Back Yard Report: August 2018

For the third straight day we've been locked in an eerie grayness.  For the first two of those days, the gray clouds were accompanied by wind and a touch of moisture, as if a thunderstorm were perpetually about to break out.  Today was windless which seemed to allow the smoke to filter down.  For that's what the grayness is and was: a mixture of marine layer fog and smoke.  The National Weather Service says the smoke is coming down from fires as far away as British Columbia, Washington and Oregon.

Nevertheless it is August, and for much of the summer the back garden has been radiating yellow.  Planted for the first time this year, giant sunflowers bloom.

Yellow wildflowers, begun with a snippet from our late neighbor, who spotted the blooms in a field across Sunset years ago, have spread this year to dominate a corner of the garden.

Some of the other blooms are new as well, from plants gathered from the Humboldt Botanical Gardens last summer and fall.

Blooms as well in the front yard.

Besides the flowers there are Margaret's vegetables coming in: onions, lettuces (the third crop so far), tomatoes, herbs, as well as blueberries in both back and front.

So noting the surrounding strangeness and grief, the infamy, the losses and the signs, we still have the flowers.

There Is No Climate Crisis

The previous post on hotter temperatures and their effects is the latest in a long series of factual updates and explanations, interspersed with conceptualizations and calls to action regarding the Climate Crisis, that I have been writing, publishing and posting for at least 20 years.

What is the purpose of such posts? I now ask myself.  As witnessing, as a kind of log of scientific studies, predictions and extreme climate events,  they may serve some weary historical purpose, though who would be interested in that is hard to imagine.  But as calls to action they obviously have failed.  And I've come to realize, they always will fail, and not just because I am a flawed and hapless messenger. Because to admit as a society that this is the preeminent crisis of our age would mean we'd have to change everything, beginning with our national and personal priorities, and therefore how we think and behave. And we'd rather not.

There may even be some wisdom in it, because it now seems to me quite possible that truly facing this crisis would expose fatal flaws in our ability to respond and even cope as a society.  So better to ignore it until it can no longer be ignored, and which point this self-fulfilling prophesy of collapse will begin.

I used to argue against the weak nomenclature, that called it "global warming," as if the planet were a cuddly puppy, or in the numbingly neutral terms of "climate change."  I still call it global heating.  And I have usually called it the Climate Crisis.

But it isn't.  Because a crisis, by definition, is a turning point, a decisive moment when things are bad but could get worse, so decisions must be made.  It is a time of urgency and certainly attention.  But there are no decisions being made with a national sense of urgency based on a national recognition. So there is no climate crisis.  There is only a climate catastrophe that's already started, and inevitably worsening.

If this were an actual Climate Crisis, we would be making decisions in two major areas: addressing the causes of global heating by figuring out how to stop emitting CO2 and other greenhouse gases, while also (and simultaneously) addressing the effects of global heating that include heat waves and longer term problems of higher temperatures like plant, animal and human diseases; storms, droughts and resulting famines, refugees and wars over resources; sea level rise, and changes in the oceans and ocean currents, with appropriate technologies, planning and organization, resources and innovation.

All of these consequences are already manifest somewhere in the world. So far the worst consequences appear out of direct sight from the affluent America. Other consequences closer to home take a little more persistence to ignore, but we're managing.

Of course there are many people working very hard to address individual problems within this group of tasks (plus others related to global heating.) In the area of cause, some progress has been made in carbon neutral energy technologies, and the Paris Agreement of 2016 demonstrated some attempt to reduce those emissions.  The probability is that what has been done or even planned is not going to be enough.

Some believe or at least hope that these largely separate and incremental efforts will be enough, particularly involving new technologies.  When things get bad enough, solutions being worked on in obscurity will suddenly emerge.

I hope they are right, but it seems to me they are underestimating both the scale and the vulnerability of the international systems (economic, technological) that support us, now that we do almost nothing for ourselves.  On the other hand, if the needed effort is at least as massive and complex as World War II, then superior and dedicated leadership is essential, which requires public support, which in turn requires a sense of crisis.  But today, the society as a whole and its most powerful institutions do not recognize a Climate Crisis, at least not of its true potential dimensions.

We've instead had more than 20 years of failure.  No presidential candidate has ever made the climate crisis the most prominent and central issue of that candidate's campaign.  No US president has consistently made it the major issue, which it deserves to be.

Now the current administration and its warping of the federal government in this regard is the enemy of the people and all life on this planet.  And partly because of this toxic presidency, Democratic candidates are unlikely to place climate at the center of their campaigns.

Thus far the American electorate has failed to hold candidates and office holders to account on addressing the climate crisis.  Major news media has failed to focus attention on the climate crisis.

Corporate America has failed.  The powerful fossil fuel corporations have knowingly and willingly increased greenhouse gas emissions, and some have spent tons of money to suppress information from the public.

But other corporations have also failed.  The most powerful corporations currently are the tech businesses, and they are also failing to prominently demand a societal response to this crisis.

We've all wallowed in distractions.  But we're not personally going to pay for it so much,  because when the effects become undeniable, we'll probably be dead or well on the way. It's going to be the innocents who pay for it: today's children, the not yet born, entire species of animals and plants, and the planet itself.

I no longer expect that to change.  We'll keep ignoring it until it's overwhelming. There are those who believe our science, our institutions will still rise to the occasion.  I hope they are right.  And I hope those who believe that are young, and are intent on doing something about it, because it will be up to them to respond.

Sooner or later (and by later I figure 2050, but I suppose it could be later still), climate catastrophe will change everything.  Possibly some people will respond nobly, and find fulfillment in lives completely devoted to service in addressing the effects or the causes.  They will make a difference, at least for awhile.  But we, who probably could have made a much bigger difference, have failed.

 And because we have never had a climate crisis, we will continue to have climate catastrophes.