Snowflake (Arthur Jeon) should have been published by a major publisher and promoted with a huge budget, and it should be on every bestseller list by now. That it wasn’t and it’s not proves Ben’s point. Some excerpts below … [Author’s note: “The media headlines, tweets, and quotes are authentic. And, as of 2020, …
Category: environment
Dec 15 2022
Another reason to hate men
Another reason to hate men: “By 2050 at the latest, and ideally before 2040, we must have stopped emitting more greenhouse gases [typically caused by the burning of fossil fuels] into the atmosphere than Earth can naturally absorb through its ecosystems (a balance known as net-zero emissions or carbon neutrality). In order to get to …
Nov 19 2022
from Joel Bakan’s The New Corporation
“There are no limits in the [Paris] accord on continued exploration and drilling or on tar sands exploration (which experts say could alone defeat Paris targets), pipeline construction, or hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”). The accord contains no legally binding emission targets, no timeline for emission reductions, no enforcement mechanisms, no concrete regulatory proposals, and no plans …
Oct 16 2022
Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry for the Future. A MUST READ.
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson should be required reading for everyone. In particular, for those with economic and political power (send a copy to the people of your choice!). “Easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism …” p25 And that’s the problem. “Looking into plans …
Feb 19 2022
about the truckers’ protest
If this is what (some) Canadians do when they have to wear a mask, imagine what’s going to happen when the consequences of global warming really start to hit us, when … they have to stand in line not just for toilet paper, but for food – because, due to the increasing droughts, the loss of …
Dec 31 2021
Killing What You Enjoy
So I saw an ad on the website of the far-too-nearby gun club for a book by one of its members (“The Gun Guy”) that “takes the reader through the joyful and humorous stories about life at the hunt camp, hunting culture, and the joys of nature and wildlife.” I wrote him a short letter: …
Oct 19 2021
Surely, A Metaphor (for what’s happening to our planet)
Weather websites and municipalities are issuing air quality alerts because of the smoke coming from several uncontrolled forest fires, and yet people in cottage country just a few hours north of Toronto have smokepits going all day, presumably so they won’t be bothered by mosquitoes. Never mind that said smokepits fill the whole neighbourhood with …
Feb 19 2021
from We are the Weather, Jonathan Safran Foer
Reason to stop eating meat (well, would’ve been that back in the 70s … now, well, it’s reason to accept the blame, to feel the guilt for our demise … ): “Globally, humans use 59 percent of all the land capable of growing crops to grow food for livestock.” (p79) “One-third of all the fresh …
Jan 26 2021
Excerpts from The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, David Wallace-Wells
“In fact, more than half of the carbon exhaled into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels has been emitted in just the past three decades. Which means we have done as much damage to the fate of the planet and its ability to sustain human life and civilization since Al Gore published his …
Jan 15 2021
“332 litres of gasoline and oil are dumped over each and every one of the 49,000 kilometres of [snowmobile] trail …
Read the whole piece here: http://www.pinecone.on.ca/MAGAZINE/stories/the-well-groomed-trail.html
fiction
