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A message from our great elder, Savid Suzuki.

September 19, 2016 — leslie dean brown

I went to see David Suzki talk about our planet’s health earlier this year at an event called ‘Hope for the Planet’. I’ve always been aware of the enviornment, ever since I did general studies way back in 1991.

So I paid to see this talk “hope for the planet”. I think all business owners, CEOs, directors, managers, millionaires, billionaires, developers, miners, indeed the entire human race should hear what David Suzuki has to say here. He speaks as a grandfather, an elder. Indigenous peoples will of course already know what he has to say.

“Nature couldn’t care less about human boundaries.” — David Suzki

Watch it & share. Because the fact that it only has a thousand views is unfathomable. Our future as a species depends on how many people listen to a talk like this.

We need to work collectively towards a better future. Otherwise, what’s the point of even working so hard on our businesses?

It’s so true when David Suzuki speaks about the most important things for us humans in this world: clean air, fresh water and uncontaminated, healthy food. Without aire, we’d all be dead in two minutes!

It is absolutely ridiculous that corporations can poison our world and get away with it. They are encouraged to do so by our own government. Workers in such industries are paid HUGE amounts of money and I see that as a form of environmental corrruption. When you pay your workers $100k, $200k, $1M, $10M salaries, it’s a way of getting them to forget about their conscience.

Anyway, I think seeing his talk [which is not quite what this video is about] made me realise my place in the world. I studied materials science so I know better than anybody where all these materials come from, how they are mined, extracted and used. I know that every time you buy something physical, something mandmade and synthetic, you are directly supporting the mining industry.

And I’m sure if mining industries had their own way, no areas would be safe on this planet. They don’t truly care about this world. They only seem to care about profit. And that’s one of the many reasons why I try to reduce my consumption and materialism in all areas of my life. Ever since I decided to do this, it has made me much, much happier as a person.

I think that the whole concept of the “7 generations” that Indigenous American Indians have is way more evolved than the concept of industrialisation. I think that in that respect, Indgineous Australian Aborigines are probably a thousand years ahead of us in terms of sustainability. I think we need to look to them on how to best protect our world.

Zen and the art of minimalism

September 10, 2016 — leslie dean brown

How can you (we) all go about buying less stuff?

I have bought many things over the last few decades. I started with bike parts, I was forever looking to build the ‘ultimate’ bicycle.

I have easily spent tens of thousands of dollars on bike parts of the last 20 years. But every time I got something new, I would lust for something even newer. The more I got, the more I’d want. It was pure greed and indulgence.

But looking back, some of my favourite rides (most of them actually) weren’t done on my most expensive bikes. Most of my favourite rides were made on relatively cheap bikes!

Whenever I see a product now I ask many additional things:

1. Where did it come from / how was it made? What was the the environmental cost of manufacture?
2. Will I be able to resell it, reuse it, recycle it or compost it when I am finished with it? (and the packaging)
3. Do I really even need it? Or do I think I just ‘want’ it?
4. What are the “false promises” being advertised?
5. Will the new item create extra ‘worry’?

The next time you go to buy something, stop yourself and ask whether you really need it. Never buy on impulse. Never! Wait. Put things in your ‘watch’ list. Meanwhile, look for the most sustainable or ecological alternative. If you still think you ‘need’ something after one or two months, by all means, go ahead and buy it.

Ever since I started doing this, I almost never regret anything I have purchased. [Read more…]

Dear America,

September 10, 2016 — leslie dean brown

[TOP SECRET: classified]

I just wanted to say that if allow this person to die in your custody, they will become a martyr. And you don’t want that, do you? Because a martyr is ten times worse than a political prisoner. A martyr can never be forgotten. They are forever remembered throughout history.

And I’m sure you don’t want to start editing history now do you? Because that would put you alongside places like North Korea. And I’m sure you don’t want to do that. Because you’re trying to be a ‘better’ country.

Which martyr am I talking about? Well that’s just it. They’re not a martyr yet. Because they’re not dead. They’re still very much alive…

Why am I writing this? Well, I’m writing this because here is what Chelsea Manning, your most famous politicial prisoner, wrote today:

I need help. I am not getting any. I have asked for help time and time again for six years and through five separate confinement locations. My request has only been ignored, delayed, mocked, given trinkets and lip service by the prison, the military, and this administration.

I need help. I needed help earlier this year. I was driven to suicide by the lack of care for my gender dysphoria that I have been desperate for. I didn’t get any. I still haven’t gotten any.

I needed help. Yet, instead I am now being punished for surviving my attempt. When I was a child, my father would beat me repeatedly for simply not being masculine enough. I was told to stop crying—to “suck it up.” But, I couldn’t stop crying. The pain just got worse and worse. Until finally, I just couldn’t take the pain anymore.

I needed help, but no one came then. No one is coming now.

Today, I have decided that I am no longer going to be bullied by this prison—or by anyone within the U.S. government. I have asked for nothing but the dignity and respect—that I once actually believed would be provided for—afforded to any living human being.

I do not believe that this should be dependent on any arbitrary factors—whether you are cisgender or transgender; service member or civilian, citizen or non-citizen. In response to virtually every request, I have been granted limited, if any, dignity and respect—just more pain and anguish.

I am no longer asking. Now, I am demanding. As of 12:01 am Central Daylight Time on September 9, 2016, and until I am given minimum standards of dignity, respect, and humanity, I shall—refuse to voluntarily cut or shorten my hair in any way; consume any food or drink voluntarily, except for water and currently prescribed medications; and comply with all rules, regulations, laws, and orders that are not related to the two things I have mentioned.

This is a peaceful act. I intend to keep it as peaceful and non-violent, on my end, as possible. Any physical harm that should come to me at the hands of military or civilian staff will be unnecessary and vendictive. I will not physically resist or in any way harm another person. I have also submitted a “do not resuscitate” letter that is effective immediately. This shall include any attempts to forcibly cut or shorten my hair or to forcibly feed me by any medical or pseudomedical means.

Until I am shown dignity and respect as a human again, I shall endure this pain before me. I am prepared for this mentally and emotionally. I expect that this ordeal will last for a long time. Quite possibly until my permanent incapacitation or death. I am ready for this.

I need help. Please, give me help.
Chelsea Manning

Yes this person, Manning, exposed one of the underlying reasons for at least some of the terrorism that we are now seeing… and that is that innocent people were being shot down by helicopter gunships like in the video above.

That was actually a very brave thing for anyone to do. Because I’m sure that that person knew there would be some repurcussions. But they did it anyway.

And so what happened then? Well, instead of Americans and the government simply watching the video and starting to ask themselves the really hard questions like “why do some people hate the West?” or “have we done anything to piss foreigners off?” or “what have we done to deserve this?”. What did you do?

You took the ‘easy’ approach. Next, you tried to silence that person by giving them an unfair trial. [Read more…]

Our environmental footprint

September 5, 2016 — leslie dean brown

carbon footprint — Illustration by leslie dean brown. © 2019. All rights reserved.

Most of the global economy is based on the idea of selling physical products. And if you’re not selling something yourself, your clients are people that do.

B I’ve noticed that in some environmental discussions and debates, Westerners automatically assume that their country is less polluting than poorer countries. I don’t think pointing the finger at China really helps. And here’s why:

I think our blatant consumerism in the West doesn’t compare favourably to the third world, because all of the things that we buy have a kind of “environmental footprint” if you like. And note that I’m not even really talking about CO₂ emissions here (even though the US carbon emission per capita is 17.56 metric tons while that of China is ‘only’ 6.19 metric tons per capita). Carbon is not the only element on the periodic table although it is the one that goes into the atmosphere more than the others.

If China pollutes rivers or whatever making loads of stuff for the West, who is really doing (causing) the polluting? The chinese manufacturers? Or is the Western consumer demand for those products ultimately to blame?

My main backround if materials science. One of the more eye-opening subjects I found out about (in terms of environmental degradation) is called “extractive metallurgy”. Extractive metallurgy is the study of chemical processes that we use to extract an refine metals from their ores. Basically, in a nut shell, all materials have to come from somewhere. Ususally it’s either the Earth’s crust itself or sea water.

In most of the processes, you need either need huge amounts of electricity and/or high temperatures and/or huge amounts of other chemicals to obtain the desired elements and/or compounds.

For example, here is just one of the many steps in the refinement of germanium:

GeO₂ + 4 HCl → GeCl₄ + 2 H₂O

In this step, the reactive gas chlorine is being used to make germanium more reactive. So chlorine, which is toxic, is used in one of the processes to extract the element germanium from its oxide. Okay.

And here is just one of the steps in tellurium refinement:

HTeO−3 + OH⁻ + H₂SO₄ → TeO₂ + SO2−4 + 2 H₂O

In this step, sulfuric acid is being used to make tellurium more reactive. Okay.

And where are germanium and tellurium being used you ask? They are two semiconductors that are the basis for integrated circuits and other electronic components in all sorts of electronic devices. Not so good.

In fact, many other nasty chemical compounds are used in the extraction, refinement and manufacturing industries. Many others.

I’m not 100% sure, but I think the worst offenders are the electronic consumer devices, simply because they contain the most number of hard-to-extract elements. The harder-to-extract elements require more chemical treatment steps. That’s just one of the reasons why they these elements are so expensive (not just that they’re rare). In fact I can probably go so far as to invent a new theory, which goes something like this: “the higher the unit price of an element, the more damaging its extraction process is to the environment.” But I digress…

Here’s the thing. There are a lot of chemical elements used in computers and extracting them from the ground and processing them taxes the environment (especially when you consider all of the planned obsolesence we see today). Our current way of life creates more and more electronic waste that cannot be recovered or recycled (except perhaps the gold bits)

I recently asked a few questions on Quora and I’d like to share those questions and answers with you now. Listed here are some of the toxic chemicals and semiconductors that are used in electonic decices. Go on, take a look. Can you begin to see how big the problem is now?

The point is, nasty chemicals are used at all steps of the extraction and refinement process. We just don’t ever see them being used in industry. Oh but they’re there alright. They’re being used all the time.

Suffice it to say that if Westeners think they pollute the Earth less than a typical 3rd-worlder, in my eyes, they are sorely mistaken. [Read more…]

Some perspective about colonising the planet Mars.

August 29, 2016 — leslie dean brown

Illustration by leslie dean brown. © 2019. All rights reserved.

Imagine if 7 billlion people had always lived on a dust-bowl Mars-like planet with no life outside of the base stations. Imagine if that’s the way it had always been. Imagine if that was humanities’ entire existence, on the red planet…

With that in mind, I’d like to do a little thought experiment. I want you to imagine what would happen if we were to start exploring the solar system, from our home Mars.

The closest other world, Earth, looks very promising. We’ve spent a hundred trillion dollars on this latest space mission, okay. It’s been 30 years in the planning stage alone…

So we go to this new place called ‘Earth’.

And we don’t find another dust-bowl freeze-your-arse-off planet with no oceans, a toxic atmosphere* and a severe lack of oxygen. We don’t find it to be uninhabited. We don’t find the gravity extremely off-putting. We don’t find a desolate, barren wasteland devoid of all life like the home planet. No.

Instead, what we encounter is another world no unlike this one, the one we already know as ‘Earth’, exactly the way it is now, but without all the humans. Without any civilisation.

Imagine if we found 60 amur leopards, 400 Sumatran tigers, 880 mountain gorillas, 1826 giant pandas, 4080 snow leopards, 4848 black rhinos and 10000 blue whales!

Impenetrable jungles! Countless species of insects! Fish! Crustaceans! Molluscs! Birds! Frogs!

“Frogs? What an unusual name. What are they? Oh they’re slimy but harmless critters –amphibians– that thrive both on the land and in the water and use jumping as a form of locomotion.”

Lakes containing fresh water! Glaciers! Too many animal species to list!

“They’ve got a whole interconnected web-like thing scientists are calling an ‘ecosystem’ over there on that other planet. We’ve been trying for close to a millenium to get something like that going over here.”

Meanwhile back on Mars inside our dry and dusty base station, we get a breaking news report about the existence of all these weird and wonderful creatures on the new world. That’s right. Millions upon millions of new species that had never been seen or even reported before and now, as if by magic, all of a sudden they existed! Imagine what the news media would say if that was what we discovered when we weren’t even expecting the most modest and basic life-forms!!

Don’t you think we’d want to “swap planets”?

“No? What do you mean she is still not convinced of going?!

Because on the new planet they have oceans! Water falls from the sky! Food is abundant!

“Mate! You sure you still don’t want to leave here? They’re saying that not only could you breathe without a respirator, but everyone could literally walk outside, without ever having to wear a space suit. Your body would never be at risk of ‘exploding’! No airlocks required. A-fucking-mazing. I’d like to live there. Fuck this Mars shithole I say.”

But they’re not on that other planet, they’re right here on this one, now.

So just imagine if, miraculously, we materialised over there on the new and way cooler planet Earth with lots of life. Yes. Imagine if we didn’t even have to travel through space to get there; no need for a mass-exodus from planet Mars to get over to planet Earth.

“I’m telling you it turns out we don’t even have to travel anywhere Duncan! We’ve all been part of a cruel social experiment. Everyone has been living in a dream world. Just step outside and take a look for yourself. Its all out there”.

Imagine if we just found out about all that’s here, today. Imagine if it was only yesterday that we were totally ignorant and only today that we all just found out about all these new and never-before-described animals.

Giraffes, chameleons, snails, dragonflies, bees, grasshoppers, stick insects, jellyfish, toucans, macaws, catepillars, hermit crabs, barnacles, sharks, barracuda. Not to mention flowers.

Wouldn’t that be incredible? Wouldn’t that thought give you an unbelievable feeling inside? Do you think that would give us some sense of hope that “all is not lost”?

Next, I’d like you to imagine if we were given a second chance at everything. A chance to do things right. Imagine if, despite all the well-documented mistakes we’d made in the past, we were somehow expunged of all of our “conservation inaction guilt”. Imagine if we had a chance of recolonising this planet Earth. Do you think we’d be so naive and myopic as to make the same mistakes all over again on the new planet? No I don’t think so.

I think we’d all say something like:

“no hang on, we tried internal combustion engines on that other planet Earth and it didn’t go so well”.

I think we’d probably be a little more prudent the next time around don’t you think?

What you’d like to hear me tell you is what we could and should be saying:

“Yes we already know from our land survey data that there are plenty of coal & oil reserves on this new planet Earth. But knowing what we know about the alternate timelines, sooner than dig all of these fossil fuels out of the ground and burn them, we’d be better off building massive solar power stations instead. Better to utilise electric cars and have them recharged with renewable energy…”

Wouldn’t you agree that the new Earth colony could very easily put a government mandate in place that prohibits the use of fossil fuels and other toxic materials?

But that’s precisely what we are not doing, isn’t it?

Because we’re waking up every single day hoping that this problem will all just somehow “go away” all by itself.

We’re waking up every day with this second-chance-option, every single day, and we’re not taking it.

We already know that many animal species are threatened with extinction. Many people find this news very depressing/distressing (myself included). But they’re not extinct yet. No not just yet. I don’t mean to say that they won’t ever become extinct. I’m not saying that at all.

Last of all, imagine if we learned that instead of thriving on this new planet, the survival situation for quite a few of those species was more than a little precarious. Many of them are doing okay and still breeding fine but some niche species aren’t coping very well at all.

Now imagine we’d spent all that money to get to this other planet, one hundred trillion dollars, and then imagine we’re too fucking stingy to save even a few of the thousands of endangered species. What do you think would make news headlines on that day?

My point is, we haven’t even spent a hundred trillion dollars on some ridiculous space mission. Not yet.

Rather, it’s more a case of “they’re already here and we’re already there”. That new planet is this planet.

So to me it looks like the majority of humans are either stingy, lazy, stupid or a combination of all three. Most people have this “can’t be fucked attitude” about a problem we ourselves created.

We’re not stingy when we’re buying the latest generation mobile phones though are we? No, it seems we all have plenty of money for that.

See, I think we’re acting worse than a typical teenager who doesn’t want to clean up their own mess. They expect that someone else will do it for them.

But we’re not teenagers. We’re adults. And you’d think that we would have more responsibility for our own actions.

Instead, we’re treating dear planet Earth a bit like our first proper girlfriend or boyfriend —the one we used to hold on a pedestal, the one we looked up to, the one we tried so hard in the beginning for, the one we never imagined would end— and by foolishly and repeatedly not respecting the others’ limits and boundaries, we inevitably lost them. We then suffered the unimagineable heartbreak of the completely avoidable relationship breakup.

So in this rather unusual post, I’d like to remind everyone that we are taking what we have here for granted. Massively so.

We’re making the same mistakes we always make. And it really makes me rather sad. I feel like I shouldn’t even be living in this timezone…

Because scientsists are warning everyone, the entire world, that we might not even be able to recover from this particular “relationhip breakup”. It’s going to be far worse than our first-ever divorce. It’s going to be that hard and way harder still.

I don’t think we can make it on our own. I don’t think we’re ‘smart’ enough.

We still need this world. And I hope this blog makes people aware of that.

The way I think of it is this. Mars is just another example of a ‘shithole’ (meaning uninhabitable) planet in our the solar system. Why do I say that? Well I don’t see too many 5-star resorts being built in the middle of a deserted wasteland thousands of miles from civilisation. No. See, we already know that there’s this consensus that the nicest places to be and more importantly stay at are generally the ones where there’s either a city, a river, a lake, an ocean, a beach, a mountain or a forest. Or preferably combinations of them.

Mars has none of that. Who the fuck is going to want to voluntarily live there? Slaves? Miners? People with no imagination for what it’s actually going to be like living there on a day-to-day basis, sign some contract and get stuck there? Poor people who can no longer afford to live on Earth. Probably the latter. Maybe this is what this is all about. An ultra-rich class of people wanting to find a new home for all of us poor people.

Forget Mars. Earth is where it’s at. We’re already on the good planet Elon. If you want to go and live there, by all means, go. I think you’ll be back. You’re realise it was a bad invesment