Relevence is simply a matter of perspective. Perspective is largely a sum of experience informing your decisions. I have been wrassling with some of my ideas. Imagine my shock when sod me of my treasured notions could not stand the light of day. I have no memory of many of the events shaping my perspective. I remember my education, and have a deeper and richer understanding of math than I ever have. It is mostly remembering that I did stuff, not the memory of having done it.

It had left me on shaky philosophical grounds and that was not a position I like. Over the past few years I have taken a nice little job as a manager of a retail clothing store, and worked the occasional computer job as I rehabilitated myself. I am not a psychologist, and I do not think that a shrink would be of much use to me. My mind was kind of in the condition of a trailer park that has been hit by a hurricane. What do you think are the chances that another hurricane would come along and put it back the way it was?

I took advantage of the fact that my perspective had shifted somewhat, and I think that I have overcome some of the limitations that my former life had imposed on me. Previous acquaintances – some of whome I remember – tell me I am a lot nicer now. To be honest, being nice has never been a huge priority for me, even now. What I am is respectful of the essential dignity in all human beings, and  polite for that reason. That is new me. I like it a lot…

She commutes some 7o kilometers each day to her work, as none of the venues for her profession are suitable in our town. Yes, that does mean they do not pay enough here. Show me a waitress who says she works for her wage and I will show you a no-ambition, talentless server who is trying to conceal her incompetence. To a professional server such as my lovely bride the rewards are immediate and concrete – but our town does not support such, or she would be cycling to work right beside me.

Slowly we have begun to implement the changes in our lives that reflect our concern with the environment. I have a deep and passionate belief in mankind’s role as custodians of our globe, a mandate that became a moral imperative when we achieved the capability of destroying life on this world. Many have inferred somehow from my published musings that I have either an extreme leftist orientation or that I have a deep and abiding hatred of technology. The truth of my political orientation is largely that I do not have one.

Economically I believe the state should have complete control over the creation of money, but zero control of people’s choices in the free market. Private banking should be abolished.

Politically, I am of the belief that the guarantee of an individual to be able to pursue rational happiness and fulfillment is the only possible justification for government, and that rational self-interest should dictate to us as a race that the only possible solution lies in addressing the fundamental problems that create the situations we find ourselves embroiled in.

I will also go so far as to say that these fundamental problems will never be addressed under the present system of responsibility dodging and tunnel vision enjoyed by present administrations.

The book is an insightful look at global warming and it’s consequences, offering both a scathing – if engagingly written – critique of the current attitude towarad environmentalism and the Green movement. The shortcomings of moving from agriculture for food to agriculture for energy is pointed out, as well as the problems inherent for businesses in establishing markets in unproven, expensive technologies.

Fortunately for my peace of mind, I am an optimist and believe that we are more than capable of reaching out to embrace the idea of clean energy generation. I am speaking now as a patriotic Canadian. Is that a dirty word here yet? I do not give much of a crap for our government or it’s policies both here and abroad, but this country, with all of it’s beauty and grandeur – it’s beautiful waterways, and stunning mountain vistas, and amazing variety of wildlife, is worth preserving for it’s own right.

I must confess to all right now that I possess more than a slight leaning toward a system based on personal freedom balanced by social responsiblility. This does not mean any more than the government require that people  pay the actual cost of thier energy indulgences. My libertarian instincts have been very stressed by my gaining more insight into the problem and some of it’s possible solutions.

I must agree that the only way to deal with the issue is for government to set energy prices at a realistic price, and for consumers to stop looking for a free lunch. It just ain’t gonna happen. I also agree that the solution must be a result of market forces, but for this to occur, there must be a clear price signal. As mentioned in a previous article, my parents did not have a refrigerator until 1961. This is more than 30 years after they were invented. That is the scale of the learning curve that we face with developing sustainable clean energy sources. Why are we not starting now?

Politics. Big Money. Special Interests. Conflicting Regulations between National and State (Provincial) Energy Delivery Systems. Greed. Short Term Planning. Decentralized Energy Regulation. Did I mention short term planning?

The exact same issues that plague the US also plague us. Our watersheds are linked to thier watersheds. Our rivers are not OUR rivers. Water is a global resource. I have said it many times. We have the ability to turn the world into a Garden. The only thing that we will need to do to guarantee the destruction of our way of life is not to find a way to stimulate private research into clean energy generation and responsible consumption.

Think about it…

Of course one must realize by now, global warming is a measureable phenomenna and quite real by any sensible person’s ability to collate a few non-technical bits of data. Things that were science fiction a few decades ago are now yearly phenomena.

We have roughly the same number of really badass storms as we did in 1950, but the trouble is the storms seem to be both larger and of longer duration. I think it time that we gave some serious consideration of causes, as there seems to be plenty of room left for bickering. I mean discussion. Concensus seems to point to industry and automobiles as the prime movers and shakers.

I have my own theory. I believe, with all my heart, that if we remove the Collectivist vocalizations of the Liberal party and the NDP, and allow the Conservative party to speak only on alternate even numbered weeks, with carbon credits, the amount of greenhouse gas those clods in Ottawa are tossing into our poor atmosphere might match their Kyoto promises.

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Tags: Environment, Alternative Energy

It seems that every time I turn around, there is another chicken-or-egg conundrum to confound me. Maybe it is just that I am easily confounded.Or maybe, just Maybe, it is that humanity has been blessed with the ability to look around corners.

It has to do with the way we look at the world and the way that we fit into it. The purpose of this blog, ladies and gentlemen, and the challenge that I set before you, is nothing more or less than to enable some future writer, musing on chickens and egss, to ask the following qusetion: “Did civilization save itself from the threat of environmental collapse or did the threat of environmental collapse save civillization?”

The solution is of course that we must get pro-active about this whole thing. Think outside of the box, maybe even contemplate a few other geometric projections. Possibly a circle. Or oval. Ovals are friendly. How about… Ovoid.

The mistake that most human-hating activists make is in thinking that humanity has elevated himself outside of the bounds of the ecosystem, and that cause and effect now simply flow one way. This simply ain’t so. We are a part of the cycle, possibly even a natural check on the fecundity of the planet.

It seems to me that we are heading toward an Easter Island sort of scenario. We can either adopt a policy of grooming the planet into a park, or we can watch the inevitable decline that occurs when an organism has consumed it’s host. It is man’s nature to change his environment. This can be done either in a rational and controlled manner, or it can be left to chance.

I prefer reason. I do not want to give up the comfortable lifestyle we enjoy in the West, but I cannot help seeing an increasingly panicked electorate pushing guys like Stephane Dion into declaring an Ecowar Martial Law that will further disenfranchise Canadians and impose the values of some unwashed unthinking troll who just thinks that big business is out to rape the planet for no reason other than greed. Governments are funny that way.

To avoid this grim scenario, I suggest that Industry get off it’s metaphoric ass and spend some of those billions of dollars on developing new energy sources and tweaking existing green technologies. Use fricking robots to mine slag heaps; I don’t know, I’m a writer and a computer geek, not an engineer. Make some money off of it. It is possible. One notion that I would support is the genetic engineering of foodstuffs. Of dune-fixing grasses and networks of root systems that transport water to places where it is only a fond dream. Itty bitty bugs that gobble up oilspills, or chemical neutralizing agents that turn ‘em into something harmless.. Non-hydrocarbon burning engines. The List Goes On.

We can make the planet into a park.

We can make the planet into a desert.

It is up to us, and down to just these choices.

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Through the course of several metaphysical experiments, I have found that Newton was exactly right in respect to his laws of motion – as applied to a purely metaphorical universe, which I have determined that this is not.

Forward momentum, I am learning, can be a dangerous thing. As a maxim for life it can present challenges. Being a human cannonball socially and philosophically has it’s advantages. Although pressure can be applied to make one alter course, it takes quite determined effort to do so.The trouble comes when you impact your target. Yes, that is after all the purpose of cannonballs. That is when you find out if you are able to keep the chaos contained. The shrapnel of unintended primary, secondary and tertiary consequences fly about at will inflicting benefit and ruin at random. Rapidly one becomes aware that Newton can only take you so far in a metaphor, and that the bleak uncertainty of chaos theory has become your best friend.

Maintaining forward momentum is simple – all that one need do is keep running fast enough that you don’t overbalance and fall on your face. The trouble is that no body can remain in motion forever, there are too many outside forces acting on it. Just make sure that if you do adopt this maxim, you think about what will happen when you impact your target. And you had better impact your target – after all, there is not much more destructive – metaphorically – than an unaimed cannonball.

So what is my point. Just this – be sure to arrange things so that the trauma teams can get to the area if they are needed. Be responsible in your destruction, because you are responsible for the damage you do.

It was not the usual altruistic crap that states that as my brother’s keeper – but never my own, that is my brother’s job – I have a moral responsibility to somehow ameliorate someone else’s suffering by substituting it with my own. Instead, quite calmly and rationally, it exhorted me to donate in my own selfish self interest! It was so refreshing to hear, and so unexpected when I heard it that I actually laughed aloud in glee… and I am not given to laughing aloud with glee, believe me.

I walked right on over to my chequebook and wrote a donation out for them immediately. I am not a rich guy, so it was pretty small by many standards, but they were speaking my language for a change. The moral to this story is that it is all too easy to mistake the evil of altruism for ‘kindness’ and ‘niceness’.

Altruism is the mindless self-sacrifice of willing slaves. It is impossible to be ‘kind’ to one’s master, which altruism declares is just about anybody but oneself, and any ‘niceness’ to someone who is exploiting one’s willing sacrifice is hypocritical and ultimately self-destroying. Healthy selfishness, concern with one’s own being, must come before any true concern with anyone else’s.

As a longtime smoker, it is a matter of some personal interest to me to see that smoking-related illnesses are researched. To a (slightly) lesser degree the health and well being of my family and my few friends are as well.  At the same time I realize that the effects of my donation will not be limited to my family and friends, and I take pleasure in knowing that because of my kindness – not my sacrifice – I may be helping someone else. That good feeling that I am feeling right now is my selfish reward for helping others.

Can you dig it, Brothers and Sisters?

cybrbear is a heretic Green and a rabid capitalist Greens and capitalists both disown him.He has been told that he is a Randite, and has nothing resembling a social conscience, and that the fires of Hell await him in the afterlife. It appears that he is quite the rebel for such a conservative and inoffensive guy.

Half of the people he meet hate him on sight, the other half love him. None of them get him, but that’s ok. He mostly don’t get them either. This is the way he entertains himself whenhe is not working on software or playing old hippie folk-rock guitar. He muses. He wonders. And he writes the sh*t down.

He is certain that this and his hatred of all things television indicates a certain geekness level that is Friendly Giant kind of ‘Way, way up’, but has enough social skills that, although his social life is primarily limited to business contacts, if he feels the need for a real social life, he borrows hisy wife’s, as she is not a Geek but a Lady , and thusly has one of her own..

She makes him brilliantly happy, and although you may or may not guess this based on your admittedly limited knowlege of him, he chose a woman to be his partner who was smarter, funnier, better looking and nicer than him (he is not very nice). She makes every day a challenge tohim, and gives him the best reasons to keep to the straight and narrow. His children are brilliant, of course. Intelligence is transmitted through a female-linked gene, so he would not expect less… Anyways, here he goes again. Saving the world. One page at a time….

Standard musical fare included eclectic classical and folk with showtunes, and country and western thrown in from my father. They were a product of the 1960s, and like most of their generation they soaked up the new ‘virtues’ of progressive thought. They were young adults, barely out of their teens themselves, when the students were shot by confused National Guardsmen who were themselves teenagers at Ohio State University.

They saw the first of America’s modern adventurist undertakings, Vietnam, going horribly wrong for both the people it was ostensibly to help. There was no ‘Serious moral tonic’ involved in murdering civillians, even given the difficulty in distinguishing the combatants from the civillians.

I grew up in the shelter of giant cedar trees, near Lynn Creek, in Lynn Valley. At my elementary school, Westover, there was an outdoor classroom under some of the aforementioned cedars. It was an idyllic place to learn, and I cannot doubt it’s efficacy as a learning environment over a classroom. Even the depradations of thugs such as Willie, who had no redeeming characteristics whatsoever, could not dull that memory. Whenever I think of that certain mindless thug type of bully, I think of Willie C. I am saddened to think of how many of his type I see at my children’s schools. I don’t see any outdoor classrooms, either. That is sad.

Schools reward the manipulator and the thug by promoting them as being superior to the thinker or the doer. In subtle, nearly invisible ways, they encourage group and faction politics; popularity is determined by skills in social manipulation. There are far too few ways for introverted students to excell – perhaps there should be a physio-intellectual Olympics, for it is in fact our minds that give us our Mastery, not our bodies alone. Many animals are superior to Man in their own arena, but none can hold a candle to us in ours. We are infinitely superior to all of the creatures we share this planet with, and it is our minds alone that provide us with this superiority. Do not reward the thugs. I am not a socialist. I am not a Liberal. I am not a Conservative. I am a weird, funky amalgam of two of the three. I have values from liberal and conservative camps, and I lean to pure capitalism.

I simply believe that man is being held down by a form of government that will not allow him to grow. Tradition is a stupid reason to do something. A folly is not decreased by repeating it. A form of government is not inflicted on a people permanently; constitutions can be changed.

We can grow up and be responsible to ourselves and our planet. We can clean up our messes here and go off into space and stop making them on earth. I truly believe that out there lies the salvation and the future of humanity.

You can think Robert A. Heinlein for that, and for my objectivist view of life. Him and Ayn Rand, leavened with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gerald Durrel. Lots of weird stuff, EE Doc Smith. My heroes are all sterling expressions of what man can be at his best. The anti-hero has become far too popular with young minds. I do not think that this should be encouraged.

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