Remove any woman of her freedom and of her dignity and see what happens to her. But don’t just do it once. Do it day in and day out. Starve her and reward her with food only when she complies to your commands. Now do this to a dolphin for human entertainment. How would you expect this non-human person would cope?
Dolphins are “killers”. The secret is out. They sneak around in the dark depths of a SeaWorld aquarium like a gang of bored teenagers looking for trouble. Or are they just tricksters who go along with human games to get fish because they are just as basically lazy as the people who sit in the stands drinking super-sized Slurpies waiting for the enslaved species to entertain them with flips and squeaks, right?
I thought it would be interesting today to anthropomorphize a corporation since I love to do that so much with the animals and other creatures of our planet. Heck, I even like to give Earth the characteristics of a graceful warrior and serene being. What traits then could we attribute to a corporate entity?
In a country as rich in minerals as Canada one would imagine that international exploitation would be unnecessary. However, this seems not to be the case. It’s much more convenient to pollute someone else’s backyard rather than your own, especially if the neighbour’s eyes hunger over the promises of easy short term riches. But where's the accountability?
How we choose and what we choose to eat is completely within our control. The only thing stopping us is that our taste buds got used to certain flavours. They can easily get unused to them. The question is, do we have the will do to so?
If you are at all familiar with Monty Python, you may have seen the movie The Meaning Of Life. Granted the humour is not always palatable at the dinner table but it is still hilariously ridiculous. So along those same fishing lines, let’s look at what is happening in our oceans because although you might like the taste of Skinny Mermaid Salmon and even buy into claim that it is a sustainable fish when grown in closed containment facilities or inland, it still contributes to the “one wafer-thin sardine” problem. But that's not all.
When it comes to food choices we need octopus arms to count them and then some. In fact, I am convinced that two-third of all Americans secretly have 6 extra arms pasted against their chest which magically bust through their shirts at the all-you-can-eat buffet when the other third of Americans aren’t watching. How else would more than two-thirds (68.8 %) of adults be considered overweight or obese and then half of those actually be obese?
The population of the state of Texas is literally imploding in density while simultaneously exploding in numbers. The cities are becoming stars that spread human-induced global warming outwards, scorching the surrounding land and creating hard crusty regions where there were once grasslands. Now where's the beef?
On those crusty deserted lands there is nothing like lying on a sandy beach relaxing with a cool drink listening to surfer tunes. There are only the sounds of insects and the occasional tourists uttering explicatives while thumbing it on the side of the highway because they decided to blast their air conditioning without paying attention to their gas gauge. Whoops! Why is this happening and what can we do about it?
Imagine for a moment that the skies are overcast, like today in Toronto, and you are pining for the joy a little sunshine brings into your life. Unfortunately, the sun has decided to take a much needed break from your neighbourhood so you’re left digging deep into your reserves to muster up the energy you need to get through the day. What if you had your own personal sun-in-a-box?
The truth is we have a love/hate relationship with the sun. We love it in the cold winter months as we sip a hot cocoa après-ski but we hate it when we get into the car in our short-shorts and toast our toosh on the hot leather seats because the tree moved. When you think of the word sun, what vision comes to your mind? What about fossil fuels? We have enough oil to last out through the transition to clean energy so what’s our excuse?
What I like about this bubble chart is the visual representation the author devised in order to summarize the massive amounts of information you can currently find on the internet about the ins and outs of polyculture— the sustainable way of future farming, in my opinion. What about you? What kind of visual tools spark your imagination?
Farmers used to till their fields and rotate their crops from harvest to harvest. For example, they would plant a nitrate vampire like corn one year, and then rotate it with a nitrate miser like beans the next, thus reducing their dependence on synthetic fertilizers filled with way too much nitrate for yummy, or rather yucky, plant food. The new mono-crop methods put an end to all that. Was this a smart move?
Now when I go for a walk in the Music Garden at Harbourfront I stop to watch the bees pollinate. I can almost hear The Flight Of The Bumble Bee play as they zip from flower to flower. Maybe’s that why it’s called the Music Garden. I even got up close and personal with them and my smart phone this summer. When I look at the pictures though, the image is all fuzzy, just like the bees themselves. They just can’t seem to stay still long enough to strike a pose. Why the rush?
Yesterday the developing "aquacultural" practice of open ocean farming questioned our appetite for More Fish Please, so today let’s continue evaluating our habits by looking at fish farmed closer to shore. Humans love their salmon as sure as they love their beef or even more so than in countries other than Texas. Whoops! Texas is [...]
It seems we have all the ingredients and technology that can make ocean farming a reality. We’re not just talking fish farms along the coastlines. There are companies currently fish farming in the open ocean and seeing results to their liking (aka. bottom line bounty). The question is: What are they NOT seeing?
Since the industrial revolution, CO2 has been bad, really bad, so much so that we are at the point of sequestering it. Off to the corner it goes never to romp around with the other molecules in the atmospheric playground. Well, except for about 350 of them. That’s all the school-sky Stewards can manage before tempers get heated. What kind of detention can we impose on these airborn bullies?
Yes. Eutopication. I decided to ignore that little red line in my text editor by invoking my license to be poetic. With your permission I shall continue on with why I believe a new word is necessary in the English language. So what exactly is eutopication and is it all related to "eutrophication"?
…or my front yard, or my side yard, or my driveway…Take a look out your window. What do you see? Is there a big gaping hole in the grass, pavement, sidewalk, gravel, sand, garden, paving stone, or in whatever you count as your stable entourage? For some, it's their immediate reality but for the rest of us...
Apparently there is a sinkhole epidemic going on right now and theories abound as to why the sudden reshaping of Earth’s crust. Hmmm. Sudden? There is nothing sudden about a sinkhole spontaneously appearing out of seemingly nowhere. But the real question is whether there actually are more sinkhole sightings across the globe or we are just little randy bunny rabbits moving into new previously uninhabited territory?
Shout out to all you L.A. Disco Divas out there! Does the picture look familiar? It may not be The Valley skyline but you might recognize the lovely brown haze hovering over the landscape. If you look closely, you’ll notice that nobody in the picture is wearing bell bottoms or a “Movember” mug. What if you zoom in?
Fracking is an eloquent verb invented to animate the scientific term Hydraulic Fracturing, a process in which high pressure water-based toxins are pumped into shale rock in order to break it apart thereby releasing natural gas that placates our need to burn baby burn. Farcking on the other hand refers to something different.
Depending on how accurate the math is, the climate fortune tellers can be full of the same stuff their carnival counterparts are or they can be superstars constantly surrounded by paparazzi. I haven’t seen any of them grace the cover of People magazine yet. Hmmm. Where does that leave us?
Gaea longs for the healthy albedo she once enjoyed. She was confident, glistening with pride, and the envy of the galaxy. She could take the sun’s heat and shout: “Right back at you, fireball!” But no more. Her ability to reflect the sun, her albedo, is in question. Could planetary Viagra be the cure?
The Ross ice shelf is not some guy with a big beard that scared my older sister at the age of 4 (that would be my uncle), it's an Antarctic glacier that is feeling a little unstable at the moment and no amount of lithium is going to normalize his behaviour. Why is Ross so important?
It is a case of "not in our back yard" syndrome turned upside down. The North Pacific Gyre is clean compared to the biggest fresh water lakes in the world, right in the back yard millions of people. Hmmm. Which lakes would those be I wonder?
A shark is an apex ocean predator. Mrs. Monique White from the Fiji Or Bust saga is a case in point. She is the “Iron Fish” on the reef and the open sea. Nobody dares mess with her, that is, nobody except Colossal Carol the Killer Whale or perhaps Richard Dreyfuss. So why is Monique so important to cherish? Isn’t she after all just a big bully preying on the smaller fish and marine mammals?
So is shark fin soup really that tasty? It’s the broth that gives it flavour. The fin is there merely for texture. In that case, could we learn from the vegans and create a mock shark fin?
While the water-energy nexus is a human construct, there is another relationship prevalent on this beautiful planet of ours which trumps anything humanity can intelligently (or not so intelligently) design. Any guesses?
In 1995, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) landed on Earth from planet Monsanto in the evil galaxy of Frankenfood and commenced their world-wide domination. How can we stop them?
Tropical rainfall seems to be the new norm in Toronto. If it’s not the lack of sage in my diet or eating spaghetti sauce out of aluminum plates, or, shudder to think, the fermenting of my brain cells like a good wine, then what IS causing this shift in Toronto’s rainfall patterns?
What does the number 350 mean to you? In and of itself, 350 is still just a number, a factoid, an ace in your pocket when going for that final piece of cheese in Trivial Pursuit. It only acquires some meaning in our every day lives when we build some context around it, such as...