Time for some ethical critical thinking by Karen I. Shragg

 The “politically correct” or PC world came knocking on my door in the late 90’s when I was getting my doctorate in critical pedagogy. Our multi-cultural co-hort full of smart and interesting people, ascribed to the notion that searching for language that would not offend was one of our critical goals. In my opinion they  spent way too much time trying to figure out which group had experienced the most marginalization, instead of focusing on how to go about eliminating discrimination. One day I specifically remember that I whispered under my breath that I was disappointed that my classmate, just called on, was going to take a long time answering a question. My motivation? It was 1 pm, I was hungry. I just wanted them to hold their question till after the break. I was called out for being a racist by a white co-hort member who was trying very hard to be the most PC in the class.

The focus on political correctness has only made us less resilient problem solvers, for every story has both a small and larger focus. Every story has a history and will only have a better future if it is grappled with in the context of ethical improvement for the short and long term.

When the politically correct police silence people, they get a temporary feeling of euphoria that they have accomplished something. But it is a destructive act. They have only taken a broad judgmental brush and canceled what they determine is a ‘bad’ opinion. Making people afraid to speak their minds is not only undemocratic and even fascist, it does nothing to improve the issue at hand. It has only gotten worse in the 18 years since they put a Dr. before my name. It is now CC or cancel culture and is reminiscent of the “love it or leave it” chants of the sixties. I am learning a hard lesson. The “left” can be equally obstinate and steadfast that they own the only truth on the block. Shutting out other voices, they know to be sincere, is hurting their own cause. 

Instead I would like to offer a different approach and perhaps to coin a new word: “E.C.T.” stands for Ethical Critical Thinker. We need to rid ourselves of the PC world and adopt an E.C.T approach. First, we have to be ethical which means we have to have the goal of improving the world in a way that causes the least harm.  The second is that we must consider all aspects of a problem in both the short and long term. We must realize that we rarely get a perfect choice, just a better one. To the best of our ability and with the latest scientific information, we need to consider the long-term consequences of our actions for us and our rapidly deteriorating biosphere.

To be PC is like painting a rotting house with a fresh coat of paint. It temporarily may look better, but it still rots from within. If you are E.C.T. you do not rush to judge. You try to listen to everyone’s story. You ask critical questions and look out for impacts to those other than yourself and your species. An E.C.T.person also realizes that the personal and global goals can be diametrically opposed to one another at the same time and that dynamic needs a deep dive if it is ever going to resolved.

An E.C.T. person does not think quick fixes for long entrenched problems are ever a good idea. An E.C.T. person also tries to link our problems to false narratives which have to be questioned at their core. An E.C.T. person sees a lot of gray in issues yet also knows when something is intrinsically evil and must be stopped in its tracks. To truly be an ethical critical thinker is to avoid jumping on to the current bandwagon which haven’t fully been vetted.

It seemed like a great idea when Canada geese were brought into a suburban nature center in the 70’s until they did so well, they started flying into airplanes. It seemed that DDT worked well to kill off pests until its residue endangered raptors. We can’t always know the consequences of our actions, but we can try to forecast impacts before they are initiated so we can avoid expensive fixes in the future.

I have been to many ribbon-cutting ceremonies for large corporate developments with smiling officials getting whiplash for patting themselves on the back for a job well done. An E.C.T. person would wonder, what about the traffic that will bring to our area? They would question the further demand on the limited local water supply and the wisdom of the bribery of delayed taxes (TIF financing) that corporations were given, delaying any tax benefit to city coffers. An E.C.T. person would wonder where the wildlife was supposed to live and what kind of energy demand the new structure would make and add to our global emissions. A countering PC person would deny their right to even ask these critical questions, wondering why they want to stop progress and all of its “benefits”.

I may start my overpopulation talks in the future with something like this. “I am an ECT person, and as an Ethical Critical Thinker I am here today to invite you to explore a different way out of many of our problems. The issue I am bringing up has been thrown under the bus so many times by the PC police that it has deep tire treads all over it making it taboo for all but the most determined activists. But I would like to ask rhetorically, how is that working for us? Hopefully you too want to be open to a broader context of why we cannot seem to get ahead on environmental issues.  If you can join me using this E.C.T. approach, perhaps we can get there together.  That is what I want to say to the loud critics of the profound film Planet of the Humans. Filmmaker Jeff Gibbs has a perspective that is worth discussing in an open and non-judgmental way. His film is an invitation to rethink our assumptions, which is what all movements and cutting-edge films are trying to do. An E.C.T. person listens and asks questions, they do not accept any idea at first blush, nor do they cancel it in an act of pure cowardice.

An E.C.T. person knows how to prioritize their time and efforts. They know that debating the kind of sunscreen used by passengers on the boat deck is not as important as the fact that the boat has a hole in it.  They know that it is not time to fuss over a clogged drain spout when smoke is pouring out the windows. They weigh all possible outcomes and are not trigger happy with their responses. Do protests work? There is a long history that they do. The anti-war protests of the sixties certainly helped to end the Vietnam war. But are even the most well justified protests likely to be putting our overall health and the livelihoods of so many in jeopardy in the midst of a pandemic? An E.C.T. is not afraid to answer, YES and wait to see if the data confirmed that notion.

Name the touchiest of subjects and you will see it has been ruined by the PC police. Not only do they claim to be offended but dig even deeper and they may have something to lose economically if something new comes to light. Name-calling ensues just by trying to have an upstream discussion. When looking at the US through the lens of sustainability, on all kinds of measurements it is clear we are in overshoot. Although still operating under the mantra represented by the poem on the plaque inside the Statue of Liberty, we are running out of water, open space, forest and wild habitats for the animals that need them. Life is becoming less fun and more dangerous in our overcrowded cities whose answer to growth addiction is either sprawl or high rises. Magnificent animals from the Florida panther to the mountain lion are endangered with extinction due to human overpopulation and our continued growth. But try to have an upstream E.C.T. discussion about population growth, overpopulation and its primary driver, legal immigration, and watch the accusations start to fly.  An E.C.T person who wanted to have a discussion about carrying capacity on our landscapes frequently ends up discussing the value of immigrants to this country’s history. E.C.T.’s do not conflate unrelated issues, only PC people do.                                                                                            

There is one more thing that E.C.T.’s believe: you focus on the message, debate its merits and do not waste everyone’s time by focusing your critique on hating the messenger, unless that messenger has provable ill intent. Propagandists can certainly be scorned for both their message and intent, but someone making a heartfelt film or writing a book rarely deserve the often-heard cries of the morally offended. It’s time to start a new and more helpful era where we can build new bridges of understanding rather than spend all of our energies bashing each other just for having a different perspective.

 

Don't Start the Revolution Without Me- A Review of Planet of the Humans

Michael Moore is great at starting revolutions and I have been a fan of each and every one of his films. I remember meeting him and witnessing his passion for doing the right thing at a showing of his film, Bowling for Columbine in St.Paul years ago. Greedy multinational corporations are not put on trial enough for the pain they leave in their wake. The crime of illegal wars, institutional racism and classism and are never deeply examined enough and admirably Moore is consistently up for the task. 

I patiently waited while he ever so skillfully he went after General Motors, the Health Care System, the Gun Lobby and more. Sometimes I wasn’t so patient. While I was completely with him in his attack on everything from the NRA to Wall street greed, I was waiting for a film that deeply questioned why we were still heading for the cliff of collapse even though we had 50 years of Earth days under our belt.

Well here it is, Planet of the Humans, a film detonating business as usual, because to keep on doing the same thing while getting zero results is the definition of insanity. Moore lent his moxie to a film by Jeff Gibbs who dared to question the fundamental ways in which we are dealing with our predicament on the planet. Any objective view of our state of the world would reveal that we are in more trouble than ever. Carbon parts per million is going up, human numbers keep skyrocketing, endangered species keep getting added to the list and in the race to cover the landscape of the planet, forests are losing out to deserts. More than that, monied interests keep controlling the modern human narrative with their advocates deeply in their pockets. The green illusions have to be a part of that story and with Ozzie Zehner’s help we can now see why green has not lived up to its promises.

 Those of us who have been in the trenches fighting for the deep attention the earth really need to be grateful for this revolutionary film. We cannot shoot the messengers even though there is an embarrassing litany of doing so throughout history. Those benefiting from the current way of doing things will always protest, but they cannot get in our way of listening.

 Galileo died under house arrest for suggesting what his telescope revealed. Gibbs has crafted a telescope of sorts to peer into the way energy is delivered to us under false pretenses and some are upset, offended and even call for a violation of his first amendment rights. They refuse to look through his lens, because they are intellectually married to their savior, renewable energy. Ignaz Semmelweis was a doctor who discovered in the 1800’s that if surgeons washed their hands, patients wouldn’t die of infection. He had double blind studies and documentation that he was right. No one believed him at the time and he himself died in his 40’s of an infection himself. The vitriol directed at POTH unfortunately reveals that the tendency to ignore science and evidence is still with us today and hurting us more than ever.

I have long believed that the worst thing we could do is to come up with some magical form of energy to power our destructive ways. If the world of industrial development ever discovers an unlimited and easily harnessed, carbon-free energy source we are all doomed. We do not need a world of bulldozers powered by magical energy, we need less bulldozing. We need less of everything we have been doing.  We are deep into what I like to call the GHG.. the Great Human Gobbling and Gibbs and Zehner have given their life’s blood into waking us up. The fact that POTH uncovers the lies behind our hopes for green energy’s ability to save us from ourselves is just the beginning of the story that needs to be told

 It’s like many people have been riding on a high-speed electric train riding along and enjoying the view, eating their vegetarian organic meals in the dining car when they are told to stop the train. They liked the ride and thought they were on the right train, after all its electric and they are eating the most planet conscious diet.  POTH is the first awakening in a long time to say that the ride may seem to be sustainable but you are still headed for a cliff. We need to be thankful for the warning.

 I have been a lifelong environmentalist and overpopulation activist. For a long time, I knew our house was on fire. I could see the billowing smoke in our numbers alone. But I was told I couldn’t call the fire department, I would be an alarmist even though I knew reckless pro-growth policies would never allow efforts to practice conservation and green up the earth to work.

POTH didn’t just call the fire department, it called a global 911 and I for one am eternally grateful. While some are still wondering why it was necessary and still others have been shocked back into denial, I have other concerns. What concerns me is not that they have revealed that the emperor of green energy has no clothes but how our new and very much needed environmental movement might still miss the mark. If the millions who have seen POTH are shocked and dismayed by the delusions of green energy just wait til they hear how overpopulation and its evil twin overconsumption, have been thrown under the politically correct bus. Even more disturbing will be the revelation that the environmental establishment has been in the driver’s seat not willing to address the implications of the 5.5 billion people we have added to our limited planet in the last century.

 There have been plenty of us lesser known writers, filmmakers, and activists waiting in the wings for a new batch of environmental recruits. We are willing and able to take on the challenge of steering our train away from the cliff, but will our messages get heard or be drowned out by the next batch of snakeoil salesmen? We are here ready to grab this opportunity with even more truths to reveal.

 Will these newly awakened environmentally concerned get to hear that we have to start de-growing our world one country at a time using the most effective and humane means possible? Will they understand the implications of overshooting our resources locally and globally by both our numbers and habits? Can they embrace the fact that the first method available to us is to redo our immigration, tax and labor laws to stop our trajectory toward our ever-climbing numbers? I hope so. I am concerned that once again our much needed revolution will get off track. So many revolutions start out with great ideas and get derailed by those more interested in profit and power than in truly making a difference.

The full story of the Great Human Gobbling of the only planet in our solar system able to sustain life has begun to be told by POTH. It is just the beginning. Put on your seatbelt -- we are in for a ride and we must we must stay awake. No more falling asleep at the wheel to the soothing voices of those with promises in one pocket and dollars in the other.

Elms R US

Elms R Us by Karen I. Shragg

 

My city used to be covered with mature elm trees planted closely together. They formed arches over streets in a beautiful configuration that added value to neighborhoods. But then came the bark beetle. Because the trees were planted close together these fungus-carrying beetles had a hay day and soon the trees were dead and had to be removed. The solution was to decrease their density, at least 60 to 70 feet apart, and to plant diverse species with them because usually diseases like this are species specific.

So why are we like Elms? We are being densely planted in cities which welcome growth like it isn’t a recipe for disaster.  We are learning with Covid 19 as our teacher, that our proximity is one risk factor for spreading the disease.  When given the command to keep six feet away from others I wonder how one does that in a world where we have been cramming people into places for decades? Just the word mass transit used to be synonymous with being green, now we think of them as Petri dishes for disease.

Our whole world is turning upside down. We are living in the most ironic times but it is also an opportunity to rethink how we warehouse people believing that density is a problem solver of growth. How strange that spacious offices are sending people home to crowded apartment buildings in order to get away from people.

Experts tell us that pandemics are going to be with us even if we get this one under control. Humans are ripe for them because we have been tempting viruses with our addiction to growth and our total disregard for the way our density disrupts the natural world. We are so afraid of seeing what ultimately threatens our health with our required proximity and it is simply that we live in an overpopulated world.

Yes overpopulation, specifically the 5.5 billion we have added in less than a century and the density it requires, must become the focus of our discussions as a cure for what ails us.  A short perusal of the literature will demonstrate its role in the spread of viruses. Canceling the discussion under some politically correct delusion is just another way to throw a monkey wrench into potential solutions to this economic and public health disaster.  Besides this is global pandemic and pointing fingers between developed and underdeveloped countries is no longer relevant. We all need to reign in our populations by humane means or yes the virus and the ones yet to come will do it for us in ways that are too ugly to mention. 

An ancient remedy for sore throats can be found in slippery elm bark, but perhaps this tree’s greatest contribution to humankind is its lesson on the need to recognize the chaos we create when we disrespect the way nature requires that we be sparsely planted  on our limited planet. 

BYE THE NUMBERS

This February marked what would have been have been my grandfather’s 125th birthday. We called my father’s dad, Zadie. He was born in Russia near Kletsk in 1895. An unwilling Jewish soldier in Tsar Nicolas’s army, he and most of his siblings sought a better life in the US. Not all made it here, which is why to this day I have cousins in Argentina. Yes, I am a proud granddaughter of an immigrant. But he and his relatives came here in the 1920’s, back when the US had a population of around 110,000,000 and the world’s population was just under 2 billion. US immigration was limited in those days for a lot of reasons that most would not be proud of today. Anti-Semitism and a general xenophobia informed much of our policy and kept legal immigration to a more ecologically sane number, approximately 150,000. 

This century, the persecuted around the globe have increased. Their desperation runs deeper and their numbers climb higher. This is due to many factors, including global overpopulation, climate change pressures, the hangovers of colonialism and the ravages of the US military industrial complex which have kept developing countries in poverty. No one blames refugees for trying to get to a country of apparent riches. I am certainly glad my relatives were able to get in. I have unconditional empathy for those seeking entrance to a country, which promises a better life, even though our racism and xenophobia roots have not disappeared.

The trouble is that due exponential growth, medical advances and a huge increase in legal immigration limits over the years, the US has nearly tripled to an unsustainable 327,000,000.  So has immigration policy stayed low to compensate for the higher population? No it has not.  At about 1.1 million, legal immigration has grown about 6-fold. To be blunt that is half-assed backwards. Our dominant story has followed the poem on the statue of liberty without any regard to the physical, ecological limits that are built into every country’s landscape, including our own. Over a million new drivers, job seekers, and consumers of limited water supplies are now added each year because we feel it is our moral duty to absorb those in need. Our public discourse has shunned all conversation about bringing sanity back into our immigration policies. We need to stress that we also have a moral duty to preserve our fragile ecosystems. Officials in both political parties need to show some courage, integrity and encourage this much needed conversation.

All who care about this country and its environment should join in a chorus of reducing the number of legal immigration back to the days when my grandfather arrived in a ship to Boston harbor. Policies need to reflect the needs for preservation of habitat for wildlife and to protect our local natural resources. We behave as if we expect to avoid congestion, large carbon footprints, water shortages, increases in solid waste and air pollution while adding over 1 million new consumers into our country.  If we continue with current immigration policies we can expect an additional 75 million Americans by 2060.  According to Global Footprint Network, we passed our sustainable number at 150 million. Overshoot is here and eating away at our promises. If clean and available water, open space, less traffic congestion and lower carbon footprints are truly valued, we must look to all sources of population growth and address them. Fertility rates and immigration are both causes of US overpopulation. As such they must both become a part of a civil discussion about how we address our problems at their source.

My Zadie knew how lucky he was to make it to America and worked hard all his life to make better opportunities for his family. He made me respect the challenges all immigrants face and the way they must learn to fit into a prejudiced society. I just wish I had the wherewithal to tell him, years ago, how much I appreciate the sacrifices he made so that my siblings, cousins and I could grow up in the US. I also wish people realized that my Zadie and his peers lived during a time when we had a population we could have sustained. It is in our best interest to convince Americans and our leaders that we have long said goodbye to a number the environment in the US can handle.

Why Environmental Moderates Are More Frustrating than Outright Climate Deniers

If your house was smoldering you could use water from a hose with weak pressure. If your house was just starting to burn you would need to call the fire department. But if your house was being consumed by fire you would need to sound all alarms and call in multiple fire departments. How many Greta’s will it take for the majority of leaders and people to realize our house is burning down? How many moderate responses to an environment catastrophe can we continue to tolerate? I am inspired by the words of Martin Luther King Jr. who was very frustrated with white moderates.

“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice [...]

That is exactly how I have felt about environmental moderates. They are our greatest stumbling blocks to doing right by the earth. Those who will not even discuss human numbers and how overpopulation is a driving force behind the flames, frustrate me more than those who deny human caused climate change. They never use their microphone for educating people how people are not going to survive if we don’t stop converting the planet to a place just for us and our billions.

MLK further said “ …a white moderate is someone who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom." Such a person is, according to King, someone "who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a 'more convenient season.'"

As a self proclaimed and proud overpopulation activist, I have personally been told to wait to push this issue because other issues are more pressing. Well waiting gets us an additional 1 million passengers every 4.5 days to find water for, clothe, house, feed and employ. We are already at least 5.5 billion overpopulated compared to our resources and the pollution resulting during their extraction. The environmental moderates also operate by a mythical timetable, one in which renewable energy and cloth bags will save us.

Ultimately, King wrote that "shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."  Thank you MLK, you just described perfectly how it feels to be in a world where most environmental organizations have a moderate approach to saving the world when you know it is like bringing a garden hose to a house fire.

 

 

Entrenched in a Sea of Inertia

In our world of declining, non-renewable resources, Inertia seems to be a renewable and infinite resource on any number of issues. Those of us who love reading and learning often think education is the best tool for moving the needle on the inertia scale. Activists on any number of issues,however, would beg to differ. They are frequently disappointed with their results when fact -proliferation is their only tool. Change is hard and complex. Let’s apply this to the gun issue.

The year 2018 ended with a population of 329,093,106 in the US. The US population of guns was estimated to be larger; 393,347,000. The total gun deaths, not counting suicides was 39,773. That is more than how many die in accidents on US roads.

Now to give that context, if you combine the population of Japan, Sweden the UK, Israel and Australia you come up with 246,995,950 people who collectively own 8,804,00 guns. The total gun deaths in those countries combined was less than 1,000, way less it was 460 total deaths. Those facts are enough to make activists squirm and most thinking adults dismayed, but not enough to make the sea change needed.

The ingredients for a seismic shift on entrenched problems, need more than information. I propose a that the recipe for radical social change has to include at least the following: 1) evidence that is provable by many sources 2) a tragic event or incidents that attracts national ( or international) attention AND is intimately and inextricably linked to said evidence, 3) coalitions representing multiple voices from various political groups, gender and racial groups speaking up in a unified voice and messaging with demonstrations, speeches and in writing 4) opposing views are dismissed as being fundamentally unfounded and its ‘leaders’ exposed for being self serving in some way, either for money or power to the detriment of most people and/ or the environment. 5) A way out, direction offered to change behavior that is acceptable to most and doable by enough people to make enough of a difference 6) this all needs to culminate into a tipping point so that society that demands change 7) we then need leaders who know how to make the necessary legislative changes even at possible risk of losing their own political standing. In other words, change is complicated and we need to quit reciting facts as if that is going to work.

We have enough evidence to know that the US has horrific gun problem. We have already had enough tragic events to last us forever. We are starting to build the coalitions to expose how gun lobbyists influence politicians and have also worked hard to crush the world view that gun owners actually stop crime or that gun safety activists are after people’s guns particularly those used in hunting.

What we may need is a way out that offers a new less-threatening approach with the mantra that it will save lives. Do gun owners deserve more freedom than car owners? It’s true, car owners do not have their own amendment to the constitution, but they are free to buy whatever car they can afford as long as they follow the rules. We ask all drivers to pass a test and be insured. We ask that cars get inspected so that they are safer on the roads. We don’t prevent the manufacturing or ownership of cars, we make them safer with rules and regulations. We could even get more creative and use part of the insurance money to pay for the safety training and for follow up gun inspection for those who already own them. Even better let’s push the tipping point of this issue and insist that much of these newly generated insurance dollars go toward fully funding mental health medical coverage.

There are no losers in this scenario. No one has to lose their gun privileges, unless they break the rules. Just like we want drunk drivers off the roads, we want to try to more effectively limit access to weapons to those who are untrained and irresponsible.

welcoming diverse voices to an issue that effects us all

Their names are Jim and Paul, Jeff and Bill and several Daves. They are my colleagues and some my dearest friends. They are my heroes for fighting a fight few wish to discuss, let alone hear about. But for the longest time I have wondered why there were so few women’s voices in the world of educating people about dangers of overpopulation the the over-consumption of resources that follows in its wake.

Much to my delight, I recently have become aware of even more women, mostly in academia, some in media, who are quite vocal on this often-shunned topic. Their fresh voices somehow make me feel less alone. Overpopulation is a matter of understanding how the laws of carrying capacity apply to homo sapiens sapiens too. It shouldn’t matter who is in charge of working on this issue. In a perfect world, the presentation of scientific evidence should demand our attention no matter who is at the podium, yet we all know we live in a world that is divided and subdivided into groups with very unequal power.

Now women did have a chance to work on this existential threat to humanity and all life forms and they collectively blew it. In 1994, at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, the most vocal women there hi-jacked the purpose of this important meeting. This was a gathering of leaders from around the globe that was supposed to be focused on slowing population growth through population policies. Instead feminist activists moved it downstream to be about improving the lives of individual women. Their consensus was that enhancing individual rights and health of women would eventually lower fertility and slow population growth. ( I don’t like saying population growth because the numbers already here are alarmingly unsustainable, but that was the language of the time.) The deliberate diversion from what should have been important conversations and proposals for a truly sustainable earth were lost in this earlier version of the me-too movement. So how did their narrative play out? Well women around the world continue to suffer and Egypt’s population is now over 100 million. It was just over 63 million back in 1994. A total failure by any calculation.

Having said that, I still think women who truly understand this issue need to have more leadership roles. If they were more visible, I believe they could bring deeper and different conversations to an issue that obviously needs a new approach.

I recently took a quick survey of ten + US based population NGO’s including: World Population Balance, Negative Population Growth, Californians for Population Stabilization, Population Connection, Population Media Center, Global Footprint Network, I found that 100% are led by men. Only Canada and Australia have population NGO’s led by women. Our movement as it were, has always been plagued with a lack of diversity of both gender and race. To outsiders looking in, instead of seeing people sincerely alarmed at the crisis we are in, they see another group of (white) men telling them what to do with the very personal decisions of their lives.

Perhaps over the years, instead of mostly reaching out to the public to educate them about an issue that seems so obvious to those of us in the know, we should have been reaching out to women leaders and leaders in communities of color. We should have led the conversation with the fact that those who are disenfranchised are the first to feel the adverse effects of overpopulation. They must understand that they have skin in this game.

I really do understand that to many on the outside of this issue, it just keeps looking like a white man’s narrative, and its time for that to change. I am betting that deliberately and compassionately trying to change the complexion and gender of the leaders in this field would create many more overpopulation activists who deeply understand that this is an issue that must concern us all especially those who continue to struggle in this very unequal world.

The North Shore Beckons

The North Shore Beckons by Karen I. Shragg

 

I can hear her conifers beckoning

From my perch

Behind the keys of my computer

Where I dwell surrounded by the din of a city

Who lost her soul to growth long ago

I wonder

In what mood will I find Superior

When I finally arrive at her doorstep?

I recall the wildness of her sweet shores

So iconic, dappled with mergansers, towering waterfalls

People-free horizons and sunrises that humble

But that was long before her popularity

Crippled her

The rocks that have long taken her beating

Are likely the only things which remain unchanged

Still, I will try to ignore the wider roads and billboards

The traffic and the felled trees

And enjoy her majesty once more.

Only Photosynthesizers Get a Pass

http://nuarchive.wbai.org/mp3/wbai_181120_220005etff.mp3

Here is the archived interview done by Jessica Schab that I did on November 20th 2018. I also wrote a check to the Equal Time for Freethought program on WBAI-radio 99.5 FM New York because they truly are public radio and do not get money from corporate donors. Congrats to them for being bold enough to approach and embrace the topic of overpopulation.

What I wish to blog about is the dance we must do in all of these types of interviews between pessimism and hope. If any of us were at all optimistic, we wouldn’t be working on this issue. Forgive my choice of words, but we are mostly scared shitless about the future of planet earth because of human numbers and modern day ability to use up resources to try to meet our every need and desire. So to those people who are unaware of this issue, how do we wake them up without depressing them so much that they go back under the covers of denial?? How do we tell them the unvarnished truth about being already 5.5 billion people over our carrying capacity without painting a picture so dark and impossible that it sends them to the liquor cabinet or in my case, the bakery? How to we say that on top of that we add over 81 million to the earth every year net gain without sending them over the edge?

I struggle with this every day and with every message I write about this super challenging issue. My premise for what I do and say comes from my training and experience as a naturalist. Only plants can take energy from the sun, make their own sugars and release a product that is beneficial to the world. All animals are takers, especially homo sapiens sapien and that is exacerbated in our overpopulated world. With nearly 8 billion of us on earth, even flushing a toilet with potable water is a ridiculous waste of precious resources and most of us do that if we are lucky enough to have indoor plumbing.

I am a polluter. I am an apex predator. I take from the earth and return only pollution. I make an effort to compost and recycle, but it pales in comparison from the water I consume and the plant based food I buy which comes wrapped in plastic or mesh and comes from far away places. I never want to position myself as a model of low consumption. In an overpopulated world I don’t believe that model exists. So how to we promote hope when each of us is a part of the problem?

We sell the very real notion that this IS solvable. We demand a seat at the table. We make it very clear that IF one cares about wildlife, the future of humanity, poverty, pollution and all other progressive issues, one HAS to care and work on this issue. We can and must reduce the over-demand for nonrenewable and diminishing resources. I believe hope lives in working on the right ballfield. We cannot hit one out of the park if we are in the wrong ball park. The problem is us and the solution is less of us and our demanding ways. Working on that is hopeful because it gets us somewhere. What problem can you think of that wouldn’t be improved with less humans?

Shirley Chisholm once said, “If they don’t let you have a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” I am on my way to the thrift store right now.