Crow salutes David Suzuki

Just a few days ago our friend David Suzuki gave a speech in Australia at the University of New South Wales in which he charged the new Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, other climate change denying politicians and the ultra rich with 'criminal negligence' for their willful blindness.

"Environmentalism is a way of seeing our place within the biosphere. That’s what the battles were fought over. The barbarians – that is, many of the politicians and corporate executives that environmentalists have been fighting all these years – are driven by a totally different set of values, by the drive for profit, for growth and for power."

Later in an interview he was asked, "David, you've urged, at least twice, that legal ways should be found to jail politicians for denying what you call the science of climate change. David, do you still hold that view?"

Suzuki responded:

"You bet. I think there is a category called willful blindness. Our problem is we have no means of holding our so-called leaders - people we elect to political office to lead us into the future - we have no way to keep them accountable, except booting them out of office. But the reverberations of what they do or do not do today are rippling far beyond the coming years. There will be generational impacts. Now, if you have people who stand up to take positions of leadership and they deliberately suppress or ignore information vital to making an informed decision, I think that's willful blindness, and willful blindness, I understand, is a legal entity that you can sue people for."

Suzuki added, "I think it’s a crazy, dangerous situation if we’re going to marginalize science in favor of political priorities. I think that’s very, very dangerous."

Crow and I agree on behalf of all of those who will inherit this fine planet.
♡

gyrating Crow

Cousin Fred has been visiting the past few days telling us more about the North Pacific gyre than we really wanted to know. For those who haven't heard it's become known as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," or "trash vortex" - essentially a floating expanse of waste and debris in the Pacific Ocean now covering an area as big as the US and Canada combined. Best guesses are it contains almost 100m tons of flotsam, a vast "plastic soup" stretches 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.

It's not like a big island of plastic junk and can't be seen by people who just sail across the region. It's way more insidious than that since most of the garbage is underwater from the surface to a depth of 40ft but not tightly compacted. It's there to strangle, trap or suffocate wildlife with the natural effect of killing millions every year. That's why Fred looks so worried. His family has known about it for years but the toxic soup of refuse was discovered by people in 1997 when Charles Moore, an oceanographer, decided to travel through the center on a whim. (picture from Greenpeace)
















He found bottle caps, plastic bags and polystyrene floating with tiny plastic chips. Discarded plastic worn down by sunlight and saltwater disintegrates into smaller pieces. In subsequent trawls Mr Moore discovered that the chips outnumbered plankton by six to one. Does that sound healthy? The tiny fragments are the worst since they act as sponges for heavy metals and pollutants until mistaken for food by small fish. The toxins then become more concentrated as they move up the food chain through larger fish, birds and marine mammals. Guess who's at the tippy top?

In June a Japanese ship called Kaisei (meaning Planet Ocean), along with a decommissioned fishing trawler carrying special nets, will travel to the zone to see what they can do to begin a cleanup. It's being funded by the Scripps Oceanographic Foundation and the Brita Company which makes me wonder if they're planning to fill a really big jug and pour clean water out of the other end.

I know there's a lot of bad stuff going on right now and you probably don't want to be reminded of more. Television people have been trying to convince you this country practices a kinder and gentler torture than the Japanese in WWII or the Spanish Inquisition. Don't listen to them! I met Torquemada and you really don't want to go down that road. Then there's the bombing being carried out by stealth drones operated by guys sitting in military virtual reality game centers outside Las Vegas. Why are first person shooter games funded by the government? So they can train your children to kill without remorse, that's why. I'm not even going to talk about the continuing economic crisis other than to mention it makes no sense for a car company to get $35 or whatever billions and fire 80k employees just to save the company name and wealthy stockholders. I mean if they'd said they were going to retool and start building wind powered trains or something I'd probably agree it was a good idea. What is a car czar and why do you need one?






Anyway, Cousin Fred has his new heavy weather supplies and is on his way back out to sea. The one thing he did mention on his way out the door was that it might be a good idea for companies to start making plastics from hemp. It has lots of cellulose and really does break down but it would be best not to throw it in the sea. Please.