{"id":53783,"date":"2020-06-21T08:10:48","date_gmt":"2020-06-21T13:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=53783"},"modified":"2020-06-21T08:10:50","modified_gmt":"2020-06-21T13:10:50","slug":"normal-is-the-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=53783","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Normal Is the Problem\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thetyee.ca\/Culture\/2020\/05\/30\/New-Normal-Problem\/\">\u2018Normal Is the Problem\u2019<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>So is normal\u2019s idiot child, \u2018the new normal.\u2019 What we\u2019ve made normal never was natural.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/thetyee.ca\/Culture\/2020\/05\/29\/EarthSpaceApollo17.jpg\" alt=\"EarthSpaceApollo17.jpg\"\/><figcaption>Let\u2019s review what \u2018normal\u2019 human behaviour has done to our one and only home over the past few centuries.&nbsp;Image of Earth taken from Apollo 17 via Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sharon Wilson is a fifth-generation Texan who drives around rural communities and takes pictures of oil and gas facilities with an infrared camera. The pictures make visible all the methane pollution that industry and governments pretend is not happening in rural communities.<a href=\"https:\/\/thetyee.ca\/Culture\/2020\/05\/30\/New-Normal-Problem\/#series-listview-link\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wilson recently&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/BetterNotNormal?src=hashtag_click\">tweeted<\/a>&nbsp;these two sentences: \u201cWe can and must do better than going back to normal. Normal is the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And she is right as rain about that. Normal has become a pathological state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After the random normlessness of this pandemic, I don\u2019t want to go back to normal either. Or its idiotic child, \u201cthe new normal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let\u2019s face facts: our hi-tech, globalized-trade-anything-for-peanuts world run mostly by tyrants isn\u2019t natural.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since 1970, an&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/science.sciencemag.org\/content\/366\/6471\/eaax3100\">outpouring of normality<\/a>&nbsp;has just about destroyed the Earth: It has created an abnormal economic machine, blind to energy spending, that doubled the global population and boosted per capita consumption by 45 per cent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the same time the so-called value of global economic activity grew by 300 per cent. Meanwhile global trade has exploded like a coronavirus by 900 per cent. To support all this consumption and trade, the extraction of \u201cliving materials\u201d from nature has jumped by 200 per cent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now here\u2019s just a partial list of the cost of all this exponential normality: Humans have appropriated or altered 70 per cent of the world\u2019s lands with mines, roads, industrial farms, cities and airports. We have engineered more than 75 per cent of the world\u2019s longest rivers. We have filled the ocean with plastics and slaughtered coral reefs. Anyone who calls that kind of behaviour normal is crackers. It\u2019s ecological imperialism, and nothing more than a full-scale assault on the dignity of local life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Normal Is the Problem\u2019 So is normal\u2019s idiot child, \u2018the new normal.\u2019 What we\u2019ve made normal never was natural. Sharon Wilson is a fifth-generation Texan who drives around rural communities and takes pictures of oil and gas facilities with an infrared camera. The pictures make visible all the methane pollution that industry and governments pretend [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4,7],"tags":[5549,18462],"class_list":["post-53783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-andrew-nikiforuk","tag-normal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53783"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53784,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53783\/revisions\/53784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}