room for all

From what I've read it appears the terrible fires are still raging around Fort McMurray in Alberta. It's a sad thing and sadder too to think just how stuck so many of us are in the current economic paradigm. We don't like what burning fossil fuels is doing to the environment but at the same time people need jobs. It's just the same for every other unpleasant business or practice we might condemn.

I did find out one thing that happened during the major evacuation that I'd worried might have been forgotten. People weren’t the only ones who needed to escape, hundreds of pets needed to evacuate too. While airlines typically restrict how many animals can be on board, for a number of pilots, the choice was simple: no matter what the rules are, those pets wouldn’t be left behind.

Pilot Keith Mann, Suncor Energy’s manager of flight operations, is the owner of a “four-month-old golden retriever” and empathized with those trying to save their furry friends. He said, “the terminal was quite a sight. Just full of animals. We did everything we could to keep pets with their owners, and insure that the flights were safe. That’s the Canadian way. We wanted to help.”

For about 50 hours, his planes saved cats, dogs, bunnies, frogs, hedgehogs, and even a chinchilla from the inferno. At times, there were close to 40 animals on board one flight, yet Mann reported that the trips were mostly peaceful.

See? A nice story. Hopefully it won't be long before Canada, among many other countries, gets behind diversifying its economy. I'm sure that would make many more people and animals feel safer again.


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the game goes on

I'm sure I've written about him before, but Andy Goldsworthy's artwork in nature is something that calms me when I've read too much about the environmental destruction that continues to be wrought upon the planet.

The most recent, and unnecessary, example I've read about recently is the decision made by the Australian government to allow millions of tonnes of sludge to be dumped inside the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in order that they may build a port to export more coal. This is despite the written pleas of several hundred scientists who stated in part of a letter, "Sediment from dredging can smother corals and seagrasses and expose them to poisons." It's not that there aren't other ways to deal with creating a larger port, but the Australian government has decided to go for the cheap, fast and dirty one.

What's most aggravating about the huge projects developed around extracting the fuels required to keep our modern industrial machines running, is that the people who allow them and profit from them, never consider the damage done to the environment. It's not that they don't know, it's that they prefer not being told. Another piece of news reported yesterday is that scientists have determined the amount of harmful pollutants released in the process of recovering oil from the tar sands of western Canada is far higher than corporate interests say it is.

Some time ago there was a phrase 'Think globally, act locally' that prompted many people to enter the environmental movement. A new book written by historian Joachim Radkau called 'The Age of Ecology' that will be published this spring is on my list for purchase:

The environmental movement, notes the author, has demystified the myth of technological progress for good. At the same time, however, a nature conservation movement that has now gone on the offensive harbours a design for the re-enchantment of the world. And this occurs mainly through what takes place locally. The practical use of environmental history, the retrospective of past decades, consists in seeing how, behind the jumble of environmental regulations, the simple concerns and basic motives, such as the need for and the right to clean water, clean air, peace and quiet and healthy nourishment, were again recognised and pursued at the local level.

From the reviews I've read the core of his history is the rise of environmental activism in the past half century, charting how this movement has been tightly linked to the fate of biological life (including us, but not just us in particular I would presume) on the planet. He seems to see a great flowering of ecological awareness developing despite the current conflict with capital interests.

What the governments and corporations are telling us by their actions is that we live in a world of endless resources that can be used for unending production. This is patently untrue for the many of us who witness the destruction and waste that surrounds us. The one thing they never want to face is our need for conservation of resources - a subject that must be addressed. What use are the products of great wealth on a planet ravaged by drought, famine, sea level rise, dead and dying oceans, and a polluted stormy sky?

Meanwhile, a sample of a documentary called 'Rivers and Tides':



As Crow says (although he may not have originated it), 'Where there's life, there's hope. I got my Green Party membership card in the mail this morning.

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gaming developments

I'm sure you'll be delighted to know my primary team in Final Fantasy IX have reached level 20 status (out of 99) and have been successful in their effort to traverse the dangerous city of Burmecia, a gloomy and dismal dungeon now the king and all the citizens have fled from the dark mage monsters. Poor Vivi, sad and mystified about their resemblance to him, is determined to find the answer. Meanwhile, the second team, separated from their friends, continue on their way to Tremo to rescue a friend who has been petrified. I left them yesterday after they'd found a cave where they can heal and regain magic power after fighting battles outside in a large forest where the worst enemies are called Mandragoras. Although I'd been warned they were dangerous, when it turned out they look like mischievous dancing tomato plants, I went ahead and battled them anyway - barely winning after being hit by various spells and other damaging attacks. A frequent trick in FF games is that some of the most powerful enemies appear to be the least offensive. This seems to be common in real life too.

Today's good thing and bad thing in the news are both about the same thing and fairly close to home at that - the Keystone Pipeline. Of course, in my opinion no news about the exploitation of the Alberta Tar Sands can possibly be good news because of the massive environmental destruction and all that implies.

The good news is that of all the states where farmers have agreed to easements on land that the pipeline is planned to traverse, farmers in the state of Nebraska continue to refuse the increasingly large amounts of money now being offered. These are brave and principled people.

The bad news is that on Saturday night there was yet another TransCanada Pipeline disaster when a pipeline providing natural gas to four thousand homes near Winnipeg, Manitoba exploded. These events are becoming more common all the time.

Now I'd better get back to my FFIX team near the cave. So far they've reached level 13, but because I need them to be a bit stronger before they take on the next dungeon I'll be doing something called grinding (battling to gain money/gil and experience points). The cool thing about Final Fantasy's earlier games is that you can make the characters strong enough that getting through the hard parts is much easier. I'm all for that.

Crow thought it might be nice for me to get one of these clever harnesses with an attached perch, but since he's six feet tall and wears boots, I balked at the idea.

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