Author: Rocco

By comparison, getting people to believe the dangers of leaded gasoline, ozone depletion and second-hand smoke must have been a walk in the park compared to global warming. This seems odd because all three of these blights were just as abstract as the present one. You couldn’t really see or touch them, and their consequences were not immediate. With the exception of second-hand smoke – which ended up being a long, protracted legal battle – the steps taken to remedy these problems were made systematically and with an almost global effort. There was none of the strife we are witnessing today, between believers and non-believers, on television and newspapers. A photo on the front page of today’s Globe and Mail shows a large group of environmentalists at the UN talks in Bali, holding flags from various countries. Also in the same photo are members of a smaller group, each holding letter in the word PLEASE.

Why such a tumultuous dispute over something that we’ve known about for decades? In my Grade 8 class, roughly about 20 years ago, we were made to watch a video on the topic of the “greenhouse effect”, as it was called back then. I remember the rather ominous words of a scientist in the video as he remarked how as a scientist, the future of the planet would be very interesting for him, but as a human being, he wasn’t looking forward to it. As doom-and-gloom goes, this was a perfect example what the today’s contrarians use to take the wind out of the effort to fight global warming, but it also shows that no one can say that this is a new science. Was there even any doubt that the black stuff coming out of our exhaust pipes was bad for us and the environment?

And now what was an ignorable collection of scientists making their case to class of 14-year-olds has become an international movement, the summits of which presidents, prime ministers, dignitaries and renowned experts make an appearance. The movement has a tremendous worldwide following, is backed by thousands of today’s top scientists, and even now a winner of the Nobel Prize. But still, even with more than half the world enthusiastically behind it and the changes that would ensue, the remaining half can only look on with a mixture of cynicism, disbelief and lethargy.

Internet forums are full of such people, post links to sites reporting a decrease in the Earth’s temperature or evidence showing that the ice-caps are in fact growing, not shrinking (which would beg the question of why our own government is taking initiatives to secure Canada’s sovereignty over the ever-widening waterways of the far north). Often the comments evoke a general feeling of “who cares?”, a sentiment that former Saturday Night Live personality Dennis Miller expressed when he remarked that a 2-degree change in temperature is something he’d barely notice in his own living room. Such a change in the temperature of his own body, I believe, is something that wouldn’t escape his attention.

Opposition to the fight against global warming originates from many factors, the most obvious of which are the industries that make their money from the production of oil and other fuels. Their sponsorship of “non-biased” studies into global warming and its affects are a matter of public knowledge. But the results of such studies are picked up and used by those who are already cynical. I believe there are two more fundamental factors are at play.

Firstly, this crisis has been around for decades, and scientists who would normally be commended on their astuteness have been cast in the light of Chicken Littles. The consequences of this crisis have been slow in coming, especially to those of us in developed countries. As for what is happening in the developing world, I can posit that a good number of us have already been over-saturated by the likes of Sally Struthers and her pleas for more money. Turning the channel or putting down the newspaper, it comes down to a matter of out of sight, out of mind. And this apathy easily turns to disbelief.

The second factor is the consequences of global warming. Second-hand smoke causes cancer. Ozone depletion causes cancer. Lead poisoning results in a whole host of nasty symptoms including memory loss and tooth decay. As for the consequences of global warming, they are vast and world-altering, but they have so far escaped the notice of the average citizen of New York, London and Tokyo. As for the consequences that people are aware about: hotter summers and rising water levels, though significant they affect us indirectly. They are not personal. Our basement might get flooded, but we’re not going to get cancer or dementia. Our bodies will remain unscathed. At least that’s what we think. So those that even might believe in global warming grow disinterested in the whole matter. For them, this crisis isn’t worth the sacrifices needed to solve it.

These factors are what global interests are using to thwart the fight against global warming. Keep it impersonal and beyond the horizon. As Norm, the character on the television Cheers, once asked when a problem was brought to him from outside the bar: “How does this affect me?” But the warning bells are ringing. If this crisis is purely imaginary or hardly worth worrying about, why then is our very own Prime Minister following this series of conferences around the world, albeit attempting to undermine its objectives? Why bother?

What we will get from these first talks is a compromise. Countries willing to fight global warning won’t be entirely happy about it, but at least it will be something to get the big polluters on board. In the end, what we’ll be left with is the hope that those of us who are willing will bring an end to this crisis, and those who aren’t will learn to see past their own backyards.

Ah, August, when the colours of the street bloom in the afternoon sun, and in the swelter of Kensington market, you can hear the drums of the buskers and the ice rattling in the tall glasses of caf? patrons. On the street, girls and women stride in loose clothing, having shed the remaining vestiges of cool weather. For many a man, the sight of a woman in flower dress is something that they cannot resist. They have to look. Demanding that they don’t is like telling a woman not to peek into the display window of a discount shoe store.

In this often unavoidable predicament, men have different lines of action. Not wanting to get caught looking, some men dawn dark sunglasses. Some have learned the method of turning their heads in the direction which the woman is walking and therefore allowing the temporary object of desire to enter freely into his line of vision. And other men, usually in the company of their buddies, take to becoming obnoxious.

Where a man’s eyes wonder is often the centre of a lot of debate in the community newspapers. One rather angry reporter, obviously not to keen on men looking at her, portrayed herself in her article as a street goddess, and men in society nothing more than packs of Pavlovian dogs, slobbering at her feet.

Is checking someone out really this bad? When does looking cross the line and become ogling?

A comedian once said that “there is a fine line between eye-contact and the stare of a psychopath.” Once when sitting in a park, me and my girlfriend watched a man stare, nonstop, at two young women playing frisbee, for about half an hour. Most men know the difference between an ogle and a look. I think it has something to do with the intent of the stare. Some men look because they like women, and others look because they don’t. As for the latter, these are the men who yell from car windows, flick their tongues when at a red light, and make kissing sounds in the shadows of bus shelters.

In the past, something happened to them. Some event jarred their minds like a record player and they lost the ability to make the connection between the mothers and sisters who love them, and wives and girlfriends and women they hate. They are stuck in a savage boyhood, unable to move forward. These are the men who will lovingly kiss their mothers goodbye, and within the same hour violate a women on a public bus with a hurtful comment or salacious sneer. When these men look at women, it is for the sole purpose of them making a feel uncomfortable and frightened. My advice to these men:

1. Grow up.

2. Go home and beg your mothers for forgiveness for having been two-faced liars and putting the members of her gender through so much abuse and scorn.

3. Contact all you ex-girlfriends and ex-wives and apologize for all the hostility and neglect that you’ve heaped upon them.

4. Go to your usual place of ogling with an armload of roses give one rose to each woman who passes by. Do this every day for a year.

Then, there is the other side of the coin: the yin for the Misogynist’s yang. As much as there are men out there who will go to no end to make women feel like nothing more than an object, there are women out there who do their best to be objects themselves. You can see it in the lineup of summer wear worn by 16-20 year old North American girls that, as Bill Maher said, is leaving prostitutes wondering what they’re going to wear. Strangely enough, while women are wearing less and less – the crotches of the newest bathing suits becoming more and more like ribbons – men are wearing more and more – the cuffs of their bathing trunks now hovering well below the knees. I am not sure why this is happening, possibly because women, young women, are becoming more bold and confident with their bodies, and men are becoming more insecure. How many men out there, have been told, at one time or another, that men’s private parts are ugly, and their bodies plain? How many men out there are embarrassed by their hairy chests, and back? While North American men have developed tastes for the young-looking supermodel look, North American women have also developed tastes for younger looking men: Brad Pitt, Ryan Philippe, lean and hairless as 14 year-old-boys.

Now, as much as the above described how Misogynists curse and mumble about the “stuck up” women who do their best to ignore their charming advances, certain women will complain about the looks and comments they receive on the street. Now before some of you start rattling out angry responses, please allow me to clarify myself. In this society, no one has the right to make someone else feel uncomfortable, period. There has always been the pervert in the park and the dirty old man in the subway, and it is my deepest hope that time will take care of them, but if I decided one morning to wear a shirt with the message “just do me,” should I be surprised and shocked that I receive comments about the shirt? No. I am not wearing this shirt for its comfort, or the way it makes my feel (pretty, attractive etc). I am wearing it to get a reaction. Now, I can really only speculate but, if I were a woman, and one day decided wear a lacy tube top clinging to my body by my erect nipples, and a pair of sixth grade pants tight enough to give me a frontal wedgy, I:

1) wouldn’t be wearing this outfit for comfort.

2) wouldn’t hope that only the people I choose, are going to give me looks and comments.

3) wouldn’t rely on the decency of the strangers I don’t choose, to avert their eyes and mind their own business.

Society has limits to public decency, which are always being tested and pushed. Now if you want to ride those limits, good. It’s a free country and you should be allowed to wear what you want. The rest of us need people like you to force the change in people’s attitudes. However, there are reactions – looks, leers, and comments – that I would have to expect if I were to do this.

Between these two extremes, we have the huddled masses. If this middle ground bears a common characteristic to these extremes, it is the frustration caused by the rift between how we want society to behave, and the way it does. Young men who want every attractive woman they look at to find them attractive in turn, and young women who, while for the most part want to be able to walk down the street without being gawked at, feel that spine of jealously when their friends get more attention then they do.

There is nothing wrong with checking someone out, but long gone are the days of Dean Martin’s “Watching All the Girls Go By.” And while we are all demanding more from each other and society, we can make summertime appreciation of one another other more tolerable by compromising. For the guys: if you see a pretty girl who you are not going to approach, dawn your shades and treat her like the sun. If you are planning on approaching her, instead of making a lewd comment, gather some courage and walk up to her and say: “Hi, my name is Joe, I was wondering if you would like to go for some coffee.” (Hey I never said I was Don Juan). And for the girls, while I realize that you have to put up with a lot of schmucks, all men see better than they think, so even the nice guys will occasionally rubberneck. This is not a perfect world, and many of these nice fellows you probably won’t find attractive. I just ask you not view them all as Pavlovian dogs. Besides, wouldn’t it stroke your ego if you could once, just once, be the cause of a minor traffic accident?