Category: sustainability

Longevity and Wellbeing

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It continues to baffle me why so much emphasis is put on a long life.

Japan’s life expectancy fell to second place behind Hong Kong. The above BBC linked article is typical of this rhetoric.

Words and phrases like “fallen behind” and “topped the rankings” make longevity out as some kind of race and the those living longest are runners.

Are OCTOGENARIANS LONG DISTANCES ATHLETES?

Is this also why Westerners love to run, because they feel they will live longer by doing so?

Living longer does not make you happier. There are plenty of people who live to a ripe old age but miserably. Equally there are others who live shorter lives but happily.

The previous Dalai Lama quote should remind you of where you will find happiness, and it isn’t in a long life.

From wood to plastic – new technologies

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This morning’s NHK News featured a story on the opening of a factory which can produce plastic from wood (in Japanese) bypassing the need to use petroleum, the usual resource for its production.

This could be the start of the decline of our reliance on oil but it is still early days yet. The production is labour intensive and costly for now but it is a start.

World Population Day

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Today is World Population Day.

Theme this year is Universal Access to Reproductive Health Services and it is part of the Millenium Development Goals for 2015.

Ancient fuel

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Friend: So, did you read the story about moss surviving on poo from 8,000 years ago?

Me: That’s nothing. Man has been surviving on dead things that’s 650 million years old!

How much or little know about glaciers

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Did you know only ten glaciers among 54,000 in the Himalayas have been studied in any great detail. Just how little do we know.

Global warming brings about extreme weather and climate. Should expect this to be any different for mountain terrain and glacial ice?

A message from David Suzuki of the David Suzuki Foundation

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Dear friends,
Some of you may have seen media coverage about my decision to step off the board of directors of the David Suzuki Foundation. I am writing to tell you more about this and what it means.

After my children and grandchildren, my greatest pride is the David Suzuki Foundation.

I am fiercely proud of how the Foundation brings science and solutions to environment problems. I’m determined to ensure that the Foundation continues to have the ability to solve critical environmental issues and bring hope for the future.

But I have reached a point in my life where I would like to consider myself an elder. I want to speak freely without fear that my words will be deemed too political, and harm the organization of which I am so proud. I am keenly aware that some governments, industries and special interest groups are working hard to silence us. They use threats to the Foundation’s charitable status in attempts to mute its powerful voice on issues that matter deeply to you and many other Canadians.

This bullying demonstrates how important it is to speak out.

The Foundation’s science-based, solutions-oriented research and educational work has enriched our democracy and reflected Canadian values for two decades. While not always happily received by governments or industrial interests, this work is strictly non-partisan, as required by the laws governing charities, and has made the Foundation one of the most trusted environmental voices in Canada.

Our opponents, however, are redoubling their efforts to marginalize the Foundation by getting at me, personally.

So last year, I made the decision to step off the board of directors of the David Suzuki Foundation. I remain one of its most active volunteers and committed major donors. This way I can fulfill my personal mission and the Foundation can continue to build on its inspiring work—for us and our grandchildren—in finding solutions to our shared, and very real, environmental challenges.

I hope you understand this decision and will continue to show your, steadfast support for my work in this concrete way:

Please share this letter with your family and friends and, at this critical moment, invite them to become supporters of the David Suzuki Foundation, by joining our online community or donating today.

Sincerely,
David Suzuki

Apple financially bigger than Poland?

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Numbers are deceptive, especially catchy headlines quoting stupid statistics.

Apple is apparently worth more than the nation of Poland. Well, not quite. Apple is worth 500 billion making this more than Poland’s GDP.

So there you have it. Measuring market worth against a country’s GDP … um, no comment.

It doesn’t take a math genius to figure out that Apple, a company with 60,400 workers cannot be equated to Poland, a nation of over 38 million people. If somehow the numbers make sense then Apple must churning so many iPhones, iPads and iWhatevers that there must one for every person in Poland or the planet. But clearly this is not the case.

No, don’t listen to stupid numbers. Count what is important. Count the starving people. Count the number of deaths from war. Count the growing population in developing nations and the declining population in the developed (‘developed’ as compared to what?) nations.

If you count everything in monetary terms you will only see what’s in it for you and not who is dying for your selfishness.

The thing about inconveniences …

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… is that it ultimately gives one a better perspective of the world.

Last night I posted on my Facebook Wall about the beauty of the stars in a clear sky. And this morning I continued the story with an update about how clear the morning night sky was again. This prompted a  friend of mine to comment how she wished she had the luxury of looking at the stars like me.

But what she and probably everyone else don’t realize was that I wasn’t actually delibrately going outside to look at the night sky but rather I was doing the mundane task of putting in the laundry into the washing machine in our creaky old country outhouse. I do it every night before I sleep at nine (put on a six-hour-later timer so that we use the off peak electricity, of course), collect and hang it up just after five in the morning. So all I had done was look up at the night sky as I made the trip there and back.

It isn’t the romantic country lifestyle as everyone seems to think. That is what is so great about darkness. They are like “alcohol goggles” (that is, being drunk): you can forget about reality and enjoy the sheer beauty of the dark clear night sky. But it all comes crashing back to earth when you enter your artificially lit home and see yourself in your run down PJs in the mirror.

As I said it isn’t a romantic lifestyle but it is an ideal one, one that makes me happy and feel closer to nature. And I wouldn’t give it up for the world. At least that is what I feel at the moment. Because if it wasn’t for this lack of convenience of not having space for a washine machine in our house I wouldn’t have seen that beautiful sky, or notice the natural rhythm – night after night – of the world that is beyond the psychological and physical walls which surround me.