Elizabeth May - unlike Stephen Harper - is NOT a 'Rogue Boomer'

It is interesting to speculate why Elizabeth May, so similar in age to Stephen Harper, is so different in her attitude.

While Elizabeth is only 4 years older than Harper, I think she benefited from having an activist mom who introduced her children to adult issues at least a dozen years before many others first seriously think about them.

(Ie as young adults, after their upbringing in their formative years have hardened into dogma --- and when it is thus too late !)

I think I was a relatively ordinary child until I was ten, when a sudden change of circumstance separated me from a neighbourhood of kids playing outside and left me with only adult aged books and adult aged news magazines for boon companions.

Almost instantly, kids even a fair bit older than me seemed immature and boring and I much preferred to hang about with educated adults.

Ten - and an intellectual snob !

But as a result, my recollections of the Fifties (coincidentally my years before I was ten) is almost 100% childlike sunshine - while the early Sixties (my true formative years) are cast in the darkest direst most adult-like Noir.

I suspect that Harper had a perfectly ordinary childhood and that he never even suspected he'd just played tag and keep away during some of the most exciting years of the century - until he was in university.

Then regret-filled nostalgia kicked in - and he's been trying to relive the glory days of Fifties Big Fin Cars, Scientism and Golly Gee Modernity ever since...

First Wave Boomers must help transition Second Wave Boomers into the new world

My history professor, Judith Fingard (born in 1943) , myself (born in 1951) and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper (born in 1959) are all considered to fit the definition of Baby Boomer by most authorities on that vexed subject.

Stephen Harper, Rogue Boomer

But Fingard and myself actually knew Modernity at first hand, before easing ourselves into PostModernity - while Harper only read about Modernity in a book.

Even I, going through school eight years after Fingard , had plenty of teachers whose key formative years were during Edwardian times before the calamity of WWI - the age cohort that I consider the most ardently pro-Modernity of that entire era.

We both got Modernity's values both barrels in our schooling - and Modernity was still mostly in the driver's seat in the outside world, in areas like human rights and social values, until late in the 1960s.

But by then Judy and I had both left our High School in Dartmouth Nova Scotia - but Harper was not yet even in Middle School.

And in a growing prosperous Toronto suburb such as Harper lived in, I suspect that even his Middle School teachers were mostly a generation younger than the equivalent ones had been for me or Fingard.

(Because just a couple of years after I left High School, the high school teacher population in Dartmouth seemed to undergo an abrupt generational change --- a change that seemed to lag by a few years the situation in more rapidly growing and prosperous areas of North America.)

"Super Hero Modernity"

What Rogue Boomers like Harper mostly peddle is nostalgia for a super hero-like Modernity they never personally know.

And as usual in such circumstances, their very best customers are themselves.

So we First Wavers have a moral duty to our Second Wave fellow Boomers .

Because we are truly unique : once almost fully comfortable as modernists, we are now also almost fully comfortable as postmodernists.

To adapt George Orwell's (& Henry Miller's) famous phrase, we have been comfortable inside two whales.

We have successfully made the transition from the old way of thinking into the new - while knowing both.

Stephen Harper and his climate destruction denying buddies, 1930s hubris combined with 21st century high tech tools , will rampage across the entire planet and destroy it for all future generations - unless we other Boomers can help them make the needed transit into the new ways of regarding the world...

'Rogue Boomers' : Running our world ; ruining our planet

When one thinks of Rogue Boomers, one immediately thinks of people like prime ministers Stephen Harper (born 1959) and Tony Abbott (born 1957) --- and not just because they are currently leading the charge (from the rear) against doing anything substantial about man-made climate disaster.

Rather it is something so unexpected about the vivid contrast between their still-baby faces and their totally Old School ways of thinking that humans can control the natural world - thinking we'd might expect more from their grandfathers, let alone their fathers.

Yes, those I call Noir's Children , the most vocal (and regrettably the smallest) segment of the Boomer kids got it, successfully absorbed the dire lessons (on all sides) from WWII , and adjusted their thinking.

But the Rogue Boomers ( the silent majority of my Boomer generation) carried right on as if nothing had changed, still believing in the simplistic old pre-war ways , despite Science (reluctantly) revealing an ever more complicated world.

It was as if they were to be frozen in aspic, forever locked into a time warp with the first generation of comic book super heroes.

Entombed forever within WWII's golden age of superheroes, superpowers, super-weapons and super-easy solutions to controlling unpleasant reality....

Stephen said he'd pull out, Tony stayed in , Kyoto2 had a baby : that's hardly a sin

Greg Hunt "Warmist"?

With apologizes for ruining Bruce Springsteen's wonderful song about Spare Parts with the likes of Stephen Harper and A. "Nasty" Abbott, but there really is some startling and unsettling news for Prime Minister Harper, the world's biggest climate denier.

First his fellow conservative Angela Merkel went all "warmist" on him by daring to dis him on his own home turf and visit a Dalhousie University climate change project.

Next, Eric Loughead, the co-founder of The Friends of Science, from his own home town of Calgary, for God's Sake ! - again mocked De Capo's authority by calling people who deny climate change  stupid  ,while responding to a poll that says only 2% ( yep - 2 percent!) of Canadians deny climate change.

I mean that is a fair description of Harper - but should we really mock him that brazenly in public ?

Aussie Liberal Party, like Merkel and Loughead going "WARMIST" ?

Now Harper's equivalent party Down Under, the Australian  Libertarians Liberals say, via spokesperson Greg Hunt, they are up for signing onto Kyoto 2 ; while Canada, under Harper's vigorous thrusting, has moaned "no go" on Kyoto.

It seems as if Harper's allies, his erstwhile partners in global mass destruction , like ships abandoning a sinking rat, are deserting him...

When Merkel visits Dalhousie climate change project, Harper gets diplomatic "flu"

Harper sees a WARMIST !

The world media rarely get to see Conservative leaders quarrelling in public and it won't happen when "Angela (Merkel) Meets Stephen (Harper)". Not in public. Nosiree Bob.

But in private ? In private, Harper is furious that warmist Merkel has chosen to 'dis' his well known hostility to climate change by actually visiting a Dalhousie University climate change project being done with researchers from Germany 's Helmholtz Institute.

Promoting climate change !!! On his own turf !!! A fellow conservative !!!

Stabbed in the back !!!   WARMIST traitor !!!

As Evergreen Nova Scotia says, I bet his nurses had to be instructed to keep him away from sharp knives until Angela was safely beyond Canadian airspace ......

ASTRO-TURF is our business (and business is good) : Ethical Oil

astroturfin' fools !

Please , please send your pennies, nickels and dimes to the pay pal donation cup of Ethical Oil.Org  'cause they is poor folk , poor at the poor Conservative party, poor Big Oil and the poor Canadian government: the new Cadillac poor.

Lots and lots of bloggers and newspaper journalists have asked why conceal the highly obvious fact that the key figure behind this poor 'n' green oily effort was actually a top lobbyist for the never-short-for-change tar sands industry.

And oh yes, Stephen Harper, media manipulator extraordinaire , looms like The Wicked Merlin of the West at Dorothy's coming out party, far off in the background.

I kinda prefer my deniers to be evil and smart : not dumber and dumber

The legal paper trail is always, always, always, always how the astroturfers slip up : very surprising in this case because the original three involved in this group were all with law degrees, so you'd think they know better.

I don't mind debating deniers with some brains but when they are as stupid and as arrogant as a-bag-of-nails-with-an-attitude, it really depresses me.

How can I emotionally engage with their science arguments when I  can't get my head around a scheme so transparent that even a first day law clerk won't be dumb enough to fall for it..........

Area 51 Alert : 97% of ice MELTING ; 97% of scientists VOTE agreement

the 97 % solution ....

It was like something out of Roswell New Mexico's Area 51.

 Or  A. "nasty" Abbott's worst nightmare.

An unlikely but true coincidence ----- or is it, boys and girls ?

Space photos showing 97 % of Greenland's ice cap melting at the same time that 97 % of the world's climate scientists have voted that the whole Earth is getting hot.

97 Percent - wow !

Like that is three times the vote that Stephen Harper got when he was elected absolute - majority government - dictator of Canada for 5 years to life, with time off to Canadians for good behavior.

But is just 97% of the votes of the climate scientist electorate enough to push ahead on bold new changes on how we run our national governments ?

The 37% solution

No, of course not, for that you need a, er, much lower vote - like 37%.

Like the sort of vote that Nasty Abbott or Harper or Cameron get when they are given majority government to make bold new decisions.

97% is much too , er, high  for politicians.

But for scientists ? Politicians - the lying, denying politicians anyway - say that   97 %  is way, way too low.

Politicians simply point out that on this, as in so many things, citizens must simply learn to suck it up ; it is "do as I say --- never, do as I do" .

the 100.00000000% solution of the think tankers

Libertarian denier think tankers have made this point very clear - and as long as Tobacco or Oil or Asbestos keeps feeding them money, they're the experts.

They say we shouldn't act on the gravest crisis facing us since Adam ate the apple until every last one of us, that is all 6.7 billion of us , becomes part of the consensus: 100.00000000% agreement, or nothing.

'Cause I mean, after all, saving our great grandchildrens' lives isn't anything like voting is it ?

For something like saving our own kiddies, it is a case of every last one of us on Earth must be on board or none of us is.......