Public Professor

By Beth Gerwin

Have you ever had the experience of waking up somewhere other than your own bed at home, and for a moment not knowing where you are? Maybe a loud noise in the movie you were watching rouses you from your nap on the couch; or a crow cawing outside your tent wakes you as dawn breaks on your first day of a camping trip. Sometimes you might awaken with a start, but often the strange combin-ation of unfamiliar noises and an unfamiliar bed does not shock your mind. "How odd, that crow sounds like it's right above my head" you might think peacefully, before becoming conscious enough to realize that it actually is right above your head, and that you, rather than the crow, are in an unusual place.

Marcel Proust (1871 - 1922) opens his famous and enormously long "Remembrance of Things Past" - published in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927 - with a description of this same experience. His reasons for this choice are multiple, but one of the main ones is precisely that the experience is so widely shared. Turning the pages of his book, says Proust, the reader will relive moments of his or her own life, magnified through a lens. Proust is fascinated by the kinds of tricks that our minds and memories play on us, because to him, such universal experiences are what make us all human. Almost inevitably, Proust's first paragraphs will open the floodgate to our personal versions of the same event. This is also why such mental quirks are valuable and important. Proust is constantly seeking to revive the quickly forgotten moments we all live through daily, to explore them, remember them, and treasure the doorways that they open into our past and present lives.

Of course, there is more at stake than a trip down memory lane. What Proust wants to examine through this example is another element of the human mind that we all have in common, for better or for worse, habit formation. Habits are our innate tendency to normalize what is around us. They help us feel at home, says Proust, but they also encourage us to accept and conform to our surroundings, sometimes all too readily.

The question of becoming habituated to what is "normal" at a particular time is not a trivial one. It certainly wasn't for Proust, who was writing during the rise, the crisis and the aftermath of the First World War. Half Jewish and homosexual, Proust was keenly aware of the dangers of hypocrisy and intolerance that are inherent in societal habits and comfortable prejudices. This is why the opening pages of the novel's first volume, Swann's Way (1913), breathe life into a common experience of being shaken out of our habits. When we wake up in an unfamiliar place, for a moment our habits are left aside, and we are open to new and surprising feelings as we hover, half-asleep, between what we expect - to hear the alarm going off, to smell coffee - and what we are actually experiencing. It is a rare moment in which our minds are truly open and yet, though it is rare for us as a species, it is common to us all as individuals.

Eventually, claims Proust, habit will catch us up and reassure us. The cawing of the first crow will become expected, a familiar part of the early-morning routine at the campsite. But we should not lose touch with the accepting amazement we felt on that first morning. Remembering it, we remain open to the later disruption of our habits, too. And when a crow interrupts our thoughts on a busy workday, we should allow our memories to take us out of ourselves, back to a childhood camping trip, and to a world full of possibilities.

Beth Gerwin is an assistant professor of French, University of Lethbridge.

By Kent A. Peacock
“It hit an iceberg and it sank,” said Robert Ballard, who discovered the hulk of the Titanic in 1985. “Get over it.” Judging from the attention being given to the 100th anniversary of the sinking, people aren’t ready to get over it yet, and I think they are right.  
I used to teach the Titanic in a course on engineering ethics. Even then, almost 20 ago, it was clear the loss of the ship was caused by a perfect storm of professional negligence and possibly even criminality, and I presented it as a textbook case of what professionals should not do. New information, some very recent, about how and why the ship sank, and how the facts about the disaster were shamelessly covered up afterward, only reinforce this picture. Those who died on the wreck will not have died entirely in vain if we learn something from the sorry tale of this entirely preventable disaster.
The picture of the sinking in James Cameron’s 1997 movie “Titanic” is incorrect, although based on the best knowledge available at the time he made the movie. Cameron depicts the ship breaking in two, with the bow sinking quickly and the stern bobbing about at a 90-degree angle for agonizing minutes before taking the plunge. It makes for terrific theatre, but the experts now know the ship did not sink that way, and the ship’s builders knew only weeks after the disaster precisely how and why the ship sank but covered up the facts for decades.
Here’s what really happened: the ship started to go down by the bow after scraping the iceberg. At first the ship sank slowly, which should have made it possible to save hundreds more had there been enough lifeboats and proper lifeboat drills. But when the ship got to an angle of about 11 degrees from the water it suddenly ripped apart and both chunks vanished beneath the surface almost instantly.
How could such a massive hull snap in half like a twig? It is true that the quality of the steel was probably not up to today’s shipbuilding standards. However, the ship was doomed by three major design flaws. First, the watertight bulkheads had been stopped short of the top deck to allow room for a squash court and other first-class amenities. Second, the steel and rivets were not thick enough.  Third, and fatal, the ship’s designer, Thomas Andrews, had added an expansion joint amidships to accommodate the flexing of the hull. The joint was designed incorrectly and under the huge stress of the ship being lifted out of the sea by thousands of tons of water in its bow, the joint propagated a crack that split the hull in half.
Andrews had originally specified steel that was probably thick enough, but management insisted he cut it down in order to save weight and thereby fuel costs. Andrews foolishly allowed his professional judgment to be overruled, and he ended up on the bottom of the Atlantic for it. He had added braces and the faulty expansion joint to compensate for the weakness of the hull, but it was not enough; the Titanic for all her size was barely seaworthy, and the claim that she was “unsinkable” was pure hype. It was not really an iceberg that sank Titanic but the fact that marketing and pound-foolish cost control were given precedence over prudent engineering. The Titanic will be a case study in the professional ethics curriculum long after the tragedy has faded from the public eye.
Kent Peacock is a professor in the department of philosophy at the University of Lethbridge.

By James Linville

My last column for Public Professor (Feb. 4) stirred up a bit of a controversy. One letter writer expressed shock that a “teacher of religious wisdom” would label the Bible’s creation stories “mythology.”

The word “myth” is frequently used to disparage as false, or deceptive, stories held to be true by others. I presume the letter writer thought I had meant this. In scholarly contexts, however, “myth” denotes stories which are foundational to a group’s sense of identity or understanding of the world. By using the term, scholars do not judge a story as inferior or childish, but as important and sacred to others, regardless of how those people may label it themselves. 

In this light, the biblical creation accounts and the gospels themselves can be labelled “myth” since they are central stories in Christian theology. Some (but not all) Christian scholars are resistant to this because it puts the Bible on the same level as other religions. Yet, a common cross-cultural academic vocabulary is necessary for Religious Studies. Given the great number of religions throughout history, it is rather arbitrary to protect one tradition from the critical analysis directed at all others or to adopt the judgments of one tradition over others. For example, I cannot count the times I have had students from an evangelical background become indignant when I or the textbook refer to Roman Catholics as Christian. If I adopt their meaning of “Christian,” however, will I not incur the anger of the Catholic students? Scholars and their students need to come to terms with the exclusivist claims and counterclaims to legitimacy that mark the history of religions.

Part of the “work” religions do is to express for a group of people the essential correctness and boundaries of their own way of life and how they are the possessors of a special truth and are different from other people. The job of Religious Studies is not to affirm this effort at differentiation but to understand it as it develops and is expressed in politics, art, literature, ethics and more. What religions set aside as special, sacrosanct and beyond question, and how and why they do this are the very things that scholarship must investigate. This is not to determine if the beliefs are true or false, wise or foolish but to understand how those ideas and the behaviours surrounding them work within a society and within the lives of individuals.

In many ways we live not only in the physical world but in worlds of the imagination shaped through education, socialization and personal experience. Religion is only one aspect of how people imagine their world and link themselves to one another in societies. Indeed, in many cases, there is no fundamental distinction between religion and other aspects of culture.
People often fail to see how their ideas of what seems normal or natural are actually the result of human decision, political or environmental realities, or the once-radical views of a particular individual. Religions themselves are always changing. This includes how rituals are performed, what structures of authority are accepted, and even the key doctrines and beliefs that are taught. No religion is immune to this even as they affirm that their core teachings are eternal or divinely given. Indeed, the affirmation may be an attempt to find order and stability within the vagaries of history.

Dr. Linville will be giving a rather playful and provocative talk on Religious Studies and secularism on Tuesday, March 27 at 7 p.m. in Turcotte Hall 201, entitled “On the Job of Not Practising What I Teach. Some Personal Reflections on Religion, Academia, and the Evil Atheist Conspiracy.” Go to http://www.uleth.ca/artsci/event/17242 for more details.

James Linville teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Lethbridge.

By Dennis Connolly In the previous article on tides, my main purpose was to explain the puzzle of two high tides a day. I mentioned that the high tides came every 12 hours as the earth spun through the two ocean bulges. To complicate matters, the moon moves in an elliptical path around the Earth. The moon is directly overhead approximately every 25 hours. Consequently, the time between high tides is nearer 12 hours and 25 minutes. Also the moon’s cyclic, varying distance from Earth affects the tides significantly, as does the moon’s cyclic varying height above the horizon. Further, there is friction between the ocean and the Earth’s surface moving underneath, so that the ocean bulges are not exactly beneath an overhead moon, but always several hours behind, trying to “catch up” as it were. The exact motion of the moon is very complicated. Sir Isaac Newton wrote: “Thinking about the moon’s motion makes my head ache.” It was several years (and several headaches?) before Newton could accurately predict where in the sky to look for the moon in a year’s time. Similarly, the sun’s varying height above the horizon, its varying distance from Earth, and the effects on the moon’s orbit all further complicate tidal predictions. To accurately predict tides for a particular port for an upcoming year, one must first collect tidal records (ocean heights every hour), in that port for a minimum period of a year. Every port, even just a few kilometres away, has its own unique hourly records, due to coastal irregularities and varying ocean depths. Once these detailed hourly records have been collected, the calculations of prediction, using Fourier Analysis, can begin. Before 1873, it took many months to calculate a year’s future tides for a single port. Then William Thomson invented the tide machine, a set of connected brass cogs with a moving pen at the machine’s end. The pen scrolled up and down as a roll of paper was fed underneath. The cogs were set according to the collected tidal records of a particular port. However, the intense calculations needed to set the cogs took hundreds of hours. Once the cogs were set, amazingly, in minutes, out came the graph of a year’s future tides for that port. This first tidal machine is now in the London Science Museum. I can never visit London without calling in to view this ingenious invention. Then, in 1878, Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, invented the mechanical Harmonic Analyser in order to reduce the massive cog-setting calculations from months to hours. (The great Astronomer Royal, George Airy, had predicted that such a complicated analyser would be impossible to build.) Soon, sophisticated tide machines were being built around the world. In Liverpool there is a very large electrically driven tide machine (Google “Doodson Machine” for a photo and details). This machine ran 24 hours a day, accurately predicting tides for ports around the Empire. It took approximately three days to print a year’s future tides for a particular port. Computers finally took over in the early 1960s, printing out future tides almost instantly; however, for tidal predictions at any particular port, one still must collect and feed into the computer a year’s worth of this port’s unique hourly tidal records (19 years of records is better if you want really accurate, long-term predictions which take into account, for example, the 19-year Metonic Cycle of the sun’s effect on the moon’s orbit). No wonder Newton complained of headaches! Of interest, at the site: http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~tony/tides/. There are two rather nice photos of Halls Harbour, Nova Scotia, taken six hours apart. Also below, on the same page, is a drawing of Kelvin’s 1873 tide machine. Predicting the Tides. Dennis Connolly is an Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Lethbridge.

By Bryson Brown
Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently declared his government will not allow “foreign interests” to derail plans to pipe diluted bitumen across British Columbia for export to China and other Asian markets. Although some of Alberta’s political parties would like to see more attention paid to environmental concerns, all support further expansion of tarsands production. The Government of Alberta recently stopped spending the $2 billion that had been allocated to subsidize carbon capture and sequestration, reserving the last few hundred million for other purposes.
But hitching our economic prospects to growing the tarsands is a serious mistake. In the long run, burning all or most of the reserves is unthinkable: it would add on the order of 200 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 to our atmosphere all by itself, putting us well on the way to climate catastrophe. And a worrisome financial question was recently raised by the Bank of England:
The Bank of England will evaluate whether the U.K.’s exposure to investments in greenhouse gas-emitting industries poses a risk to financial stability, Governor Mervyn King said. (Bloomberg, 2012/02/07)
As Canada and Alberta continue to expand our fossil-fuel industry, we need to ask ourselves this question, too. Each of the last three decades has been the hottest on record. Insurance giants like Munich Re report increasing losses to weather disasters, losses out of proportion to other kinds of losses. Last year the U.S. had at least 12 weather disasters costing over $1 billion each; the previous record was nine (Washington Post, 2011/07/12). Ocean heat content continues to climb, Arctic ice to decline, and global temperatures continue to rise (see Levitus et al. in Geophysical Research Letters 36 (2009), NSIDC.org and data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/).
The world’s oil companies collectively report reserves of 2,795 gigatons; burning them all would put us over five times the CO2 levels of just 150 years ago, transforming our planet permanently. Sea level would rise continuously and too rapidly to build on coastlines at all; the acidity of sea water would disrupt shell formation and the development of fish embryos, causing mass extinction in the seas; climate zones would shift so rapidly that trees and animals would be unable to adapt or migrate fast enough; higher temperatures would drive down grain yields and droughts like that in Texas this year could become permanent.
But if burning all these fuels will lead to disaster, putting all our economic eggs in the fossil-fuel basket is too big a risk. We need to invest in longer-term prospects, including energy efficiency and alternative sources of energy. These investments are underway already, in China, in Germany and in many other countries — and the new industries emerging from them are already competing successfully in many areas.
Together, we’re on the verge of exceeding the ability of the Earth’s climate to cope with emissions of greenhouse gases, and Canadians are contributing more than our share. Canada produces about 1.8 per cent of total emissions (we have the third-highest per capita rate in the world) — but we represent less than .5 per cent of the world’s population. Worse, our government seems determined to do nothing to change this. No one seriously thinks we will meet our declared target of 17 per cent reduction in our GHG emissions from 2005 levels by 2020. Projections for Alberta alone anticipate emissions of 400 million tons in 2020, making up 88 per cent of Canada’s total target of 450 Mt for 2020 (see Mark Jaquard in the Vancouver Sun, 2012/01/26). It’s long past time to change course — our children and grandchildren are depending on it.
Bryson Brown teaches logic and philosophy of science in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Lethbridge.

By Dan Johnson
Sunday, Feb. 12, is the 203rd anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, celebrated by scientists around the world. Why is this shy country gentleman, who spent much of his life occupied with his private nature studies, family life, and letter-writing, revered as a world changer? He is considered the most influential scientist because he had a simple idea that changed the way we understand the past and present, and set the stage for remarkable discoveries.
His idea began with a five-year world voyage on the survey ship HMS Beagle, which left England in December, 1831. He was 22, and hired on to record geological and other natural history observations along the way. Like other traveling naturalists of the time, Darwin found previously unknown plants and animals, including fossils. When he returned to England, his experiences and collected specimens provided the basis for his popular books on geology and natural history. Darwin never left England again. After decades of further study in his home lab and library, he presented a simple but shocking idea that advanced the new science of biogeography, and continues to form the foundations of all life sciences.
For centuries, people had noted distant locations always had their own local sets of species of plants, birds, fish, insects, and mammals, species that differ geographically, but which operate and interact in familiar ways and roles. Darwin slowly realized some simple rules of life automatically lead to slow changes in populations of plants and animals over time, eventually yielding new species. He recognized evolutionary changes are not at all random, but occur in response to successes and failures, and inheritance of traits. Over long periods of time, natural processes can produce changes and adaptations in much the same way an animal breeder can improve a variety or breed. What he had to say is actually very simple and testable, and that is the reason for the lasting explanatory power of the idea.
Selection of traits, either by natural forces or by a breeding program, works because of the considerable genetic variation present in populations of living things, and because many of the traits of interest are inherited. Darwin saw that such variation exists in natural populations as well. A large surplus of offspring are produced by wild organisms, which are then reduced in number by limited resources, competition, harsh conditions, predators, parasites and pathogens. Only a fraction survives to reproduce. The survivor traits are passed to the next generation, resulting in a slight shift in the collection of characteristics in the breeding population. Slowly, the traits of those individuals which have the survival edge or some breeding advantage become more dominant in subsequent generations. Given enough time, this can produce new varieties and species. Changes in environmental conditions can result in new species similar to their ancestors in some ways, but better adapted to challenges. The slight shift is not “progress” toward some superior level, but simply what works for recent and current conditions.
The mechanism, "natural selection," successfully explains changes seen in plants, animals and microbes over time. Darwin's idea was the start of modern evolutionary theory, the comprehensive body of knowledge that after extensive testing and analysis continues to explain the observed evidence.
Science has a big sign on the door, “No Dogmas Allowed.” No science idea can survive unless it can successfully explain and predict. Darwin’s idea lasts and lasts, because it continued to give robust and testable explanations. When science discovered the DNA record of the intricate details of evidence of descent and relationships, this new tool fully backed up Darwin’s basic idea, and added powerful new refinements. Darwin’s genius was his ability to arrive at the truth of the mechanism of natural selection, working only with the limited tools of the 1850s.
On the evening of Feb 15, at the University of Lethbridge, we will hold a small public gathering to say ‘Happy Birthday’ to the scientist who changed everything.
Dan Johnson is a biogeographer and professor of environmental science at the University of Lethbridge.

By James Linville
Next weekend Dan Johnson’s Public Professor column will mark the 203rd birthday of Charles Darwin (Feb. 12). This will probably result in a lot of people talking about the Bible’s creation myths, so I thought I would get a head start. Here is the King James Version (KJV) of the opening three verses of Genesis:
“1: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
“2: And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
“3: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”
This translation portrays a series of events following from the absolute beginning of everything. This is not the only way to translate the Hebrew, however, which is rather open-ended in its original form, written without vowels or punctuation. In the New Revised Standard Version, the “Spirit of God” is replaced with “wind from God,” a change that reflects the double meaning of the Hebrew term, ruah. More importantly, KJV’s four sentences become only two which rather significantly changes the opening two verses:
“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”
The clear sequence of events in KJV has been recast as a single statement that describes the preconditions for the dramatic creation of light (in Latin, fiat lux, incidentally, the motto of the University of Lethbridge).
The New Jewish Publication Society (NJPS) translation goes further and construes all of verses 1-3 as a single sentence. Notice how it opens and the punctuation:
“When God began to create heaven and earth — the earth being unformed and void, with darkness on the face of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water — God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”
In this translation, God creating light through speaking is the first act of creation. The differences in translation are not simply due to the differences between Christian and Jewish beliefs, as there are comparable Christian translations such as the brand new Common English Bible. The issue is uncertainty over some features of ancient Hebrew and the peculiarities of the vowels added to the biblical text centuries after the original composition. What is at stake is whether Genesis says that God created the heavens and earth from nothing, as the first two translations imply, or whether something pre-existed creation. The NJPS has the formless void being with God before creation.
When seen in the light of other ancient mythologies, the pre-existence of chaos is most plausible, and some recent linguistic research supports view that Genesis does not discuss the absolute beginning of everything. Yet, this runs up against the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo “creation from nothing.” This doctrine reflects the impact of the Greek philosophical concept of a cosmic “Prime Mover” on the older biblical text. The Jewish philosopher, Philo, who died in 50 AD, strove to connect the Bible with Greek philosophy and he interpreted Genesis accordingly. A little prior to Philo, the Greek Jewish book of 2 Maccabees (now in Catholic and Orthodox Christian bibles) declared that God created everything from “things that were not.” This book was a powerful influence on early Christian theologians who, like Philo, tried to reconcile the Bible with Greek reason, considered the epitome of human intellectual achievement.
In a manner of speaking, just like biological species, religious doctrine adapts and changes as time goes on, becoming something rather different than what it started out as, even doctrines of creation.
James Linville teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Lethbridge.

By Kent A. Peacock
Yes, Virginia, there really is global warming, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about today. Instead, I am going to talk about the other huge problem that stems from the fact that modern civilization depends so heavily on the energy from fossil fuels — the fact that we’re running harder and harder to stand in the same place.
Whenever we drill for oil or gas, dig out a ton of coal, or squeeze a barrel of oil out of a hopper of tarsand, we have to expend energy to do the job. Those Brobdignagian trucks and excavators at Fort McMurray drink up lakes of diesel fuel. Then we heat the tarry muck to tease the oil out of it, burning up a good part of Canada’s natural gas heritage in the process.
Building the roads, the pipelines, the refineries — everything we have to do in order to extract usable oil from the tarsands gobbles up a huge amount of energy. Even if you’re just gathering brush to make a campfire, you must expend energy. It takes energy to produce energy.
Ecologists measure the efficiency of energy production by means of a parameter called EROI, “Energy Return on Energy Investment.” If I get 10 barrels of oil out of the ground for every barrel I spend extracting the oil, I’ve achieved an EROI of 10.
Any human society is a complex machine designed to convert energy from the environment into forms useful to humans. Everything we do that is not directed to producing energy, including our sciences, arts, military, medicine, education, politics, Boxing Day sales, and the Grey Cup game, has to be powered by whatever net energy we can garner from fossil fuels, the sun, the wind, or dying atomic nuclei. No complex society can function unless the EROI of its methods of energy production is greater than one. If a method of producing oil has an EROI less than one, then it doesn’t matter if the producer is getting $1,000 per barrel; it is a losing proposition for the human economy as a whole (even if someone is getting rich along the way).
Ancient Rome powered itself mostly by agriculture and plundering its neighbours. At their height, the Romans built a very sophisticated culture on an EROI of roughly 20. As their soils eroded and their forests disappeared and as conquerable neighbours became harder to find, Rome grew unable to generate enough energy to power itself, and it soon came down like a house of cards.
Since the late 19th century we’ve enjoyed a much higher EROI than the Romans, courtesy of oil. In the good old days of oil exploration a shallow deposit of high-quality oil could be pumped at an EROI of 100. There are still a few deposits like this left but most remaining oil is now deeper, harder to extract and process.
These days the EROI of conventional oil is 30 to 40, often less. And what about the tarsands? The numbers are dismal: from 1.5 to 6 at best. No one would dream of mining the tarsands except for the fact the heavy oil from them can be converted into highly useful liquid fuels.
So that’s the other problem with fossil fuels: with the highest-EROI sources almost tapped out, the global EROI of all methods of energy production combined is drifting downward to Roman levels, and human ingenuity has not yet come up with a source of energy that can reverse the trend. The clock is ticking.
 Kent Peacock is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Lethbridge

The natural environment is so valuable, for so many reasons, that the ways we agree to use it, or in some cases use it up, form the basis of some of the most important conflicts that need to be settled. The method of settling those conflicts has been changing. The good news is the tools are improving, allowing some optimism regarding our ability to manage looming problems, including shortages (such as water, or future employment), changes (such as climate, or world economic conditions) and impacts (such as the risk of toxic spills, or managing the left-over consequences of energy development).
In past times, decisions regarding environment and development were based mainly on potential returns on investment. Negative consequences resulted in creation and application of environmental law. Later, science was promoted as the basis for decisions and best practices, and even for resolution of conflicts. This sequence of focus occurred not only for environmental management, but also for agriculture, forestry, health care and international trade. During the BSE cattle pathology crisis, “science-based” surveillance, risk management and trade responses were often called for. But science alone is not a sufficient sole basis for management, or for conflict resolution.
In Alberta, people who are directly affected by government decisions on the environment can appeal actions such as decisions to grant or deny permits to develop, remediate or otherwise alter the environment or a natural resource. The right of appeal, and the process, are guaranteed under the Alberta Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act. The Act also established the Environmental Appeals Board to make decisions on appeals and conflicts. The EAB is a quasi-judicial tribunal, with a mission to “advance the protection, enhancement and wise use of Alberta’s environment by providing fair, impartial and efficient resolution of all matters before it.” Initially, this duty was accomplished by holding hearings, where evidence was presented with the help of lawyers, experts and evidentiary rules typical of court. This has changed, especially over the last decade, as the EAB has chosen mediation as the method to resolve disputes and appeal. Mediation is less costly than hearings (and therefore often more fair), proceeds more quickly, reduces emotional factors in conflicts, increases the likelihood of development of common goals, prevents or delays more escalation to irreversible conflict, and results in more “buy-in” by participants, and therefore more lasting solutions.
How does mediation work? It is surprisingly simple. The mediator’s role is to help the parties in dispute to talk in a neutral setting, and possibly come to an agreement after “constructive confrontation.” Environmental mediation has been referred to as a special form because of the additional demand that the agreement must be consistent with the interests of environmental protection, but this is not really a special case. All forms of mediation have secondary requirements (for example, replace “environmental protection” with “the children,” and you have the foundation of much of family dispute mediation). Environmental mediation does differ in some ways, in that the disputes may concern matters of public, not just private, interest, and because the resulting agreements could affect others in the future or those who are not represented in the current conflict of views or claims. Around over 80 per cent of mediations by the EAB are successfully resolved.
This means we have arrived at a time when the best and often most lasting decisions and solutions to conflict are not based solely on science, law, business or even environmental protection, but on shared innovation and agreement. The best members of tribunals such as the EAB are not necessarily lawyers, scientists, experienced consultants, environmentalists or former government managers. The best mediators bring parties in conflict together to talk and form a clearer view of the problem, and in some cases to find a solution that reduces the conflict while being good for the environment. The EAB assigns its own members as mediators not only because of their experience and knowledge in certain areas (everyone has some), but in part to show the high degree of respect the board holds for the mediation process. What counts is people talking to people.
Dan Johnson is a professor of environmental science in the Department of Geography at the University of Lethbridge, and a member of the Environmental Appeals Board, www.eab.gov.ab.ca.