Thursday, July 1, 2021

Climate Culling and Healing

July 18, 2021 Update: Thank you to the 127 visitors from Myanmar (Burma) yesterday. The “Translate” tool in the lower right frame offers these languages: 

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Imagine Earth reaches 5 C above 1850 preindustrial baseline "within 80 years or so at our current trajectory" as noted by Dave Borlace if we don’t cut enough carbon. Before that, with a 4 C world, Earth’s population is reduced “below one billion people” as predicted by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), quoted by Paddy Manning July 9, 2011 in The Sydney Morning Herald. One third of the global human population migrates to survive. Next, imagine large-scale negative carbon emissions such as direct air capture (DAC) don’t work, large-scale aerial geoengineering remains technically impossible over 1 C, and targeted country-scale or part-of-country aerial geoengineering in the Global North are not options because India and Pakistan, which both have nuclear weapons, simply say “No.” due to how they may be affected. Think this sounds like a Hollywood disaster film? It gets worse. Ordinary citizens lose trust in governments to provide water security, food security, employment, and protection. In the U. S. the National Guard fails to report to work to distribute food and water, and maintain order. How will Earth’s citizens, many of whom in privileged countries never wanted to be global citizens, decide who survives?  

If things get near that bad, I propose a 100-question exam designed by 3rd graders in Bangladesh, Nigeria, Haiti, Yemen, The Philippines, Tuvalu, Kiribati, and The Marshall Islands tuned by leading academics so only one eighth of the global population can pass. Everyone else dies. This would be far more equitable than “politics of the armed lifeboat” described by Amitav Ghosh in The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. I chuckled when I read a September 8, 2016, article about that book in The Guardian by Kavitha Rao noting “So chilling was Ghosh that the local paper reported – only half in jest – that a disturbed audience had to be soothed by a subsequent talk by Buddhist monks.” The point is Jonathan Swift cared deeply about starvation in Ireland in 1729 so he wrote “A Modest Proposal” suggesting Irish babies be raised for meat and gloves as a way to draw attention from wealthy London investors. Here is a short film adaptation of Swift's “A Modest Proposal” made by THE NORWEGIAN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY in 2013.

Similarly, Edward Abbey, who wrote about preservation of wilderness, wild creatures, and biodiversity gave a 1985 speech at the University of Montana “One Life at a Time, Please” to cattle-raising people suggesting “we open a hunting season on range cattle” to eliminate livestock damage. He added “If there’s anyone still present whom I’ve failed to insult, I apologize.” I quoted Abbey on this blog, and imagined his ghost speaking about the climate issue in my book Hawk on Wire.

Thanks to Olympic Climate Action's "Hot Off the Wire" for posting a June 23, 2021 Phys.org article by Marlowe Hood with Patrick Galey and Kelly MacNamara, "Crushing climate impacts to hit sooner than feared: draft UN report."

In this post I am arguing for nonviolent creativity like Ghosh, Swift, and Abbey in response to our climate emergency to act fast globally. I deeply respect musicians on the Titanic because they had no other options. We do. 

Regarding the "healing" in my title, I enjoyed U. K. Psychotherapist Rosemary Randall's Six short videos on Coping with the Climate Crisis. She focused on emotional heath, and has been working with climate-stressed patients 15 years. It's a great series to share with students, professors, or anyone stressed about climate inaction and/or delay. Watching the videos, I was reminded of Pink Floyd's song "On the Turning Away," because of how she said "turning away," and encouraged us to get on with the necessary work of personal and global healing without ignoring our feelings, or escaping into illusion of "control" by endlessly telling disaster scenarios. Pink Floyd's song reminded me of another fitting song, "Learning to Fly."  Teaching creative writing for about 30 years, I had many students who, while young, dreamed of flying.  It is time to recall those dreams. Of course, since I mentioned those two songs, I must include "High Hopes." Virgil wrote "In the lives of mortals, the best days are the first to flee." Now, this applies as much to biodiversity loss as it does to unrestrained magic of childhood. In other words, for human existence to be more than a technicality, our animal brothers and sisters are needed.

In a related matter, I have long used writing and wilderness to balance, heal, and cause constructive trouble. Ray Bradbury said “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” Long ago he gave me written permission to use his story "A Sound of Thunder" in my classes without any copyright restrictions.

Here is my short fiction "Crew," published by the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) in their “Quick Fictions” episode in honor of EcoCast’s first birthday July, 2021. The icon to play the stories is at the bottom of that page. I'm grateful to join authors from England, India, Turkey, Germany, Poland, Spain, Pakistan, Australia, and Nigeria writing about "ecological issues, climate breakdown, or mass extinction."

As I wrote at the end of my previous post, "['Crew']was inspired by friend and longtime Tradewinds captain of the Debbie Lynn, Bill Wagner, formerly of Depoe Bay, Oregon [ . . . . who] told me a background story about his near-death at sea [ . . . ]"  Anyone who has water, food, air, and real human and nonhuman community has much to be grateful for. Circling back to my agreement with Rosemary Randall's work, I recall the end of Voltaire's novel Candide, when Candide says "let us cultivate our garden," and the end of Joni Mitchell's song "Woodstock" (with lyrics):

Billion year old carbon

Caught in the devil's bargain

We are golden

And we've got to get ourselves

Back to the garden

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