12:05 a.m. - 2002-10-06
I Have a Headache
I wasn't ready to write yesterday. There was too much going on in my head.
I attended a workshop at our university on Friday, entitled Human Rights and Resource Development - sort of an oxymoron. When I signed up for it, I was hoping it might shed some light on the debate around the Kyoto Protocol. Like most other forms of education, when it is at its best, it raised as many questions as it answered. The thrust of the workshop seemed to be how to find the balance between social justice and the economic imperatives of a population. The only conclusion I've drawn so far is that I'm going to have to do a lot more research on my own.
The panelists were provocative both in their presentations and their analysis. All were well grounded in their own areas of expertise. Where I am finding difficulty is in the context.
For example, the whole issue of climate change should, in my mind, be considered based on the sunspot cycles that have been observed over the centuries. There are the 11 year mini cycles where sunspot activity peaks then wanes with predictable influence on the weather and, some would argue, social patterns on earth. When the sunspot activity is highest as it is now, there are more violent storms, drier, hotter summers, more unusual occurrences with phenomenon like floods. Human nature seems to be tied in becoming more combative, creative, and confrontational. There are also longer cycles that are harmonics of the 11 year cycles. When current conditions are examined, the benchmarks for measuring the impacts of human activity on climate change should take this into account.
In the work I do, I have had access to longitudinal geological and geophysical studies of some of the most sensitive geographic areas in the world, such as the Arctic, dating back to the early 1900's. I think of the patterns that existed in the "dirty thirties". I wonder why these sources of information are not part of the assessment of climate change now.
I wonder if that is even the most critical question for us at this time. The material presented that caused me the greatest concern was with respect to the types and levels of pollutants and toxins in the water and the air that all of us must share and the lack of attention to the cumulative effects these are having on human health. In some ways, the talk about the increased heating of the earth's atmosphere seems to be almost a diversion to stop the important questions being asked about the increasing toxicity in our environments. Wind and water move into and penetrate every surface of the earth leaving behind signatures that are specific to industrial activity now just as the coal based economies of the industrial revolution left their marks. Recent studies of skeletons exhumed in major coal producing areas of Briton, for example, show that the damage penetrated the very bones and organs of the people who lived nearby in ways not forseen. It did not affect Britons living further away from the areas of extraction. The current toxins, however, are considerably lighter and, therefore, more pervasive.
Greenhouse gases may be a concern but there are other issues that should be dealt with first. The factor of human rights seemed to be part of the workshop because it may be the only reasonable vehicle available to force examination of the pervasive pollution of the air and water that are essential to every human beings existence.
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