45. Musings from Paradise
Manroot
Spring, 2026, Pender Island
It has been a while since I’ve come here. Family issues. Early spring and already the manroot has started to take over the lower cliff. This plant is local, not technically invasive, but it sure does seem to grow almost as fast as bull kelp, spreading and overtaking moss and everything else in its path. When, some year ago, I noticed it climbing up the wild rose bush and latching on to the Gary Oak that is growing horizontally above the tide line I decided ‘enough’. The oak had already been weakened by drought and a huge infestation of tent caterpillars. The moss is luxuriously soft and colourful at this time of year, and it too was being smothered. I’ve been practicing God’s work here ever since. I pull the roots up in some places to prevent it from taking over everything and try to keep it contained to just a few rocky areas by folding its viny tentacles back on itself. A Sisyphean task. I’ve also taken up a fight against an invasive called Daphne (Splurge-Laurel) which is a sicko for other plants, and humans too. Before that we had taken on Scotch Broom but lost that battle. It’s all over the cliff now wherever there is sun. We had wisely declared victory and moved on.
As I was sitting on rocks by the shore and gazing at the water an otter popped up. It had noticed me first, even though I was downwind. A reminder that other animals possess a more immediate and alert consciousness. We think we own the place. I had been thinking about the three orcas my new neighbours, Nikki and Jason, and I had spotted from the top of the cliff just a couple of hours before. During the climb back up a young deer with unkept, molting fur surprised me. Signs of spring. Out at sea a large flock of Western Grebes has been floating for hours, drifting with the tide. I don’t usually see them in such numbers. It was late afternoon when a beautiful Flicker landed on the moss right in front of me. I could tell he was male because of his red feathers. Then I heard him pounding relentlessly on the metal rain gutter next door. What did he hope to accomplish? Then his mate flew past and he followed her into the forest. She probably had more sense. Or was the clanking the message? I think of young guys here in their pickups who like to rev their engines. Was he proclaiming with his pecking: “listen to this racket. I am strong. I can be a good provider and protector?” Later, swallows spun out in their loopy, swoopy flight patterns chasing bugs. A little like the bats that will be out at dusk. There is a soffit opening on the underside of our roof that once had a screen covering which had been pecked apart by flickers. Now this is where the swallows live. Birds and bats: There must still be bugs! Increasing numbers of guillemots on the cliffs plunging and chasing each other in the water, and grebes, seals, eagles and whales: there must still be fish! Paradise!
Moss on the cliff
As I write this the U.S. boy fantasist president has postponed bombing Iran’s infrastructure. Or so he says. He blundered carelessly into this war without any idea of how to get out. Eventually this war will end, but no one can predict how many people will be killed and how many will be made homeless and suffer. We do know the toll on the environment will be huge. A toxic mix of chemicals, heavy metals and other pollutants will affect agriculture and drinking water, likely for decades. Over 5 million tonnes of CO2 was emitted during just the first 14 days of war. Why do people just shrug this off? How have we come to accept such violence against our home?
Joint Stock Companies
In Britain in 1600 the East India Company received a royal charter. This was followed in 1602 in the Dutch Republic. These were joint-stock companies composed of individual investors who pooled resources to reduce risk. Similar organizations had existed since at least Roman times, but those were inheritance type structures. Although the objectification of nature had been a pervasive idea since at least the dawn of industrial scale agriculture, the development of these early investor-type corporations established a legal process to begin the colonization of vast areas including North America and Asia. Most of the investors didn’t give a whit about subject lands or peoples. In 1886 corporations in California received legal rights similar to people. The effects of these two initiators of corporate personhood have been so overwhelming in our societies that we can’t think of any other way to organize our affairs. It didn’t have to be this way.
Golden Eras
Golden eras of civilizations have developed when societies welcomed new ideas and people. The dawn of democracy that began in Athens was eventually snuffed out when philosophy threatened state control. Socrates was killed and Aristotle banished. These and other golden eras are covered convincingly in “Peak Human” by Johan Norberg. It is openness that leads these societies to thrive. The Roman Empire lasted longer than any other. People from all over the known world were welcomed and new ideas embraced. But this eventually faded as exemplified by Augustine of Hippo’s campaign against reason and science. Similarly, the Abbasid Caliphate centered in Baghdad and the Song Dynasty in China, both which led the world in creativity and achievement, eventually turned inward and perished. Now society and the economy are in trouble. This time it’s global. The great American experiment in democracy is being undermined by an assault on reason and science and people. This is happening at a very important time when a small elite controls the economy and media, AI is becoming more powerful and unpredictable (the U.S. was one of only a few countries that did not support a declaration for secure and safe AI development in February, 2025) and the assault on our natural world, especially due to fossil fuels, continues unabated. The fossils control the purse and the conversation. There seems to be a schism developing between smaller, often more democratic countries, which favor climate initiatives, and the increasingly autocratic fossil exporters and petrostates which are undermining climate science. Climate scientists fear that tipping points are coming much sooner than we have thought. Wow, is there any way out of this? Time for some new (actually very old) ideas.
Rights of Nature
On September 28, 2008, a new constitution was ratified in Ecuador that was truly historic. It included the “Rights of Nature” articles. It stated that “Nature, or Pach Mama, where life is reproduced and occurs has the right to integral respect for its existence”. This is quoted from “Is a River Alive”, by Robert Macfarlane, pg. 42. A beautifully written and wise work. He writes that rivers and forests and mountains should be accorded living rights status. He quotes Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano: “The world is painting still lives, forests are dying”.
On March 20, 2017, the Te Awa Tupua Act was passed in New Zealand. The Whanganui River was recognized as being alive, “an indivisible and living whole”, “a spiritual and physical entity” with a “lifeforce”. The act united principles or Māori and western law.
The Magpie River in Quebec, Canada, was recognized as having legal personhood in February 2021. “We’ve always known the river is alive. Our ancestors have always said that” says Innu activist, poet and educator Rita Mestokosho as she swaddles her deerskin drum in a fleece blanket. “The river is like the blood that runs in our veins. If the river is sick, we will also be sick. That’s why we need to protect her”. (Canadian Geographics.ca).
Macfarlane relates how Indigenous communities have “preserved the vital ideas of the entangled lives of rivers, forests, mountains and people”. He doesn’t mention oceans. As a keen thalassophile, I find that odd, but I quibble. Indigenous peoples around the world share these convictions. All of nature is alive and deserves our love and respect. The Rights of Nature movement argues that nature rights should not be subordinate to economic rights. Long term economic wellbeing depends on a healthy environment. The present challenges of climate catastrophe, environmental degradation and species extinctions indicate how far away we are from understanding this deeply. And acting on these insights. If you have trouble accepting the idea that nature should be accorded rights, please consider this quote by Galeano: “We might find it bizarre to think of a forest or river as having rights. Yet look how fully we have naturalized the idea that corporations have comparable rights to those of humans, “as if companies could breathe! How strange that we should assent to this legal fiction but be surprised - even outraged -at the notion that a river might be other than a ‘piece of property’”. Macfarlane goes on to explain: “It seems clear to me then, in that strange, bright water, that to say a river is alive is not an anthropomorphic claim. A river is not a human person, nor vice versa. Each withholds from the other in different ways. To call a river alive is not to personify a river, but instead further to deepen and widen the category of “live’’. Pg. 82. These ideas have been central to indigenous understanding for thousands of years. The advantage of codifying these insights into rights equal or superior to corporate rights is that it creates long overdue rules for protecting and enhancing nature in modern societies. It is amazing that these thoughts are percolating within indigenous and non-indigenous societies on every continent. What potential!
Maybe we will segway through without environmental disaster. There are lots of people and nations pursuing a post fossil future. The fossil transition conference at Santa Marta may point the way. Either way, if we are headed to an exit of some sort from ‘Late-Stage Capitalism’ we will need different ideas on how to organize our thoughts and ourselves when we enter a new stage, probably on a diminished planet. This might be when some very old thoughts about our place in nature would be helpful. A different philosophy.
As I write this Anthropic has described its new Mythos AI offering as so dangerous it has limited its release to a few mega companies, including U.S. banks and tech giants. The concerns seem to center on data security for the big corporations. The bigger problem is what the effects will be on the planet. The Tech Masters have been sucking up all the knowledge on the internet basically for free and sucking up huge amounts of power and water for their data centres with the goal of creating an intelligence way beyond human understanding. They owe all of us Big Time. Since algorithms can be trained to monetize and endear through sycophancy, why can’t they be enlisted to protect the planet? What would happen if the Rights of Nature were inculcated into the digital DNA of powerful AI systems, on an equal or superior level with corporate rights? Better call Dario Amodei, who might be receptive, and, heck, the other tech bros. Before it’s too late. Does anyone have their cell or phone numbers? Please hurry.
Astronomers tell us that for the Universe to form after the Big Bang extraordinary coincidences had to occur at the same time. Light and dark matter, strong and weak forces, chemistry. All had to be in balance. The chances for all this to happen were extremely remote. Then, for our star, the sun, to burn bright, but not too bright, and for our peculiar planet to be just the right distance from this star, and for life to develop over millions of years and for humans to evolve. All this was spectacularly unlikely. So, the odds that you and I are, at the same time, on this gorgeous blue planet are essentially zero. Yet here we are. Let’s not blow it.