I attended a seminar in Emergency Management for Business a couple of weeks ago. This is something I would have considered unrelated to my life as a private citizen and as a business owner. But the looming threat of a pandemic and my desire to provide a safe place for clients and staff prompted me to attend.
You read this blog because you are interested in personal growth and health. As you improve your life and happiness with a healthy disciplined lifestyle and with quality safe products, you discover that your health and well being rests greatly on your community, your government and now to geo-political occurrences in the rest of the world. Natural disasters caused by geophysical occurrences like volcanoes and tsunamis have remained constant in frequency since being recorded from the year 1900. But the disasters caused by change in climate have been increasing at a steep rate since the 1980’s
These include the aforementioned pandemics and the much discussed and much denied global warming. There are current natural disasters that are related to global warming like drought, forest fires, floods (yes drought and floods), dust storms. No longer are these disasters only happening in third world countries as there is a drought in the western USA and drought is the cause of dust storms in Australia.
Gwynne Dyer, one of my favourite journalists, discusses the news on global warming with “Hadley Climate Centre in England, one of the world's most respected sources of climate predictions, recently released a study showing that even rapid cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions, turning the current one percent annual growth into a three percent annual decline within a few years, would still warm the world by 1.7 degrees Celsius by 2050.
That is dangerously near the two degrees C rise in average global temperature which is the point of no return. Further warming would trigger natural processes that release vast quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from melting permafrost and warming oceans. These processes, once begun, are unstoppable, and could make the planet four, five or six degrees hotter than the present by the end of the century.”
http://www.gwynnedyer.com/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20US%20Climate%20and%20Pragmatism.txt
The United Nations warns that the changes in climate can impact our ability to function effectively in democracies as our procrastination to act will force us to compromise our rights in urgent circumstances. Find more at http://blog.taragana.com/n/tackle-climate-change-or-imperil-democracy-168759/
The World Health Organization warns that with the increase in weather caused disaster increase comes the increase in illness from heat stress to infectious diseases to pandemics. To read the whole report go to http://www.environmental-expert.com/resultEachArticle.aspx?cid=33596&codi=62107&level=0§ion=5
Gwynne also warns us of the ineffectiveness of our democratic governments as in “Get upset about it if you like, but this is how the system works. Obama cannot ignore the fact that climate change denial is still stronger in the United States than anywhere else, and that much of the US Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of the fossil fuel industries. He’s going as far as he can, for now. He can’t go any farther even if what he’s doing is not good enough, which it isn’t.” http://www.gwynnedyer.com/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20Climate%20Change%20-%20Two%20Cheers.txt
So what should we do? My advice is to take a two pronged approach. Do what we can as constitutients in a democratic country and as citizens of the world. But also make some personal preparations for foreseeable disasters. Advisable as our communities are preparing for flu pandemics and we have just seen a few violent storms and mild hurricanes affect some of our neighbourhood communities outside of the Greater Toronto Area.
Susan Gilbert, Emergency Management Specialist, advises that we train staff and ready our business operations for emergencies and disasters. She also advises we make personal and business emergency management plans for plausible disaster that may come our way.
We are devising a plan to mitigate the effects of the soon to come second wave of H1N1 (Swine) Flu. As a spa owner, I am preparing my employees, who come into very close contact with the public, with some changes in their behavior.
The steps are advisable for all of us to follow include are hand washing after physical contact with each client both retail and service mandatory. Our front desk holds a large container of natural hand sanitizer for both employees and clients after any transactions.
We already wear face masks to prevent the transmission of day to day germs. Staff is to stay home if they feel under the weather. Workaholics are now being discouraged. We have devised a support plan that will allow staff to ask for help in getting the necessities of food and medicine as many of our staff are single and far from their homeland.
With the help of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda, we have increased our immunity with holistic advice like keeping our nasal passages moist with saline water and oil and the consumption of immune herbs like ashwaganda, astralagus and ginseng.
I just watched a documentary on PBS "Unnatural Causes" http://www.pbs.org/unnaturalcauses/ which demonstrated how the eco-political environment created inequalities that created different levels of stress to different segments of society. Those who suffered the most from stress were less in control of their lives. Whether your stress is ultimately caused by the macro environment or not- the stress lowered immunity.
You read this blog because you are interested in personal growth and health. As you improve your life and happiness with a healthy disciplined lifestyle and with quality safe products, you discover that your health and well being rests greatly on your community, your government and now to geo-political occurrences in the rest of the world. Natural disasters caused by geophysical occurrences like volcanoes and tsunamis have remained constant in frequency since being recorded from the year 1900. But the disasters caused by change in climate have been increasing at a steep rate since the 1980’s
These include the aforementioned pandemics and the much discussed and much denied global warming. There are current natural disasters that are related to global warming like drought, forest fires, floods (yes drought and floods), dust storms. No longer are these disasters only happening in third world countries as there is a drought in the western USA and drought is the cause of dust storms in Australia.
Gwynne Dyer, one of my favourite journalists, discusses the news on global warming with “Hadley Climate Centre in England, one of the world's most respected sources of climate predictions, recently released a study showing that even rapid cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions, turning the current one percent annual growth into a three percent annual decline within a few years, would still warm the world by 1.7 degrees Celsius by 2050.
That is dangerously near the two degrees C rise in average global temperature which is the point of no return. Further warming would trigger natural processes that release vast quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from melting permafrost and warming oceans. These processes, once begun, are unstoppable, and could make the planet four, five or six degrees hotter than the present by the end of the century.”
http://www.gwynnedyer.com/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20US%20Climate%20and%20Pragmatism.txt
The United Nations warns that the changes in climate can impact our ability to function effectively in democracies as our procrastination to act will force us to compromise our rights in urgent circumstances. Find more at http://blog.taragana.com/n/tackle-climate-change-or-imperil-democracy-168759/
The World Health Organization warns that with the increase in weather caused disaster increase comes the increase in illness from heat stress to infectious diseases to pandemics. To read the whole report go to http://www.environmental-expert.com/resultEachArticle.aspx?cid=33596&codi=62107&level=0§ion=5
Gwynne also warns us of the ineffectiveness of our democratic governments as in “Get upset about it if you like, but this is how the system works. Obama cannot ignore the fact that climate change denial is still stronger in the United States than anywhere else, and that much of the US Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of the fossil fuel industries. He’s going as far as he can, for now. He can’t go any farther even if what he’s doing is not good enough, which it isn’t.” http://www.gwynnedyer.com/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20Climate%20Change%20-%20Two%20Cheers.txt
So what should we do? My advice is to take a two pronged approach. Do what we can as constitutients in a democratic country and as citizens of the world. But also make some personal preparations for foreseeable disasters. Advisable as our communities are preparing for flu pandemics and we have just seen a few violent storms and mild hurricanes affect some of our neighbourhood communities outside of the Greater Toronto Area.
Susan Gilbert, Emergency Management Specialist, advises that we train staff and ready our business operations for emergencies and disasters. She also advises we make personal and business emergency management plans for plausible disaster that may come our way.
We are devising a plan to mitigate the effects of the soon to come second wave of H1N1 (Swine) Flu. As a spa owner, I am preparing my employees, who come into very close contact with the public, with some changes in their behavior.
The steps are advisable for all of us to follow include are hand washing after physical contact with each client both retail and service mandatory. Our front desk holds a large container of natural hand sanitizer for both employees and clients after any transactions.
We already wear face masks to prevent the transmission of day to day germs. Staff is to stay home if they feel under the weather. Workaholics are now being discouraged. We have devised a support plan that will allow staff to ask for help in getting the necessities of food and medicine as many of our staff are single and far from their homeland.
With the help of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda, we have increased our immunity with holistic advice like keeping our nasal passages moist with saline water and oil and the consumption of immune herbs like ashwaganda, astralagus and ginseng.
I just watched a documentary on PBS "Unnatural Causes" http://www.pbs.org/unnaturalcauses/ which demonstrated how the eco-political environment created inequalities that created different levels of stress to different segments of society. Those who suffered the most from stress were less in control of their lives. Whether your stress is ultimately caused by the macro environment or not- the stress lowered immunity.
So while there is much change and turmoil in the world and is increasing its impact on our lives, I recommend that we practice mediation or Chi Kung to lessen our emotion's impact on our health and our response.
Therefore, while we may not be able to control what our political leaders, our economic leaders or our neighbours may do. we can practice some new healthy habits as stated above. We can tailor our own emergency management plans (disaster plan sounds fateful) from what we know about ourselves and the probable emergency situations.
We can bring more harmony and peace of mind into our lives by further simplifying our lives and nurture our love for our world and those in it.
Namaste.
