Full Comment - When the baby boomers die, where will we put all the bodies？

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00:02:37.420 But this issue of our earthly demise, as I said, it's not something that we like to talk about.

00:02:43.260 And when you're young, you don't think about it at all.

00:02:45.200 And then you become a parent, or at least many of us do.

00:02:48.760 And you have horrid dreams of what would happen if one of your children were to pass.

00:02:54.240 And then eventually you think about your parents.

00:02:57.200 And then, well, I'm guessing that eventually you think about yourself.

00:03:01.220 I'm not quite there yet, although I see it on the horizon.

00:03:04.900 Ian Sutton is someone who has been thinking about that for some time now.

00:03:09.440 And he's written a new book called The Big Exit.

00:03:12.580 What do we do with all the baby boomers once they're gone? 1.00

00:03:16.440 And long-time journalist Ian Sutton, formerly of the Toronto Star, joins me now from Nova Scotia.

00:03:21.300 Thanks for the time, Ian.

00:03:22.720 Oh, you're welcome.

00:03:23.760 I'm glad to be here.

00:03:25.140 Thanks a lot, Brian.

00:03:26.480 I want to start with this idea that we don't like thinking about or talking about our own demise.

00:03:34.560 But it happens to all of us sooner or later.

00:03:38.440 Yes, it actually does, obviously.

00:03:40.660 And I tried to emphasize in the book I didn't want it to be particularly morbid, but it's hard to avoid that.

00:03:49.040 You actually made it entertaining talking about death.

00:03:51.940 I was hoping I had.

00:03:53.900 That's what I was aiming for.

00:03:56.060 Because it is entertaining in a sort of fashion.

00:04:01.480 At least the subject is.

00:04:04.980 The subject of death, not death itself necessarily.

00:04:07.980 But I think the point I was trying to make is that we aren't really prepared, Canadians and Americans and the Brits,

00:04:19.920 and hardly anybody is really prepared for the numbers of baby boomers particularly, but even millennials and those.

00:04:27.840 And my generation, I come before baby boomers.

00:04:33.340 I was born in 1940.

00:04:34.620 I was going to say, you're in your early 80s.

00:04:41.100 My mother's 78.

00:04:42.120 She only counts as a baby boomer in her native Britain because it started earlier there.

00:04:46.960 The boys got home from the war a little earlier, let's say.

00:04:50.200 Yes, that's right.

00:04:50.980 Well, yeah.

00:04:51.400 So what drew your interest to this idea that we're going to have a lot of people die,

00:04:57.660 and then when we do, we have to think about a different way of dealing with all the bodies.

00:05:04.580 I mean, that's not something I ever would have thought of.

00:05:07.540 How did you come to think about this?

00:05:09.960 Well, that's a good question.

00:05:11.580 It was actually because of a funeral home way back in my hometown.

00:05:15.700 I was working in my 70s, and not in my hometown exactly, but as working radio actually in a small radio station in eastern Ontario.

00:05:26.300 And a funeral home in my hometown, which is Smith Falls, Ontario, had to discontinue what it was offering.

00:05:34.660 It was called an alkaline hydrolysis process, which I'd never heard of, but the provincial regulatory agency pulled the plug on it, and that got me interested.

00:05:46.180 So then I started looking into the whole subject, because there has to be some alternatives to burial and cremation,

00:05:55.960 because we're running out of space in cemeteries, particularly urban cemeteries.

00:06:04.660 And cremation has some environmental issues that are causing genuine concern.

00:06:10.460 So there needs to be several new alternatives, which there are, that need to be looked at by families,

00:06:18.580 but also by public policy makers and the politicians, for that matter.

00:06:28.000 So before we get into the new ways and why you think that the two main ones that we now deal with are problematic,

00:06:38.200 let's get back to talking about the discomfort of speaking about death.

00:06:42.960 You said you worked at a radio station in Smith Falls.

00:06:46.240 I worked for years in radio.

00:06:48.100 And there's always ads that try to make burial and planning for it and funeral planning sound as simple as possible.

00:06:59.700 They want to make sure that you're looking after your loved ones, because it is something that we all put off.

00:07:05.420 We don't want to think about our deaths.

00:07:07.940 We don't want to think about the deaths of other loved ones, but we have to.

00:07:12.360 And you read extensively about demographics and how this plays into it.

00:07:18.520 In your early chapters, you cite David Foote several times.

00:07:21.580 He was the author of a very famous book in the, I think, the early 90s, Boom, Bust, and Echo.

00:07:27.560 That's right.

00:07:28.080 And I thought, okay, I see where Ian's going here.

00:07:34.040 And I agree that demographically, we should have thought about this by now.

00:07:40.180 But then I also thought, well, we didn't think about planning for schools using demographics for baby boomers.

00:07:45.980 We didn't think about retirement homes or long-term care or retirement planning or just about anything else using demographics.

00:07:55.700 Why would we start with death?

00:07:58.080 Well, because there are so damn many baby boomers, for one thing. 1.00

00:08:03.860 And we don't think about demographics as far as, but your own parents are getting old.

00:08:12.000 My parents were getting old in their 70s and 80s and 90s.

00:08:15.960 And I'm getting old.

00:08:17.440 So, yeah, you're sort of forcibly to, forced to consider the demographics of our society.

00:08:26.580 And I'm interested in the demographics of the generations that are coming.

00:08:31.600 But they're not the ones that this book focuses on, millennials and Generation Z or Zed.

00:08:41.380 Well, I'm Generation X.

00:08:43.520 I'm the one that nobody talks about except ourselves.

00:08:46.380 Everyone else seems to have forgotten about us.

00:08:48.280 Oh, no, we haven't.

00:08:49.540 We're after the boomers, and so nobody cared. 1.00

00:08:55.320 That's what you'd like to think, I suppose.

00:08:57.360 But we keep you in mind.

00:09:00.720 So, what is the issue, then, with burial?

00:09:06.920 Well, we'll talk about cremation in a minute.

00:09:09.460 But what's the issue with burial?

00:09:13.960 What is the environmental implication?

00:09:17.120 Because that's kind of the angle you're coming at this from.

00:09:20.680 Well, yeah.

00:09:21.320 What's the environmental implication, impact, problem with burying people?

00:09:28.440 Well, yes, I come at that subject from a point of view of the impact on the environment, groundwater and surrounding cemeteries.

00:09:40.780 Because there are studies that have been done recently about leaching of chemicals into the ground and even human remains being leaked into the ground.

00:09:58.680 It's called leachate.

00:10:00.900 And there's some serious concerns about that.

00:10:05.320 The other concern with cemeteries is they're running out of space.

00:10:08.640 So, there aren't new cemeteries.

00:10:11.080 And I've talked to land use planners, and they say, we've actually missed the bolt on cemeteries.

00:10:19.740 We plan for everything else, schools and hospitals and parks and so on.

00:10:25.120 But we forget about cemeteries.

00:10:29.380 Eric Lees is a landscape architect in BC, although he works in Canada and the States.

00:10:37.420 And he does design cemeteries.

00:10:43.080 But he says cemeteries are the forgotten by everybody.

00:10:50.240 They just don't think it's not productive.

00:10:55.700 So, there hasn't been any planning.

00:10:59.400 And now cemeteries are, many of them are founding themselves underground.

00:11:08.720 And so, there are very serious concerns about burial and the costs of a plot.

00:11:16.940 So, okay, we can talk about the space issue in a moment.

00:11:22.540 But let's talk about the leachate that you were talking about.

00:11:26.340 Is it that due to our current burial techniques and bombing and everything else that we are filling ourselves with chemicals that are then problematic when we decompose in the ground?

00:11:38.980 And this is a very dark conversation you and I are having, Ian.

00:11:42.760 But is that the main issue?

00:11:46.680 That, you know, the embalming and the embalming fluids become problematic?

00:11:50.840 Or is it the actual human remains?

00:11:54.320 Well, yeah, definitely embalming fluids.

00:11:57.780 But the caskets are full of, in conventional caskets that are made of wood and they've got metal fittings, that all leaches into the soil.

00:12:14.460 And if a casket is varnished or whatever, that leaches into the soil as the casket disintegrates.

00:12:22.540 So, there's contaminants for both the bodies itself and the casket.

00:12:32.720 And that's why green burial is becoming more popular.

00:12:37.780 And I can fully understand that part.

00:12:41.940 But the old saying, and by the way, I didn't know this came from the book of Anglican Book of Common Prayer until I read your book.

00:12:48.240 The saying, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, it explains why I never heard it in the Catholic Mass before.

00:12:55.160 It's from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

00:12:57.500 But it is something that we all think.

00:13:01.300 Well, we came from the ground, we go back.

00:13:06.020 Is it possible that perhaps an answer is just taking a different look at how we do burial?

00:13:13.520 You know, you don't get the casket with the 17 coats of varnish on it and the gold bars along the side and the three inches of wood.

00:13:23.580 That's right.

00:13:24.020 You have a simpler burial.

00:13:26.220 Yes.

00:13:26.680 Well, that can be done.

00:13:28.220 And burials still are happening.

00:13:31.220 Conventional burials are still happening using materials that aren't contaminating the soil.

00:13:38.760 But it requires some awareness on behalf of the part of the funeral profession and individual families.

00:13:51.880 What materials do we use to bury mom or dad or grandpa or ourselves?

00:13:58.260 Or ourselves, yeah.

00:13:58.880 Or ourselves, yeah.

00:14:01.140 Now, green burial takes a different route.

00:14:05.600 It still requires land, of course, but certain materials are not permitted with green burial, like varnish and plastics or any materials such as that.

00:14:22.820 And the burials are only about 18 inches deep.

00:14:29.700 And the plot can be reused after a number of years.

00:14:37.000 The burial rituals in some faiths, like Judaism or Islam, you don't get a fancy casket, per se, if you're following the rules.

00:14:51.240 It's done very quickly.

00:14:52.360 It's very simply.

00:14:53.820 Is that, you know, these are ancient ways of doing it.

00:14:56.140 Is that perhaps part of the future?

00:14:59.760 It very well may.

00:15:00.920 Obviously, we may borrow some ideas from Islam and other faiths, other than Christian faiths.

00:15:12.160 Orthodox Jews do not permit cremation, and neither does Islam.

00:15:18.000 But they're gravitating towards green burial because there's, which can be a mix of conventional burial and green burial because it doesn't use these contaminants in the container that one is buried in and in the body itself.

00:15:40.280 Yeah.

00:15:41.340 Yeah, I'm just sorry I'm stuck on burial.

00:15:43.460 It just, it does seem to me like a circular economy.

00:15:46.000 You know, we decompose if we're put in the ground.

00:15:49.140 You mentioned with green burial, it's only 18 inches deep. 0.86

00:15:53.820 Why that instead of six feet, which is pretty standard for what we do now, and it's seen as a way to make sure the body doesn't come back up out of the ground.

00:16:04.920 Well, there's no reports of bodies coming back out of the ground, unless you're watching certain movies.

00:16:13.580 Well, I may have.

00:16:14.720 Well, I hope you didn't see that.

00:16:18.780 There are concerns, or there have been concerns that you can put at rest that animals don't get into the grave site when green burial 18 inches below the surface.

00:16:32.360 It's never happened.

00:16:35.360 It's never, it's never, it's never been reported anyway.

00:16:41.300 And it uses, it makes less use of the land.

00:16:45.240 And, and it, that site can be used again for new burials.

00:16:50.640 Whereas when they're six feet under, you can't really use the site again.

00:16:57.220 Although it is, burials and conventional methods are used again.

00:17:03.140 Uh, but that's regulated and it, uh, it's only permitted in some countries.

00:17:09.200 Well, I, I know that, uh, my family burial plots, um, uh, back in Glasgow that buried one on top of the other.

00:17:17.660 That normally a husband and wife, um, in that sort of thing, you mentioned that we're running out of land.

00:17:25.420 Um, I've walked the necropolis where, uh, my grandparents are buried.

00:17:29.940 Parts of it date back to the 1400s and there's still appears to be room.

00:17:36.020 So are we really running out?

00:17:38.040 If a place as small as Glasgow in Scotland can deal with this, are we in Canada, a place with infinite amount of land that we never touch?

00:17:48.760 Are we really running out of land?

00:17:51.460 Yes.

00:17:51.960 Well, that's a good point.

00:17:53.960 I don't know, uh, but Glasgow being a small community, but, uh.

00:17:58.740 It's about a million people in a small, uh, bit of land.

00:18:02.940 Um, it's actually larger urban centers that are having the problem with space.

00:18:09.780 Um, smaller, smaller towns do not.

00:18:13.240 And towns like I, where I came from, there isn't a problem with the cemeteries there.

00:18:18.440 Uh, they still have, and they acquire more land around them, but, but, um, that's not always possible.

00:18:25.760 If you're in the city of Toronto, uh, it's very hard to, uh, find land, adjacent land to a cemetery.

00:18:34.100 You have to, they, they're looking in York region to find more land for, for cemeteries, uh, to, uh, which has been under discussion for several years.

00:18:45.400 Um, simply because the, the, the major, the big cemeteries in Toronto are, are out, out of, out of land and, um, and they have none to, to, to sell.

00:18:59.440 So, um, there's just no, no other answers than, than finding, uh, new, new room for cemeteries.

00:19:10.680 With considering how much land space there is in Canada, you'd think it wouldn't be a problem, but it is because of zoning and, and as I, what I mentioned is planning hasn't, the planning professions haven't been, been, uh, uh, dealing with the issue.

00:19:29.160 I want to ask you about some of your proposals for different ways of, of dealing with this big exit, as your book is appropriately called.

00:19:37.860 Uh, but first I have to ask you about cremation because I thought that was one of the environmentally friendly ways of, of dealing with bodies, or at least I did till I read the big exit.

00:19:50.280 So can you explain to, to listeners what the, what's the environmental issue with, with cremation?

00:19:57.280 Where, where does that, uh, image that, that I had not jive with what you see?

00:20:04.460 Well, it's considered, um, it's considered definitely unfriendly, environmentally unfriendly, uh, because of the use of materials, uh, that the fuel that, that's used for burning the body and the emissions from the, from the stacks, for instance.

00:20:24.080 Um, now, some, some, some crematoriums, crematoria, uh, are, have proper, uh, uh, technology that prevents some emissions from their stacks, but they're still are happening in, even in, in, in the most modern cemeteries.

00:20:45.340 And, uh, and, uh, it's just, uh, I talked to a toxicologist and says, she says, she's American.

00:20:53.160 She says, many cemeteries don't have any, uh, crematory, crematories don't have any, uh, methods of limiting emissions.

00:21:04.600 Um, so, do they need stacks on them the way that our fossil burning power plants used to, to, to capture, um, debris for a better term, for, to capture, capture particulate?

00:21:20.380 Well, they're, they're, yes, they're using that more and more, but it isn't, uh, answering the question, um, and it's, it's, uh, crematoria are not permitted near, uh, schools or housing areas, residential areas, or libraries, because of the emissions from them, mainly from their stacks.

00:21:44.080 Again, we're having a dark conversation in these, these, these aren't things that I thought about before reading your book or talking to you today.

00:21:53.240 Uh, you, you know, you don't just generally in the course of everyday life, you don't think about the emissions from a crematorium and, uh, and where they have to be regulated.

00:22:05.720 We need to take a quick break, but when we come back, I do want to ask you about new ways.

00:22:10.240 Um, some interesting ones, some involving Elon Musk, perhaps, on getting rid of bodies in the future.

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00:23:04.060 Disposing of yourself once you die.

00:23:07.660 I keep having images of Monty Python and either bring out your dead or the cremation sketch.

00:23:15.040 As I've been thinking about this, reading Ian Sutton's book, The Big Exit, and considering what to do after we die.

00:23:23.500 As I said to you earlier, Ian, I thought cremation was the greener way.

00:23:28.300 I thought perhaps there were greener burials, as you've discussed.

00:23:32.100 You raise a bunch of different methods in your book.

00:23:38.660 One is sky burial.

00:23:40.740 One is going into outer space on SpaceX.

00:23:44.880 You talk about burial pods, reef burials.

00:23:48.860 The one that I'd never heard of, and I have to look at the word to make sure I pronounce it correctly,

00:23:55.220 Prometion?

00:23:56.020 Prometion, is that it?

00:23:58.300 Yes, Prometion.

00:23:59.900 Prometion.

00:24:00.580 See, brand new to me.

00:24:03.740 Well, it got a lot of publicity maybe 10 or 15 years ago.

00:24:10.500 It's still being developed.

00:24:12.040 Actually, the developer of the process died about four years ago, but her husband is carrying on the business.

00:24:19.760 But it's not really going anywhere, which is unfortunate.

00:24:23.540 It involved freezing the body and then crushing the remains, and there was a lot of skepticism about that method.

00:24:35.100 So the one you mentioned...

00:24:36.100 So freeze-dried, like 1970s instant coffee.

00:24:41.220 Yeah, freeze-dried.

00:24:41.420 Exactly.

00:24:41.840 But it really hasn't gone anywhere.

00:24:47.460 The ones you mentioned, sky burial and bodies in space, are sort of outlier methods of disposition that aren't really disposition.

00:25:00.600 There are such things as reef burials, but again, they're cremated remains, are placed in reefs in the ocean, which is another sort of outlier method.

00:25:19.360 But they're pretty costly.

00:25:22.720 That was just pulling up the cost here, because I remember looking at that, I was going through, it's about $7,500, you say?

00:25:30.640 I mean, you can easily find burials more than that, but you've also got to be close to water or be able to get to water.

00:25:38.780 Yeah, yeah, it's mainly appeals to people who are ocean lovers, and the deceased family member was an ocean lover or loved the sea, and that's very appropriate.

00:25:49.100 And the family can visit the site by boat.

00:25:52.360 Or diving.

00:25:53.800 And dive, and place memorials on the reef.

00:25:57.740 And so it's fairly, it has a sort of niche, it's a niche market.

00:26:06.040 I can definitely see the arguments against it from people who are committed to saving reefs, and that is that, well, you're going to disturb the reef, and a reef is a very gentle and at-risk ecosystem.

00:26:22.980 And so, if it became popular, I could see it becoming an environmental problem pretty quickly.

00:26:28.520 Wouldn't that be the case?

00:26:30.340 It hasn't become an environmental problem, apparently, from what I've read, and the people I've talked to, they are very careful not to disturb the environment, the ocean environment, and the creatures in the ocean.

00:26:47.360 And that's part of the conditions of doing reef burial.

00:26:55.080 So it's not a real concern about disturbing the environment.

00:27:01.480 So in this case, you would be cremated and then put out to sea?

00:27:04.840 Well, yes, these artificial reefs have pods, cement, concrete pods, that the body is located in. 0.91

00:27:19.120 And that's why they're called burial reefs.

00:27:23.140 They're artificial reefs, actually.

00:27:24.640 And there are thousands of them, mainly off the coasts of the United States, Florida, California.

00:27:35.540 I don't know if there's many in Canada.

00:27:38.100 I'm not aware of many in Canada.

00:27:41.360 But the water is a bit cooler off Yarmouth than off Tampa Bay.

00:27:44.940 Yes, it is.

00:27:48.080 I want to ask you again about promession.

00:27:51.160 So you're frozen and then crushed down to dust.

00:27:58.680 What happens to your remains then?

00:28:02.500 Well, the freeze-drying in liquid nitrogen, and then the body is reduced to natural basics.

00:28:17.820 And similar to cremation, the remaining portions of the body can be returned to the family.

00:28:32.640 But it's run into some controversies in Sweden, where it was first developed.

00:28:39.000 It was, it originally was tested with bodies of pigs, which are similar in their anatomy to humans.

00:28:52.820 And that seemed to work, but there's been a lot of controversy about bodies being stored for something like five years or 10 years, and not properly being disposed of.

00:29:10.660 And they, it caused a huge controversy in Sweden.

00:29:16.100 And so it was eventually, the Swedish tax agency announced that the method was not realistic.

00:29:23.060 So that's pretty well been abandoned, although the developer's husband, Susan Wayne Mossack's husband, is still trying to raise money.

00:29:36.060 It's a, it's an interesting one.

00:29:38.240 I'm not sure it's for me.

00:29:39.660 But as I said, you know, those ads that you and I would have heard on radio, you know, this is not sound as warm and cuddly as Hulse Playfair and McGarry.

00:29:49.960 No, no, no.

00:29:52.740 Not at all.

00:29:53.740 This is, this is a bit of a, a brutalist way of looking at it.

00:29:57.820 Talk to me about burial pods.

00:30:01.660 It's early stages for thinking about this, but this is for, instead of a sea lover, perhaps a tree lover.

00:30:12.400 Well, there is, there's an alternative to burial pods sinking in the ocean.

00:30:18.160 It's, but again, it's another method that, that hasn't really gone anywhere.

00:30:24.600 It's called, dubbed, the company is called Capsula Mundi, which means the world's capsule.

00:30:32.780 It was developed by two Italian artists, which displayed it, I think, about 10 years ago and got, got a lot of publicity.

00:30:40.500 Any, any new method that seems reasonable gets a lot of coverage from the media and then, then we find out it's, it isn't going anywhere.

00:30:50.900 Capsula Mundi is a, a biodegradable urn that's located in a, is a, with a seed in it that becomes a tree.

00:31:01.720 And this sounded kind of reasonable, reasonable to me, but again, it's gone nowhere.

00:31:07.660 And actually one of the developers says they're not ready for the market.

00:31:13.820 The only thing they produce are biodegradable urns, not, not burial, not a method of burial.

00:31:21.420 So it's a bit of a half idea.

00:31:22.820 It's not fully in sync yet.

00:31:25.020 Um, yeah, that's, that's, uh, an understatement, I think.

00:31:33.100 Okay.

00:31:33.600 So which, which of the alternative methods that you've looked at, we've discussed, uh, I think four of them now, let's talk about SpaceX quickly.

00:31:41.380 And then I'll, I'll ask you what I was going to ask, um, uh, SpaceX as we're recording today, and this is, uh, April 20th in the afternoon, uh, SpaceX, uh, sent a rocket up into, uh, the sky and it blew up over Texas.

00:31:54.560 So, I mean, that's one way to dispose of bodies, I suppose.

00:31:58.060 Thankfully, nobody was on that, but, um, is if you're trying to think of environmentally friendly ways, you couldn't be doing this one person at a time.

00:32:07.120 That would be incredible emissions.

00:32:09.420 You'd have to be sending up pods of, uh, of people at once and, and letting them loose into the, uh, uh, the, the external atmosphere, I suppose.

00:32:20.540 That's right.

00:32:21.260 Well, again, uh, we're, we're only talking about parts of bodies, like, uh, uh, bodies that have all been, already been cremated of being sent out, uh, little bits of them, uh, a portion of them to astro, uh, NASA astronauts, their bodies were sent or pieces of them.

00:32:42.280 That's hardly, that's hardly, we aren't going to expect bodies floating around in, in, uh, the, uh, uh, stratosphere.

00:32:51.780 Um, that's never going to happen.

00:32:54.120 You, uh, you seem to be focusing, focusing on the outlier methods.

00:32:58.840 So, I want to ask you, what are the methods that you prefer then?

00:33:03.100 Because, of course, the outliers are the ones that get people talking.

00:33:07.060 Yeah, they do.

00:33:07.720 And they get a lot of publicity, and then they, they don't go anywhere.

00:33:11.520 So, let's talk about the, the ones that are functional.

00:33:15.620 Well, there are some that are.

00:33:16.940 You think will, uh, catch the attention of, if need be, public policy experts.

00:33:22.660 Yeah, I would hope so.

00:33:24.320 Uh, but there, um, yes, there's two or three.

00:33:27.780 Um, one is, uh, one that got a lot, a lot of publicity in Washington State, for instance.

00:33:33.940 It's called composting, or natural organ reduction, where the body is placed in a, uh, uh, a, uh, container and with wood chips and, uh, and water and heated.

00:33:50.160 And it's reduced, over a period of time, to the basic, the basic, uh, elements of the human body.

00:33:57.180 And there's hardly anything left but, but the teeth and bones.

00:34:02.420 Um, that got a lot of publicity three or four years ago.

00:34:07.100 And now, I think three companies in Washington State are doing it.

00:34:11.560 Uh, one company in California is, and in Colorado.

00:34:15.880 So, but it hasn't really taken off beyond that.

00:34:19.840 And, um, and there are some who aren't, aren't very supportive of it, are very critical of the method.

00:34:26.680 Um, and it also costs like $700 per, $7,000 per body.

00:34:33.700 Um, or, or $500,000 to $700,000.

00:34:37.000 One company that's best known, they charge $7,000 to a disposable body.

00:34:41.620 Um, there's recently been a young man in the Netherlands who's developed a mycelium coffin.

00:34:51.040 Um, which he's marketing and is, he's, he's, um, has a large, uh, factory that's turning up mycelium coffins, which is basically a mushroom.

00:35:04.780 Um, and the body is placed in the coffin, casket, and a bed of, of, of, uh, uh, uh, uh, mushrooms.

00:35:12.620 And it, after a few weeks, it is pretty well gone, which is similar to natural organic result reduction or composting.

00:35:23.400 Um, but it's, it's, uh, it, it's not expensive.

00:35:28.180 I think it's about, uh, $1,200 Canadian.

00:35:32.140 Um, and then the, the, uh, the third that is taking, getting a lot of attention is called alkaline hydrolysis, which is dissolving the body in a mixture of lye and water and heat with heat.

00:35:50.080 Um, and, um, that's been, uh, become more popular in the United States.

00:35:57.540 Twenty-five states have approved it, have made it, have legalized it.

00:36:01.360 It was used by Reverend, uh, Desmond Tutu for his, when he was, when he passed away in December, I think, of 20, 2021.

00:36:11.740 His funeral was in January of last year, and, and he, he used that method because he was an, an environmental activist.

00:36:23.080 And, um, and, uh, and people who are involved in that, um, alternative method think this may, may, has created a lot more interest since, uh, Reverend Tutu's death.

00:36:36.800 Um, again, that involves, it's, it's, it's also the, the cremation society of America considers it just another form of cremation, actually, except no, no flame is involved.

00:36:50.100 Uh, the body is heated in, in lye and water, and, uh, you end up with, uh, uh, just the bones, which are crushed.

00:36:59.880 Uh, you have to remove any metallic parts, like, uh, titanium, uh, limbs, uh, or, um, um, um, anything metal, because it would damage the, uh, the, uh, grinding machine.

00:37:17.520 But it, it's, it's, it's starting to take off in the States.

00:37:21.240 It, in Canada, only three provinces, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and, and Quebec are using it, have approved it, um, and, and still only a couple of relatively small municipalities where it, where it's happening, which, which concerns me.

00:37:43.760 Because Canada seems to be falling behind, um, in this, in this, uh, challenge of finding local, uh, finding methods of disposition of bodies.

00:37:54.980 Uh, it's, it has very few green cemeteries compared to the United States, um, and, or, or the, or the UK.

00:38:04.440 And, um, um, these methods using alternative methods, um, are also not, not, uh, getting approval or not becoming any more popular in Canada for some reason.

00:38:18.160 I don't know.

00:38:19.400 Well, if they need approval, um, I think there's a couple of reasons why that may not be happening.

00:38:25.760 And you, you discuss them, perhaps not in the way I'm going to broach it, but you do discuss them in, in your book.

00:38:31.420 And that is that the rituals we have around burial are complex.

00:38:38.880 They're very emotional.

00:38:40.600 There's tradition, history, family ties to how and why we do things.

00:38:46.140 And then on, on top of that, you've got, um, I think in a couple of different chapters, you talk about the, uh, the power of the, the funeral home lobby of the, uh, the size and the strength of the industry.

00:39:00.140 And those two factors would be, would weigh heavy on politicians, wouldn't they?

00:39:05.320 Um, yes, but I, I don't think like there's the, there's the funeral giants like SCI, uh, corporation.

00:39:13.480 That's one of the huge, it's a multi-billion dollar company that owns funeral homes in, in Canada and North and United States and Britain.

00:39:24.120 Uh, but it, it, it isn't resistant.

00:39:26.480 It isn't, uh, outwardly resistant to some of these alternatives.

00:39:31.100 Um, there's no indication that they've undertaken any of them, but they haven't expressed any lack of interest in these alternatives.

00:39:40.120 Um, where the problem has risen largely is, uh, and I, I, I take it you're a Catholic.

00:39:48.140 Uh, okay, uh, I, I have many Catholic friends and, and many, many Catholics who are, there's one Franciscan nun who has spoken in favor of this alkaline hydrolysis method is very acceptable.

00:40:06.960 But Catholic bishops in, I think, three or four United, U.S. States have opposed it because they say it's, is disrespectful to the, to the remains, as opposed to cremation, which was approved by Pius the fourth, or Pius the sixth, sorry, back in 1960s.

00:40:26.320 Um, and that method was okay with, was okay with, uh, with the Catholic Church.

00:40:33.960 Uh, but the cremation society, cremation association regards this new method as, uh, as very similar as just cremation without, without burning, which.

00:40:49.080 So, so there's cultural reasons, religious reasons that might be holding some of this back.

00:40:56.740 Yes, there are, yes, um, cultural reasons.

00:41:00.320 That's, that's, that's for sure.

00:41:02.300 Um, most of the opposition has come from religion, um, not, most, most of it from the Catholic Church, the Catholic bishops, uh, although the Vatican had, I don't think has ruled on it, but, um, this, uh, Franciscan nun has spoken out, has written a report on it that's, that's supportive of the idea.

00:41:25.460 Um, so, uh, do you, do you think it'll take us a long time to, to change our, our views on this?

00:41:34.620 Uh, it's, it's taken a long time to get to the point where our burial rituals are what they are.

00:41:40.160 It's taken us millennia.

00:41:41.720 Um.

00:41:42.580 That's right.

00:41:43.320 So, uh, so my guess is it would take us a while to get around, uh, to, to reconsidering how we do things.

00:41:52.220 Well, we don't have time.

00:41:54.340 Uh, we better, we better hurry up and make some of these decisions.

00:41:58.880 Um, the, the funeral industry itself, although it's, it's open to most of these alternatives.

00:42:04.680 Um, but public, public policy makers, uh, need to consider it because with the, the millions of baby boomers in the States and, and in Canada, which are obviously smaller numbers in Canada, but they're still in the millions, 16 million over the next 40 or 50 or 60 years will be gone.

00:42:27.520 And where are their bodies?

00:42:29.900 Well, as, as Carlton Basmajian, as a university professor from Iowa state says, it's going to take a crisis or a catastrophe before people start paying attention.

00:42:43.540 Now, that seems par for the course from my decades of covering politics.

00:42:48.700 So I'm not shocked on that front.

00:42:52.500 Uh, no, but no, but there, there isn't time left because it's, you can't sweep it under the rug.

00:42:58.720 It's not like many other issues.

00:43:00.380 You can't just sweep it under the rug because you can't sweep those bodies under the rug or they're going to be.

00:43:06.840 A rather lumpy rug.

00:43:08.960 Yeah, exactly.

00:43:11.120 Ian, you've, uh, you've written a book that is, uh, informative, eyeopening, uh, challenging, and, um, you did succeed in your, your quest to make it humorous.

00:43:20.380 So I found myself laughing and chuckling.

00:43:23.240 So I tried not to, uh, let the morbid, uh, nature of the subject, uh, dominate the book.

00:43:31.560 Well, if people are interested in alternative ways and not just shooting a body up into space or cremated remains up into space, uh, via SpaceX, do check out the big exit by Ian Sutton.

00:43:44.320 Uh, it is available everywhere.

00:43:46.000 Books are sold.

00:43:46.740 Ian, thanks so much for the time today.

00:43:48.760 Okay, Brian, you're welcome.

00:43:51.040 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:43:53.980 My name's Brian Lilly, your host.

00:43:55.680 The episode was produced by Andre Pru, uh, theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:43:59.960 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

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Full Comment - May 15, 2023

When the baby boomers die, where will we put all the bodies？

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