Category: The environment

Atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, etc – everything about life and the state of this planet

“Love Will Save This Place”

The power of this ferocious love [for places where people live and where they care about] is what the resource companies and their advocates in government inevitably underestimate, precisely because no amount of money can extinguish it. When what is being fought for is an identity, a culture, a beloved place that people are determined to pass on to their grandchildren, and that their ancestors may have paid for with great sacrifice, there is nothing companies can offer as a bargaining chip. No safety pledge will assuage; no bribe will be big enough. And though this kind of connection to place is surely strongest in Indigenous communities where the ties to the land go back thousands of years, it is in fact Blockadia’s defining feature.

Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. p. 342 (hardcover)

Bill McKibben on Obama’s climate change denial

In response to the decision to let Shell drill for oil in the arctic:

This is climate denial of the status quo sort, where people accept the science, and indeed make long speeches about the immorality of passing on a ruined world to our children. They just deny the meaning of the science, which is that we must keep carbon in the ground.

We are past the point where rhetorical acknowledgment of climate change is an acceptable response. Decision-makers today need to be taking serious strides to leave most of the world’s remaining fossil fuels unburned.

Burial wishes

A limited effort expended to try to find the comment thread where I explained my preference to be buried in a simple sheet without being embalmed – so as to better return to nature – hasn’t been immediately simple to find.

I really like this idea of making soil from the bodies of the dead. It reinforces the essential point that we are part of the biosphere of the Earth. Putting your remains temporarily in some sealed box is futile and unnatural. The relationship between a particular batch of atoms and molecules with consciousness remains a philosophical and scientific quandary, but it’s surely better to quickly become part of life again rather than be a toxic corpse in a box.

Obviously, any usable organs I possess should be used for transplants or research or practice by doctors, but whatever they don’t want I would like to see composted in the way proposed by the Urban Death Project.

OMG NDP!

Too bad they have such a misguided climate and energy policy:

Party leader Rachel Notley has said on the campaign trail that she would withdraw support for the Northern Gateway pipeline, but the NDP is interested in proposals to expand the Trans Mountain line and build the Energy East pipeline to Atlantic Canada.

Of course, it would be hard to be worse than the Alberta PCs or Wildrose on this issue.

U of T’s fossil fuel divestment brief

As promised, Toronto350.org got the electronic version of our final fossil fuel divestment brief to the committee members a week before our presentation: The Fossil Fuel Industry and the Case for Divestment: Update.

My friend Anne designed a great cover, using a photo from our November 2014 divestment march. I also have a version of the cover which prints perfectly at 11×17″ to serve as a cover for a bound book.

We are having paperback versions of the brief with glossy colour covers printed for the committee members, our presenters, and to deposit with the U of T library system and Library and Archives Canada. We are required to provide a legal deposit copy to them, since the work has been issued an ISBN: 978-0-9947524-0-6. The book is being printed by the Asquith Press at the Toronto Reference Library.

The next step is to adapt the brief into a kit version that can be easily employed by other campaigns. Long parts of the brief are applicable to every fossil fuel divestment campaign, such as the parts on climate science and the economics of the fossil fuel industry. Other parts need to be tailored for each institution. Particularly given that Glasgow has already succeeded using our basic text, putting in some effort to make a kit seems worthwhile.

More thoughts about the strike

I am in a bit of a vise right now. Nobody else can finish the fossil fuel divestment brief update, but the strike and picket duties are ongoing. Even totally neglecting my PhD work, reconciling the two is impossible. And now I have come down with a cold.

The prospect of pulling back from union duties is uncomfortable. The University of Toronto’s position remains unconscionable. They are failing to recognize how running an institution of learning requires mutual respect, and some respect for social justice. Being unable to be fully effective for two social justice fights – and two distinct groups of allies – is vexing.

Tomorrow afternoon there is a union meeting to discuss the latest offer from the employer. It is based in a way on the proposal from our meeting last Friday, where we decided to give up on aspirations like poverty-line pay for TAs in exchange for structural gains in the contract: recognition that tuition and the funding package are appropriate bargaining items for the union, and that funding assigned to individuals makes more sense and is more just than pools of funding that must be split among as many TA graduate students as the university cares to admit. The offer from the administration being voted on tomorrow jettisons the structural gains being sought, raising questions about what purpose the strike has served and how much more corroded and precarious the position of graduate students at U of T will become.

As far as TA work goes, I am happy to strike for as long as is required to get a deal with real gains. At the same time, the special burden of completing the brief weighs heavily on me.