Climate, Transit and Ticking Clocks

First off, how about that snowstorm? And the transit strike starting the very next day? I can't help but wonder if maybe After listening to Gwynne Dyer last night at St. Brigid's Centre for the Arts before heading out into the Bad Weather before the Labour Storm hasn't soured me a little on having sympathy for both sides of this.



Because there's a third side involved here, and that's the side keeping this planet as liveable for ourselves as possible for as long as possible. And hopefully keeping ourselves sane while we're working on all the crap we've gotten ourselves into as a species. That latest book of his, Climate Wars is a bit of an eye-opener. Or "re-opener". Or maybe I should rip off Mr. Dyer's editor at Embassy and use the same label he did: "shit disturber".

Why not? It works, impolite as it is. And my discomfort with the phrase matters not a whit nor a damn.

I am beginning to think that this particular labour battle is a waste of time for both City Hall and the Amalgamated Transit Union's Ottawa local. Both camps are missing the point I referred to last paragraph, that point about the third side. We've got a ticking clock here, and one we can possibly still have some small hope of stopping before it reaches "midnight": a 2-degree rise in worldwide temperatures due to carbon particulate pollution. Whether or not we'll be able to cheat that clock, and Mr. Dyer suggested ways and means of doing that with an eye towards using that extra time to actually solve this problem and maybe another one coming on its own anyway no matter how much ecological harm we do over the next century...well, we don't know for sure yet.

But the sooner we get this transit labour dispute settled, that'll be one less fight we need to have and one more bit of climate derangement solving done.

Cut a deal, people.

Sidebar: If you want to hear what Dyer actually said, go here. It'll have links to all the needed files.

Confession: This was originally posted over at my LJ Blog.