Bio: Dr. Tim Ball, B.A., M.A., Ph,D.

Dr. Tim Ball taught at the University of Winnipeg from 1971 to 1996. With a Ph. D. in Climatology, he is an expert on the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. While at the University of Winnipeg Dr. Ball was well-known for his sold-out classes for seniors on Current World Events.
Now living in Victoria, B.C., Dr. Ball works as an environmental consultant and is a popular speaker and columnist. He is a regular contributing writer to Country Guide and the author of numerous papers on climate change, bird migration, weather patterns and related issues. His book on environment, climate change and the fur trade is in print at McGill Queens University Press. Dr. Ball has also chaired provincial boards on water management, environmental issues and sustainable development.
Dr. Ball has been heavily involved in education at all levels, kindergarten to seniors. He has acted as a motivational speaker for teachers, served on committees for curriculum development, and is a board member of Agriculture in the Classroom (BC).

---

Annual Luncheon - October 23, 2003
Guest Speaker: Dr. Tim Ball
Current World Events

Honourable Ministers and friends - so many of you out there are my friends. I'm proud to say that. I don't think I've ever been so nervous before a talk. That's not true. I talked to a Grade 4 class. That's a challenge! I was talking about the weather during the fur trade. The teacher introduced me as a climatologist and immediately a hand went up at the back of the room. I said you've got a question. He said "Yeah, how many mountains have you climbed anyway?" What else would a climatologist do, right? Right to the point! Lovely.

I would like to dedicate my talk (some of you might have known him) to Alex Cameron, who used to come to my seniors classes. He always asked very, very good questions. And one day he really gave me a perspective on life which I think that we need to adopt nowadays. As Wordsworth said, "The world is too much with us." One day I said, "Alex, do your read the paper every day? " And he said, "You know, I never miss." I said, "How can you read every day and not get angry and upset like I do? " He said, "It's very simple. I read it a week late."

Now I don't know whether that's because Alex was Scottish. That reminds me of a letter to The Times of London where a Scotsman wrote, "Sir, I'm sick and tired or your constant jokes and innuendoes in reference to us Scots as being cheap, and if you do not cease forthwith I shall stop borrowing your newspaper!" So Alex taught me that the urgency of the news is very quickly dissipated with the one-week delay, and it's interesting to look at the newspaper and see whether it has any relevance any more.

I want to put that into the context of teaching seniors and growing old myself. It's an interesting thing that I haven't figured out yet. I haven't figured out yet how is it that as I get slower, time gets faster. I haven't figured that one out yet. And I haven't figured out yet how we're living longer but the parts still wear out at the same time. So there are a few challenging questions there. But, Alex gave me that perspective and I'd like to dedicate my talk to him.

I've lived in B.C. for seven years now and I've finally figured out the difference. In B.C. the climate is stable and the politics are wild; in Manitoba it's the other way around, and on the prairies generally it's the other way around. In B.C. - of course it harbors a lot of very unusual people. I don't know if any of you have heard of Salt Spring Island, but we visited there with friends and the friend said, "It has a population of 10,000. One of each."

The context of my talk today is to remind you that it was just seventy years ago today - which encompasses a lot of our lives - it was 70 years ago that Hitler came to power in Germany. Just 70 years ago! Think of what's happened in the world in that 70 years. The incredible changes, the incredible advances. And all of the crises that have arrived. And generally we're living in a better world, but not from the perspective that I want to talk about today. I'm not going to make any predictions for you. One of the things I've learned as a climatologist is that predictions are pretty risky. They're right up there with the economists in failures in predictions.

At the turn of the century 100 famous Americans were asked to make a prediction about the year 2050, and the only one that caught my eye, the only one that I think is going to be correct is Dennis Miller (he's a critical commentator on life) who said that he predicted that in the year 2050 there would be a lot of 70-year-old women with silly tattoos on their bodies. Again, I could reference the west coast as an example of that.

But one of the things that I've learnt in teaching and talking with students from K to 12 and through to the seniors was that the seniors were more interested in the future than the young people. The future didn't exist for the young people. It wasn't that they weren't aware they were going to have a future, but it wasn't a concern to them. So, as you get older, of course, you become more aware not only of your own mortality but of where the world has come from and where the world is going. Teaching the seniors classes, I learned an awful lot about where the world's come from and what they've gone through. One of the things that we're in danger of suffering from right now is what I refer to as the complacency of super-abundance. We've got generations that have never known what it is to do without. "Well the government will look after it; they'll provide all the answers." And so it's quite a different situation. Think of just 70 years ago and what I mentioned earlier.

One of the problems is that we create crises. That's what Alex was talking about with the newspaper. Every day there's some new crisis. And the problem is that we don't get enough information about things, and we tend to focus on issues. There's a marvelous story during the Greek power 700? B.C. - the Greek army was preparing to march and this fellow came up with his sword and shield, and he was limping. The other soldiers started to laugh. "They said, "What are you doing here?" He said, "I'm here to fight." They said, "Well, you can't fight. You've got a limp." He said, "I came to fight, not to run!" We've got to focus on the right issues. And it's extremely difficult for leaders to do that today.

Let me give you just an example, and I think it's very fitting that the 20th century ended and the 21st century began - incidentally in the wrong year, technically! - that there was so much pressure amongst the public and the media that we celebrated the new millennium in the wrong year, but nonetheless it happened. And we had an event called Y2K. Remember that? What ever happened to Y2K? I saw an article the other day - a fellow talking about Y3K. I guess he's getting ahead of the hysteria. He's going to make his money early. And there never was a problem. Y2K was a classic example of somebody speculating on a potential disaster and it's picked up by people. I'd like to have a TV program right now where we grab back all those people who wrote books that this could be the end of the world and say, "OK, what do you say for yourselves now?" Because what you find is that they're on to some other artificial crisis.

When I talk about keeping priorities straight, I've estimated that at the different levels of government - the federal government admitted spending a million dollars on it - and that's a billion without being GR factored (that's the gun registry factor). It's a modern multiple. I've estimated that between private industry and different levels of government, we've spent five million dollars on the Y2K issue.

On the first of January 2000, every reporter in the world was out there looking for a problem. They didn't find one! Not one! And, of course, when I spoke about it - that's because of all the money we spent. I said, "Hang on a minute. You also told us that the countries that would have the worst problem were going to be India and China because they had the oldest computer systems. Well I'm here to tell you that they didn't spend a nickel and they didn't have any problems. Not only that, but the only government that dealt with it effectively was the Chinese because they ordered all the executives of Chinese airlines to be airborne on New Year's Eve! Put yourself up there where the potential danger is.

Now, what's the significance of that? It's not that long ago that the provinces went to the federal government and said, We need $5M ($5B?) for health care, and the federal government said we haven't got it. Well could the Y2K money have been into the health care and the education system.

It's a combination of our complacency of super-abundance, and the crisis of dealing with issues, and the sky is falling, that makes it very difficult to put our priorities in the right place. But I think that people that have lived for a while will know what our right priorities are. I certainly found that with the seniors, because they've gone through privations, they've gone through the difficulties, and they know. Unfortunately, We've stopped listening. And that's something else that bothers me.

Now, I want to leave those ideas and turn to something quite different, because part of what caused the problem is that we have become a world in which, if you're not a specialist, you're an idiot. Let me illustrate that. You hear people say, "You don't have to be a rocket scientist." What does that mean? Well, we use the phrase, everyone talks about it, but what does it mean? Well, it implies that a rocket scientist is somehow smarter than the rest of us! I don't think so. I don't think it takes a lot of brains to put fuel in a rocket, put a match to it, and fire it off.

Let me put it in a different context. There's an old form of argument called reduction ad absurdum, that is reducing to the absurd. It doesn't work very well any more because we start at the absurd. Let me play that game with you. I like to say to people, "Ah, you don't have to be a farmer." It doesn't ring right, does it? "You've got to be a rocket scientist" - Ah, that works! But a farmer? Because our view of farmers is - ah "Dumb old people out there on the farm don't know very much."

You go and try a modern farm today where you're putting your chemicals on using a sprayer that's hooked into a satellite and a computer dish. You go look at the technology and the survival that they're doing with prices that remain constant from the thirties forward. Unbelievable. Now the difference is, of course, what's gone on in the world, and unfortunately I think it's gone on too much in universities, and that is that we've glorified a certain type of specialization. And to universities is if you're a specialist, you're a genius; if you're a generalist, you're a fool. But the farmer's got to be a successful generalist. All of us in our day to day life have got to be generalists, we've got to deal with all the information that's coming in and sort it out. A specialist can stay focused on one thing. But they don't see the rest of the world around them. It's not in any context.

That context for seniors is experience. And if we abandon onr thing in this world, especially Canada, it is experience. .... some people say once you retire, your brain shuts off. And I see it among the aboriginal people. I was on commission hearings in northern Manitoba and nobody spoke to all the seniors who had spoken, to the elders who had spoken. That collective wisdom of the elders is so important. We can talk about the problems in the north among the aboriginal people. They did not have a chief System. We imposed that on them. They had a system whereby they preferred to. be in groups of 400, and if the food supply got reduced they would move down to groups of 150, and if the food supply got worse, they would reduce to 60. And the smallest group that would go around would be 15.

Now if you have a chief , that system doesn't work. What groups does the chief go with? But you always had enough elders to split to the different groups. And that tradition of not doing anything.... I can remember a hearing when all of them could get up and speak extemporaneously for 20 or 30 minutes on a particular topic. Try that at public hearings today. Most of us have a very difficult time in just getting up and saying anything. It's not part of our evolvement in the political process. But the sad news is that the aboriginal people are not listening to the elders these days. And you see posters, "Listen to the elders." And they're losing that. They're losing that experience which we've effectively lost.

I want you to think about that and I want you to think about how we tend to look at the young and the old as liabilities. I think it's absolutely outrageous, as I've seen many, many young students graduating with massive debt that will cripple them for ten years . Now we don't have to make it easy for them to go to school; they should want to go. To have someone graduate and then not be able to afford a house or a car because they have to pay off their student loan. There are simple things we can do. We have forgivable loans, if you graduate you may get a break on your loan ... if you don't graduate you've got to pay it back. Give them an incentive. I've seen so many students graduate with those things. It's because we don't see education as an investment, we don't see the young as an investment, we see as a liability, a cost. That's our future. Everybody says that. But when you look at the realities, we don't follow through. And the same with the elderly, the seniors. We see them as a liability. All the discussion about the aging population and how are we going to cope with it! In Italy they are paying families $1,000 automatically to have a third child because of the concern of who is going to support this system.

Why don't we cap into the skills and values of the elderly, the experience that they can offer. Simple things - for example why can't all the juries we have be made up of seniors? The pay's a pittance; they're happy to get it. They've got the wisdom to deal with those problems. They've got the time. Why take somebody out of a job and give them minimum money to go and sit on a jury? That's where they could work as elders would in an aboriginal community. But, we see them as a liability and we've got to see them ... we should see their experience as a return on our investment and a return on their investment in their lives. One of the frustrations I've seen teaching seniors was that they were raised being told that when you get old your experience will be devalued, you'll be a liability. What are we going to do with them?

That's why I was so thrilled when Farrell Fleming started Creative Retirement here, and I helped as much as I could over the years with what he was doing. And as the length of the time that we are seniors increases, which of course is because of all the good things that are going on, we're going to have a bigger pool of the people to call on and a bigger pool of people who can help and support. And who gets along better than grandchildren and grandparents? Pass that middle man. Pass them all down from the grandparents and credit the connection (17.51) That is a part of what we have to look at.

Now, I just want to develop those ideas, and I make no apologies for being a generalist. Absolutely none. You know, the situation we're in right now needs a perspective, and the perspective starts with the second World War. That's why my opening comment was about Hitler and seventy years. But I'll tell you the war... we all got used to the government doing everything for us. We saw a little bit of a return to that with the War Measures Act when the FLQ crisis came. The government suddenly asserted all of its authority. But during the war, even in the United States, we surrendered most of our individual rights to the societal good. And we came out of the war - the government even issued rations for food (I lived in England for that), and we came out of that with the idea that the government looked after everything.

You'll remember that Winston Churchill was kicked out of power three months after the war ended. And Clement Atlee, Churchill said about Atlee - someone said "He's a very humble man" and Churchill said, "He's got lots to be humble about!" But Atlee brought in basically the social system that we enjoy and appreciate - public education, public health, and so on. And that spread throughout the world, certainly the western world, and most of the advanced nations of the world. And then about 1970 the bills started to come in. And people started to get into this: "Well, we've got too much government; it's costing us too much money. And California, the leader, had Proposition 13 of which they said, "We're not paying any more taxes; no more deficits," And suddenly the governments cut their funding. And then we had Mulroney, and we had Reagan, and we had Thatcher, and we started chopping the government - but they didn't know what to do once they chopped the government. They had no follow-up plan. So that's the situation right now.

We're in that situation where - what does government look after and what does private industry look after, and what do private citizens look after? - the self-reliance that all of you grew up with and were aware of, of looking after yourself. And the power .. In Britain just the other day passed a ruling because a fellow went and dived into a body of water and broke his neck. There was a sign there that said, "Do not swim here." And he sued the Council and said the Council should have done more to stop him swimming. And the judges said, "Sorry, you've got to accept some personal responsibility somewhere along the line."

And just to illustrate that idea, you see it - either one, the same person, one minute is saying, "There's too much government", too high taxes, we've got to cut back" and two hours later you're looking at a problem and saying, "Why doesn't the government do something about this?" The same contradictory statements from the same person. That's the stage that we're at now. One of the things that's going on with Creative Retirement, and I think it's a critical part of all this, and it's already been mentioned with the Volunteer Award which I applaud. Most of you grew up when most of the things in society were done by volunteers: the church ladies and the church groups, that you have to work volunteering. And then when government basically took over everything, volunteers disappeared. Now, we're looking for volunteers again with the government cutbacks. And I'm impressed with the way people are responding. Not as many as we'd like. Especially the younger people - they say, "Why should I do something for nothing? " They put a monetary value on everything - which we pay. And there's a simple way that we could deal with that. And I've suggested it on several occasions. What we could do is, if you're doing volunteer work for a registered organization, keep track of the hours. And then when it comes to Income Tax time get the number of hours, multiply by the minimum wage, and allow that as a tax deduction. Quite a simple idea. It doesn't cost the government anything, no money has to change hands, but the volunteers can benefit from what they've done. And it recognizes the value of a volunteer to society. But some people would argue that the government would lose some tax revenue from that, but then they would gain because they wouldn't have to pay for all those things out of government coffers for what the volunteers are doing. Who is now doing more volunteer work than the seniors because they have that knowledge and that tradition.

That's where we are today . We need some imagination. We need to sit down collectively and come up with really imaginative things. I always thought a subway would be good in Winnipeg. What better climate? And get you down to that new arena? And what about a magnetic train, an elevated magnetic train at 600 km/hour across the prairies. You could be in Regina faster than by Air Canada! Actually that's not such a great challenge any more.

And the last thing I want to comment about is - and I see this with the environmentalism movement. I'm very tired of people who come on television and it says "environmentalist". The fact is that title should be under every one of us; we're all environmentalists to a greater or lesser degree. Why should special interest groups steal that title? I've worked with farmers for thirty-five years across the prairies. I don't know of any group that are more aware and are doing more about environmental issues than the farmers. The same is also true about the fact that I'm getting tired of young people being told that the world is in bad shape because of what the old people did, because of what's gone on in the past! Well, I'm here to tell you, having studied it for thirty-five years, that the world's in better shape than it's ever been. People are living longer and in better health. That virtually all of the issues you hear about are just that. They're no different that the Y2K issue. Whatever happened to the ozone situation? It's the climate... and I could go on and on. We heard about frogs being deformed, and then they discovered there was a microbe attacking the eggs. Perfectly natural! But they didn't correct the misconception of the public. So I think we need to calm down. We need to take a perspective as Alex Cameron said. And look at the fact that it's a very good world.

To illustrate the bias, there was a report done and published last year - 100 scientists, nineteen of whom wrote the report, found that 54% (over half of the world) was in pristine condition. But you don't hear about that. What we do is we take the telescope, turn it around and focus on the warts and the minor problems - and we have them, there's no question there are problems. But we're not going to put them in perspective and we're not going to deal with them without the perspective, without the calm, and without the experience of the elders in our society.

And I thank you for being an elder. I thank you for being here. And I thank you for this opportunity to come and talk with you. Thank you.

---

2003 Luncheon ||| Ageless Heroes ||| Special Events