Activism might actually work this time

Posted on 9 February, 2020 by alloporus

Whenever something frightening is real and present, people tend to cooperate. This is remarkable.

All that needs to happen for cohesion to overtake personal gain is danger felt by everyone… within the same tribe.

Cohesion through connection with others when the going is tough appears to be a hard-wired behaviour that probably saved the species more than once over a tortuous evolution.

I have experienced the feeling when a bushfire, whipped into house felling ferocity by a windstorm, passed close by our home and then, turning back on itself, came into our neighbourhood. People were scared. Everyone feared for their lives and their possessions, even as they helped each neighbour, in turn, protect theirs.

Honest cooperation is contagious enough when a threat is real and you look similar enough to the folk needing or giving help.

This behaviour is exploited by activists the world over. The threat of this, the fight against that, dangerous climate change, the death of the oceans.

Wait. That last one isn’t dangerous to me, surely.

The idea being that if enough danger is realised by each individual then emotions are triggered and we all get together to fight the good fight.

Unfortunately with the environment, it fails every time.

The fight is only in the extreme and for many of the most serious environmental issues, such as running out of rock phosphorus — ah-ha not expecting that one, hey — there is no personal extreme.

This systemic rather than acute pain applies to climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean pollution, soil degradation and a host of other issues.

It is very hard to fight something that you cannot see.

So the activists latch onto the koala, the tiger or the manatee.

At least you can get a visual on these critters and imagine the loss of cuteness.

This need for personal danger or at least a visual that is relatable, is starting to happen in the climate change debate.

This is partly through the ‘climate emergency’ idea that is declared by an increasing number of jurisdictions and organisations. It is also, more tellingly, through the very real feeling among the youngsters that the current system is mortgaging their future. That their parents are letting the powers that be, political or otherwise, raid their legacy for profit under the notion that economic growth is a necessity.

It also helps that forests are burning into suburbs and whole cities are choked with toxic air from the smoke.

The logical and the morals of this premise are now in the frame as much as the nebulous and unrelatable 3 degrees of warming.

It means we can get real activism. The sort of thing that will bring people together and bring forth leaders with progressive thinking and a sense of urgency. Not through the current generation of stupid white men who have a disproportionate impact on the world, but the kids who will grow up to take their place.

For the first time in a long while, there is hope that leaders will not be predominantly white or men or stupid.

If you enjoyed this and other Alloporus posts please consider reposting to you social networks… It’s lonely out in space.

Tuppence a bag

Posted on 25 May, 2018 by alloporus

Should you feed the birds?

Well, they are wild animals, more than capable of feeding themselves.

Of course, if they fly around and don’t find food they go hungry. If this foraging fail continues for too long they either starve or are too weak to nest and rear chicks. Those that find enough food pass their genes on into the next generation – bog standard natural selection.

The presence of my house and suburb is, of course, a huge disturbance to the natural habitat. It alters the outcome of natural selection drastically favouring those species that like what houses and gardens offer over the resources available in the bush that was there for millennia before westerners.

Feeding the birds is only a tiny blip in this dramatic habitat change. Trees and shrubs to paved roads and gardens is way more important than a few seeds or apple cores on a bird table. Throw in an Indian or a noisy myna bird that come along with the houses and, well, feed all you like, the aggressive mynas will still be there to chase the passerines away.

Feeding the birds is only ever going to affect wild birds at the margins. In time of extreme heat, cold or drought it might keep a few specimens alive a little longer, enough to get through, but this would be the exception not the rule.

So, the reason to feed them is for my benefit.

I get to see them up close and squabble amongst themselves on the feeder. The pecking order between and amongst the species is a fascination as is their choice of the morsels offered. There can be half a dozen brightly coloured specimens parading at any one time. It is quite a sight.

Then the sulphur crested cockatoos glide in and spoil the party. They are big, brash and more than capable of taking a chunk out of the hardwood balustrade when they get bored. I sometimes chase them off which is bizarre given I got them to come over in the first place.

And if I forget to put out a fresh supply of ‘wild bird seed’ the cheeky buggers line up on the outdoor furniture, peering into the house at any movement with a chirp and a forlorn look.

In a pique I refuse to replenish the supply. After a few days the lineup dwindles to nothing and normality is restored until, in a moment of weakness, I put some seeds out again to repeat the cycle.

Yes, it’s OK to feed wild birds in your garden – so long as it’s the right food

As you probably gathered I live in Australia. There are conservation minded folk here who dislike, even detest, my bird feeding behaviour. That I should feed birds at all is bad enough, that I do so intermittently borders on the criminal. Wild should be wild they say. What right do I have to cause obesity in lorikeets by feeding them the wrong seeds?

Instead all I need to do is plant some wild bird friendly plants in my garden and enjoy the wild birds from a distance.

Only here is the thing.

Those aforementioned noisy mynas arrived in our yard about 5 years ago. They took up residence en mass and now patrol the airspace chasing away everything but the butcherbird, the kookaburras and the cockatoos. All the smaller species, the treecreepers, whistlers, wagtails, scrubwrens, and the like that I used to marvel at from my office window are nowhere to be seen or heard. They have retreated to safer habitat.

If I planted, it would be like trying to win a battle on the ground without first dealing with superiority in the air. Any bird trying for a feed at the bottlebrush blossom would just be hounded away before they took a sip.

It is actually rather sad. There was once a wonderful distraction when I glanced up from my computer screen toward the gum trees. But not any more.

The only hope is that we have a drought. For then the garden might be attractive enough for more species to brave the myna harassment long enough for me to view them again.

Meantime I will make do with feeding the bigger birds and not feel guilty because the damage is already done by me. Not because I feed the birds, but because I chose to live in a suburb carved out of the bush.

Think global act local

Posted on 11 May, 2018 by alloporus

At its inception, ‘think global, act local’ was about empowerment. An endless stream of bad environmental news had affected people. Many became bewildered and overwhelmed.

Concerned individuals could not see how their own effort could make any difference against the global economic juggernaut. ‘Think global, act local’ became an engaging mantra because it implies that there is more than the sum of the parts and, however small, each part matters.

‘Every little helps’, ‘Look after the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves’ are hewn from the same psychological rock.

I like that. You probably do too.

Whilst at some level we all know that we are small and insignificant, it is a fact that our egos refuse to accept. So anything that implies greatness, even via aggregation with our fellows, feels good.

Unfortunately, most individual acts actually are insignificant against the tide of economic development. Standing down the bulldozer and chainsaw by living on a platform in a tree at the edge of the forest is meaningful at the time for the tree dweller, the dozer driver and the handful of people following the social feed. But not to the logging company, as rarely will their licence be revoked for long.

In time, the act of bravery and defiance is forgotten and a new agreement reached to create jobs for the timber industry and paper for the printer.

And yes, the cardboard used for the placards at the demo originated in a tree. The road, vehicles and fuel that transported both the protagonists and antagonists to the forest have an environmental footprint. The tree dwellers family have jobs in the city and after tossing their disposable coffee cup into the bin went online and transferred $500 into their daughters account, claiming the gift against tax.

The local act was noble and courageous. It will have raised awareness a little and stalled a poor development decision — for the record I believe that any further logging of primary forest is not development but degradation of the worst kind and that timber production should be all about revegetation and management of already logged forests — only the act did not go global. The thought might have but the action did not.

So here is a suggestion.

Act global, think local.

At first, this sounds stupid. If individuals are and feel so small and insignificant they cannot possibly act globally. It is beyond them and why the original mantra became popular. The best they can do is vote for global change and look where that got us.

But they can think local.

What happens if we think about everything we do. Think about the disposable coffee cup, the commute by car for an hour by yourself, the printer when there is the cloud, and any number of commonplace actions that all have an environmental cost.

If we think we question. The answer might be that coffee is an essential that should not be passed over and, anyway, it was fair trade coffee that spread the love across the world. All right, the thought at least triggered a logic flow.

Do this many times and the logic starts to accumulate.

Gather enough logic thoughts and, before long, the futility of so many of our individual and collective decisions will become obvious.

Do not underestimate the force of this process. Awareness is not a step, it is a leap. It can empower just as strongly as any collective action because it changes individuals where it matters. In their value set. In the way they perceive themselves and the world they live in. In what they believe in.

There is no doubt that environmental issues are the aggregation of all our common actions. A world with over a billion wealthy people, and another three billion more hot on their heels, will strain the limits of natural resources and global resilience. And changing the light bulbs is never going to be enough.

If we think local we become more aware. We start to realise the extent of the challenge and only then does act global make any sense at all.