Chandra Clarke

Offering Light and Laughter Wherever I Can

Regional Government

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We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are.
— Max De Pree

In the last post in my series on the environment and what you can do to help, we talked about the need to push for change at the municipal level. Today, we’ll kick it up a notch and focus on regional government.

Depending on where you live, that could be your state, your province, your county, your canton, prefecture, etc. For the sake of simplicity, let’s consider this any level of government between municipal and national/federal.

These governments aren’t quite as monolithic and hard to budge as the national governments can be, yet they quite often have really big budgets and mandates to deal with environmental issues.

What should you press for at the regional level? Here are some suggestions:

  • The preservation of, the expansion of, and/or the creation of conservation areas, parks, or “green belts” (areas not made into parks but that are theoretically off limits to development).
  • Subsidies for the development and installation of green economy infrastructure. This could include incentives to buy cars that aren’t powered by internal combustion engines, setting up charger networks, or providing incentives to homeowners for conservation and power generation.
  • How is power generated in your region? Is it green or something like coal? What are the regulations regarding ‘going off the grid?’ Is it possible to sell power generated at home? Each one of these could be it’s own grassroots campaign.
  • How do your waterways look? Are they clean? Which authority is responsible for them? Is there a plan to fix problems like phosphorus runoff from farms, or pollution from factories and municipalities? Who’s tapping into the water supply and are they paying a fair price to do so? (All that bottled water we drink? It’s purchased off municipal or state water systems for pennies and sold to us for dollars – and encased in plastic to boot!)
  • How well do your public transportation networks link up? Is it possible to travel everywhere in your region through public transit? If not, could it be possible?

As with municipal-level issues, pick one to advocate for. You’re more likely to run into issues with multiple governing bodies here, so take the time to research who is responsible for what before you start taking action.

How to Take Action

There are three ways you can take action at the regional government level.

  1. Find out who else might be making noise about your preferred issue already. Chances are, given that you’re looking at the regional level, that there’s some sort of advocacy group or non-governmental organization (NGO) already involved. Then join it, and commit some volunteer hours to making it succeed.
  2. It might be the case that there isn’t an organization already, or no local chapter. Guess who could start one? You!
  3. You can make your views known to your regional representative. A phone call might be more effective here, as regional reps get a lot of email. You could even go old school and send a paper letter by post.
  4. Don’t forget the option of running for office here too. Obviously, this is going to take more money and effort than it would at the municipal level, so it might not be an option for you. But you could also consider…
  5. Joining a regional-level political party. Candidates and elected officials don’t come up with policy on their own; they’re just the public face of the party in their area. You can be one of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ people, pushing for policies at the party level between elections, keeping party members organized, helping to select candidates or delegates within the party that align with your issues, and helping to get your preferred candidate elected when the time comes. We talk a lot about how much money goes into political campaigns, but tens of thousands of hours of volunteer labour is also required. What could you contribute?

What issue would you tackle at the regional level? Comment below.

Be Your Own Man

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A long time ago, British researcher Gerald Lincoln announced that he suspected that men might be subject to a medical condition known as ‘irritable male syndrome.’

I suspect we haven’t heard much about this since because I’m betting Lincoln was buried in a pile of 23,576,654 emails from women around the world that said: ‘No kidding, Sherlock.’

Another 14,357,542 emails probably politely suggested that Lincoln rename the condition to ‘irritating male syndrome,’ as that would be more accurate.

Lincoln based his theory on his studies of animals, including Indian elephants, reindeer, red deer, and mouflon (sheep). He found that as their testosterone levels fell, male animals became moody and withdrawn, striking out irrationally.

Now, to be fair, it could be that these creatures were irritable because some bloke in a lab coat kept running in to check their testosterone level. Because this is a family publication, I won’t discuss how Lincoln measured testosterone, but let’s just say it might explain why he studied sheep more often than large, easily enraged elephants.

However, let’s assume Lincoln was on to something. Are there similarities between irritable men and irritable rams? We’ll compare:

Rams: When angry, will do something irrational like run headfirst into a tree.

Men: When angry, will do something irrational like punch a wall.

Rams: Will signal their displeasure by bleating angrily.

Men: Will signal their displeasure by calling the referee on TV nasty names.

Ram: When in a bad mood, will go sulk in a corner of the pasture. When a ewe comes over to ask what’s wrong, he’ll avoid eye contact and say nothing.

Men: When in a bad mood, will retreat to the garage. When his wife comes out to ask what’s wrong, he’ll avoid eye contact and say: ‘Nothing.’

Rams: Wooly all over.

Men: Hairy all over.

So, it appears that Lincoln’s theory stands up to rigorous scientific scrutiny. I’m curious as to why we haven’t heard very much about this potential issue.

Actually, no, I’m not curious. I know why it hasn’t gotten a lot of press: Because what this implies is, men can be governed by their hormones.

Men have tried to claim this about women this for centuries, probably as far back as the cave days:

MRS. UGH: Argle! You have left your underfur all over the cave again. How many times I got to clean it up? You drive me crazy!

MR. UGH: Oh oh. You angry. Must be dat time of month again huh?

MRS. UGH: No! I’m just sick and tired of …

MR. UGH: There, there [patting her head]. Look, I just go over to visit Bargle. Be back in, um… few days.

Things had not improved much by the 20th century:

MAN 1: Give women the vote? Good lord, what a horrible idea. Women are far too emotional to make any sort of decisions. And can you imagine what sort of dither they’d be in if an election happened to land on their special day?’

MAN 2: Indeed. Next thing you know, they’ll want to run for public office.

MAN 1: [Shudder]. Perish the thought. We’d have prime ministers going around bombing other countries just because they were in a bad mood or something.

The ultimate irony here is that Lincoln’s theory about hormones has come full circle to bite men in their wooly regions. If both men and women are supposedly hormonal, at least women can claim to be predictably so, whereas a man can be irrational and crabby at any time, without warning. This is why lots of women wear t-shirts that say: ‘Sometimes I wake up grumpy, and sometimes I let him sleep in.’

Of course, we could do something radical like take mental health issues for both men and women seriously and devote some serious time and money into investigating and treating them. In fact, I’d say this is our second biggest issue of the 21st century, right behind climate change.

Why do I think that, you ask?

I mean, have you seen the comments on social media lately?

Image credit: Canva

Five Interesting Things – March 2022

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Hey folx! It’s time for the March 2021 edition of 5 Interesting Things. It’s a short round up of things I’ve found that are: potentially actionable, inspiring, thought-provoking. Let’s gooo!

The Future Forest Company – A lot of us live urban lives these days, so we might not have much, if any room to plant a tree. If that’s the case, you can use this organization or others like it to get trees planted where there is room. You’ll be helping to reduce CO2 loads, providing habitat for animals and insects, and generally making things cooler and greener.

Male Fertility – The press has devoted a lot of ink and pixels to the idea of a male fertility crisis. This article suggests that there really isn’t one. If nothing else, this piece demonstrates why continued study of an issue is important to refining our understanding of complicated subjects.

Piddling Concerns – Although this is possibly too much information, an adult on a typical Western diet urinates about 500 liters a year, enough to fill three standard bathtubs. Urine is also full of full of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus, which plants need to grow. Rather than flush all that away, researchers are looking at ways to safely recycle your piddle into fertilizer. It would save farmers input costs, and cut sewage treatment plant use down.

Volcano Snails – Yes, you read that right, volcano snails. Apparently, these things live around hydrothermal vents in the Indian ocean, and have — get this — iron shells.

5G and the IoT – The subject of a lot of really stupid conspiracy theories, the 5G technology being rolled out this year is going to make things very interesting in the next decade. It will enable a lot of what we’re calling the “Internet of Things.” That is, objects connected to the Internet and exchanging data. One use case would be sensors embedded in bridges, which would enable us to check their condition remotely and address structural issues before fail like this one did. If you have never heard of the IoT, now is the time to brush up, as it will be affecting your life very soon.

Freedom Convoys?

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Like many Canadians, I’ve spent the last few weeks being very distracted by a movement billing itself as a “Freedom Convoy.” For those of you who aren’t familiar, some truckers who were unhappy with vaccine requirements for border crossings decided to roll a convoy into the nation’s capital and demand that all pandemic-related mandates and restrictions be removed. The movement morphed into a three-week occupation of the capital and blockades of several border crossings before being broken up by police.

There are any number of reasons for this convoy which have been covered in depth elsewhere: frustration fueled by inconsistent and sometimes inexplicable policies that in some jurisdictions seem based more on politics than public health; outright disinformation and social media echo chambers; concerns about civil liberties, some of which are legit, while others are based on ignorance of what the Charter of Rights actually says; and finally general frustration about the pandemic. It’s been ongoing since March 2020. We’re all tired and fed up.

There is one other reason that I think we should explore, especially because it might be a primary driver of many other issues in society right now: humans need purpose.

I say this because I watched a snippet on Twitter of a guy filming the Ottawa protest. He had his two young sons with him, and one of the boys briefly complained that his legs hurt. The father gave them a lengthy talk about ignoring pain and being resilient, using terms like sacrifice, how real men should behave, and fighting for freedom. Whatever your feelings about the protest itself, it’s quite clear that he genuinely felt that he was Doing Something Big.

A lot of us are lacking that right now. Our grandparents and great-grandparents fought en masse in the horrendous world wars, or if they weren’t directly involved in combat, worked ‘on the home front’ in some way or another. The fifties, sixties and seventies had the the Cold War and the communist scare, the Civil Rights Movement, the hippie peace movement, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, the race to the moon.

Obviously, we don’t want any more great wars, or indeed wars of any kind, if we can avoid them. They don’t give purpose so much as they consume a generation and they are hugely destructive. What’s happening in Ukraine is horrifying and could all too easily spill over into a wider conflict.

And obviously, there are still more than enough problems left to solve in the world. But many of these feel huge and intractable, or are only solvable by highly trained specialists.

I’m very concerned about plastic pollution for example, but my refusal to buy a plastic bottle of Coke doesn’t even register against sales of 1.9 billion servings per day.

Civil rights and social justice? I do my best every day, and while the ultimate goal is very clear, on some days it’s hard to see what the short to medium term victory conditions are and how we achieve them.

The fight against cancer? Since I’m not an oncologist and I don’t have the talent to be one, the best I can do is donate. Yay me.

I’m reminded of the speech by the Tyler Durden character in Fight Club (movie version):

Man, I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see it squandered. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables – slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won’t. We’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.

None of this is helped by the feeling that many of our institutions seem completely incapable of solving our problems either. The pandemic is exhibit A: Two years in and multi-billions of dollars of spending later, my home province’s response to COVID case increases as recently as this past December was still to randomly shut down various sectors of the economy and hope for the best. It was like watching someone repeatedly reboot their computer when what they needed were several software updates.

Actually, it’s worse than that: it’s like watching your surgeon prep for your procedure by practicing on the Operation® game board, and blaming someone else every time the buzzer goes off.

And what happens when you have entire sections of society that feel rootless, purposeless, and angry? You get moral panics. Authoritarians and demagogues start becoming popular. Grifters and charlatans make bank. You see a rise in conspiracy theories because it might actually be more comforting to think that our institutions are merely evil rather than catastrophically incapable.

How do we solve this without going through yet another bloody cycle of anacyclosis? My suggestion would be for governments to set up (and fund) a positive challenge that everyone could participate in.

To my mind, our best bet for this would be what I’m going to call Wilding (which is not a term original to me), but could be called anything: Earth Restoration, Stewardship, Mega Conservation whatever.

Most people can do things like plant trees, shrubs and plants (and those that can’t might be able to start seedlings, sort and prep seeds etc); people with a bit more knowledge can pull invasives and help with maintenance; experts could help decide what plants and animals to reintroduce to a plot of land. Governments could use it to create jobs; the rich could donate land for tax breaks. We have methods now for quickly growing diverse forests, reverse desertification, and restoring prairies. We also need to start picking up garbage and cleaning up our waterways.

Of course, a lot of this work is happening now, but in small projects, many of them underfunded and lacking warm bodies to get hard work done. We need a massive, coordinated global effort to restore the planet, fast.

It has the potential to have bipartisan appeal. Because even if climate change isn’t immediately apparent in your own back yard, you might be concerned about dwindling fish and game stocks, our natural heritage, and the beauty of your countryside. If we do it in a thoughtful, consultative way, it has the potential to mend some fences with our Indigenous populations. It can be both urban and rural; it can involve all three levels of government.

But most of all, it’s something the average person can do, especially young men, who seem to have energy and passion to burn. Radicalization is a thing that happens; we’ve seen it over and over throughout history.

Why not deliberately channel it into something positive for a change?