The Pig Chill

Not my bacon!!!! Calm down David, calm down. You may have heard the recent warnings that those of us who are pork lovers may be dealing with a shortage of the good stuff, along with sharply rising prices. Actually, my weakness is bacon and even then not all that often. They say it is a guy thing. One of the funniest comedy skits ever is Jim Gaffigan's bacon schtick http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drqUfOAenwQ

I digress. Why the shortage and soaring prices? Well, drought conditions in the U.S. killed off corn crops, and no corn --or really expensive corn -- means no pigs, means no bringing home the bacon. Many farmers are getting out of the pork production business, including one of the biggest outfits in the country. As farmers sell their herds en masse the price declines, even as the cost of raising a pig to market maturity rises. It costs about $170 to raise a pig which sells for $130. This is just bad business. And this means that the affordable meat will be harder to find and cost more.

During Creation Time I have addressed climate change (fire), which leads to drought, and food production (earth) from a faith perspective. Feeding ourselves is both a practical and spiritual issue. Perhaps when it is a matter of "sticker shock" we well get it.

While I think I hear a few vegetarians chuckling out there, I'm interested to hear your thoughts about all this.Is part of all this becoming less dependent on animal protein in our diets? Or about fair compensation to farmers? Is the end of bacon a sign of the apigalypse?

More Gateway

This morning I waited to leave home so I could listen to an interview on CBC radio's The Current.  The two men being interviewed were from the British Columbia communities of Smithers and Dawson, both in the vicinity or direct path of the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline linking Alberta oilsands with the BC coast. The mayor of Dawson is taking a wait-and-see approach to the review process because his community is already an oil and gas town. The mayor of Smithers is opposed because much of the local economy is dependent on tourism and a portion of the pipeline will follow a river which is prime fishing. He pointed out that not a single BC municipality has endorsed the pipeline to date, while many stakeholders are strongly against it.Both men were intelligent, well-spoken and had good insights, albeit from different perspectives.

For the past year I have been reminding Oshawa Presbytery of the United Church that BC Conference has been very involved in the discussion about the pipeline. And at General Council 41 this past August the United Church took a public stand opposing the pipeline for a number of reasons including solidarity with First Nations in the area and environmental.

This is not an easy discussion because Canada is a resource-rich nation and simply opposing every development makes no sense. But we seem to be in a political moment where resource extraction for short-term gain trumps all other concerns. There just isn't any long-term strategy and that is scary.

 

Have any of you been following the Northern Gateway discussions? Should we keep our noses out of this as a church? We already have people grumbling that we are too social action oriented. What does this have to do with Jesus?

As Seen On TV!

This morning the folks from Breakfast Television in Toronto came to Bowmanville at the crack of dawn -- literally. In the gloom of an early Fall morning they came to have one of the on-air team plunge into Bowmanville Creek and chase salmon with a net. Strange but true. If this sounds like a weird dream, add in the mayor and some local councillors, all there to track down the large salmon moving upstream which I wrote about recently. Take a look: http://www.nationalprostaff.com/report/3729/Breakfast+Television+at+the+Salmon+lift

Because the construction of a new fish ladder was postponed earlier in the Summer, and then postponed again, a team of volunteers has been recruited to catch and lift the fish over the dam so they can make their way up into the Bowmanville watershed. The BT team was there today because they have reached the 5,000 fish mark, but they have been able to identify and count other species as well as salmon.

The irony is that now tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people across the GTA are  aware of this fish ladder project. I had the folk from Valleys 2000 bring their display to Oshawa Presbytery when it was at Trinity UC in the Spring. This reaches a much wider audience. The guy from BT was astounded at the activity in the pond, as so many are. We really are disconnected from the natural world and its processes, the everyday miracles of changing seasons, migration, procreation. As we continue through Creation Time we have a right-on-the-doorstep example and we can watch it live and in person, not just on television.

At least one member, Laura, was there this morning. Are there others who have gone down to watch in recent days?

Earthships

There was an article/video in the Toronto Star recently about an "earthship" home built in the stark, beautiful landscape near Taos, New Mexico. These pounded or rammed earth homes are designed and created to maintain temperatures across a broad range from hot to cold as part of the earth rather than imposed on the earth. So many home, including most of ours, are built to defy the elements with air-conditioning in summer and furnaces and winter. These are built on an entirely different premise and apparently they work. http://www.thestar.com/videozone/1257352--building-a-home-off-the-grid

Somehow I have seen these houses near Taos, although I never intended to visit them. I was on retreat at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico one January and a group of college students were there at the same time (thankfully not at the retreat house!), using it as a base camp for day trips. At mealtime one of the leader asked if I was interested in going to Taos which is a UN World Heritage Site for the oldest continuously inhabited aboriginal community, the pueblo there. So I tagged along and on our way we passed a colony of these earthship homes.

As the builder in the video suggests, these homes can be built in Canada as well. Randy Bachman of Guess Who fame built one out West and it is impressive.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra4Pldetd_M  Sure, you say, you can do anything with enough money, and rock stars have the cash. But there are modest urban homes which are energy efficient as well.

As a Christian I'm convinced we are in the process of reinventing ourselves as the church because we simply have to do so. Conventional thinking can sound the death knell for institutions. We are going to have to rethink our relationship with our Earthship planet as well.

What do you think? Could places like these be home? Can we learn to think and create differently?

Net Worth

What is a tract of land which is "undeveloped" or a park worth? Is there any value if resources aren't extracted or a strip mall erected? Take a look at this excerpt from an article in yesterday's Toronto Star. A consulting group has carefully estimated the value of the new Rouge National Park at over $100 million -- per year.

Mary Ormsby Feature Writer

Free oxygen. Free filtered water. Free flood control.

Free pollution storage. Free pollination services.

The Rouge National Urban Park to the Greater Toronto Area: “You’re welcome.”

Work by the natural world to boost the health and well-being of the environment — carbon-storing trees, water-purifying wetlands, bees as flying fertilizers — has carried on for centuries in the lands, watersheds and valleys that will soon become Canada’s largest urban park. It’s also work done with scant human notice or gratitude.

“We treat the benefits we get from nature as if they’re invisible, as if they have no value,” says Faisal Moola, director of Ontario programs for the David Suzuki Foundation.
Those benefits have now been quantified as dollar amounts in a study released Thursday by the foundation to demonstrate how vital the natural economy is to surrounding communities.
Written by Sara Wilson of Natural Capital Research & Consulting, the study estimates the Rouge region provides $115 million annually in ecosystem services that benefit the GTA.
“I never understood why, when a tree gets turned into a piece of two-by-four when you clear cut from a forest, then it has value to our economy because you can sell or buy that two-by-four,” says Moola.
“But when you keep that tree standing and you don’t destroy it, it continues to help filter our drinking water, it produces oxygen that we breathe and it provides habitat for endangered species.”

I have to wonder if God isn't saying "well, duh!" on this one. This isn't the first time this sort of estimate for value has been applied, but this is close to home.

Have you ever seen this before? What do you think?

Mean as Dirt

Do you know that expression "mean as dirt?" How did dirt get such a tough reputation?|This coming Sunday will be our third in Creation Time 2012 and the theme will be earth --dirt. We tend to think of dirt as, well, dirt. It doesn't occur to us that earth needs to be healthy and alive with microbes and bacteria for other living things to thrive in it.

The earth and the land are very important themes in scripture and rightly so. When dirt "dies" it is good for nothing. And soil which has been mistreated by certain forms of agriculture and erosion requires increasing applications of chemicals to make it a viable growing culture. Should the expression should be "mean as humans" because it is our often destructive practices which deplete and compromise the health of soil?

We can do better and why wouldn't we, knowing that we are groundlings or earthlings ourselves, according to scripture and our basic composition. In the end we are all composted and return to the soil, so we should start early in making friends with our hosts.

Any earthy observations? Made a mud pie lately?

The New Guy on the Block

This is an interesting face, don't you think? Chances are this is the first time you have ever seen one because this species of monkey has just been discovered by scientists in Central Africa. It has been known to locals simply as lesula, a medium sized, slender animal that looks similar to an owl-faced monkey already known to scientists.

New primate species are rare, but they do show up from time to time. There are many other discoveries though, and the estimate is that only one sixth of the world's species have been identified -- how do they know that if they haven't been discovered? Hmm, well I'll take the word of the scientific community.

The challenge is not identification. It is ensuring habitat isn't destroyed by humans for species we don't even know about yet. Whether you are an ardent creationist or hard-nosed evolutionist or somewhere in between, this world is remarkable in its diversity. I thank God for the vast variety of creatures of every shape and size. I just hope we don't end up as the voracious killer species that turns creation into a biological wasteland. In the case of the lesula, the illegal deforestation of the Democratic Republic of Congo laying waste to its habitat.

I would like to believe that humans can be a force for good rather than destruction because we have the God-given humility to see the intrinsic value of other creatures, not just the monetary value of resources. It does seem to be a tough sell. This lesula seems to be saying "what do you mean 'new species',--I've been here all along!

 

What is your response to this discovery? Are religions a help or a hindrance to the efforts to respect other species?