commercial or corporate presence on campus; contracting-out; exclusive beverage marketing; access to drinking fountains/tap water, and campus action in response to these trends.

Among its findings: 79% of respondents indicated there are fast-food suppliers on campus; 79% cite corporate sponsorship of activities like Welcome Week or Spirit Week; 54% of respondents said their campus had an exclusive arrangement with Coke and 40% an exclusive arrangement with Pepsi.

“Commercialism on campus is a trend we know is on the increase,” explained Erika Shaker of the CCPA. “The responses to this survey provide a preliminary look at the effects of this trend on campus life, from sponsored activities and research to the most basic: access to tap water.”

You can download a copy of the report here