TALKING RIVERS, ROADS AND REVOLUTION
by
MARK GOLDFARB
____________________________________________________
Just
back from a walk and run in a driving rain. It's 8c out there
so not too cold. It's taken me years to consider weather like
this a gift from the gods. I'm still wearing shorts outside. But
I'd be singing a different tune if it was pouring and -5, which
it eventually will be. I'm OK as long as I dress properly. The
same rule applies in Montreal but the clothing is different. As
a friend of mine once told me many years ago, don't live in Vancouver
if you can't hack the rain. So, I've learned to hack it and love
it and live with it and dress for it.
How many
years have you been running on a regular basis? You were blessed
with the body for it. Seventy years and at least fifteen thousand
miles on your legs have been kind to you and left you unscathed.
No arthritis, no torn menisci, no torn ligaments, no shin splints
and no stress fractures. That's something to write home about.
Thanks
for the update on your ever-evolving diet. The day will come when
all you'll have to do is lift your face in supplication towards
Ra and open your mouth to replenish your nutritional needs. I'm
not sure what Elizabeth May will charge you for that privilege
but it'll probably be less than what Justin charged you for the
Trans Mountain pipeline. And it will be legal – as long
as you don't perform the act in Quebec. When you die at the Methuselaic
age of 969 your body, by then a mere electromagnetic field, will
simply radiate into the Great Void saving Siggy the expense of
a coffin and the planet a green space it can ill afford to lose.
Cremation leaves a carbon footprint of its own, including woodsmoke
which you would probably prefer not to create. I've requested
my sisters dump my corpse in a forest for the buzzards and the
bears and the beetles and the deer and the crows and coyotes to
feast on. My instincts tell me they aren't going to fulfill my
dying wish.
The
ephemeralization of your carbon footprints would do a Ninja warrior
proud. There are many who snicker and say that those who commute
to work by car, travel by plane, eat non-local foods like coffee
and papaya, heat their homes with fossil fuels and drive cars
to demonstrations like the Montreal Climatestrike are hypocrites
who take advantage of the very same means and technologies that
are destroying the planet. I've heard smug people laugh raucously
and derisively at the likes of David Suzuki, Greta Thunberg and
First Nation peoples who promise resistance to pipelines at any
cost. It's an ignorant statement.
Political
Science 101 teaches us that any successful revolution you can
think of was waged and won by revolutionaries who contested the
system from within the system – not from without. They used
established technologies, institutions and infrastructure to change
the existing system. Buddha, Gutenberg, Galileo, Washington, Morse,
Newton, Engels, Trotsky, Tesla, Bell, Marconi, Benz, Ford, the
Wright brothers, Einstein, Gandhi, Mao, Castro, Morgantaler, Gates
and Cooper (inventor of cell phone) never fought the existing
reality. They used it to build a new model that rendered the existing
one obsolete. Ralph Nader didn't ride his Raleigh bicycle across
the country while he fought for human rights and against corporate
greed and irresponsibility. Martin Luther King used previously
established channels and the same justice system that enslaved
his people to gain a measure of freedom for African Americans.
Jesus always used the entire Torah as the foundation of his teaching.
Every
grain of coffee, sip of water and square inch of soil are treasures
we shouldn't waste or take for granted. Easier said than done
in our throw-away society. My record for using the same razor
blade is 166days. I heated my home for just 12 hours between May
2019 and mid-September. I take military showers – turn off
the flow of water while I lather up and only turn it on again
to rinse. Small gestures which as you say add up when multiplied
by 7.7 billion people 365 days a year but which I suspect will
not prevent Krypton from burning. Nevertheless every gesture counts.
Every body that turns up at a demonstration counts. Every letter
to the editor and l'hotel de ville counts. Despite claims
to the contrary by city engineers and officials who tout the party
line, our cities are not nor ever were designed for people. They're
designed for cars. Prior to the advent of cars they were designed
for horses and horse drawn wagons. I don't have to tell you the
number of pedestrians, cyclists and drivers killed, disabled,
disfigured, their lives forever fucked by our magnificently designed
cities. Cities that were designed for cars and commerce, not for
people. And there lies the root of said problem. Last May BC passed
it's Zero-Emission Vehicles Act (ZEVA) which mandates all new
light-duty vehicles sold in the province be zero-emission vehicles
by 2040. It plans to gradually meet its objective: 10% of new
light-duty vehicle sales by 2025, 30% by 2030 and 100% by 2040.
Zero-emission vehicles include battery electric, plug-in hybrid
and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. But the law has all sorts of
loop holes in it that render it toothless. It will take more than
a law to reduce emissions. It will take nothing less than a community
whose populace shares an entirely new vision.
The 550,000
square mile gyre of plastic in the North Pacific
that Arts & Opinion published a story about in 2009
is now 1.6 million square miles – as big as BC and Alberta
combined – and still growing. It's so big nobody knows how
big it is. It won't get smaller unless we clean it up and stop
adding to it. I just don't see that happening. What's worse is
that it's not the only plastic graveyard on the planet. There
are others. We
want our oceans back and we want them now.
And so do all the fauna and flora that live in and depend on them.
