Listed Annoyances of Now

Things that have annoyed me in the last twenty-or-so minutes:

1. Bright neon signs declaring that a place of business is open when said place of business is clearly NOT open. What the hell? Shop owners, are you just lazy? You are actively spending money and burning the ozone layer to convey a message which is entirely inaccurate…in fact, the opposite of accurate. Why? Do you think that no one walks the street at night (during the time of day when your sign is, ironically, most visible, and your store is always closed)? Well, people do walk the streets at night. Nice people. People that matter. So stop blatantly lying right to our faces and turn off your sign at night.

2. “Adaptation is not an option,” a poster campaign produced by the Vancouver Aquarium featuring pictures of arctic animals ‘adapted’ to a warming climate via photoshop (e.g. a polar bear wearing zebra stripes, a Nemo-coloured beluga, that sort of thing.) Pretty the pictures may be, but the message ‘adaptation is not an option,’ is actually the opposite of true. Adaptation is always an option…and in fact, in terms of arctic climate change, adaptation is the only option. As the world changes (as it constantly does and always has), species will adapt according to survival of the fittest. Some species will certainly die out in the process, and other species will flourish, adapt and take their place.

Polar bears always have and always will adapt according to evolutionary principles (survival of the fittest and all that). And if the polar bears are going to live, that’s pretty much their only chance. I don’t think anyone has any functional theories on reversing the pre-existing effects of climate change…so unless you yourself have a plan to prevent Hudson Bay from melting this winter, there’s not a lot we can do.

On a related note, wouldn’t it be totally awesome if the Vancouver Aquarium had polar bears? If I were a busybody philanthropist, I would totally hit up that cause.