This is our house, but I’m the only one who makes the calls.

Jim doesn’t manage this place: I do.

Let me speak about the Inuits. In 1962, I worked in Pangnirtung, Baffin Island. The only person with a dogteam in the village was the RCMP. FOR LOCAL COLOUR. All the Inuits had skidoos. They were experts in mecanics. Much better than the white men. Do you think that they wanted to train dogs and feed them? None of them lived in igloos either. They were still in tents until 1965. Then they got houses like us. Ask them if they want to give up their electrical appliances to save the environment?

To bring the lifestyle of the long-ago native people as a possible alternative doesn’t make sense. Of course they used just what they needed. Where could they put the extras? Sometimes they did not even have what was needed. Other times, other ways of life…

With all the junk food and anti-biotic addictions we have, that’s still pretty good.

What was the life expectancy for natives before Columbus? You tell me.

Native Americans didn’t have socialized medicine because they didn’t need it - access to whatever form of health care they had was available to anyone. Your only qualification for entry into their system was a pulse.

Look what we did to the buffalo herds. Look what we did to the cod fishery. Or what we’re doing to the populations of every species on this planet that is not us.

And we’re about to face a water crisis that many experts believe is going to make global warming look like a cakewalk. Read Maude Barlow’s latest book, Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water. Trust me, it’ll blow you away. It’s another case of us being incapable at looking at the long-term ramifications of our actions.

We have unleaded fuel now.

Humans do have a conscience and some efforts are made.

You’re correct, Jim, I do see myself as “owner” rather then “tennant”. But I’ve also been taught since Grade School about not littering, about recycling and about pollution.

One of the key things that differenciates humans from other animals is that we modify our enviromnent to fit our needs. We can’t NOT. We have no fur to live in cold weather, we get pneumonia if we stay in the rain long enough. We have to stuggle to survive, and then we get creative and also complacent to some extent.

I wish we could look to native values and priorities, but I also like Western values and priorities. Asperine, peneseline and morphine weren’t created to help the planet, they were discovered by humans to save humans.

We look at industry and western values as bad, but frankly, natives didn’t come up with socialised healthcare. We did.

That’s not a bad thing.

And two, a belief that everything on Earth, with minor exception, is independent of everything else. This belief inherently makes you incapable of seeing that every organism on the planet has a symbiotic relationship with one or more other organisms. Thus, we are all connected, everything matters, everything affects everything else.

The Native North Americans always considered themselves tenants and custodians of the Earth, or at least their part of it. It was their philosophy to take only what they needed, to respect where it came from, and to nurture and replenish the source. Somehow, they knew that was the right thing to do.

On the contrary, Western civilization sees themselves as owners, accountable to no one, and who enjoy among other distinctions, tacit permission to piss on and/or destroy anything they so desire if it will advance their position economically, politically, idealogically, etc. And of course the end, always justifies the means.

The fact is, the planet doesn’t really need us in order for it to function. If anything ever was an “accessory,” it was us.

I don’t know much about science either, Claude. I’m not out in the field making measurements.

But we got as much snow as you did, we broke the record that dated back to 1971, 37 years ago. So this had been seen in the past, but rarely.

I noticed the absence of cold spells of -20 C for weeks on end. We did have a mild winter this year.

And if our forefathers were right, bees and wasps did settle very high off the ground, predicting lots of snow. The one hive I saw last fall was up on the second floor of a building which…turned out to be a good idea.

The first thing that hits me when I watch weather reports is this: Humid air masses coming from Florida which affect the weather up here. HUMID. Not CO2 filled air masses. Water is key. An air masse loaded with water holds the heat even when it hits cold air.

So you tell me. What’s the best greenhouse gas around: Water or CO2?

Maybe we should get rid of water, huh? All 80% of earth’s surface…

It’s also hard to believe that it would be my fault if it did. Or that I would be responsible for climatic changes. As compared to everything BIG that happens around my planet, the Earth population is too small to have the enormous impact attributed to it.

This planet has been tilting and orbiting around the sun, without my participation, for a long time. I have very little influence (if any?) on the solar reflectivity and on the heat retention. Landmass distribution and undersea activity have been going on for thousand of years.

Our technology, which is supposed to be so disastrous, has been going on for only 100 years at the most. And those prophets of doom tell me that I’m the guilty party for cold/warm/whatever we’re experiencing? NUTS! NUTS! NUTS again. Gore and his gang must think I’m stupid…

Mr. Harris, welcome to my blog. You’re invited to spam the hell out of my posts any time you want.

Facts will set us free. Sophisms won’t work on me.