President Biden's April 22/23 Climate Summit (also called "Leaders' Climate Summit"), and Noble Prize Summit -- OUR PLANET, OUR FUTURE April 26/27/28

I watched most of the first day of President Biden's April 22/23 Climate Summit, and participated in the Noble Prize Summit -- OUR PLANET, OUR FUTURE April 26/27/28. There were some tech glitches in both, but overall I'm glad I watched/attended. 

I respect U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry's visit to China before President Biden's Summit, and I appreciate Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping's attendance where he said "China has committed to move from carbon peak to carbon neutrality [by 2060] in a much shorter time span than what might take many developed countries, and that requires extraordinary hard efforts from China." Hyung-Jin Kim reported April 18 at apnews.com "'For a big country with 1.4 billion people, these goals are not easily delivered,' [Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng] said during an interview with The Associated Press in Beijing. 'Some countries are asking China to achieve the goals earlier. I am afraid this is not very realistic.'" Cooperation was noted in the April 17 "U.S.-China Joint Statement Addressing the Climate Crisis."

U. S. President Biden said at his Summit "the United States sets out on the road to cut greenhouse gases in half — in half by the end of this decade."

These statements are important because it has been widely reported the U. S. is the biggest historical emitter, and China is the current largest emitter on an annual basis. India is third, and Russia is fourth.

India's Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi said "[ . . . . ] we are among the few countries whose NDCs are 2-degree-Celsius compatible [ . . . . ] India’s per capita carbon footprint is 60% lower than the global average. It is because our lifestyle is still rooted in sustainable traditional practices."

President of Russia Vladimir Putin said, through a translator, "Compared to 1990, Russia reduced its greenhouse-gas emissions in a bigger volume than many other countries. These emissions were reduced by half - starting from 3.1 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent to 1.6 billion tonnes. This was the result of a drastic restructuring of the Russian industry and energy sector, conducted over the past 20 years. And as a result, today they constitute low-emission energy sources mentioned in this connection that make up 45 percent of our energy balance, including nuclear generation. [ . . . . ]  In connection to this I will note that in one of our regions - in Sakhalin Oblast - we are working on a carbon pricing and trading system in carbon units. When accomplished, it will result in carbon neutrality of this region already in 2025."

Other highlights of President Biden's Summit, regarding sincerity and delivery, were from Fiji's Attorney-General and Minister for Climate Change Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum (Fiji was not invited as the U. S. claimed the Summit was for the top emitters, but Sayed-Khaiyum was allowed to speak.), and 19-year-old climate activist Xiye Bastida, Mexican-Chilean climate activist, member of the indigenous Mexican Otomi-Toltec Nation, and a lead organizer of Fridays for Future with Greta Thunberg.  

Sayed-Khaiyum said "In 2016, Fiji was struck by the strongest cyclone to ever make landfall in the Southern Hemisphere, Cyclone Winston. It wiped out one third of the value of our GDP in 36 hours [ . . . . ] We are relocating communities, with six already safely on higher ground. More than 40 others must be moved. Our Climate Relocation and Displaced Peoples Trust is designed to harness multilateral support to bring security to these communities [ . . . . ] [E]ven if the global economy became carbon-neutral tomorrow, we would still have to reckon with a range of water-related crises, from super-storms, to the risings seas, to the changing weather patterns that kill-off crops and steal livelihoods of our farmers [ . . . . ]  Today it is Pacific communities on the frontlines of this emergency. Tomorrow it will be New York City, Houston, and Miami. This crisis is shared, as must be our solutions [ . . . . ] "

Xiye Bastida also spoke at the Noble Prize Summit -- OUR PLANET, OUR FUTURE April 26/27/28. At President Biden's Climate Summit she said "You need to accept that the era of fossil fuels is over [ . . . .] [M]ost importantly, all of these solutions must be implemented with the voices of frontline black, brown, indigenous communities as leaders and decision-makers. You will often tell us, again and again, that we are being unrealistic and unreasonable, but who is being unrealistic and unreasonable with unambitious, nonbold, so-called solutions? You are the ones creating and finding loopholes in your own legislation, resolutions, policies and agreements.You are the naive ones if you think we can survive this crisis in the current way of living.  You are the pessimists if you don’t believe we have what it takes to change the world."  Regarding her last point, I recall Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research that was a partner of Noble Prize Summit -- OUR PLANET, OUR FUTURE April 26/27/28) said May 4th, 2018 in a video no longer available, "It's all about agency, about who could turn this crisis into a solution. [ . . . .] The CEO of Shell once told me 'The climate problem is real but it is completely intractable. You can not solve it. So, let's get rich quick before the world ends, huh?'"

The award for best humor in President Biden's Climate Summit goes to U. K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson: "[ . . . . ] it’s vital for all of us to show that this is not all about some expensive politically correct green act of ‘bunny hugging’ or however you want to put it. Nothing wrong with ‘bunny hugging’ but you know what I’m driving at."

The award for biggest disappointment goes to Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison which is expected given Australia's fossil fuel resources, and ironic since 2019-2020 fires there killed or destroyed habitat for nearly three billion animals. Prime Minister Scott Morrison stuck "to the country’s 2030 target of a 26%-28% cut compared with 2005 levels" as reported by The Guardian's Katharine Murphy and Adam Morton on April 22. 

At day 1 of the Noble Prize Summit -- OUR PLANET, OUR FUTURE April 26/27/28, Jason Box, who I worked alongside at Playa in Oregon, said Greenland is losing "10,000 cubic meters of ice per second. So is Greenland lost? Evidently, it is" [Climate.nasa.gov and nature.com note losing Greenland's ice would mean about 23 feet of sea level rise in a thousand years unless, of course, the process speeds much faster than predicted, which seems to be the trend, and ice melt from the bigger problem of Antarctica is added.]. Johan Rockstrom, a top climate scientist at my 2020 post "Updated Best Practices for Climate Crisis," said we are in a "climate emergency" but added "Window for a safe landing is barely open [ . . . . ] I am an optimist due to cooperation [ . . . . ] We can act with speed at scale.'  U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry said "Six banks just pledged 4.16 trillion dollars into a renewable economy [ . . . .] 2050 net zero [carbon emissions] is the goal." 

In "Closing Remarks on Day One of [President Biden's] Summit on Climate" Kerry added "As I mentioned earlier, even if we get to net 50 – net zero by 2050, [ . . . ] we still have to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. A lot of people don’t focus on that. And that means we need the innovative technologies to do that, or to be able to know that we can store it and – or turn it into something. We haven’t discovered that yet." His last point sounds eerily similar to Abby Rabinowitz and Amanda Simson's December 10, 2017 Wired article "The Dirty Secret of the World’s Plan to Avert Climate Disaster" in which they noted, "without emissions cuts, global temperatures are projected to rise by 4°C by the end of the century. Many scientists are reluctant to make predictions, but the apocalyptic litany of what a 4°C world could hold includes widespread drought, famine, climate refugees by the millions, civilization-threatening warfare, and a sea level rise that would permanently drown much of New York, Miami, Mumbai, Shanghai, and other coastal cities. [par] But here’s where things get weird. The UN report envisions 116 scenarios in which global temperatures are prevented from rising more than 2°C. In 101 of them, that goal is accomplished by [geoengineering also known as] sucking massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—a concept called 'negative emissions'—chiefly via [ . . . . ] “bioenergy with carbon capture and storage” [also known as . . . . ] BECCS. And in these scenarios to prevent planetary disaster, this would need to happen by midcentury, or even as soon as 2020. Like a pharmaceutical warning label, one footnote warned that such 'methods may carry side effects and long-term consequences on a global scale.'" This plan seems like building and deploying a huge net at the bottom of a cliff after many have jumped. You must be smart, fast, and able to do this at scale. 

Day 2 of the Noble Prize Summit -- OUR PLANET, OUR FUTURE April 26/27/28, it was great to see actor Bill Murray and actress Frances McDormand in the Greek tragedy Oedipus which I taught for about 25 years. Three points: 1) Many scholars believe the character Oedipus’ tragic flaw is hubris (pride) similar to some modern political leaders; 2) Tiresias' character as the “intuitive introvert” is spoken about in an interview with Carl Jung about how this is a real personality type based on Jung's patients, not just fiction; 3) Two ways to explore Oedipus’ emotional/intuitive blindness vs Tiresias physical blindness/reality vision are to ask students to place Oedipus, Creon, Jocasta, and Tiresias on a scale from strong intuitive power to weak intuitive power and 2) ask student groups to imagine what people a thousand years from now will say about us (if humans survive the climate emergency). Students have  always enjoyed these exercises. The film versions I used were here and here. 

Participants enjoyed an interview with with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet. Here is his prayer at the end of a Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1989.

Day 3 of the Noble Prize Summit -- OUR PLANET, OUR FUTURE April 26/27/28 I attended "Roots of Change: Empathy as a Collective Responsibility" hosted by DICCE, GenZGirlGang, and ProjectLets. The session began with a guided meditation followed by "speed friending" to create  a sense of community among the approximately 90 participants.  Next, the excellent moderators Phoebe Omonira, Lyne Odhiambo, and Zoe Jenkins, were supported by speakers Julie Fratantoni, Peggy Mason, Joy Buolamwini, Ed Diener, Gary A. Hoover, and Natalia Kanem. Gary A. Hoover, Executive Director of the Murphy Institute and Professor of Economics at Tulane University, spoke about the problem of looking only at data without meeting those affected. Julie Fratantoni, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Center for BrainHealth, part of the University of Texas at Dallas, suggested activist work requires "healthy boundaries, self-care," teaching the right vocabulary, mindfulness, and showing how empathy can be taught by modeling it for students and others. I could write more about this session, but it is best to let the moderators and speakers show you at a future conference. 

Documenting a Vanishing Pacific Northwest Ecosystem and Culture

April 30, 2021 Update -- Yesterday apnews.com reported "California officials will again truck ['more than 16.8 million'] young salmon raised at fish hatcheries in the state’s Central Valley agricultural region to the Pacific Ocean because projected river conditions show that the waterways the fish use to travel downstream will be historically low and warm due to increasing drought."

I'm grateful to MoonPath Press in Oregon for publishing my new book documenting vanishing Pacific Northwest salmon culture. Previously I posted about this from a historical perspective, and this book continues that theme, except it is based on people I met, places I fished, and climate emergency we are experiencing.

The book's MoonPath Press Website reports "a Metro Vancouver BC study noted unless carbon emissions are quickly reduced, 'Vancouver [BC] would be warmer than present-day San Diego by the 2050s' as reported [by Larry Pynn] in the Vancouver Sun in 2017 ." What will that mean for salmon and salmon people?

It mentions my 2016 “Letter” at The Columbian daily newspaper in Vancouver, Washington: "[In 2015] the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife trucked salmon up low rivers to spawn, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife trucked salmon out of Central Oregon due to warm waters, and California trucked smolts to the ocean."  Similarly, "an email from Bob Lackey, Professor of Fisheries at Oregon State University, [noted] 'In a 100 years wild salmon runs south of Canada will be reduced to remnant runs.'"

In response, my book reflects some of the water magic before it may be gone. I wrote about my fishing buddy Slim Bracken, other fishermen, fellow whale watching and charter fishing captains, my time fishing out of Depoe Bay, Oregon and Washington people, "The Wolf in Estacada’s Safari Club," "Wild Trout," "80-year-old sturgeon/cruising river bank" -- in short, many scenic gifts of the Pacific Northwest for 10,000 years.  

The back cover of my previous book Hawk on Wire noted "the INDC (Intended Nationally Determined Contributions) agreed to in Paris in 2016 of 3.5° C (6.3° F) over pre-industrial levels are insanely irresponsible to present and future generations of all species." As I wrote before, "Amanda Erickson noted in the Washington Post October 11, 2018, 'Few countries are meeting the Paris climate goals.'" and, according to Datawrapper and  Raftery et.al, 2017, a "4 C + WORLD" means "Deadly heatwaves every summer, hundreds of drowned cities, devastation of the majority of eco-systems, more tipping points are crossed, leading to intensified warming." More people are aware of this than ever before, as shown in U. S. President Biden's April 22/23 Climate Summit, but each year the CO2 numbers keep rising.  

The book's MoonPath Press Website notes my "Manifesto from Poet on a Dying Planet" which includes a Robert Bly quote "It’s a poet’s job to defend nature.” My activism and poetry are part of that.

The MoonPath site mentions Robert Wilson’s essay “Will the end of the world be on the final exam?” in the book Teaching Climate Change in the Humanities. One of Wilson’s “teaching assistants [led] a discussion section about climate change: ‘My soul is crushed’ she began. ‘I thought we were going to have this fabulous conversation about framing arguments, the role of science, finding allies and figuring out how to effectively communicate [climate science to the public]. The class – and I don’t just mean two or three vocal people – basically came up with this: all of Bangladesh could die, the temperature could increase six degrees, tons of species could die, and people in other places could suffer from drinking water and crop shortages, and we wouldn’t care at all [ . . . . ]’” This means in addition to making fossil fuel companies pay for mitigation and adaptation, and colleges/universities and pension funds divest, we must also find ways to increase capacity for caring in developed nations before many more human and nonhuman inhabitants globally will be forced to migrate and/or die early and awfully.

Oregon author Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion) wrote a 1993 letter to Allen Ginsberg: "Ancient Advice Left in cave by Wise French Caveman: 'When Bigbad Shit come, no run scream hide. Try paint picture of it on wall. Drum to it. Sing to it. Dance to it. This give you handle on it.' So Twister is my try."

Endorsements for my book are below.

"Mindful of environmental degradation, Scott T. Starbuck's poetry offers those needed songs of redemption, rising from his love of forests, water, and fish. He has composed some of the finest fishing poems I've ever read-vivid, pulsing, and honest-with humble, understated humor and insight expressing great wisdom. Exploring the dynamics between the shared and owned, poor and rich, young and old, ghosts and the living, Between River & Street mediates our divisive, troubled times. Like the mythological Raven of the Northwest, Starbuck is a 'Flamekeeper, ' and his poetry a bright beacon for the wild and sacred."-Henry Hughes, Oregon Book Award-winning poet and author of Back Seat with Fish

"Trust a contemplative fisherman of Northwest rivers to give us a wise poem collection like Between River & Street. Scott T. Starbuck brings the tender respectful eye of the naturalist; the nudge of the environmentalist; the long thoughts of the tribe; the brush of a painter sending exquisite lines of ink down paper. He also has an ear for a good story, scattering characters throughout-not the 'suits' in the street who'd never know 'what the salmon said' or what the ancients knew, but people met or recounted at riverbanks, little bookstores, out-of-the-way cafes, bars. My favorite is 'the woman behind the counter, ' or is it Crazy Lucy and her roller rink in the barn or Maynard who loved his cow more than most? You'll read this book more than once and find your own."-Florence Sage, author of Nevertheless: Poems from the Gray Area and The Man Who Whistled, The Woman Who Wished: A Polish-Canadian Story

"With Between River & Street, Scott T. Starbuck is deep listener, ace observer, shape-shifting storyteller. He's historian, philosopher, climatologist, ecologist, lover, rememberer. He's salmon, and salmon fisherman. Those who know Northwest rivers will want to pass this passionate book to friends. Those streetwise to our environmentally-challenged world will catch these smart, tough poems in order to release as seems right. Like the late Oregon poet, William Stafford, Starbuck writes of place with integrity, authenticity, humanity."-Ken Waldman, author of The Writing Party and Leftovers and Gravy

"Scott T. Starbuck's poems are Oregon poems-humble yet heartfelt, all the way to the bone. Like filets of rosy salmon flesh, cooked on bonfire coals; these words lift easily from the carcass of felt sense. Between River & Street is a collection of mostly short but never simple poems, reflecting a life lived with daily presence and purpose. Starbuck's poems attend to fish and to fish stream-the moss and fern, salal and spruce, wet stone and rivulet-but also the hominids, on the shores and in the quik marts and cafés of classic hometowns from Astoria south to the Siskiyou. These pages honor Oregon existence: good folk whose unfettered reverence plays potent role in the annual cycle of lives lived out in place. Readers, be ready; pull on your waders, step into the stream. Starbuck casts words like caddis flies; these poems hit the heart, like a trout hits the hook, lies briefly in careful hand, caught-and released into gratitude and requisite grief. Travel down the coast and up tributaries of the inland soul. These are poems of a citizen who is denizen, engaged in each damp day, and witness to those moments when clouds part and sun shimmers with 'shadow on the once-magic-waters.'"-Nancy Cook, author of Siltwater, a collection of essays. She teaches writing in Astoria, where for eight years she also served as the editor of RAIN Magazine.

"If you're not concerned about the imminent collapse of the ecosystems of earth, then you should be. Such is the overarching theme of Scott T. Starbuck's Between River & Street. Awareness is a call to action, to give up our citified car culture and rediscover our original home. About that home, Scott celebrates the natural world of fish (especially fish), birds, animals, and the manifold flora of his local ground, the Columbia Gorge and Pacific Coast. Scott's poems tell of some people unaware of that world, while other encounters yield insight on how we really live on earth. Scott's brief poems carry hope for the human future."-Bill Siverly, author of Nightfall, co-editor of Windfall: A Journal of Poetry of Place

Biden, Putin, Xi Jinping, and Obama Should Fish Together Before Biden’s April 22/23 Climate Summit

April 20, 2021 Update -- According to dw.com in Germany, President of Russia Vladimir Putin will attend U. S. President Joe Biden's April 22/23 Climate Summit. Sustraitstimes.com in Singapore reported Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping will also attend.

It was widely reported U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry has been in China trying to collaborate on what 34 nations, Scientific American, the United Nations Environment Programme, and Rep. Earl Blumenauer  (D-ORE.) called a "Climate Emergency."  With six days before U. S. President Biden's April 22/23 Climate Summit of possibly "40 World Leaders," invitations to President of Russia Vladimir Putin and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping resulted in a maybe from Putin, and unknown from Xi Jinping. The Climate Summit, according to whitehouse.gov, will be "live streamed for public viewing" with a live video to be posted by clicking here.

Vladimir Putin is a serious angler who fished with U.S. President George W. Bush, Xi Jinping enjoys eating fish, and former U.S. President Barack Obama likes to fish, so why not ask them to fish together?  The fate of island nations, Arctic tribes, and eventually all of us, could depend on it. I understand my plan may get as much traction as when I suggested to "require by international law fossil fuel emissions in all countries be immediately colored purple [nearly white purple to increase albedo] the same way rotten egg scent is added to natural gas to alert homeowners to danger of leaks," but stranger things have happened.

I know some good fishing spots.

In a related matter, congratulations to Jeff Goodell, author of The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World and contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine, for one of the best climate articles I have read in months, "‘This is it. If we don’t amp up, we’re goners’: the last chance to confront the climate crisis?" in today's issue of The Guardian.