Wallace-Wells' article noted, "John Kerry, the American climate envoy, has acknowledged, perhaps inadvertently, that the cost of climate damage in the global south is already in the 'trillions' — a number he cited not to illustrate the need for support but to explain why nations in the global north wouldn’t pay. (He added that he refused to feel guilty about it.)" Yes, it may be in the ''trillions," but Kerry could have been born in the global south, and possibly will be next time. I'm serious. See this 2-min video Reincarnation in the Tibetan Tradition.
My question to King Charles III regarding his absence from COP27 is "Seriously?"
António Guterres, please consider hiking with David Wallace-Wells, John Kerry, and King Charles III to help them along.
Since I mentioned Carl Sagan and the word "cosmos" in my two previous posts, I am including the image that went into outer space on Pioneer 10 and 11 plaques that he gave me permission to put on an organic T-shirt with the words "Endangered Species." I was told he wore the T-shirt to a conference, and it seems timely with COP27 starting Nov. 6, 2022. I am grateful to receive permission to use it again.
“They
are our cousins. Perhaps, the ones who come to my--my heroes, are the macaques,
who are also known as rhesus monkeys. And when [ . . . ] participating in a
horrendous experiment in the 1960s, in which they were offered food as a reward
for shocking their fellows, for shocking other macaques, an enormous number of
them, some 60 percent, in every experiment refused to do so. They preferred to
go hungry rather than to inflict pain on their fellows. In one course of the
experiment, 87 percent of the macaques said no to the food rather than inflict
pain. And, in some cases, this was after two weeks of not being given any food.”
– Ann Druyan quoted at studsterkel.wfmt.com where Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan
discuss their best-selling book Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Ballantine
Books, 1993)
Why don’t we see
underwater
dolphin cities
or ape castles in
forests?
Because they're
smarter.
Why didn’t rhesus
monkeys
cave immediately like
humans
in the Milgram
Experiment?
Because they're
kinder.
As we journeyed across,
what, exactly, did we gain
and lose?
#
I used Carl Sagan's great 3 minute 26 second video Pale Blue Dot as a creative writing prompt in courses I taught many years. It was "Considering this video, what is your advice for people on the Pale Blue Dot?"
Big Oil could have transitioned away from fossil fuels, and chose not to do this. Like HAL, the men wanted to believe they were doing good, given the complexity of global politics, even though in their deepest hearts, some knew it was a lie. Deactivating Big Oil now will likely be no less dramatic than Deactivation of Hal 9000.
These are Aristotelian scholars in Brecht's play Life of Galileo refusing to look through a telescope.
They are Freud, according to Judith Herman, so worried about his career, he hid patients' abuse.
They are Meletus against Socrates in 399 B. C., and McCarthy against Richard Wright in 1953.
It was widely-reported Big Oil had the "largest delegation" at COP26 strange as hanging their logos on Chartres Cathedral.
There is a thick fog of ignorance in the room, and almost no time to open a window.
Congrats to Denmark for being the first country to "Offer 'Loss and Damage' Climate Funding" according to Valerie Volcovici at Reuters, republished at U.S. News & World Report Sept. 20, 2022.
The climate situation has become like a doctor telling a patient: "You may get sick if you don't change your energy diet." followed by "You will get sick." followed by this summer's news, "In worst-case scenarios, you may not survive."
Western red cedars, my favorite local trees, are dying in many areas likely from drought caused by climate change, according to scientists. Nathan Gilles of Columbia Insight wrote at The Register-Guard [in Eugene, OR] September 1, 2022, "To many Indigenous peoples, who used the trees for houses, clothes, weapons, tools, medicines, art and canoes, they’re known as the Tree of Life. [par break] They’ve been recorded to live for over 1,500 years. [par break] But these trees are now dying." He added, "The dieback is widespread, and the cause appears to be climate change. What’s more, we now know that the dieback could be the beginning of the end for the species in many parts of the Pacific Northwest."
When I was a writer-in-residence at Artsmith on Orcas Island, a trail plaque explained western red cedars slowly migrated north after the last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago. Serena Renner wrote at TheTyee.ca September 15, 2020, "While plant fossils show that a tree like red cedar has been growing around the northwest for as long as 50 million years, the species has only become widespread in the past 4,000 to 5,000 years — long after humans arrived in the region, says Richard Hebda, a paleontologist and adjunct associate professor at the University of Victoria. [par break] Coast Salish Oral History tells that before there was red cedar, there was a generous man. Whenever his people were in need, the man gave food and clothing. Recognizing the man’s good work, the Creator declared that when he died, a red cedar would grow where he was buried and continue to provide for the people. Red cedar did just that, co-evolving with First Nations and helping them build sophisticated societies of unparalleled wealth, abundance and ingenuity. [par break] Prior to cedar, canoes and homes on the coast were often built of Sitka spruce. But once abundant, mother cedar became the tree of choice at least 3,000 years ago. 'Without the environment we live in, we are not who we are,' Hebda says."
Given that, it's a great time for nonviolent creative action to protect who and what you love.
In 2020 I posted
a brief chart about impacts of “What 2C, 3 C, 4 C, and 5 C Mean,” but the above video is much more detailed. It
is my recent favorite climate video, and was made by writer/advisor (for The
Maldives, Government of the Netherlands, “and vulnerable countries”) Mark Lynas
and host Luke Kemp. It was posted Feb 4, 2022, and as of today 9/12/2022 has 25,010 views, but it deserves over two million views.
This post is taking longer than
usual because my wife is scolding me to take out the garbage, and do other
chores. “Uh, I’m helping save all human and nonhuman life on Earth if that’s
okay with you,” I said. She said it wasn’t okay.
What Can Be
Done:
In the above video
Mark Lynas argued human behavior change is not a realistic plan to respond to the climate issue so we must focus on
scalable technology solutions. He may be right, but what if scalable technology
solutions are not possible, given fast rate of change, before human societies fall apart? Interviewer
Luke Kemp responded to the issue of “stratospheric aerosol injection” which I noted in a previous post, according to Corey Gabriel, Executive Director
of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Masters of Advanced Studies in Climate
Science and Policy, is not currently possible at large scale: “Professor
Gabriel said large-scale geoengineering is a challenge because the least
expensive method of using sulphate particulates is not currently possible over
1 C above the 1850 baseline when they fall from the sky, and we are at or over
1 C now [1.2 C as of September 2022]. Therefore, he believes more research is
needed, but [he said] small-scale geoengineering will do more
good than harm.” Kemp noted in the above
video, ”I think that it’s likely to happen in uncoordinated unilateral fashion.
[ . . . ] This is what the modeling almost never actually accounts for. They
always kind of assume this coordinated [ . . . ] best-case scenario in terms of
governance. I think if it does happen, it’s probably going to happen in a much
more ramshackle fashion. And I can’t see us doing it if it stays at 1.5 but once
things get to 2 degrees or 3 degrees [C above 1850 preindustrial baseline] if
the impacts you [ Mark Lynas . . . ] laid out here do come to fruition, I think
it only takes one country to spend a couple billion. They’re going to.”
I agree with Kemp
as I wrote in my aforementioned post, “Scientist and Forbes writer James Conca noted September 10, 2019, '[ . . .
. ] The Chinese have specifically said they will do exactly this [small-scale solar
geoengineering] if things get too out of hand with global warming. And they
have a robust research program already underway.'"
So what
next?I was impressed with inventor and MacArthur
Fellow Saul Griffith’s idea in another Forbes article, “Climate Change Ponzi Scheme” April 6, 2009. Griffith wrote, “You know those
adults who don't let you stay out late, don't let you see certain movies, don't
let you vote--and don't install enough solar cells and wind turbines? Well, you
hold something in your hands that scares the willies out of them: their own
self-interested future. Next time they refuse you a reasonable request, like a
beer on your 18th birthday, the keys to the Prius, or a regulated carbon
market, on the grounds that it's irresponsible, simply reply: 'Then I won't
cover your health care costs and you can rot in your rusty wheelchair with no
dentures to speak of.'"
My favorite climate video I recently watched was How Earth’s Geography Will Change With Climate Change [in a 4 C World]with about two million views in the past two years. I recall a poem I read years ago where a man responded to environmental crisis by singing on a mountain. It seems there is more than one way to sing.
In addition to flood, fire, drought news this week, WION Climate Tracker made an August 23, 2022 video noting Germany's five alpine glaciers will disappear in the next 15 years according to Glaciologist Christoph Mayer of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. He also noted, "The majority of the glaciers in the Alps will disappear in the next 55 years." As many reported, Germany's Rhine River had serious drought/transportation issues this summer.
The recent idea to divert Mississippi River water (over objections of people who live there) to the Colorado River System reminds me of the
bizarre no-music ballet scene in the film Amadeus. It seems more vital to greatly reduce GHGs
(greenhouse gas emissions) instead, even if fossil fuel companies resist. I recall
a story about a German noble who set all the clocks in his city-state to his own eccentric time – ignoring everyone else on Earth. Regarding climate reality and
unreality, this is what Big Oil has been doing for too long.
Below, my 2014 poem “Global Warming Serpent,” from the book Industrial Oz, is in Satan's voice. I’m not saying Big Oil is Satan. I’m saying Big Oil has been used by energies
that, for insanely selfish reasons, have so far chosen to harm instead of help.
I'm grateful my last blog post (on water issues) had over a thousand views.
I’m grateful to editors Adeline Johns-Putra of Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China, and Kelly
Sultzbach of University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, for a positive review of this blog in The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Climate (March 23, 2022): “Starbuck also writes about his dreams
(one describes koalas with human voices asking for a seat at the United Nations!) [ . . . ]" They noted, “If idiosyncratic,
the blog’s homespun nature offers, to its audience, an effective,
comprehensive, and multifaceted picture of the personal impact of diminished
fish stocks in American rivers.”
I’m grateful to Pamela S. Ellis for asking me to
provide a short review of Climate Connection: American Student Voices,
featuring the “twenty-three top climate student essay finalists in the 2022
National Climate Essay Student Competition” along with “inaugural works of the
2019, 2020, and 2021 National Climate Student Essayists included [to] demonstrate
a climate urgency for a response trajectory synchronizing individual concerns,
present-day humanity, and biodiversity survival realities.”
It seems no one told these water managers from California to Germany to Afghanistan about the importance of distraction, sugarcoating, and when politically needed, bold-faced lies.
In a more serious tone, the desperation reminds me of when William Shatner, Star Trek's original Captain James Kirk, in 2015 wanted a water pipeline from Seattle to Lake Mead since California had a widely-reported year of above-ground-water left. March 20 of that year, LA Times reporter Tony Barboza, citing NASA Jet Propulsion senior water scientist and UC Irvine professor Jay Famiglietti (also in the above video), noted, "decades worth of groundwater remain [unless rate of use increases]." July 28, 2022, Famiglietti, now a hydrologist who directs the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, was quoted in a phys.org article by Elizabeth Weise, "The speed at which the severity of the drought increases, the pace of groundwater depletion, the pace at which ice is melting, these are all things that are changing much faster than we can keep up with." In the same article, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said, "We need to have greater imaginations when thinking about the hazards. We need to be thinking about climate change everywhere all the time in the context of all the infrastructure we have, both existing and especially new."
This is like a comment by British climate scientist and University of Manchester professor Kevin Anderson in a recent video, "Even if it's more expensive, let's put in the infrastructure that can both deal with 1.5 [C over 1850 preindustrial level] but also deal with, say what looks like, 3 degrees centigrade of warming in our local environment [over 1850 preindustrial level]." This idea fits UK meteorologist John Hammond's comments linked in my previous post regarding what became a UK record-breaking heatwave of 104.4 degrees Fahrenheit (40.2 degrees Celsius) at London’s Heathrow Airport, "[ . . . ] potentially railway lines becoming buckled, and lots of infrastructure disruption. Am I going to get to work? Should I be getting to work?"
The same idea of preparing for 3 degrees centigrade of warming could be useful for businesses, nonprofits, hospitals, colleges and universities, homeowners, and concerned citizens, given fast rate of icemelt in the Arctic and Antarctic which may soon leave darker surfaces, and therefore accelerated warming, with or without much feared, but controversial, potential huge methane releases.
I'm grateful Lower Columbia College in Longview, Washington accepted my Clay Salmon Poem in their art collection. I recently donated other pieces to Washington State University, Vancouver Library, and Columbia Basin Fish & Wildlife Library, a program of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.
Severe fires and droughts have been reported in many areas, and July 2022 flooding in Kentucky as well as recent floods in China, Japan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, South Korea, The Philippines, Australia, South Africa, Houston, Detroit, St. Louis, Yellowstone National Park, and Death Valley.
August 1, 2022, Damian Carrington, Environment Editor at The Guardian, reported in his article, "Climate endgame: risk of human extinction ‘dangerously underexplored'," "The current trend of greenhouse gas emissions would cause a rise of 2.1-3.9C by 2100. But if existing pledges of action are fully implemented, the range would be 1.9-3C. Achieving all long-term targets set to date would mean 1.7-2.6C of warming." He quoted scientists recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences who he said claimed "Even these optimistic assumptions lead to dangerous Earth system trajectories.” Carrington added, "Temperatures more than 2C above pre-industrial levels had not been sustained on Earth for more than 2.6m years, they said, far before the rise of human civilisation, which had risen in a 'narrow climatic envelope' over the past 10,000 years." November 13, 2021 in my post "COP26 Report from Tim Crosland, Extinction Rebellion spokesperson and Director of Plan B.Earth," Crosland responded to Sky News reporter Adam Boulton, "What about taking everyone along from the Marshall Islands, and from Tuvalu, countries that are going to disappear if that 1.5 limit is exceeded? People in Bangladesh. Whole regions of the world are going to be uninhabitable. How are those people feeling right now when they see it ['emissions rising by 13.7 % by 2030' in the deal] going in the opposite direction [of scientific report to limit warming to 1.5 C by 'reducing carbon emissions 45% by 2030'] ? And how would you be feeling?"
In the above YouTube, Professor Stefan Rahmstorf of Postsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research explains jet stream weather changes as "hot dry sunny weather lingers for longer, maybe for weeks on end, therefore causing drought problems, wildfire problems, and also the rainfall systems are moving more slowly, and that was one of the main problems with that flooding in West Germany and Belgium/Holland one year ago [ . . . . ]" He says the "weakening jet stream" also explains "extreme heat in parts of the United States, in Europe, and also in China, and the worst case nightmare of climate scientists is really that there is a [ . . . ] simultaneous harvest failure in the major bread basket region of the Northern Hemisphere including United States, Europe, Russia, Ukraine which could cause a hunger crisis."
Climate Adam ("Doctor in climate science from Oxford."), with his typical blend of superb humor/reliable info, gives an excellent answer for a question many students had, "What is the point of climate action if other countries lag?" In my May 19, 2014 blog post it was the same question of Charles Koch. I wrote, "According to Bill Gates’ interview in Rolling Stone, Charles Koch says the problem is bigger than the USA can solve [so why try?]." I added, "When these billionaires discuss climate change at 'dinner,' you know there is a problem."
My favorite recent climate article is "‘Soon it [Earth] will be unrecognisable’: total climate meltdown cannot be stopped, says expert" about a new book Hothouse Earth by Bill McGuire,"emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London." The 7/30/2022 article by Robin McKie at The Guardian quotes McGuire, "I know a lot of people working in climate science who say one thing in public but a very different thing in private. In confidence, they are all much more scared about the future we face, but they won’t admit that in public. I call this climate appeasement and I believe it only makes things worse. The world needs to know how bad things are going to get before we can hope to start to tackle the crisis." McGuire added, "Who would have thought that a village on the edge of London would be almost wiped out by wildfires in 2022." McKie wrote, "McGuire finished writing Hothouse Earth at the end of 2021. He includes many of the record high temperatures that had just afflicted the planet, including extremes that had struck the UK. A few months after he completed his manuscript, and as publication loomed, he found that many of those records had already been broken."
For many years, my mantra has been "rate of change, rate of change, rate of change," but now it is "water security, food security, community-building." Thank you to the recent 241 visitors from France, 123 from United Kingdom, and 78 from Germany.
dried salmon, raw apple, hand-picked blackberries, a few honest words circling wood fire followed by silent glow for people who crave real food.
Everyone here knows our dreams tell us we put too many limits on ourselves to see, feel, think, do.
Maybe there’s a song so ancient it makes all stop to listen who we really are, and could be, in this time of dread
as fires rage, villages flood, hurricanes scream, millions of people and other animals flee for better places.
If someone doesn’t sing it soon, most will die.
I'm grateful to people all over the world who participated in "Hosting & Facilitating a Climate Café " offered by Climate Psychology Alliance July 12, 2022. I heard many honest words from those bringing their best gifts to the table, or in process of doing so. Regarding the "song" idea in my above poem, I like "Brave" by Sara Bareilles. This is not an easy thing to do in meetings or conversations, especially about climate issues. In a related matter, a big congratulations to my former landlord on his 102nd birthday! I recall he said about my first book Industrial Oz published in 2015, "Scott, if you read these poems, you're going to jail."
On a recent business trip to San Francisco, of course I wrote a climate poem:
San Francisco Climate
Clues, June 21, 2022
In Hotel Caza painting, room 418, orange octopus tentacles reach up thousands of feet under Golden Gate Bridge
like Nature making COVID-19,
BA.4, BA.5, Atlantic and Gulf Coast hurricanes, fires, heatwaves, ice melt, sea rise, dead corals disrupting lives and livelihoods.
Later, in a nearby coffee shop two men lament how Paradise, California, will never be paradise again in our lifetimes.
A nude woman walks to me on a hot sidewalk above Fisherman’s Wharf as news reports 92 degrees, and Santa Rosa 104.
I worry about her young soles and paws of various dogs scampering behind oblivious owners.
My Uber driver says about the woman, “Yes, that happens here when people are so drugged they don’t know what they’re doing.”
Outside delicious Beloved Café a man quietly sings to himself so no one else can hear the words.
Across town, a homeless man grasps a screwdriver like a dagger until I see it’s for protection.
Today Matt McGrath reported at bbc.com in "Climate change: Bonn talks end in acrimony over compensation""'The climate emergency is fast becoming a catastrophe,' said Conrod Hunte, lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS)." The article continues, "At last year's COP26 conference in Glasgow, island states and developing countries agreed to prioritise cuts to carbon emissions on the back of promises that richer nations would finally set up a compensation process this year. [ . . . . ] But despite two weeks of discussions here in Bonn, they have been unable to get the issue of a funding facility on the agenda for the COP27 conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt in November."
Spring term 2022, in addition to a Poetry Seminar, I taught five climate-themed sections of Critical Thinking and Intermediate Composition, and one of the students' favorite videos was David Schechter/Verify Road Trip's DOCUMENTARY: Climate skeptic examines what scientists know and how they know itin which "the skeptic, 38-year-old Justin Fain, is a 'politically conservative' honest and curious Texas roofer with a great sense of humor [ . . . ]." One of the most disturbing videos was Climate scientists reveal their fears for the future complementing students' fears of having children.
I told my students to look for circles, threads, and connections. Katharine Hayhoe was also featured in Schechter/Verify Road Trip's above DOCUMENTARY . . . . The video Climate scientists reveal their fears for the future, like Nguyen's/VICE News video above, was focused mostly on Australia.
It’s
like we’re on Spaceship Earth and our
top navigators warn we will
soon collide with asteroid belt unless we
change course. .00000005
percent get to vote.
Bill McKibben wrote it best in his Substack publication The Crucial Years, "At 5 a.m. this morning [April 4, 2022] we were supposed to get the report from Working Group 3 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It didn’t come—because delegates were still arguing. And the arguments were over the two most fundamental questions of the climate era: must we get off fossil fuels, and can we do it in a way that’s fair to the developing world?"
Regarding the IPCC Summary's main points, section C.1 notes, “[ . . . . ] Without a strengthening of policies beyond those that are implemented by the end of 2020, GHG [Greenhouse Gas] emissions are projected to rise beyond 2025, leading to a median global warming of 3.2 [2.2 to 3.5] °C by 2100 [FOOTNOTE39, 40] (medium confidence). (Table SPM.1, Figure SPM.4, Figure SPM.5) {3.3, 3.4}”
A "3.2 °C" temperature rise is a problem for two main reasons. First, greenhouse gas emissions are, and have been, moving in the upward direction as Tim Crosland recently noted. Second, 3.2 °C means, according to Gregor Aisch at Datawrapper, “High risk of reversing of carbon cycle triggering runaway warming spiral. Droughts and famine for billions of people, leading to chaos and wars."
In similar bad news, Section C.3 of the IPCC Summary notes, “All global modelled pathways [ . . . ] that limit warming to 2°C (>67%) involve rapid and deep and in most cases immediate GHG [Greenhouse Gas] emission reductions in all sectors [ . . . . ]”
You can be sure items agreed upon by 195 nations are likely, due to political interference sometimes referred to as “compromise,” to be like Sir Alec Issigonis' quote, "A camel is a horse designed by committee." In 2019 Writer Dahr Jamail spoke about a pattern of severe IPCC underestimations.
Billions of humans and nonhumans have relied on IPCC-informed world leaders to respond in meaningful ways at 26 COPS (Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), and these leaders have repeatedly “dropped the ball” as football fans in the U. S. would say. I wish I could write there is hope on the horizon. Poetic honesty demands three other responses to consider: 1) water security; 2) food security; and 3) community building.
March 20-22, 2022 Update -- Fiona Harvey at The Guardian reported "Heatwaves at both of Earth’s poles alarm climate scientists." The article noted "Antarctic areas reach 40C [70 degrees Fahrenheit] above normal at same time as north pole regions hit 30C [50 degrees Fahrenheit] above usual levels" and "Startling heatwaves at both of Earth’s poles are causing alarm among climate scientists, who have warned the 'unprecedented' events could signal faster and abrupt climate breakdown." Alarmist-averse Michael Mann was quoted, "[. . . ] extreme events are exceeding model projections." The article added, "James Hansen, former NASA chief scientist and one of the first to warn governments of global heating more than three decades ago, told the Guardian the heating of the poles was 'concerning' [ . . . ]" Harvey wrote climate "scientists warned that the events unfolding were 'historic' [ . . . ] and 'dramatic'."
In a related matter, possible collapse of Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier ice shelf within five years has been widely reported.
Thank you to 426 visitors the past three days. Here is a poem I wrote this morning walking my dog about disconnect between climate reality and many people living as if everything's okay.
Law of Unintended Consequences
You collected
dog poop in small bag, tossed
it over fence near garbage.
Your
wife’s howl meant she thought it was
a package from Amazon
like
buying her a new Camry and flying
to Hawaii for her birthday
or hiking
in Columbia Gorge wildflowers
instead of nonviolently
bringing
down oil companies that at this
rate will kill her someday
I'm grateful to Windfall, A Journal of Poetry of Place for publishing this poem in the Spring 2022 issue along with work by noted writers Amy Miller, Steve Dieffenbacher, Mark Thalman, Bette Lynch Husted, Penelope Scambly Schott, Marilyn Johnston, Gary Lark, Carlos Reyes, Barbara Drake, Clemens Starck, Charles Goodrich, Dianne Stepp, James Dott, Kim Stafford, Paulann Petersen, Andrea Hollander, Lisa M. Steinman, Tim Gillespie, Pepper Trail, Luther Allen, Joel Savishinsky, Tom Wayman,Eleanor Berry, Michael McDowell, and Bill Siverly.
Used with permission of Extinction Rebellion. Dr. Ye Tao gives an excellent presentation weaving in social equity, and the need for nonprofit science-based solutions benefiting people in all countries such as mirrored roof tiles in India to reduce suffering during extreme heat events.
The end of the Extinction Rebellion above video mentions Kim Stanley Robinson's climate novel The Ministry for the Future in which a heat wave kills 20 million people in India. Interviewed by Amy Brady October 27, 2020 in Burning Worlds at Chicago Review of Books, Robinson responded, "Recent studies of the effect of heat and humidity combined have found that a temperature index of 'wet-bulb 35' (which would be about 95 degrees Fahrenheit with 100% humidity, and then higher temperatures combined with slightly lower humidities [ . . . ]), are fatal to humans who can’t take shelter in air-conditioned spaces. But in heat emergencies like this, power systems are likely to be overwhelmed and go down, at which point even people unclothed, in the shade, and fanning themselves, would still die, in a kind of slow parboiling that the body just can’t handle [ . . . . ] I remain terrified that something like this opening scene might happen in the coming decade."
In the Extinction Rebellion video Dr. Ye Tao says, "Any form of direct air capture by industrial method will not be able to work at scale, and to make a measurable impact to the climate crisis in less than several centuries of time. The basic reason is the process of demixing the air is a highly energy-intensive process. Just imagine if you had to separate a pile of well-mixed salt and pepper. So to create order out of disorder takes a lot of energy, and that is guaranteed by the laws of thermodynamics. So it doesn't really matter how much engineering you put onto it. We need an operation the size of the U. S. Military six thousand years [ . . . ] to really achieve what these companies are calling for."
This fits what Agence France-Presse wrote at The Guardian September 8, 2021, in "World’s biggest machine capturing carbon from air turned on in Iceland." The article notes, "Constructed by Climeworks, when operating at capacity the plant will draw 4,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the air every year, the companies say. [par break] According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, that equates to the emissions from about 870 cars. The plant cost between US$10 and 15m to build, Bloomberg reported."
and Jeff Bezos bought -- then didn't buy super yacht Flying Fox according to stuff.co.nz's John Anthony. The oceans are a better climate refuge than Mars, I thought.
I wrote, "These yes -- no -- reports are like the dead parrot scene in Monty's Python's sketch about a 'resting' Norwegian Blue," and later posted about Nirvana's version of Bowie's song
"The Man Who Sold the World." as much our story as theirs. Say what you dislike about them, Earth's two richest bipedal homo sapien mammals are not fools.
Gates "aw-shucks" brilliance took him from a New Mexico garage to fame and privilege. His "I know something you don't"-grin is priceless in a 1977 mugshot for a traffic violation.
It was reported Bezos' Amazon empire similarly started in a garage with spunk, "a handful of employees," and marketable data. Fortunes were made, dreams came true, and many lives changed.
If you were them, what exactly would you do with your wealth, creativity, research teams, and who knows what as glaciers melt, seas rise, forests burn, crops vanish, and species die?
Playing their cards right, they may be the last two surviving humans, as neurons shut down like light switches in Halloween mansions, and words fade as in flooded seaside libraries.
My post noted "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."
I wrote, "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."
Toby is our 17-year old Jack Russell who jumps like a puppy.
I followed Bill McKibben's lead, and got a puppy to go with my two older dogs. Most dogs haven't read the IPCC's dire reports. Deer, elk, squirrels, and wild birds are still magic to them, and should be to us. Koda is so smart he helps neighbor kids with their math homework.
A reader of this blog recently wrote I use too many statistics and lists. He said my readers weren't feeling the climate emergency. Yes, it's important to feel it, and it's also important to feel some joy in our days so we can keep telling people what many don't want to hear, and doing necessary work of truth-telling many don't want to do. It's odd to me this blog of a Pacific Northwest fisher/ecopoet has over 100,000 views -- odd in a good way.
In a related matter regarding the "feeling" theme, I recently heard at Rock N' Roll True Stories, "The Cranberries former manager Allen Kovac would reveal to Rolling Stone magazine that the group's label Island Records urged The Cranberries not to release the politically-urgent song ["Zombie"] as a single. The label offered [Dolores] O'Riordan one million dollars to work on a different song but she ripped up the check, according to Kovac [ . . . . ]" Earlier in the Rock N' Roll True Stories video, it was noted "There would be one incident in particular that inspired the creation of the song. That occurred on March 20, 1993. Explosives hidden under a garbage can in the city of Warrington, Northwestern England, took the lives of a three-year-old and twelve-year-old boy, and injured dozens of others." My question for students, and others, is what is so important in your writing/singing/speaking/art you would tear up a million dollar check asking you to ignore it? (I contacted Universal Music Group to fact check the claim.)
As a reminder, President Niinistö of Finland said in a Joint Press Conference with President Trump, August 28,2017 “If we lose the Arctic, we lose the globe,” and we are rapidly heading there regarding overall trends. With notable exceptions, local, state, national, and global governments are failing us. Brad Plumer reported in The New York Times January 10, 2022, "America’s greenhouse gas emissions from energy and industry rose 6.2 percent in 2021 as the economy began recovering from pandemic lows and the nation’s coal plants roared back to life, according to a preliminary estimate published Monday by the Rhodium Group." This is unacceptable given our track record historically as the world's worst offender! If it continues, I will write a poem about it. I know this sounds like an empty threat, but I will do it. My wife says things like "Nobody cares about your blog" as her version of encouragement, but here I am again.
I recall Robert Bly described war as "sleepers joining hands" (title of his 1973 book), and the same could be said about human war (especially oil companies' war) against all life on Earth. Any nonviolent action you could take to help "sleepers" wake up would be appreciated.
In related news, Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone contributing editor, continued excellent reporting on the dangers of losing ice, which in addition to the sea rise problem taking out coastal cities, has been a sort of thermal regulator for Earth since, according to researchers, "700,000 to 4 million years in the Arctic," and "about 45.5 million years" in Antarctic.
In more related news, Bill McKibben has a new newsletter, "The Crucial Years," to which I gladly subscribed. It is free to $60 a year, depending on your choice. Funds the first year will be "used to support a nascent organizing effort that [he is] calling Third Act. This is an attempt to organize people over the age of 60—I think it’s as vital that the Boomers and the Silent Generation join this fight in force as it has been to watch the incredible work of youth organizers and of frontline communities." I chose McKibben as the top "Organizer" on my "Updated Best Practices for Climate Crisis." Like 50-year activist Joanna Macy, he is a wise elder.
