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Is there a cancer threat from the oil sands industry?

2011-04-19T10:25:21Z

]]> Those of us who watched "Tipping Point: The Age of the Oil Sands" on The Nature of Things at the end of January ⁱ are legitimately concerned by this question. Kelly and Schindler, writing in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,ⁱⁱ provided evidence that mining the Athabasca oil sands has increased carcinogen levels in the environment downstream, and it follows that more carcinogens in the environment could mean a higher risk of developing cancer for the exposed population.

Demonstrating that the oil sands have caused an increase in cancer incidence is another matter. This is largely because cancer is so prevalent; one in three of us can expect to develop cancer over a lifetime and one in five may die from it. According to the 2010 Canadian Cancer Statistics,ⁱⁱⁱ the incidence rates for all cancers have not changed much across Canada in 30 years, and the current incidence of cancer in Alberta is somewhat lower than that in the Atlantic provinces. Rates of incidence for all cancers between 2004 and 2006 in the Northern Lights Regional Authority, which includes the small town of Fort Chipewyan downstream of the oil sands, are lower or equal to the Alberta provincial average.^iv However, in 2009, Alberta Health Services presented a comprehensive study of cancer incidence in Fort Chipewyan residents between 1995 and 2006, concluding that there was an increase (51 cases observed with 39 expected in about 1,200 people); this included two cases of a very rare form of bile duct cancer.^v With so few total cases, caution was correctly placed on the interpretation of this observation and whether the increase could be attributed to the oil sands chemicals alone. Nonetheless, continued monitoring of this population was advised because of the unexpected cancer incidence.

]]> What we really need are answers to more difficult questions: Can the current cancer risk be considered "acceptable", as suggested by the 2010 Royal Society report on the oil sands,^vi are all reasonable efforts being made to mitigate the risk, and will prompt regulatory action be taken when the risk is no longer considered acceptable (if it currently is)? These are not simple questions because first we need to know:

The chemical nature of the toxins from the tar sands industry. (There are potentially dozens, each with its own distribution within the environment.) Unfortunately, it is not possible to know pre-industry levels of these chemicals, and the adequacy and credibility of results obtained by the industry-supported regional aquatic monitoring program (RAMP) have come under serious question.^vii
Which chemicals have been tested and classified as human carcinogens. Ideally, any interactions between different chemicals that may affect cancer risk should also be known.
The doses of carcinogens delivered to the population (including information on the concentration, duration of exposure, and route of exposure). Ideally, biomonitoring of individuals (for example, in hair or urine) should also be performed where warranted by higher levels in the environment.
Regulations concerning exposure limits for each carcinogen, and whether these limits have been approached or exceeded downstream of the oil sands industry.
The number of individuals exposed to the carcinogens in order to estimate the number of excess cancer cases that can be expected, and the significance one can place on this estimate.
What has been done, and what can be done, to mitigate the risks of developing cancer.

Taking the position that no increase in cancer risk is acceptable fails to acknowledge the many risks to our health that we accept each day, including risks of developing cancer from lifestyle choices. The government sets limits on the levels of known carcinogens in the environment, but these limits are often meant to be "as low as reasonably achievable" and therefore are typically greater than zero. For ionizing radiation, perhaps the best understood carcinogen (and my own area of expertise), the current dose limit is 1 mSv per year for the general public. Yet a single medical imaging procedure can deliver 10 times that dose, and the natural background dose (which is highly variable from one place to another) averages three times higher.^{viii, ix} To put these amounts into perspective, exposure to 1 mSv would be expected to produce five extra cancer deaths in 100,000 people.^x It would be impossible to demonstrate a statistically significant increase in cancer incidence by exposure of small numbers of individuals to one or even 10 mSv per year, yet we are still able to estimate the probability for a large population, provided we know the exposure.

It often comes back to risk versus benefit. We all find it easier to accept risk when it is our choice to make, but First Nations and others who make their homes downstream of the oil sands may not have that option. Both risks and benefits need to be shared fairly, and that is not often the case.

Dozens of toxic chemicals are emitted and distributed during the mining and processing of the oil sands. Arsenic is a known human carcinogen, yet a 2006 report prepared by Cantox Environmental for Alberta Health and Wellness concluded that there was a negligible risk of cancer from exposure to inorganic arsenic in the Wood Buffalo region of Alberta that contains the oil sands.^xi Although the levels of arsenic used for those cancer risk estimates were provided by the industry, independently funded studies concluded that arsenic levels were rising in that area but did not exceed the regulatory limit.^{ii, xii} However, seven of 12 other toxic metals exceeded guidelines for the protection of aquatic life by -five to 300 fold.ⁱⁱ Heavy metals, including cadmium and mercury, are considered "possible" human carcinogens, a different designation that limits what can be said about the risk for developing cancer.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) include known human carcinogens that are found downstream of the oil sands. Twenty-six out of 28 measured PAHs showed, on average, a six-fold increase in concentration downstream compared to upstream.^xiii Canada Health and Welfare and the World Health Organization recommend drinking water levels for total PAHs of 0.2 g/L, and for the most carcinogenic PAH, benzo(a)pyrene, the limit is set at 0.01 g/L. The estimated lifetime risk associated with drinking water containing 0.01 µg/L benzo[a]pyrene is considered "essentially negligible" by Health Canada, and one in 100,000 by the World Health Organization.^xiv A study conducted in 2007 by Timoney xv showed that concentrations of PAHs near the oil sands vary greatly, but at times exceed guidelines, suggesting potential danger to exposed people. Perhaps we should be asking, "How dangerous is the exposure to PAHs from the tar sands industry relative to smoking cigarettes or living in an urban environment? How rapidly are levels increasing downstream of the oil sands? What are the peak levels as well as average levels?" Answering these questions requires a reliable environmental monitoring program, which is currently lacking.

Simply demonstrating that the amount of any one carcinogen is lower than government mandated limits fails to acknowledge the possible interactions between different chemicals. Co-exposure of fish to arsenic and benzo(a)pyrene can increase rates of genotoxicity eight to 18 times above rates observed after exposure to either carcinogen alone.^xvi Currently, there is little if any information on additive or multiplicative risks of cancer from exposure to several carcinogens, so the possibility is largely ignored in assigning "safe" limits.

With known carcinogens being distributed over a large region of Alberta, reducing exposure and subsequent risk should be an industry priority. In the 1970s, stack precipitators were instrumental in reducing airborne particulates, but subsequent industry expansion means that overall levels are now similar to those measured before precipitators were installed.ⁱⁱ Levels will continue to rise in coming years if no efforts are made to further reduce emissions. Tailings ponds should not leak as they do now ^xiii and they should be guarded against storm damage. River water flow should be monitored so that it is adequate to dilute particulates, and climate change effects and usage effects on river flow should be taken into consideration for future expansion. Technology should be developed to recover toxic heavy metals.

What is needed to make this happen is a world-class, government-sponsored environmental monitoring system that can keep pace with the oil sands developments, is transparent but informative to the public, and examines a full range of potential environmental effects. Water testing should be as good if not better than the air quality measurements now provided by the Wood Buffalo Environmental Association, a multi-stakeholder group that publishes readouts on its website from more than a dozen sites in the region.^xvii Information on levels of carcinogens present in plants, animals, and people in the region are also needed.

A special review panel recently convened by the Alberta government has already concluded that more stringent oversight of environmental contamination in the Athabasca oil sands is necessary.^xviii The full report is due in June 2011, but recognizing that the current monitoring program is flawed and doing something about it are two separate things. Maximum toxic contaminant levels need to be set, and not just for water, but also for soil, sediment, plant, and animal life. There should be recognition that adhering to these levels may mean curtailing expansion at some future point. The pressure to accomplish these goals must come from many directions and should not rest exclusively on the inhabitants of Northern Alberta.

Back to the question, Is there a cancer threat from the oil sands? The answer is yes, because the levels of known carcinogens in the regions downstream of the industry have increased. Have these increases actually caused cancer? Perhaps, but the available data do not support an unequivocal conclusion. Cancer is too prevalent, and the number of exposed people is too small to be sure. Does this mean that there is no reason for concern, at least at present? Absolutely not. Cancer can take many years to develop and levels of carcinogens from the industry continue to increase. Until a reliable monitoring system is in place, we will have insufficient information to base estimates of cancer risk.

The oil sands industry has the opportunity and the responsibility to mitigate these risks, but we have a responsibility to understand these risks in relation to others we encounter in our daily lives. Hall, in an earlier edition of his book,^ix examined the chances of dying from a radiation-induced cancer in relation to the risk of dying from smoking cigarettes or driving a given number of highway miles. I've used his analogy to compare PAH-induced cancer with these risks. If drinking water containing 0.01 g/L benzo(a)pyrene causes one additional fatal cancer in 100,000 people, this would be equivalent to the risk of dying from smoking 73 cigarettes or driving 178 miles. This doesn't sound too bad until we remember that we are also exposed to many carcinogens not only in drinking water but in the air we breathe and the food we eat. One of those chemicals is arsenic. The risk of dying from cancer by drinking water containing 0.01 mg/L arsenic (the government-mandated limit) is equivalent to the risk of dying by smoking 1,500 cigarettes or driving 3,500 miles. If you're wondering why maximum allowable arsenic levels are so high, it's partly because of the difficulties in estimating both exposure and risk from cancer caused by arsenic. However, Health Canada also states that its regulation represents "the lowest level of arsenic in drinking water that can be technically achieved at reasonable cost",^xix which is even more reason for close monitoring of the carcinogens produced by the oil sands industry.

References

ⁱ Tipping Point: The Age of the Oil Sands. Documentary film aired Jan 27 and Feb 12, 2011 on CBC-TV.
ⁱⁱ Kelly, EN, Schindler, DW, Hodson PV, Short JW, Radmanovich, R. Oil Sands development contributes elements toxic at low concentrations to the Athabasca River and its tributaries. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107: 16178-16183 2010.
ⁱⁱⁱ Canadian Cancer Society's Steering Committee: Canadian Cancer Statistics 2010, Toronto: Canadian Cancer Society, 2010.
^iv Alberta Health Services, Report on Cancer Statistics in Alberta, 2009.
^v Alberta Cancer Board, Report on the Incidence of Cancer in Fort Chipewyan, 1995-2006
^vi Royal Society of Canada Expert Panel, Environmental and Health Impacts of Canada's Oil Sands Industry, December, 2010.
^vii Main, C. 2010 Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program Scientific Review
^viii The 2007 Recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection. ICRP #103; Wrixon, AD. New ICRP recommendations. Journal of Radiological Protection, 28:161-168, 2008.
^ix Hall EJ and Giaccia, AJ, Radiobiology for the Radiologist, Sixth Edition, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Philadelphia, 2006.
^x Smith AH, Lopipero PA, Bates MN, Steinmaus CM. Arsenic epidemiology and drinking water standards. Science 296: 214l5-6, 2002; Kaiser J. Second Look at Arsenic Finds Higher Risk, Science 293, 2189, 2001; Arsenic in drinking water. National Academy Press, 2001 Update.
^xi Report prepared by Cantox Environmental for Alberta Health and Wellness. Assessment of the Potential Lifetime Cancer Risks Associated with Exposure to Inorganic Arsenic among Indigenous People living in the Wood Buffalo Region of Alberta, 2007.
^xii Timoney, KP and Lee P. Does the Alberta Tar Sands industry polute? The Scientific evidence. The Open Conservation Biology Journal 3:65-81, 2009.
^xiii Kelly EN, Short JW, Schindler, DW, Hodson PV, Ma M, Kwan AK, and Fortin, BL. Oil sands development contributes polycyclic aromatic compounds to the Athabasca River and its tributaries. PNAS 106:22346-22351, 2009.
^xiv Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks, Province of British Columbia. Ambient water quality criteria for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
^xv Timoney, KP. A study of water and sediment quality as related to public heath issues, Fort Chipewyan, Alberta. A report conducted on behalf of the Nunee Heath Board Society, Fort Chipewyan, Alberta.
^xvi Maier A, Schumann BL, Chang X, Talaska G, Puga A. Arsenic co-exposure potentiates benzo(a)pyrene genotoxicity. Mutation Research, 517: 101-11, 2002.
^xvii Wood Buffalo Environmental Association Website.
^xviii Jones, J. (Reuters) Water checks deficient at Canada Oil Sands: Report, March 10, 2011
xix Health Canada Environmental and Workplace Health, Arsenic, Application of the Guideline.

Let's elect a future for our grandkids

2011-04-05T08:31:44Z

Timmy Mac via Flickr

]]> Two benchmarks of a sustainable future for our grandchildren are careful management of Canada's natural environment and its resources, and promotion of a low-carbon economy.

Let's use the forthcoming federal election campaign to engage our candidates in meaningful discussion about the environment. Our grandchildren can't elect their future, but we elders can.

Question to the candidates: "Please describe how you and your party's policies will promote a sustainable future for my grandchildren. For example, what are your specific commitments to the following important issues?

A sustainable low-carbon economy that includes a national clean energy plan, financial support for renewable energy production and energy use efficiency, implementation of a revenue-neutral federal carbon tax, removal of all subsidies to coal, oil, gas and coal-bed methane industries, and support for rapid transit and new public transportation systems.
Sustained national action on climate change, including international agreements on technology transfer, financing and co-operation on emissions reductions and adaptation in developing countries in exchange for their agreement to limit emissions.
Ensuring Canada's future as a food production and exporting country by establishing a national food and farmlands policy, restructuring of our agricultural markets to sustain farming, encouragement of family farms and ensuring that farm families receive a fair share of consumer income, and support for organic agriculture instead of subsidizing costly agro-chemicals and genetically modified crops.
Protection of our irreplaceable marine fish habitats by placing a permanent legislated moratorium on oil and gas exploration and development in ecologically sensitive areas such as the west coast of British Columbia and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and by eliminating open-ocean net-pen aquaculture practices.

Please share these questions widely.

An elder's guide to climate scepticism

2011-02-14T08:41:27Z

]]> The other elders may drive me from the village with brooms and pitchforks when they read my confession. But the truth must out. I am, alas, a skeptic.

I am skeptical that my beloved Earth is going to self-destruct on 31 December 2012. I think it's more likely the Mayans ran out of the wild fig bark on which they were drawing their calendars. I am skeptical that I am by nature diplomatic, charming and easygoing because Jupiter was hanging out with Venus in the Fourth House of the night sky right about the time I came into the world 70-odd years ago. I am skeptical that the people responsible for the multi-billion dollar homeopathic remedy business have never learned to spell the words p-l-a-c-e-b-o and g-u-l-l-i-b-i-l-i-t-y. And all this scepticism flies in the teeth of the billions of people worldwide who buy into this stuff.

We sceptics are in good company. Albert Einstein was one. In 1933 he famously stated that black holes do not and cannot exist. He couldn't see one and couldn't find the rationale for them in his famous equations. Today, his successors have no such problems and not only think they have identified nearly 30 black hole candidates in the Milky Way galaxy but are now getting the proof that the holes behave in the relativistic way that Einstein's theories predict.

]]> But I'm concerned that we genuine skeptics are being given a bad name by all these so-called climate change and global warming skeptics out there.
We need to address a few issues to sort out these guys in the black hats. Firstly, what exactly is a skeptic? What is climate? And what is climate change and what does it entail?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a skeptic as one who maintains a doubting attitude with reference to some particular question or statement. Michael Schermer, the entertaining editor of Skeptic magazine, enlarges the concept thus: "Modern skepticism is embodied in the scientific method that involves gathering data to formulate and test naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena. All facts in science are provisional and subject to challenge, and therefore skepticism is a method leading to provisional conclusions. The key to skepticism is to continuously and vigorously apply the methods of science to navigate the treacherous straits between 'know nothing' skepticism and 'anything goes' credulity."

And what is "climate" and how does it differ from "weather"?

Weather is the state of the atmosphere at any given moment to the extent that it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy. The way the concept is used in daily life refers to day-to-day temperature and precipitation activity. By contrast, climate is the term for the average atmospheric conditions over longer periods of time. The difference between the two creates major confusion for many. "How the heck can it be global warming when we're having record snowfalls in eastern Canada?"

Which leads us to the obvious next question: What is the evidence for climate change?

Lots of prestigious institutions keep honest meteorological data and report their findings. At the national level, Environment Canada? reports that the national average temperature for 2010 was 3°C above normal, which makes it the warmest year on record since nationwide records began in 1948. The previous warmest year was 1998, 2.5°C above normal. Four Canadian climate regions (Arctic Tundra, Arctic Mountains and Fiords, Northeastern Forest and Atlantic Canada) experienced their warmest year on record in 2010, and for six other climate regions the year was among the 10 warmest recorded. Southern Alberta and Saskatchewan were the only parts of the country with close to normal temperatures. Environment Canada's national temperature departures table shows that of the 10 warmest years, four have occurred within the past decade, and 13 of the past 20 years are listed among the 20 warmest.

At the international level, the Climatic Research Unit the University of East Anglia has global land and marine surface temperature data dating back to 1850. The Unit reports that the years 2003, 2005 and 2010 were the warmest on record. The mean global temperature has risen by 0.8°C over the past century. The World Meteorological Organization reports that the 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has carefully summarized all the salient indicators of climate change occurring within the past century. These include:

Heat waves. The frequency of heat waves in the U.S. has risen steadily since 1970, and the area within the U.S. experiencing heat waves has increased.
Average precipitation has increased since 1901 at an average rate of more than six per cent per century in the U.S. and nearly two per cent per century worldwide.
Heavy precipitation. In recent years, a higher percentage of precipitation in the U.S. has come in the form of intense single-day events; eight of the top 10 years for extreme one-day precipitation events have occurred since 1990.
Tropical cyclone intensity in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico has risen noticeably over the past 20 years; six of the 10 most active hurricane seasons have occurred since the mid-1990s. This increase is closely related to variations in sea surface temperature in the tropical Atlantic.
Arctic sea ice. September 2007 had the lowest ice coverage of any year on record, followed by 2008 and 2009; the extent of Arctic sea ice in 2009 was 24 per cent below the 1979 to 2000 historical average.
Glaciers around the world have generally shrunk since the 1960s, and the rate at which glaciers are melting has accelerated over the past decade. Overall, glaciers worldwide have lost more than 8,000 km³ of water since 1960.
Lakes in the northern U.S. are freezing later and thawing earlier than they did in the 1800s and early 1900s; the length of time that lakes stay frozen has decreased at an average rate of one to two days per decade.
Snow cover over North America has generally decreased since 1972 (although there has been much year-to-year variability); snow covered an average of 8 million km² of North America during the years 2000 to 2008, compared with 8.8 million km² during the 1970s.

So we honest skeptics have no issue with the evidence for global warming. It's incontrovertible. Not even Sarah Palin could refudiate it.

What about the evidence for anthropogenic inputs to global climate change? In other words, to what extent are human activities -- specifically the emission of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases -- responsible for the global warming observed to date?

Total global greenhouse gas emissions (expressed as carbon dioxide equivalents) are nearing 30 billion metric tonnes per year. As a result, mean global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has gone from about 280 parts per million during pre-industrial times to more than 380 parts per million today. Earlier CO2 data were collected from ice cores in eastern Antarctica and have been the subject of dispute by so-called climate skeptics, but the modern-day data come from state-of-the-art instrumentation on Mauna Loa in Hawaii and are incontestable. From 1990 to 2008 the radiative forcing of all greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere increased by about 26 per cent, the rise in carbon dioxide concentrations accounting for approximately 80 per cent of this increase.

It turns out that atmospheric CO2 is not homogeneous. Some of it contains carbon-12, the rest carbon-13 (one more neutron per atom than carbon-12). Green plants prefer carbon-12 in their photosynthetic reactions. When fossil fuels, which are derived from ancient plants, are burned, the carbon-12 is release into the atmosphere. Over time, the continuous carbon-12 emissions change the atmospheric proportion of carbon-13 to carbon-12, and this proportion can be measured in corals and sea sponges. So not only have background levels of CO2 increased over the past century, they are directly linked to fossil fuel burning. And we honest skeptics are still cool with the concept.

Next question: Is the extra anthropogenically derived CO2 responsible for the observed warming trend? The so-called "greenhouse" effect of CO2 is well-known and can be measured easily in a laboratory. But it has also been measured globally over the past 30 years by satellite-mounted infrared sensors and found to be significant. Moreover, the amounts of global atmospheric downward long-wave radiation over land surfaces measured from 1973 to 2008 have been examined and found to be significant in contributing to the global greenhouse effect.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's summary includes some biological indicators of long-term climate change in the U.S.:

The average length of the growing season in the lower 48 states has increased by about two weeks since the beginning of the 20th century, a particularly large and steady increase having occurred over the past 30 years. The observed changes reflect earlier spring warming as well as later arrival of fall frosts, and the length of the growing season has increased more rapidly in the west than in the east.
Plant hardiness zones have shifted northward since 1990, reflecting higher winter temperatures in most parts of the country; large portions of several states have warmed by at least one hardiness zone.
Leaf and bloom dates of lilacs and honeysuckles in the lower 48 states are now a few days earlier than in 1900s.
Bird wintering ranges have shifted northward by an average of 56 kilometres since 1966, with a few species shifting by several hundred kilometres; many bird species have moved their wintering grounds farther from the coast, consistent with rising inland temperatures.

So there you have it. Take all the scientific evidence available and it would be difficult not to concur with the 97 out of 100 climate experts who think that humans are causing global warming.

So, if the evidence satisfies the honest skeptic amongst us -- i.e., those who take the time to seek out and evaluate the evidence and try their level best to come to an honest and defensible conclusions -- why then is there a substantial body of opinion that holds countervailing views; i.e., that there is no warming or climate change (it's all just natural variation), or that there is change but we ain't responsible (it's Mother Nature's fault)?

That would be the subject of future postings from the Elders. It opens up the opportunity for some innovative taxonomy of climate change personalities, but I'll leave the naming to others!

A right royal Elder

2010-12-14T14:28:08Z

]]> One word that is notably absent from my tattered CV is monarchist.
It probably started out as pure jealousy in my, um, more youthful days when I was subjected to grainy pictures in the Sunday Scream or Movietone news clips of rich, spoiled royals racing around in Maseratis or flying their personal jets, always accompanied by gorgeous princesses called Sophia. My rancour deepened during the '60s and '70s when Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands was caught pocketing a US$1 million bribe from the Lockheed Corporation. Once my plain old envy had been cleared away, it was replaced by the cold logic of the maturing elder. What on earth was the relevancy of this corrupt and mediaeval clique in the 21st century?

"It's part of the fabric of British, and Dutch, and Swedish, and definitely Monégasque society," said my detractors. I didn't really buy into that until I had spent a decade and a half of my valuable life working in Africa's two remaining monarchies, Lesotho and Swaziland. It was not difficult to appreciate the reverence those folks have for their royals. Both the Basotho and the Swazi literally owe their existence as nations to their earlier monarchs. For the Basotho it was the 19th century monarch, Moshoeshoe, who gave both Brit and Boer a run for their money and eventually forged a nation out of a scattering of loose tribes. The late Swazi king Sobhuza II had a nominal reign of 82 years and nine months, the longest documented reign of any monarch since antiquity, during which he took his country from colony to protectorate to independent kingdom.

]]> But monarchs are as monarchs do. Present-day King Mswati III of Swaziland won't allow open democratic elections in his country of a million people. He has a personal fortune estimated at $100 million and is famous for his stable of swanky cars, including a $500,000 Maybach for himself and a fleet of BMW X-5s, one for each of his 14 wives. That's to go with the 14 palaces. Two years ago he blew $1.5 million on his 40th birthday party. And this in a country where 40 percent of the workforce are unemployed and get by on less than $2 per day, and 40 percent of the entire population have HIV/AIDS. And so I'm back to my original postulate: What's the point?

But now a glimmer of enlightenment has appeared through the anti-monarchic murk. It's in the form of his Royal Nibs Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay and Lord of the Jolly Olde Isles. Charles has had some rotten press over the years for a large number of reasons, not least the whole unfortunate Diana thing. That all brought him pretty close to being in the Mswati league. But look a bit closer and more sterling stuff emerges.

Charles has long been an annoyance to some, and especially to the architectural profession, because of his strongly voiced opposition to modern architecture and urban design. The Prince has not been backward in espousing his views that urban planning, design and regeneration should be done to create urban areas on a human scale that encourages a sense of community and pride of place. At Poundbury and Newquay, two urban extensions in Dorset on Duchy land, the Prince reportedly strives to create sustainable communities that are safer and healthier for residents. Pedestrians take priority over cars, and communities are mixed-use with workplaces integrated with housing. This will all have a familiar ring to Vancouverites.

The Prince of Wales has been declared dotty by the popular media because of his interest in new age philosophy, magic and alternative medicine. That would put him middle of the road in Vancouver. It turns out that he is a fan of Leonard Cohen and the Burnley Football Club. Well, perhaps he is just a little dotty. But it's hardly earth-shattering stuff. What are significant are his mainstream activities. He has become a doyen of organic farming and has written a book on the subject. He converted his estate at Highgrove, Gloucestershire, into an organic farm that now sells more than 200 different sustainably produced products, from food to furniture. In 1990 he launched his own organic brand, Duchy Originals, the profits from which are donated to The Prince's Charities. There is an undeniable air of landed gentility about the whole business of locally produced food from royal properties, but one cannot fault its quality and financial success. Even Bill McKibben would be impressed. In 2007 the Prince launched his May Day Network, which encourages British businesses to take action on climate change. He has openly published the details of his own carbon footprint, as well as the targets set for reducing Royal household carbon emissions.

The Prince of Wales is now 62 and his latest endeavour definitely puts him into the elder league. In 2008 the United Nations set up its Collaborative Initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) in developing countries. Run collaboratively by the three UN agencies dealing with forests and natural resources (FAO, UNDP and UNEP), the programme aims to assist developing countries prepare and implement national strategies to reduce deforestation through activities such as developing guidelines on the measurement, reporting and verification of carbon emissions, ensuring that forests continue to provide multiple benefits for livelihoods and for the environment, and supporting the engagement of indigenous peoples and civil society at all stages of the design and implementation of REDD+ strategies. It's all very well-intentioned and addresses one of the most critical issues stemming from the changing world climate, but it seems to resonate with the usual clunk of ponderous UN bureaucracy and top-heavy dithering.

Prince Charles may just have come up with the game changer. He has preached the gospel about rainforest conservation for decades but has now put his name and his influence behind the REDD+ initiative in the form of The Prince's Rainforest Project. The project is directed by top-flight professionals in forestry, economics and international finance and is backed up by a steering group of more than 140 prominent British and international companies plus some individual advisers of the calibre of Lord Stern. The prince explained his motivation in a public address: "I have endeavoured to create a global public, private and NGO partnership to discover an innovative means of halting tropical deforestation. Success would literally transform the situation for our children and grandchildren and for every species on the planet." The crux of the royal effort is to set up a viable market-based mechanism to achieve the essential goals:

-- payments to Rainforest Nations for not deforesting;
-- multi-year "service agreements" based on clear performance targets;
-- payments used to fund alternative, low-carbon economic development plans;
-- transparent, in-country, multi-stakeholder disbursement mechanisms;
-- a "Tropical Forests Facility" focused on results;
-- developed country financing from public and private sources;
-- "Rainforest Bonds" issued in private capital markets;
-- Rainforest Nations participating when ready;
-- facilitating and accelerating a long-term UNFCCC agreement on forests; and
-- global action to address the drivers of deforestation.

Now, achieving all this is hopefully going to produce some real long-term climatic, economic and social benefits, but it's going to be sweat and tears for most of the way. It would be a lot more fun to cruise from palace to palace in a Maybach.

Change management

2010-11-23T11:56:59Z

]]> By Stan Hirst

If there is one thing that Elders might be better at than other folks, it is awareness of change. For one thing, we have a longer time frame for comparison of the "then" and "now". For another, it seems to be a basic human characteristic to hanker for the good old days. Thanks to a very well developed sense of selective recall, most of us are pretty good at comparing the "now" with the "then". For me, the "now" might be a few minutes in the company of my grandchildren and their electric guitars, and the grateful "then" would be my dusty collection of Willie Nelson CDs.

Change is a theme that has attracted most of the well-versed philosophic Elders. More than two millennia ago, the Buddha stated it quite plainly: "Everything changes; nothing remains without change." A few thousand years later, the famous "weeping philosopher", Heraclitus, underpinned his doctrine of change being central to the universe with his famous saying, "You cannot step twice into the same river." On into the 19th and 20th centuries the theme was picked up by philosophers (Alfred North Whitehead: "The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order."), biologists (Charles Darwin: "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.") and statesmen (Abraham Lincoln: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.").

Getting a little closer to our own times, probably the most famous modern statement on change was that by Rachel Carson:

"Change is the only element of life which is constant. Though it sounds contradictory, it is true. Change is the most important element of life. It is this change that defines life. Had there been no change, life would have become still. We can see that change occurs in all natural phenomena such as weather and time. Change is also a vital element in any relationship. If there are no alternating periods of highs and lows then any relationship will become stagnant. Change keeps the relationship and life going and gives reasons for living. Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species -- man -- acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world."

]]> We might quibble with Rachel over her presumed "constancy" of change; in fact, it's anything but constant. She probably meant continual, but the power of her assertion is unquestionable.

So, if change is such a salient feature of existence, why then do we have such difficulty in dealing with it? We obviously dig the benefits of change. Technological change has brought so many benefits -- think CAT scans, Hubble, wi-fi and iPads. World poverty levels have dropped 80 per cent over the past 30 years. Just a quarter century ago, do you think the miners in Copiapó, Chile, would have been found and brought out alive? And with more than four million web page views per minute of the event on the Internet?

But we don't deal well with the flipside (Heraclitus stated that too). Global biodiversity is declining as a result of our activities, and so is freshwater availability. The climate is changing from our huge reliance on fossil fuels, and so are the ecological factors that relate to climate -- storm frequency, drought frequency and intensity, permafrost melting... the list goes on. Many of the technological changes that have brought significant benefits have brought major disbenefits as well -- think heavy metal pollution from gasoline burning and carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic compounds in the water resulting from oil extraction.

So, it seems there are a few fundamentals about change that we are not handling well. Firstly, our social, economic and environmental systems don't deal easily with the complexity of change. The natural world is unavoidably complex, thanks to a few million years of physical, chemical and biological evolution (=change). It is a very intricate system of cause-and-effect pathways, interactions and limits. It is absolutely unavoidable that large-scale changes in one part of the system will cause corresponding effects elsewhere. Our Palaeolithic ancestors probably made a horrible mess of the places they tilled, burned and hunted, but they numbered in the hundreds of thousands, their implements were too primitive to affect more than very small areas, and their ecosystems were resilient enough to cope with the changes. By contrast, we are now running for seven billion souls world-wide, our ecological footprint is truly huge, and our ecosystems are very obviously stressed to the limit.

Secondly, we don't seem too adept at predicting change. Journalist Dan Gardner, in his new book Future Babble, says that scientists, economists and the rest all suck at it. Well, all right, he didn't say it quite like that, but Erin Brockovich would have.

Thirdly, we seem to blindside ourselves in assessing change. We put huge stock in the perceived economic or political benefits to be gained from some or other action and then we downplay the equally obvious disbenefits. The Iraq War has always been a source of amazement to me. There are something like 1,100 think tanks in Washington, D.C., all full of very smart people (they show up on PBS from time to time; hell, they are smart!). Presumably they all think. Now I ask myself, if a doddering elder like me knows something of the history of Iraq and the deep-rooted historical conflicts between Sunni and Shia and can see the obvious, then couldn't these smart Washington folks have foreseen or forestalled the inevitable loss of more than one million lives and the expenditure of $1.2 trillion that would result from a military invasion of this complex country?

Fourthly, we may be uncomfortable with change per se, but it seems to be the rate of change that really freaks us out. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore made himself a household name when he came up with the observation that the number of components in integrated circuits had doubled every year since the invention of the latter, and he made the accurate prediction that this would continue for at least 10 more years. A similar exponential rule is surely being applied in the global ecosystem now, as human numbers increase to the breaking point, and the rates and intensities of negative feedbacks accelerate. But we can't get our minds around it all.

So what do we do about it? Darned if I know. I don't work for a think tank. But one thing is for sure. A man has got to know his limitations. Was that Heraclitus again? No, that was another elder: Dirty Harry.

Stop the Tar Sands! How exactly?

2010-08-27T11:48:42Z

"Stop the tar sands!" says my fellow Elder. Then he thumps the table. "We should make that the key objective of the Suzuki Elders."

It's easy to see why thinking people get upset over the tar sands, or Alberta Oil Sands as they are more safely referred to east of the Rockies. More than 600 km²of boreal forest (roughly the same area as greater Vancouver) have already been cleared, mined or otherwise very significantly disturbed. One-fifth of Alberta's land area is currently under lease for further such bitumen mining and extraction.

The gunk-like bitumen makes up only 10% of the excavated tar sand, so something like two tons of sand must be processed to get one barrel of oil. About 40% of the bitumen resource is beyond the reach of conventional excavation, so pressurized steam injection is needed to force the stuff to the surface. The necessary steam generation chews up 34 m³ of natural gas to produce one barrel of bitumen from in situ projects and about 20 m³in the case ofintegrated projects, so daily use of purchased gas in the oil sands amounts to something like 21 million m³. Average emissions for oil sands extraction and upgrading (per barrel) are 3.2 to 4.5 times that for conventional crude oil.

Water requirements for steam and other uses range from 2 to 4.5 m³ of water per each cubic metre of synthetic crude oil extracted in a mining operation. The companies in the oil sands are licensed to withdraw 650 million m² of water from the Athabasca River annually (equal to seven times the annual water needs of city the size of Edmonton). Oil sands operations currently recycle and reuse about ¾ of the water extracted from the Athabasca River.

An average of 1.5 barrels of a processed mix of water, sand, silt, clay, contaminants and unrecovered hydrocarbons is generated for every barrel of bitumen produced, and 200 million litres of this sludge is dumped into tailings ponds every day. The area of the ponds is currently in excess of 130 km²(about the total area of Richmond B.C.) with a projected increase to 310 km² by 2040. Tailings pond water is acutely toxic to aquatic organisms and mammals and contains substances such as naphthenic acids, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, phenolic compounds, ammonia, mercury and other trace metals, some of which are toxic to humans while others are known carcinogens.

Unhappy situation? The future is scarier. China badly needs oil to keep its huge economy powering forward and has now invested $4.7 billion in Syncrude. China will presumably want its share of the crude oil at the end of a pipeline in Kitimat B.C.

Are the oil sands sustainable in the long term? Yes, says the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. The oil sands are the 2nd largest crude oil reserve in the world, and supply the U.S. with 20% of its crude oil. This proportion can only increase as Saudi Arabia and the Middle East run out of easy oil and Venezuela and the rest of the producers get ever shirtier with our southern neighbours. World surplus oil production capacity will disappear in the next five years, and the global shortfall by 2015 could reach 10 million barrels per day. Biomass is not a substitute for oil in most sectors because of low photosynthetic efficiency (Brazil, the world leader in biomass energy production, burns up just 1/3 barrel of ethanol but 4½ barrels of oil per person annually). Solar and other energy sources are a long way from replacing oil as the main driver of the transportation sector. Current mining and extraction operations affect less than ½ percent of the total oil sand area, so there is a lot more gunk out there to be dug up and processed.

Sustainable? No, say the greens. The current annual CO₂ emissions from all this mining and refining are something like 40 million tonnes which is currently 5% of the Canadian total. This level of CO₂ output will obviously increase if plans for oil sands expansion are implemented. To keep emissions down to levels consistent with Canada's greenhouse gas reduction targets, very expensive and untested proposals for carbon capture and storage will need to be implemented. The tailings ponds stand accused of being leaky, to the tune of 11 million litres of contaminated water per day. Toxic and carcinogenic compounds from the tailings and emissions are contaminating surrounding water and areas and are suspected of causing cancer in local communities. Wildlife, especially waterfowl, are heavily impacted by oil sand operations and tailings disposal. By 2020 the projected water use in the oil sands will be an estimated 45 m³/s which is nearly half the Athabasca River's low winter flow during eight of the years since 1980 and in every year since 1999. The Peace-Athabasca Delta downstream of the oil sands is already exhibiting negative effects of declining water supply from climate change and the impacts of the upstream Bennett Dam in B.C.

Naturally, none of this is acceptable. The evidence mounts daily that current oil sand operations are simply pushing the envelope too far and too close to allowable and acceptable limits in the natural and human ecosystem -- too many emissions, too much danger to downstream human communities, too many ecological impacts, too great a drain on dwindling water resources. So what we should be doing is insisting, absolutely, that whatever they produce be churned out with full consideration to the ecosystem and the local communities, and with full reckoning of the costs thereof.

Let's be honest -- the oil people up in Fort McMurray are not munching tons of sand just to annoy a few of us down here. They are simply supplying a commodity which is in huge demand by society. They didn't create the demand, they're just good at providing what society wants, i.e. cheap fossil fuel to burn in gridlocked Escalades standing on the Santa Monica freeway.

Stop the tar sands? Not likely. The current value of the plant alone exceeds $90 billion. Billions of dollars accrue to tax revenues from the oil sands every year, and 60% go into federal coffers. The Alberta coffers currently take in almost $2 billion annually from royalties. This money is the source of many federal and provincial programs and services in infrastructure, health and education. One in every 15 Albertans works for the energy industry, Take a stroll around Calgary and check out the fine recreational facilities and art museums funded by Big Oil. You had better go tell those folks you want to shut them down, fellow Elder, because I sure ain't.

The long-term solution to this quandary is not to storm the bastion or the tailings ponds or whatever. It's much duller, more difficult and highly contentious (sort of Elder-ish). In other words, it's a matter of economics and politics. Fossil fuels are simply too cheap to discourage the present profligate consumption and the associated high rate of oil production from sources such as the oil sands. Moreover, production from the oil sands is heavily subsidized by the taxpayer. The full costs of the negative consequences of production, especially the ones difficult to quantify (e.g. higher cancer rates in local people) are never costed into the production equation. So two approaches immediately present themselves: make oil energy costs totally realistic though elimination of subsidies, and level the playing field through the imposition of carbon taxes. B.C. has already demonstrated that the latter are not necessarily politically unacceptable.

The objective, fellow Elders, is not to stop the tar sands, it's to make them redundant.

Now, the next job is to convince the other ten million Elders of this...

The big picture

2010-08-24T09:08:55Z

What do B.C. and Moscow have in common? Fire. But there's more to consider.

I know. "Here comes another rant." Well not exactly. I hope that we all can maintain some perspective, by seeing the bigger picture, while we endure the shocks of everyday environmental news.

While I monitor daily news, I ignore much of it, in order to stay focused on climate change, since it is a major threat and easily ignored by sensationalist media.

I respect that others focus on addictions, poverty, crime, HST, etc. and I wish them well. I support them when I can.

But those of us interested in climate change need to start shifting our attention to adaptation to climate change, while continuing our efforts to mitigate (reduce) GHG emissions by stopping Gateways and Tar Sands pipelines.

What I mean is that the goal posts are moving. Success may look like losing more slowly, but that is still success. Climate change is here, and it is here in predictable ways. The relatively stable climate of the past 10,000 years is gone, and several climate changes will accelerate. Disasters, like this year's fires and floods will become commonplace. That is likely to cause disaster "exhaustion" unless we pace ourselves. We can expect even more difficult choices for allocation of resources in the near future.

In 1993 I read Al Gore's Earth in the Balance. It was scary, but well grounded in the scientific consensus of the day. One issue Gore warned about was "positive feedback loops", i.e. the "runaway" part of "runaway climate change". For example, the albedo effect of retreating white Arctic ice leaving dark (heat absorbing) ocean, forest and bog fires releasing GHGs, thawing permafrost releasing methane, etc.

The other issue was species (and whole ecosystems) moving northward and up to higher elevations as former habitats become too hot. The interior of B.C. is burning because summers are warmer, but also, warmer winters have lead to less pest resistence, and overall, less resilience. But this warmer climate works for species from farther south, at least temporarilty.

This is exactly what happened at the end of the last ice age, when ecosystems gradually moved north following the retreat of glaciers. The differences are 1) this time the change is much faster, and 2) there are human barriers to ecosystem movement (e.g. mammals can't spread northward if urban and agricultural barriers block their migration).

Nevertheless, that's how we should see forest fire, for example. It clears away an untenable ecosystem, no longer appropriate to warmer temperatures, and makes room for new species from warmer areas to move north. Also with changes in wind, drought, and flood patterns, there will be movement of ecosystems in relation to temperature, precipitation, and storm changes.

While long term climate is more predictable than short term local weather, climate too may become less predictable in the future. There may be sudden (i.e., over decades) jumps in climate from one steady state to another (with lots of wobble in between). When prediction is difficult, we seem to adopt a "wait and see" attitude. All of this was laid out in Al Gore's 1992 book and it's now coming true.

Therefore, we (humans) have no choice but to adapt to weather and climate unlike what we have been used to. Oceans will rise, fires will blaze, species will move toward the poles or die out, and often, new life will replace old. There is still the option of hoping for an unforeseen technological miracle, and of course, prayer. But then the need to make difficult and timely decisions (e.g. stay and build a dike or move to higher ground) will remain.

Finally, I add below the website that got me thinking in this way. The Russians drained and dried their peat bogs, and now they are suffering from peat smoke. Greater Vancouver and coastal B.C. will get warmer wetter winters and warmer drier summers. How will we meet the challenges locally and globally as they continue to pile up? Yes, turn off the sensationalist TV. Don't succumb to being overwhelmed. We still need to think and act, so we can still say to our kids, "We did our best."

BBC: Climate change 'partly to blame' for sweltering Moscow

Happiness comes at a price

2010-07-26T21:21:04Z

I discovered a set of data that says Canadians are a happy lot. A 2006 world-wide poll by the prestigious Gallup organization puts Canada joint 3rd in the world in terms of life satisfaction, just 0.5 out of 10 index points behind the leading and supremely happy Ticos of Costa Rica.

Some years back a Dutch sociologist, Ruut Veenhoven, noted the analogy between 'healthy years' (a statistic used much by public health specialists) and 'happy years' and figured he could use life satisfaction statistics to give an index of a country's happiness. He multiplied the satisfaction index by the average life expectancy for a particular country and came up with a number which he joyfully termed 'happy life years' or HLY. Doing this calculation for Canada we find ourselves brimming over with 64 HLY for each (average) Canadian, just a tad ahead of the Europeans (62.2 HLY) and Americans (61.2 HLY) and a little ahead of the average South American (50.3 HLY).

But then along comes the UK's New Economics Foundation to totally rain on our parade. They divide the HLY for each country by the ecological footprint for that country (measured in 'global hectares') and end up with something they call the Happy Planet Index or HPI. The HPI is a cleverly designed metric which relates human well-being and happiness to the planetary cost of that well-being in terms of resource extraction and imposition upon nature. Canada's HPI is just 39.4, which puts us at a miserable 89th in the world (out of 143). Costa Rica again heads the list with an HPI of 76.1. An astonishing 10 of the top 11 countries on the HPI list are south- and central American, with economies only about one-eighth the size of Canada's (measured on a per capita basis).

The ecological footprint concept was developed in the late 80's by Dr. Mathis Wackernagel in collaboration with Professor Bill Rees of the University of British Columbia. Wackernagel has gone on to develop and extend its practical use as a tool for measuring and assessing global sustainability. It is a measure of humanity's demand on the biosphere in terms of the area of biologically productive land and sea required to provide the resources we use and to absorb our waste. In 2005 the total global ecological footprint was computed to be 17.5 billion global hectares, a global hectare being a world-averaged unit area for producing resources and absorbing wastes.

Canada's ecological footprint computes out at something from 7.1 to 7.6 global hectares per capita, depending on the data and methods used to compute it. This compares to our South American neighbours who achieve their respective happiness levels on areas of from 1 to 2.5 global hectares per capita. A more telling comparison is that if every country on the planet lived at the same level of ecological impacts as our Latino friends, then the Earth could just about support us all indefinitely. If, on the other hand, they all guzzled fossil fuels and spewed out wastes the way North Americans do, we would need another three or four Earths to make ends meet.

But wait a moment say the cynics, especially those in Alberta. Canada's economy is worth $1.5 trillion, compared to the $30 billion for a smallish South American country like Costa Rica. As hewers of wood, drawers of water and rampant extractors of resources from a huge, freezing cold country, you can't expect us not to use resources like oil at a higher rate than much smaller economies which have warm climates and stacks of visiting tourists riding bicycles. Can you?

Well no, statistics from countries with widely disparate climates and natural resource bases are obviously not directly comparable. But consider this. A major component of the ecological footprint is the so-called carbon footprint (also measured in global hectares per person) which represents the biocapacity needed to absorb CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel use and land disturbance, other than the portion absorbed by the oceans. The average South American needs about 0.5 global hectares to absorb the CO₂ emitted as a result of his driving, heating, burning, cooking and industrial processes. The average European needs 2.5 of the same global hectares. Canada, by comparison, needs 3.6 and the U.S.A. a whopping 6.4.

Does Canada's size and cold climate account for the big differences between us and the Europeans and the South Americans? Ecological footprint data from the Global Footprint Network show that Canada's per capita usage of land for urban areas, grazing and crops is not hugely different to that used by Europeans and South Americans, in fact we use less cropland per capita than the Europeans. What does stand out is the large contribution made to the North American footprint by use of forests [Canada's forests cover more than four million km², about 40% of the land area].

Canada's very high fossil fuel consumption shows up in World Bank data which places Canada 11^th in the world, with about half the annual fuel use per capita of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and other choice locales with dirt cheap oil and refrigerated swimming pools. We have the same level of per capita fossil fuel use as Saudi Arabia. Each year Canadians use up more than six metric tons of fossil fuels (expressed as the oil equivalent) for each man, woman and child in the land. In so doing, we belch out 17 metric tons of CO₂ per capita, which puts us globally in 11th place again.

Do we really need to use that much oil, gas and coal to maintain a happy life style? Its not a simplistic question, and has as much to do with lifestyles and consumerism as it does with resource use and distribution and the country climate. But one thing stands out. If you use large amounts of fossil fuel energy, you are going to pay for it. And that payment comes out of your pocket or from the bank in the form of a credit loan. The Certified General Accountants Association of Canada has compiled a detailed report on Canadian household debt and finds Canadian households at the top of the world list in terms of their debt-to-financial-assets ratio which is currently 10.1%. The U.S. trundles behind us with 7.2%, as does Europe (median 2.9%). And those friendly Latinos? Their debt is just 0.4% of household assets.

Happy now?

Elders in search of a cause

2010-06-11T15:10:12Z

Come by, if you will, any third Thursday of the month to the airy and spacious offices of the David Suzuki Foundation on West 4th in Vancouver. There you will find an august group of people engaged in earnest debate around the conference table. Half are women, half the men are bearded, many are grey, most are retired, some won't admit to it. The group comprises an eclectic group of engineers, biologists, sociologists, business professionals and numerous other worthy occupations. These are the Suzuki Elders, all volunteers. This is as fine a group as you would wish to meet anywhere. How do I know this? Because I'm one of them.

The David Suzuki Foundation is one of the foremost environmental advocacy organizations in Canada, and indeed the world. With a staff of over forty, it engages with government, business and individuals to provide science-based education, advocacy and policy to effect the social changes demanded by the planet's perilous condition. The enthusiastic and highly motivated staff devote their days and many of their nights to researching, writing about, debating and promoting the Foundations' chosen targets:

keeping Canada on track to do its fair share to avoid climate change;
trying to convince Canadians to balance their high quality of life with efficient resource use, smart energy choices, energy-efficient transportation, and being mindful of the products, food and water they consume;
advocating the protection of Canada's diverse marine, freshwater and terrestrial creatures and ecosystems; and
trying to get Canadians, especially youth, to understand and appreciate their dependence on a healthy environment.

The Suzuki Elders share the Foundation's vision but our take on the issues is coloured by age, experiences and our collective, occasionally hazy, memories. Most of us can remember all the way back to the Second World War, indeed some of us were caught up in it as children. Our youth was an age of community, of heavy reliance on face-to-face exchanges. Long-distance communication required hand-written letters, memos hammered out literally on a 50 lb black Remington, or yelling through a rotary telephone. Local news came via a thick wad of newspaper which later doubled to line drawers or as a wrapping for fish and chips. International news arrived via a scratchy radio with vacuum tubes and a big yellow dial encased in a huge pressed oak cabinet.

Space was not a problem for us in our pre-elder years, especially those of us who grew up in Canada or some other outpost of the empire. We recall Dad hitting the road in a thundering great V-8 which gulped a gallon of gasoline for every eight miles it managed to cover. That was not a big problem for Dad -- the stuff cost just 20¢ a gallon. When the V-8 was finally coaxed to hit the road, we could cover a few hundred miles and hardly see any other cars or people -- just distant forests, mostly untouched, and the occasional scattered farm with workable soil for anyone willing to take a plough to it.

Garbage was not a problem, we just dumped it and someone else would eventually come along and haul the stuff away to throw in a landfill somewhere. Garbage looked a little different back then -- lots of glass bottles and containers, all kinds of paper wrappings, very little plastic, no Styrofoam, no disposable diapers. Factories and power stations blew out huge volumes of smoke and effluents. They weren't a problem either, the wind would blow the smoke somewhere else and the local rivers and streams were pretty convenient disposal areas.

That's all changed of course, and we know it as well as anybody. The planet has advanced on many fronts in the decades that we've been aware of it. We can now talk to anybody anywhere on the planet, and even see his or her grinning countenance on our cell-phones. We've got pineapples from Costa Rica, tomatoes from California, mangos from Mexico and butter from Ireland. Thirty-one brands of beer line the shelves in the liquor store, some from unpronounceable places like Plzeň, Izmir and Dharuhera. We can talk, read and write on i-Phones, i-Pads and Blackberries. We can Google, Twitter and chuckle on Facebook. We have conferences over the internet. Kids don't succumb to poliomyelitis they way they did when we were kids. Diphtheria and whooping cough are just names on a chart on the back of the clinic door. Canadians now live to 90, thank to medical science and health care, our parents' generation seldom got past 60 or 65.

But it has all come at a huge price. The vast unfilled spaces and volumes of our youth are no more. They're chocked full of our disposed and industrial wastes. Sprawling cities and megahoused suburbs have filled the landscape on our continent; mile upon mile of shanties and slums occupy the land on the other continents. There is so much disposable plastic and so many used condoms floating around in the oceans that it all forms huge islands in the middle of the Pacific. Oil spills have become so big that they threaten the future of entire coastal systems such as the Gulf of Mexico. Thousands of animal and plant species which were around when we started out are no more. Fish such as cod and salmon, which once provided the basis for regional and national economies are in steep decline. The climate is changing and even the short-term scenarios are foreboding. Our national and international leaders waffle and cogitate and bend before the mighty dollar.

We don't speak of it, but there must at least be an occasional tinge of guilt when we remember that it is our generation that contributed massively to this sorry state of affairs, driven by consumerism, greed and an inability to see the linkages between resources and their environmental underpinnings. We overlooked the simple fact that everything comes at a price, not necessarily financial and often hidden, and that there are limits on the capacities of the biosphere to absorb the wastes we produce in such incredibly huge quantities. On a higher level, it has become abundantly clear that we've lost our way, our sense of home and of belonging to the rest of Creation.

It was a realization of this loss that brought the Suzuki Elders together in the first place. The David Suzuki Foundation offered us a home and some friendly words of advice, but told us we would have to make our own way, sort it all out for ourselves. So here we sit talking, preaching and harrumphing, as elders are wont to do. We write the odd declaration to tell the world that things are in a great mess and that we don't like it. We debate structure and function and constitution, as do all groups sooner or later. But what we haven't done is actually try and remedy the situation.

Why not? Well, for starters, we're not sure how to go about it. Our name is actually a bit of a handicap. Elders have been historically defined by two things -- advancing age and wisdom. The classic examples are the elders of First Nations communities across the Americas. Elders have been, and still are in most cases, cornerstones for them. Their elders have experience, they have seen, they have endured for hundreds if not thousands of years, commonly in the very same areas that their own elders occupied. In communities with strong oral traditions and little use of printed and archived materials, aboriginal elders have been the repositories of knowledge and experience for their communities and a point of reference for interpreting changes from the norm. Not much of consequence typically happens in an aboriginal community unless it is first run by the elders.

But this model does not work for us. Age in modern western culture does not carry the built-in respect that it does for aboriginals. For us the word 'elder' has become synonymous with 'senior', with all the inevitable connotations of diminished capacity, demands for care,and the cause of lop-sided burdens on the budget. For many elders themselves the term has become pejorative, to the extent that some educational institutions even eschew the term 'elder' in their programming and seek kitschy alternatives such as the synthetic construct 'third age'.

The wisdom thing doesn't fit very well either. You can know a lot but unless you can impart it to someone who needs it, it doesn't count for much. When younger people need information they typically don't go seeking out elders for the answers, they turn to their laptops or mobile phone and simply Google the question. The internet has opened up massive libraries and databases to everyone on every conceivable subject, all free of personal bias and many free of charge. Why seek out some older dude for information when you can get it all with graphics, abstracts and annotated references? What the web cannot provide of course is the wisdom to use the data and information smartly. But then, considering the state of the planet at present, we elders cannot lay claim to much expertise in that regard either.

For some the term Elder conjures up a vision of stern-faced oldies, deeply steeped in religious chapter and verse, handing down decisions to the more youthful generation below. Not a good model for us either. We're not any better equipped than the rest of the populace to formulate solemn decrees to deal with the complexities of the planetary biosphere. Nobody is standing at the church door waiting for our advice.

So what to do then? Well, we may be ageing but we can still count. There are fifteen of us around the table here, fewer when the weather is nice outside. But there are some 300,000 elder-age people in Vancouver. There are more than a million elders, however you care to define the term, in British Columbia and nearly 5 million in Canada. Heaven only knows how many are wandering around elsewhere in North America and the rest of the beleaguered planet. We may get no respect, as the saying goes, but we still have a vote. And our numbers are increasing all the time. Our potential to make real changes to the way we treat our Earth is truly enormous, if we can but get ourselves motivated, organized and all pointing in the same direction.

Where are the rest of us? Taking a leaf out of our younger colleagues' book, we Google all the relevant terms -- elders, environment, planet, conservation, biosphere. And we find nothing -- not one other organization of elders concerned with the issues that brought us together here. We can only speculate on why the rest are so unconcerned . Are they just too comfortable, too busy fighting life's daily grind, too ignorant of the issues? But whatever the cause of the apathy, the potential is great. And so are the challenges. It's time to get moving. Go Elders!

Salmon farming: the real dispute

2010-05-19T14:01:15Z

The Get Out Migration march in April and May of 2010 in which thousands of people walked from points between Echo Bay in the Broughton Archipelago to the steps of the British Columbia legislature in Victoria, British Columbia, is yet another chapter in the long crusade against marine net-cage feedlots in western Canada. Led by biologist Alexandra Morton, the marchers and the watching crowds represented commercial and sport fishermen, First Nations, businesspeople, organizations, residents, scientists, government employees and pretty much everyone else with a connection to salmon and other resources in one of Canada's richest resource regions. Their goal was plainly stated: to make a stand against the perceived biological and social threat and commerce of the industrial marine feedlots which dot the north-eastern and western coast line of Vancouver Island. The campaigners hold that marine feedlots are a threat to wild salmon populations by intensifying diseases, depleting valuable fishery resources [which make up the feed for the caged fish], privatizing ocean spaces and threatening sovereign rights to food security.

The salmon aquaculture industry in B.C. developed from ten operating farms in 1984 to a peak of 135 farms in 1989, and today number about 130. Marine feedlots hold a variety of finfish species, mainly Atlantic, Chinook and Coho salmon, as well as smaller numbers of black cod and halibut. Through rationalization and consolidation, the number of companies holding aquaculture licenses has declined from 50 in 1989 to 12 today. Especially irksome to the campaigners against net-famed salmon is the fact that more than 90% of the farmed salmon are held by just three large Norwegian companies -- Marine Harvest, Cremaq and Grieg Seafood.

Salmon diseases are a major issue of concern for the anti-fish farm brigades. They point to fish diseases such as ectoparasitic sea-lice, infectious hematopoietic necrosis and infectious salmon anaemia [both viral diseases] which are known to occur in penned salmon and which are potentially highly infective for migrating wild salmon passing near salmon farms. They point to big drops in runs of Fraser River sockeye salmon, Broughton Archipelago pink salmon and Clayoquot Sound chinook salmon in recent years, and find significant correlations between these phenomena and the presence of nearby salmon farms. They point too to correlations between the presence of net-penned salmon along the coastlines of Ireland, Scotland and Norway, on one hand, and outbreaks of salmon lice infestation in wild salmon passing through marine waters close to these pens, on the other.

But the government agencies responsible for regulating salmon farming in B.C. coastal waters don't quite see things the same way. The Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans cites agency research to demonstrate that marked periodic fluctuations in numbers have long been a feature of pink salmon runs, and in fact pre-date the introduction of salmon farms to the area. Their data show that pink salmon populations in this region are highly variable and cyclical in nature. There have been years when pink salmon abundance was extremely low, and these years were followed by a gradual increase to very high abundance. They observe that sea lice existed on wild salmon for tens of thousands of years before the first salmon farm was ever established in Canada. They cite ongoing departmental research which shows that the levels of sea lice found in wild Pacific salmon in the Broughton Archipelago have declined each year since 2004. And anyway, they say, sea lice levels are controlled on salmon farms to levels which take the risk to fish outside the farm to negligible levels.

The provincial Ministry of Agriculture and Lands weighs in with the view that its comprehensive health management program for salmon aquaculture is based on a precautionary approach, and that regular monitoring consistently shows that B.C.'s aquaculture industry upholds a high level of environmental standards and is serious about co-existing with wild salmon stocks. Monitoring thus far has identified no new diseases that had not already been reported in wild, hatchery-reared or research salmonids in B.C.

Now, how can this be? On one hand, a deeply concerned and unquestionably committed community with a vested interest in the well-being of salmon; on the other hand, groups of professional biologists, veterinarians and experienced fishery resource managers, all looking at the same issue and coming up with radically different conclusions. It's not a unique situation. Consider the similarly wide distances [and emotionally-generated rancour] between protagonists and antagonists of other thorny issues like climate change or the efficacy of homeopathic remedies. Different themes, same problems.

Three observations can be made by the dispassionate observer, if indeed there be such a thing where salmon in British Columbia are concerned, which may help unravel the problem. The first is that neither side in the salmon farm dispute can prove conclusively that they are right and the other is wrong in terms of the impacts of salmon farms on wild salmonid populations. Neither side has ever seen wild salmon in large numbers actually dying of sea-lice or a viral disease. When tribesmen in East Africa reach the conclusion that their cattle herds have been decimated by drought, they do so while standing on a grassy, waterless plain surrounded by the carcasses of hundreds of their dead cattle. Such certainty does not exist in the B.C. marine environment. Sick and dead salmon are rapidly consumed in the depths and are removed from human view. What biologists and salmon farmers in fact see are relatively small numbers of fish in a sample haul, or larger numbers of farmed fish inside a net pen. They have to project, through calculations, correlations and complicated mathematical models, from their observations to the population at large in the sea, which is mostly out of sight and out of reach. They do so in the knowledge that the factors they measure, be they the numbers of sea lice on a caught salmon or the condition of the caught fish are but a few amongst many environmental and population factors which affect salmon in their life cycle from stream to seas again. Fisheries biologist Brian Harvey waded through all available reports on sea-lice and salmon and came to five conclusions -- salmon farms produce large numbers of sea louse larvae; encounters between farm-produced larvae and salmon cannot yet be observed [but are completely plausible biologically]; the percentage of sea lice on wild salmon that come from salmon farms can't be quantified; the role of alternate [not from salmon farms] sources of sea lice is not yet understood nor quantified; and understanding the direct link between sea lice from salmon farms and wild salmon populations will be a "lively" area of research.

The second observation is that the arguments over diseases and impacts of farmed salmon on wild salmon may be important to scientists and local communities, but are small beer in relation to real economics. The Canadian aquaculture industry is a major food production segment of the national economy, generating more than $1 billion in GDP in Canada in 2007, more than $320 million in direct GDP and about $685 million in spin-off business. It is responsible for an estimated 14,500 full-time equivalent jobs, many of them in coastal and rural communities in Canada. In British Columbia, salmon farming is the province's largest agricultural export, and generates $800 million in economic output annually and provides employment for 6,000 men and women in direct and supply and service jobs, many in coastal communities where other opportunities are limited. This level of economic activity obviously generates a commensurate amount of political weight.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the two sides in the dispute are really contesting something much deeper rooted than sea-lice or fouled water. These are just focal points for the polemic. For the coastal communities, the fishermen, the First Nations bands and the marchers on Victoria, wild salmon are not just fish. They are a symbol of place in the northwest, a marker of the community of individuals, enterprises and organizations committed to live in a way that strengthens local and regional economies, sustains the natural abundance of resources, and provides a nurturing for the spirit. For them, salmon are food, a basis for commerce and a vital source of nutrition for the land. For the salmon-farming industry, the fish have become just a corporate-produced commodity, akin to broiler-reared chickens or monocultured corn spread across the prairies, generating huge amounts of food, cash flows and corporate profits. The one view deals with resource communities as they were and as we might choose them, the other best befits the future beset by distant and burgeoning global populations who need the food, know little about the Salmon Nation, and in fact care not a whit about it.

Wisdom of the Elders

2010-05-14T16:30:49Z

Climate change indicators

2010-05-13T14:36:59Z

The evidence of human influences on climate change has become increasingly clear and compelling over the last several decades There is now convincing evidence that human activities such as electricity production and transportation are adding to the concentrations of greenhouse gases that are already naturally present in the atmosphere. These heat-trapping gases are now at record-high levels in the atmosphere compared with the recent and distant past.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recently published Climate Change Indicators in the United States to help the concerned public readers interpret a set of important indicators for climate change. The report presents 24 indicators, each describing trends in some way related to the causes and effects of climate change. The indicators focus primarily on the United States, but in some cases global trends are presented in order to provide context or a basis for comparison. The following is a brief summary of the report's contents.

Greenhouse Gases

Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Worldwide, emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities increased by 26 percent from 1990 to 2005. Emissions of carbon dioxide, which account for nearly three-fourths of the total, increased by 31 percent over this period. The majority of the world's emissions are associated with energy use.

Atmospheric Concentrations of Greenhouse Gases. Concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have risen substantially since the beginning of the industrial era. Almost all of this increase is attributable to human activities. Historical measurements show that the current levels of many greenhouse gases are higher than any seen in thousands of years, even after accounting for natural fluctuations.

Climate Forcing. From 1990 to 2008, the radiative forcing of all the greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere increased by about 26 percent. The rise in carbon dioxide concentrations accounts for approximately 80 percent of this increase. Radiative forcing is a way to measure how substances such as greenhouse gases affect the amount of energy that is absorbed by the atmosphere -- an increase in radiative forcing leads to warming while a decrease in forcing produces cooling.

Weather and Climate

U.S. and Global Temperature. Average temperatures have risen across the lower 48 states since 1901, with an increased rate of warming over the past 30 years. Parts of the North, the West, and Alaska have seen temperatures increase the most. Seven of the top 10 warmest years on record for the lower 48 states have occurred since 1990, and the last 10 five-year periods have been the warmest five-year periods on record. Average global temperatures show a similar trend, and 2000-2009 was the warmest decade on record worldwide.

Heat Waves. The frequency of heat waves in the United States decreased in the 1960s and 1970s, but has risen steadily since then. The percentage of the United States experiencing heat waves has also increased. The most severe heat waves in U.S. history remain those that occurred during the "Dust Bowl" in the 1930s, although average temperatures have increased since then.

Drought. Over the period from 2001 through 2009, roughly 30 to 60 percent of the U.S. land area experienced drought conditions at any given time. However, the data for this indicator have not been collected for long enough to determine whether droughts are increasing or decreasing over time.

U.S. and Global Precipitation. Average precipitation has increased in the United States and worldwide. Since 1901, precipitation has increased at an average rate of more than 6 percent per century in the lower 48 states and nearly 2 percent per century worldwide. However, shifting weather patterns have caused certain areas, such as Hawaii and parts of the Southwest, to experience less precipitation than they used to.

Heavy Precipitation. In recent years, a higher percentage of precipitation in the United States has come in the form of intense single-day events. Eight of the top 10 years for extreme one-day precipitation events have occurred since 1990. The occurrence of abnormally high annual precipitation totals has also increased.

Tropical Cyclone Intensity. The intensity of tropical storms in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico did not exhibit a strong long-term trend for much of the 20th century, but has risen noticeably over the past 20 years. Six of the 10 most active hurricane seasons have occurred since the mid-1990s. This increase is closely related to variations in sea surface temperature in the tropical Atlantic.

Oceans

Ocean Heat. Several studies have shown that the amount of heat stored in the ocean has increased substantially since the 1950s. Ocean heat content not only determines sea surface temperature, but it also affects sea level and currents.

Sea Surface Temperature. The surface temperature of the world's oceans increased over the 20th century. Even with some year-to-year variation, the overall increase is statistically significant, and sea surface temperatures have been higher during the past three decades than at any other time since large-scale measurement began in the late 1800s.

Sea Level. When averaged over all the world's oceans, sea level has increased at a rate of roughly six-tenths of an inch per decade since 1870. The rate of increase has accelerated in recent years to more than an inch per decade. Changes in sea level relative to the height of the land vary widely because the land itself moves. Along the U.S. coastline, sea level has risen the most relative to the land along the Mid-Atlantic coast and parts of the Gulf Coast. Sea level has decreased relative to the land in parts of Alaska and the Northwest.

Ocean Acidity. The ocean has become more acidic over the past 20 years, and studies suggest that the ocean is substantially more acidic now than it was a few centuries ago. Rising acidity is associated with increased levels of carbon dioxide dissolved in the water. Changes in acidity can affect sensitive organisms such as corals.

Snow & Ice

Arctic Sea Ice. Part of the Arctic Ocean stays frozen year-round. The area covered by ice is typically smallest in September, after the summer melting season. September 2007 had the least ice of any year on record, followed by 2008 and 2009. The extent of Arctic sea ice in 2009 was 24 percent below the 1979 to 2000 historical average.

Glaciers. Glaciers in the United States and around the world have generally shrunk since the 1960s, and the rate at which glaciers are melting appears to have accelerated over the last decade. Overall, glaciers worldwide have lost more than 2,000 cubic miles of water since 1960, which has contributed to the observed rise in sea level.

Lake Ice. Lakes in the northern United States generally appear to be freezing later and thawing earlier than they did in the 1800s and early 1900s. The length of time that lakes stay frozen has decreased at an average rate of one to two days per decade.

Snow Cover. The portion of North America covered by snow has generally decreased since 1972, although there has been much year-to-year variability. Snow covered an average of 3.18 million square miles of North America during the years 2000 to 2008, compared with 3.43 million square miles during the 1970s.

Snowpack. Between 1950 and 2000, the depth of snow on the ground in early spring decreased at most measurement sites in the western United States and Canada. Spring snowpack declined by more than 75 percent in some areas, but increased in a few others.

Society & Ecosystems

Heat-Related Deaths. Over the past three decades, more than 6,000 deaths across the United States were caused by heat-related illness such as heat stroke. However, considerable year-to-year variability makes it difficult to determine long-term trends.

Length of Growing Season. The average length of the growing season in the lower 48 states has increased by about two weeks since the beginning of the 20th century. A particularly large and steady increase has occurred over the last 30 years. The observed changes reflect earlier spring warming as well as later arrival of fall frosts. The length of the growing season has increased more rapidly in the West than in the East.

Plant Hardiness Zones. Winter low temperatures are a major factor in determining which plants can survive in a particular area. Plant hardiness zones have shifted noticeably northward since 1990, reflecting higher winter temperatures in most parts of the country. Large portions of several states have warmed by at least one hardiness zone.

Leaf and Bloom Dates. The timing of natural events such as leaf growth and flower blooms are influenced by climate change. Observations of lilacs and honeysuckles in the lower 48 states indicate that leaf growth is now occurring a few days earlier than it did in the early 1900s. Lilacs and honeysuckles are also blooming slightly earlier than in the past, but it is difficult to determine whether this change is statistically meaningful.

Bird Wintering Ranges. Some birds shift their range or alter their migration habits to adapt to changes in temperature or other environmental conditions. Long-term studies have found that bird species in North America have shifted their wintering grounds northward by an average of 35 miles since 1966, with a few species shifting by several hundred miles. On average, bird species have also moved their wintering grounds farther from the coast, consistent with rising inland temperatures.

Climate-change denialism

2010-05-13T14:08:06Z

A 2010 series of public opinion polls reveal that 58% of Canadians consider global warming to be real and mostly caused by emissions from vehicles and industrial facilities. By comparison, only 41% of Americans and 38% of British citizens think this. A further 17% of Canadians think that global warming is indeed a fact, but that it is mostly caused by natural changes (the corresponding figures for the U.S.A. and Britain are 20% and 26%). That leaves a quarter of the Canadian population with either no opinion at all or the view that climate change is theoretical and without any proof. A disturbing 39% of Americans and 36% of Brits fall into this category.

Why do such a lot of people find it so difficult to accept something which many others consider one of the most serious problems the planet has ever faced? Effective and persistent deliberate misinformation by the energy industry is one very obvious reason. Deep suspicion on the part of conservative people of climate-change views expressed widely and forcibly by others considered liberal or just plain radical is a second likely major factor. Perceived overstatement of the consequences of climate change has not helped credibility of the climate change lobby.

George Marshall of the British-based Climate Outreach and Information Network has analysed public attitudes towards climate change and finds several similarities to attitudes towards other unpleasant realties in life. He quotes Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics Stanley Cohen who uses the term passive bystander effect. This describes societies who are faced with conflicts between a moral imperative to take action and a need to rather protect themselves and their families. Cohen suggests that people deliberately maintain a level of ignorance so that they can claim they know less than they do. They exaggerate their own powerlessness and wait indefinitely for someone else to act first. Societies negotiate collective strategies to avoid action. They arrive at unwritten agreements about what can be publicly remembered and acknowledged, and what cannot.

This all sounds a bit severe, but Dr. Kari Norgaard of Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, has reached similar conclusions, and believes that denial [of climate change] is a social construct. Based on her research in Norway, she believes people to be deeply conflicted about climate change, but they manage their anxiety and guilt by excluding it from the cultural norms which define what they should pay attention to and think about -- their "norms of attention." People accordingly and tacitly agree that it is socially inappropriate to pay attention to climate change, so it does not come up in conversations, as an issue in voting, or in consumption or career choices. It's a bit like a committee that has decided to avoid a thorny problem by conspiring to make sure that it never makes it onto the agenda of any meeting.

Marshall notes that there are many different ways that the proximity of climate change could force itself onto our agendas. We already feel the impacts in our immediate environment. Scientists and [some] politicians urge us to act. The impacts directly threaten our personal and local livelihoods. And, above all, we realize that it is our consumption and affluence that is causing the problem. However, people have decided that they can keep climate change outside their "norms of attention" through a selective framing that creates the maximum distance. Thus they define it as far away ("it's a global problem, not a local problem") or far in the future ("it's a huge problem for future generations"). They embrace the tiny cluster of sceptics as evidence that "it's only a theory," and that "there is still a debate." And they strategically shift the causes as far away as possible: "I'm not the problem--it's the Chinese, the rich people, the corporations, whatever." Europeans (and Canadians) routinely blame the Americans.

People seem to have selected, isolated, and then exaggerated the aspects of climate change that best enable their detachment. And, ironically, focus-group research suggests that people are able to create the most distance when climate change is categorized as an "environmental" problem, not a social or an economic one.

Top-level Elders

2010-05-06T14:58:15Z

The Elders are an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by Nelson Mandela, who offer their collective influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity.

The story of the Elders started in a conversation between the entrepreneur Richard Branson and the musician Peter Gabriel. The idea they discussed was a simple one. In an increasingly interdependent world -- a global village -- could a small, dedicated group of independent elders help to resolve global problems and ease human suffering?

For inspiration, they looked to traditional societies, where elders often help to share wisdom and resolve disputes within communities. They took their idea to Nelson Mandela, who agreed to support it. With the help of Graça Machel and Desmond Tutu, Mandela set about bringing the Elders together. Prospective members were invited to join on the basis of a distinct set of criteria. Firstly, and most importantly, they should be independent. They should have earned international trust, demonstrated integrity and built a reputation for inclusive, progressive leadership.

Mandela announced the formation of the Elders in July 2007, on the occasion of his 89th birthday, at a ceremony in Johannesburg. During the ceremony, he described the mission of the group: "The Elders can speak freely and boldly, working both publicly and behind the scenes. They will reach out to those who most need their help. They will support courage where there is fear, foster agreement where there is conflict and inspire hope where there is despair."

The Elders amplify the voices of those who work hard to be heard, challenge injustice, stimulate dialogue and debate and help others to work for positive change in their societies. The Elders do not hold public office and have no political or legislative power. Because they are not bound by the interests of any single nation, government or institution, they are free to speak boldly and with whomever they choose on any issue, and to take any action that they believe is right.

When undertaking initiatives, the Elders are committed to listening to the views of all groups and individuals -- and especially women and young people. The Elders work both publicly and behind the scenes and at all levels -- local, national and international -- lending support and advice when invited, and sometimes when it is not.

A sense of place

2010-05-05T16:07:48Z

Our world is being radically transformed by our muscular technologies. But if we cannot predict the global ecological effects of our activities, how can we control or manage them? We can't, and increasingly, some of the leading scientific thinkers who are trying to find solutions to the ecocrisis are using terms hitherto considered inappropriate in science. Thus, Stanford University ecologist Paul Ehrlich believes that the answer to the global difficulties will be "quasi-religious." He suggests that our main dilemma is not a lack of information or technological capability. Rather, our problem is inherent in the way we perceive our relationship with the rest of Nature and our role in the grand scheme of things. Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson proposes that we foster biophilia, a love of life. He says, "We must rediscover our kin, the other animals and plants with whom we share this planet. We are related to them through our DNA and evolution. To know our kin is to come to love and cherish them." Both of these eminent scientists are suggesting that science alone is not enough to solve the planetary environmental crisis and that we must recreate for ourselves a sense of place within the biosphere that is steeped in humility and reverence for all other life.

--from Wisdom of the Elders. Peter Knudtson & David Suzuki. 1992. Stockhart, Toronto.