I saw this episode of the Stuart Davis Show about a year ago because I subscribed to Integal Naked, which is now called Integral Life. It has just come up on Vimeo for free, and I think everyone should check it out because I think everyone can relate in our day and age. Love it!

Stuart Davis is a genius…

The Stuart Davis Show – Episode 12 – A Foothill in the Mouth from integral ecology on Vimeo.

Also, check out Davis’s new song Deity Freak, it’s got a great ring to it…

I’m on Vancouver Island right now staying at a friends house. I have some extra time this morning before my school presentation, so I was reading a little, and enjoying a nice cup of tea. Caryn and I just bought some new loose leaf teas, so I snagged a bag of Irish Breakfast tea (stronger than English Breakfast) to take along; however I forgot to bring a strainer for the loose leaves. Hmmm. Yesterday at the B&B I stayed at I carefully tore the top off of a red rose tea bag, emptied it, then filled it with the Irish Breakfast tea; I then scewered the opening of the bag and hung it in the boiling water off the top edge of my ‘to-go’ mug. That was a good cuppa! I repeated that process this morning. As I said, I’m a tea freak. But for good reason, they fill those red rose bags with the sweepings off the floor! Well, perhaps that’s exaggerating, but there is just no comparrison! Okay, I’m a tea freak slash tea snob. Anyway….

I’m not a vegetarian, but I have vegetarian tendencies. There are many reasons to eat a vegetarian diet, but my main reason is environmental. When I have a really busy string of demos, I tend to add a little extra meat to my diet, usually in the form of chicken or fish, not so much in the red meat department (although I did have an In&Out burger while I was in California). I have slowly been collecting stats and stories on the impact of our western cultures mass meat consumption habits; the video below is an excellent summery of some of those points.

Like most environmental videos, it is quite one sided—so take it with a grain of salt. I don’t agree with the overall scare-tactic-tone of the presentation, but the stats are pretty spot on. It’s incredible how powerful a worldcentric perspective can be for change, and it is only in todays day and age that we have access to the knowledge that is needed to create a worldcentric vision. So if some of the stats resonate with you in some deeper way, perhaps order something vegetarian next time you eat out or cook. If not, that’s all good too! 

RL

It would be easy to bog yourself down with all the environmental malaise spreading the globe, but Earth Day needs to be a celebration and an appreciation for all things manifest. That can be a tree in the backyard, a beautiful piece of architecture, a friend, a pet, your computer, your bike, or the food that is on your plate—simply put, anything that is. When you start the day with such deep gratitude, it becomes easy to spread good vibes and positive feelings about the Earth, and thus, all the decisions you have to make throughout the day will more likely be net positive for this incredible planet which we are all a part of.

Happy Earth Day to Everything!

Before going to sleep the other night, I read a poem by Rumi from, The Soul of Rumi. This particular poem, below, struck me as very appropriate for our epoch. Rumi was born in the year 1207, and it’s just so striking that his words, as translated by Coleman Barks, could ring so true some 800 years later…

There is a glut of wealth in the City of Saba.Everyone

has more than enough. Even

 

the bath stokers wear gold belts.Huge grape clusters hang

down on every street and

 

brush the faces of the citizens. No one has to do

anything. You can balance

 

a basket on your head and walk through an orchard, and it

will fill by itself with

 

overripe fruit dropping into it. Stray dogs stray in

lanes full of thrown-out

 

scraps with barely a notice. The lean desert wolf gets

indigestion from the rich

 

food. Everyone is fat and satiated with all the

extra. There are no

 

robbers. There is no energy for crime, or for gratitude,

and no one wonders about

 

the unseen world. The people of Saba feel bored with

just the mention of prophecy.

 

They have no desire of any kind.Maybe some idle curiosity

about miracles, but that’s

 

it. This overrichness is a subtle disease. Those

who have it are blind

 

to what’s wrong and deaf to anyone who points it out.

The City of Saba cannot be

 

understood from within itself: But there is a cure, an

individual medicine, not

 

a social remedy: sit quietly, and listen for a voice

within that will say, Be

 

more silent. As that happens, your soul starts to revive.

Give up talking and

 

your positions of power. Give up the excessive money.

Turn toward teachers and

 

prophets who dont live in Saba. They can help you

grow sweet again and fragrant

 

and wild and fresh and thankful for any small event.

The problems humans face today are deep and complex. “The City of Saba connot be understood from within itself”. I am beginning to realize the truth in this. I have read many similar accounts of the same advice, this one more direct from a book I recently read called Flow:

“But no social change can come about until the consciousness of individuals is changed first. When a young man asked  Carlyle how he should go about reforming the world, Carlyle answered, “Reform yourself. That way there will be one less rascal in the world.” The advice is still valid. Those who try to make life better for everyone without having learned to control their own lives first usually end up making things worse all around.”

I feel a great responsibility, combined with a great passion, to orchestrate the next phase of my career, whatever that may be,  from a place of inspiration, based on my time dedicated, as Rumi suggested, to “be more silent.”

Hey Folks,

The David Suzuki Foundation (DSF) is putting the pressure on John Furlong, CEO of the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), to make the 2010 Winter Games carbon neutral. I recently added my signature, along with 70 other athletes, to reinforce the incredible importance such an action holds. Now it’s your turn…

When I dream of the future, there is no issue of greater concern than that of climate change. VANOC has an opportunity to inspire the world by taking action, and frankly responsibility, for the immense carbon footprint such an event leaves in it’s wake.

I am certain that in hindsight, such a decision will seem obvious to them; lets make sure they don’t have any regrets. Taking responsibility for the environment is of utmost important, and we need to let them know we believe this, and feel strongly about it. So please follow this link, and lend your name to the cause, then pass it along to your friends. It’s simple, it’s fast, and if acted on, will have a long lasting and far reaching effect on the world.

Ryan

Gwynne Dyer spoke in Vancouver yesterday about his recent book “Climate Wars”. He has written extensively on foreign affairs and war, but his curiosity soared about climate change when he found some information about the British military’s preparation for climate change related scenarios in the future. He secured a book deal that gave him 18 months of research around the world interviewing politicians, military officials, and scientists, then stringing it together with some bold predictions. Generally the science is bang on and consistent with my own research, the environmental implications based on the science are quite accurate and consistent with the current consensus; the predictions he shares about how humans will handle the situation are somewhat bold and even controversial. Below is a summery of his lecture…

“Scientists are scared”, Dyer proclaimed near the beginning of his talk. The most recent IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report in 2007 gives a range of climate change scenarios; for instance the one on temperature suggest an average warming of between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius by 2100. Some of the most recent data suggests that even the high-end estimates in the 2007 report are on the low side. For instance artic sea ice coverage is down from 7 million square km’s to 4.3 million. Some predictions have gone as far to say that we could have an ice free artic by 2013.

Dyer explained that the problem with the IPCC is that it is a consensus, thus all scientists involved must agree on the numbers; this inherently biases the numbers toward the lowest common denominator. Also the reports used to base these predictions on are old. The cut off for official documents used by the panel for the latest ‘07 report was the end of ‘05. For the reports to be peer reviewed and published they would have had to be written by the end of ‘03; that means the data must have been from 2002 or earlier. This means our political action today is based on out of date information. This is bad news because climate change is happening at an alarming rate, much faster than even the IPCC had predicted. Dyers research on military forecasts show that they’ll have lots of work, and much of the concern is based on food supply, “eating is a non negotiable activity, without it your carbon footprint will be zero within 6 weeks”.

One scenario of conflict he suggested was between Mexico and the US. American farms will be hit hard because of changes in how Hadley cells distribute heat and moisture from the equator. Mexico will unfortunately lose much of their growing capacity, and will thus look north to America; but with the yanks own domestic shortages, the US may close the border in a militaristic way, which could cause anger amongst the America’s Mexican population which by 2030 could be as much as ¼. Leading to a divided country rivaling that of the civil war.

He suggests similar situation may arise in many parts of the world. Pakistan and India will have conflict on water usage from the Indus River once the glaciers in the Himalayas have melted. Without the water, India could lose approximately 25% of it’s food production; because India has 4 of the 5 tributaries running through it before the water reaches Pakistan, there won’t be much left, if any. So if human nature follows  course, Pakistan will raid its neighbor before letting their children starve. Because he is well versed in the field of war, having written about eight books on the subject, it is hard to discount some of his predictions.

He told us that Australia has conceded that their current drought is actually climate change, because droughts end and this one isn’t….The EU could face hardships when mass immigration northward begins due to loss of growing area in the south…. Negotiating Climate Change treaties such as the Kyoto will become difficult due to countries in peril.

He then talks about the point-of-no-return, which happens when global temperature rise reaches two degrees warmer than 1990 levels. We are already committed to 1.3, and Dyer, along with most scientists, believe we are going to sail right past this point despite the fact that the technology is available to prevent this. Once the point is past, we’ll lose control, meaning that no matter what we do, even if we cut our emissions to zero, the planet will warm dramatically toward the six-degree warmer mark, and perhaps beyond. Reasons for this uncontrollable feedback is due to oceans becoming carbon emitters rather than sinks, and because of the melting of permafrost. As the permafrost melts, large stores of methane will be released into the atmosphere and will act as a heating agent that is 20 times more powerful than CO2.

He is briefly optimistic when talking about solutions such as creating bio fuel out of pond scum (algae) and about the potential for clean energy by combining hydrogen and carbon. Along with the standard solutions such as photovoltaic, wind power, wave energy, and geothermal, he concludes that we have the answers. He then states that he doesn’t believe we’ll implement them fast enough. Bottom line, he concludes, is that we are going hit 400 or 500 or more p.p.m. of carbon in the atmosphere. “So are we doomed?” he asks, his suggestion is no, because human ingenuity may have a couple more tricks to play in the form of geoengineering (the cooling kind of human produced climate change, not the warming kind which we’re already successful at).

The two leading geoengineering propositions he shares are first, to mimic the action of volcanoes, which can cool the atmosphere slightly as Pinatubo did in ‘91. This can be accomplished simply by mixing jet fuel with sulfur dioxide. Whew! The second is to send automated ships out in the ocean that pump up mist from the ocean to thicken the marine strato cumulous cloud coverage, bouncing the excess heat away from the oceans. Dyer believes these measures may be acted on within five or ten years. He claims these (far-fetched) ideas will win us ten to twenty years which will give us time to reduce emissions to where we need them. This is a very controversial conclusion, and a dangerous one to bank on. It can lead toward lax climate change actions based on the thought that science will solve the problem without us having to change our lifestyles. Dyer certainly wasn’t claiming that we can all relax now, he is more alarmed than ever, but at the same time he concludes that his optimism is much higher than when he began his research, and is glad that there is a vision for a way through this mess.

Recently my wife Caryn suggested that I was “a passivist turned activist”. My curiosity about our human condition has skyrocketed over the recent year or two, and my appetite for knowledge, both internal and external, is insatiable. I hardly touched a booked until my mid twenties, now I can put them down. TV is a thing of the past for me and the internet isn’t another entertainment tool, it’s an information resource. My media and gossip filter is working overtime and I actively seek out information and opinions from progressive thinkers, philosophers, scientists, and leaders of our time. I cannot just blindly accept the common dogma of our time as it is clearly not working. With an increased understanding of how the world is set up and works comes an increased responsibility. I find there is a certain lag time between knowledge and actually living your life as an example of that knowledge. I guess that’s called integrity, and it sure is becoming hard to have any in this increasingly transparent world.

Is it better to just go on with business as usual and trust that those in high positions of power will save the day, that government will do the right thing and save the environment, etc etc. I am just taking some notes from a booked called “Untouched” by Mariana Caplan, she quoted a poem by Martin Neimoeller, that I’ll leave you with titled, First They Came for the Jews:

First they came for the Jews

and I did not speak out

because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the communists

and I did not speak out

because I was not a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

and I did not speak out

because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me

and there was no one left

to speak out for me.

I came across this posting of an American’s voting intention for November 4th. So for those American’s who read my blog, it’s a concise outline of the key issues (please click through to Jim Burklo’s website for the entire article). If it’s not blatantly obvious who he is voting for, please do some research before heading to the polls of November 4th. It affects us Canadians up here too

 

“I’m voting on November 4 not just for myself, but for my friends Jenny and Peter and their children in Sweden, my friend Angel and his family in Mexico City, and for many people around the world whose names I don’t know – hundreds of millions of them with a strong opinion of whom they want to be president of the United States.  Their hopes and fears hinge on how I choose to vote.  I’m voting to restore America’s severely damaged reputation, and renew our nation’s much-needed leadership for progress, decency, and freedom around the world.

I’m voting to preserve the new-found right of same-sex couples to marry.  As a pastor, I have seen the tears of joy of two men as they stood before me and made their wedding vows.  It is hard for me to imagine anyone voting to deny such couples the legal right to marry, after having witnessed such a blessed event. 

I’m voting for a strong, sensibly-managed, sparingly-used military. I’m voting for carrots now and sticks later.  I’m voting for going many extra miles to let aggrieved nations and their leaders feel respected, even if we don’t like them, even if it requires America to eat some humble pie, if it can advance the cause of peace.” 

Click here for the remainder of this article by Jim Burklo

My sister-in-law lives across the street from Caryn and I, and the other day I let her out the door carrying a huge load of kids-stuff; Caryn noticed and exclaimed “Ryan! Come on! Aren’t you going to help her out?” So I guiltily ran outside and grabbed some of the stuff she had, and commented to her, “nothing like a little bit of forced chivalry eh?”

So how about a little bit of forced environmental etiquette? Well, whether we like it or not, or even realize it, this economic downtown could be a breath of fresh air for the planet.

So finally we let the bears run free, this is great news for nature. Many elders have suggested that the world needs another depression to cure a culture that has lost its way. That is awfully tough medicine, but perhaps a small dose is needed? Experts who agree that a depression is on it’s way, don’t imagine it will last as long as The Great Republican Depression of the ‘30’s, but even a short one could give our culture a well needed reboot that could launch a brand new operating system that is much more efficient, stable, and sustainable than the one we currently maintain. It might be the only way to clear this virus before it turns terminal.

To keep up the medical metaphors, Thom Hartmann recently suggested that a planet with rapid extinction of large mammals is like a human with organ failure. It is really bad news that a recent study determined that 25% of the worlds mammal species are at risk of extinction; and that is a very conservative number; in reality, it might be much higher due to limited data on marine mammals.

“The financial crisis is nothing compared with the environmental crisis,” the deputy head of IUCN’s species program, Jean-Christophe Vie, told BBC News.

I don’t think it’s one or the other, I think it’s both-and. It seems that we might need one crisis to help out the other. I am generally known as an eternal optimist, but have found myself quite worried and anxious about the recent world news. It’s easy to get sucked in to a state of fear, and even easier to spread it as I know I have been doing unconsciously lately. I recently caught myself, honestly observed my actions and fears, and am now quickly reforming my thinking around this situation to adopt and share a more optimistic view. So it’s not one crisis over another, but one crisis to help another! It takes two to tango.

Endless financial growth is like an addiction. I was once addicted to the idea of making bottomless passive income and read all the Robert Kiyosaki financial books. Fortunately it was a short phase and I moved on before it consumed me (and hence the planet). The world has a great many people addicted to cash right now, and many are being forced to quit cold turkey. They might kick and scream a little on their road to recovery, but they too will see the light of day once the withdrawals stop. Many others don’t have bottomless cash but still manage to spend every cent they earn (and more) on consumables – they too may be forced to kick the habit. The withdrawals, whether you are a multi-millionaire, or in the middle class average, will come in the form of relinquishing your attachment to material goods. You can never get enough of what you don’t really need. You can never get enough, has been the theme since Reaganomics was born almost 30 years ago; and the crux of that lesson, what you don’t really need, is being taught right now.

Our culture is based around competition, we teach our children this from a very young age. Children are naturally very cooperative, but adults instill a competitive nature with scores and gold stars at an increasingly young age.

Competitive nature combined with greed has created this economic crisis, and the current market crash could be just what the planet needs, a last minute out before we reach an environmental tipping point. Despite the crime that media tends to focus on during hard times, I believe instead it will open up an overwhelming flood of human compassion and bring the world together in cooperation rather than competition. It will lead to community gardens, sustainable technological research and implementation, bicycles on the streets, revival of small businesses, and on and on. Maybe the tipping point will be one away from greed and toward a green future; that is my vision, and it’s an optimistic one.

Another animated environmental edit. A bit harsh at times, thought it deserved a post though for shock value. Whew! After watching it (it’s only a minute long), check out some of the other related videos on the player screen.