Colorado Shooting - Boring News

Yesterday at least two young people went to their high school in Colorado, pulled out their guns and started shooting. Eight of their fellow students were injured and one student (who was trying to stop the shooters) was killed. In Canada, this story was not front page news for very long. And it should have been, it would have been not that long ago. But we hear about so many shooting-at-school reports, so many stories of children hurting other children with guns that both those who report the news and those of us who read it, no longer pay attention to the stories.

Last week, the UN published a report stating that the world's environment was in far worst condition than we thought, that there are far more animals at risk of becoming extinct and that Canada is not doing any better than any other country and in fact may be doing worst. Again, while there was some discussion of the report and some minor hand wringing, it quickly became, for most people, a topic not worthy of much interest.

Finally, there were reports last week that in Canada's far north, the permafrost is melting at an alarming rate. Communities that are built on what I was always told is land that would be frozen forever are shifting and the entire infrastructure is at risk. No one is talking about how to slow down the thawing - it is accepted that it is happening and will continue to happen. There was some minor interest in the story, but certainly, in southern Canada, no one is raising flags of any colour to suggest that this may either be or at least lead to a significant crisis in the north.

All three of the above stories were important, all three of the stories should have been front page news for days. Certainly two of the stories should have led to calls for emergency discussions in the House of Commons and in most of the Provincial Legislatures. Nothing will happen in part because no one knows what to do about each of the problems, we tire of the countless discussion similar stories have generated in the past and we are exhausted by the myriad of problems that we are forced to confront on a weekly basis.

Never before in human history have citizens been so bombarded with so many issues, all labelled a crisis, all defined as something that needs to be resolved before our species disappears from the planet. Humans are not hardwired to live in crises mod all of the time. We lack the emotional or intellectual stamina to constantly be on high alert for the next problem. It would appear that the best that we can do is think about one or two problems and ignore the rest. This coping strategy means that some topics of critical concern receive some attention but others get totally ignored. It also leads to people wasting energy arguing about what issues are more important.

It is also true, however, that most of us -even if we agreed that climate change is the most important issue, (or for that matter social inequity was) - we could not agree on where to start. And so we waste time protesting this or that, imagining small victories while the corporations negotiate the big wins elsewhere. How depressing!

It is not surprising that some days, some of us just ignore the news entirely. We just cannot cope with the seemingly relentless bombardment of pleads/demands to care about and to solve the problem(s).