Attack on Penn's Woods

Pennsylvania is among the most forested states in the contiguous U.S.  But not only is this news to outsiders, most Pennsylvanians are unaware of their forests and threats to them.

I discovered this in reporting a magazine piece I did some 20 years ago, and I believe it's still true.  (I've reposted the piece with photos here.)

The rapacious industries that are taking over the Commonwealth, not only fracking for natural gas wherever they please but rewriting laws that endanger environment and health more generally, are reaching into Pennsylvania's state forests according to this NPR report.  

"Pennsylvania is no stranger to extractive industries, like timber. By the early 20th century, its forests were decimated. Today they've grown back and trees are harvested sustainably. But, Pennsylvania has emerged as the fastest-growing state in the nation for natural gas production — with hydraulic fracturing technology unlocking vast amounts of gas in the Marcellus Shale. Scientists say this surge in gas development is having new kinds of dramatic effects on forests. Pennsylvania has roughly 2 million acres of public forest land; about a third of it is available for drilling."

"Kevin Heatley lives in the area and has come to these woods for years to hike. He's an ecologist by trade and he's concerned about what he's seeing. "Everything from the noise and the traffic to the lighting, to the pad placements, to the pipeline construction to the road expansion — this is all industrial infrastructure," Heatley says. "It's inherently incompatible with sustainable forest management. "You're looking at some of the impacts associated with forest fragmentation," he says. Forest fragmentation is what happens when human development crisscrosses the landscape, carving up large swaths of contiguous forest into smaller pieces."

And this destruction is not being inflicted from the edges or borders, but in the core:

"Core forest means "forest next to forest," making it very different from so-called "edge habitats," which means forest next to something else, like a grassy field, or a suburban home. The big tracts of core forests are rarer and they're home to species that don't do well near people. When core forest is lost, the host of important services provided by its plant and animal species go with it, according to Margaret Brittingham, a professor at Pennsylvania State University who has also studied forest fragmentation. "Insect control, climate control, water purification, you can go on and on," she says. "Recreation, aesthetics."

Not content with the power to destroy they now have, these companies want even more control and dominion, until only they rule the Commonwealth:

"But the gas industry is pushing a new measure that may lead to more forest fragmentation — a controversial bill that would limit the authority of state agencies to designate endangered species. The bill passed the state's House Game and Fisheries Committee in November."

When I posted my old story online I was able to restore the section that was cut for its original print publication, which is about Gifford Pinchot, the forester who became governor, and his friendship with President Teddy Roosevelt.  The kind of dominion these industries are seeking and in large measure already enjoy hasn't been seen generally since TR's day, and he was instrumental in reigning them in.

There are places where this hegemony continued--West Virginia being a conspicuous example, and so the chemical spill that cut off water supplies last week was more business as usual than shocking news.  Even with its habit of alternating governors of different parties, Pennsylvania had established environmental law and practice to control at least the most obvious rapacity.  But the current far right governor and right leaning legislature has paved the way for the latest attempted takeover by fossil fuel interests.  One ray of hope is that this governor is vastly unpopular, and is unlikely to be reelected.

Pennsylvania let its forests be destroyed once before.  The citizens of Penn's Woods (which is what "Penn-sylvania" means) can't let it happen again.

Potpourri

Now that potpourri is legal in Colorado, it's only a matter of time before it is in California.  Anticipating that, here's a potpourri of links from 2013 and early this year that I didn't get to in thematic posts.

For Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh Pirates fans, here's a great story about Pirates manager Clint Hurdle.  I can go on about what's wrong with Pittsburgh, pro sports and the lamentable level of American profundity but this is a Pittsburgh story that says a lot about what is best about the place.  There are just enough stories like Clint Hurdle to justify realizing that there's a certain special character about this city.  Some other reports note various characteristics, such as healthful living  here (though I hate to link to Queen Ariana's slave quarters) and articles in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette series retrospective on the past 30 years: the increase in green spaces, and the overall change from "hell with the lid off" to a perennial "livable city."

                                   
Some years ago I read and "reviewed" the books that came out of several years of the Mind and Life conferences convened by the Dalai Lama, bringing together scientists and Buddhist practitioners to see what could be learned by both that went beyond the limits of each.   Brain scientists in particular were interested in meditative states attained by trained and veteran Buddhist meditators.  I've followed some of the ongoing work in this area since.

Most of what scientists have "proven" with brain imaging etc. simply confirmed what meditators observed.  But this study caught my attention: that meditation could influence gene expression.  How genes are "expressed" and interact in given situations is the new frontier of gene research, now that the prior belief that the presence or absence of particular genes determines everything is no longer tenable.  Gene expression may turn out to be much more important, in the still mysterious complexity of our beings in the world.

Research on some bones of Neanderthals made news late in 2013.  One conclusion: "The ancient DNA reveals a long history of Neanderthals interbreeding among at least four different types of early humans living in Europe and Asia".  Another study of bones suggests that Neanderthals had the same vocal capacity for speech as modern humans.  These studies are among those that suggest a closer relationship among earlier human species.  As one of the researchers of the latter study said, "Many would argue that our capacity for speech and language is among the most fundamental of characteristics that make us human. If Neanderthals also had language then they were truly human, too."

This may remind us that we tend to err towards the extremes.  Either earlier human species (or other animals, or even other nationalities of humans) are entirely different, or they are entirely the same.  Our conception of our human ancestors seems to have been expressed and then set in cartoon stone with the Flintstones.  But there's much to learn about ourselves from a more accurate idea of real life, now and hundreds of thousands of years ago.  Paul Shepard in particular repeatedly made the point that the human history we know is a small fraction of human time--10 thousand out of hundreds of thousands of years.  That span of time is when we evolved, and yet we know little about how we responded to those early environments, and therefore in large measure what we actually are now.

Finally, a couple of stories in the political realm.  The first is an under-reported but significant story about the alleged complete lack of security for President Obama at the Nelson Mandela memorial.  Coming so close to the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination, this was chilling.  And even more troublesome was the lack of attention it got.

The others are Cold War history revealed, sort of.   One story: For Nearly Two Decades the Nuclear Launch Code at all Minuteman Silos in the United States Was 00000000.  It's about how the military undermined the attempts by JFK and other "civilians" to install safeguards against accidental or premature launching of nuclear missiles, and ipso facto, apocalypse.  Though this particular revelation has since been disputed, it is of a piece with others, for example, in recent books on JFK and/or the Cuban Missile Crisis.  General Jack D. Ripper was not entirely fictional.

Another looks at the Soviet side, and a submarine commander who "should" have but did not start a nuclear exchange.  As we look back we ask, do we actually think we are less crazy now?  Look around.  What we are is more complacent.  Assassination, even nuclear war are still present possibilities, and we ignore them at our peril.  We should read these stories and reflect, because a huge element in our complacency is not understanding what these things would really mean.

Last but not lease---happy birthday, Kath!

The Dreaming Up Daily Weekly Quote

"Imaginative literature … does not enslave; it liberates the mind of man. Its truth is not like the canons of orthodoxy or the irrationality of prejudice and superstition. It begins as an adventure in self-discovery and ends in wisdom and humane conscience."

Chinua Achebe

The Vortex Update

True to form as predicted, the Rush of Wind on the radio claimed the polar vortex was something liberals made up for this week.  Today Show meteorologist Al Roker tweeted a copy of the 1959 definition, a clear example of ultra liberal time travel, or an Obamabot rewriting history.

Andy Borowitz at the New Yorker headlined: 

Polar Vortex Causes Hundreds of Injuries as People Making Snide Remarks About Climate Change Are Punched in Face

However, there were some new words added to my vocabulary as a result of the vortex weather, like freezing fog and frost quakes.  Frost quakes were reported not only in Ontario but in Maine, Wisconsin and Ohio. Hint: not a breakfast cereal. 

Meanwhile, the polar vortex-delivered Arctic-like weather killed at least a score of people, cost the U.S. $5 billion in lost revenue, and was responsible for the lowest temperatures so far this century for a number of U.S. cities.  All 50 states experienced freezing temps at some point this week.  

The Vortex

As I write this--after midnight Sunday in the Midwest and Eastern time zones--many places there have already recorded their high temperature for Monday.  Monday and Tuesday (in some places Wednesday) will be more dangerously cold than any days in at least 20 years there.  The upper Midwest (Minnesota, North Dakota) was already freezing on Sunday, also hit by snow and wind (up to 10 inches in Chicago.)
Further east in Indianapolis and in Ohio the combination of wind, frigid cold and ice are already closing highways as well as schools and businesses.

 From a relatively balmy Sunday, Pittsburgh goes into the deep freeze Monday and Tuesday, and is scheduled to emerge to another balmy day on Wednesday.  Very cold temps and wind will eventually extend not only along the northern East Coast but deep into the South, with single digit temps forecast for Charlotte and Atlanta.  All kinds of low temp records are likely to be broken over much of the country.

Cities like Chicago and Pittsburgh are taking this especially seriously because a lot of people think they know what cold is, but they don't.  They simply haven't experienced it, or at least not in a very long time.  And with windchills possible to 50 or even 70 below, even brief exposure can mean frostbite or worse.  This is dangerous weather.

Down in Washington (where a forecast Zero will break its record) there will be wags chortling (especially since Congress reconvenes Monday) that obviously there's no global warming going on here .  Of course by now only the purposely ignorant can ignore that global heating models have shown effects including heavy snowfalls and frigid temps.  But it seems a lot of people make a very good living being purposely ignorant.

But this may be an even more specific example of a global heating effect.  One prominent theory (being promoted as fact in headlines) is that these literally Arctic temps are due to a "polar vortex," the Arctic's equivalent of a super-cold hurricane.  Because these frigid winds whip around in a circle they usually stay in the Arctic, but this may be a weakened polar vortex that has partly blown south--and one prominent theory is that it has been weakened by warmer air as a result of the melting of Arctic ice, which is a result of global heating.

NOAA scientists suggest this as they study other evidence for a "warm Arctic/cold continent" effect.  Data from 2009 and 2010 suggest this is a pattern.  But the idea that Washington would be hit with dangerously cold temperatures as a result of the climate crisis was already dramatized in Kim Stanley Robinson's Science in the Capital trilogy (2004-7.)  So it's not a new idea.

Of course, the skeptics can take the colder winter temperatures, figure in the hotter summers, and come up with a temperate average that will gosh just prove that this climate crisis isn't happening at all.  This is what happens in the circular winds of Washington.

The Other F Word

Okay, I'm going to sneak this in like the addict I apparently am.  The NFL playoffs have begun.  As I predicted, the "defending champion" Ravens stunk this year and didn't even make it as a Wild Card team.  As I sadly predicted, the Steelers didn't get in either, although they came exceptionally close: if a call hadn't been blown (that the League admits was blown) that gave San Diego a victory in their last game, the Steelers would have been a Wild Card, and would probably have defeated the Bengals Sunday.  And then gone up against Denver a decided underdog next week, but with the advantage most eventual champions have--of peaking at the end of the season.  I think the Steelers probably would have a chance against Denver if Manning had an off-day, but New England as well?  Probably not. So it is interesting that at least the sportswriters in Pittsburgh aren't crying much about it--they don't think the Steelers deserved to be in playoffs.  

I'm sure everybody in the League office who cares about money is praying for a Denver-New England playoff game, which could reach Super Bowl proportions in TV viewership.  And they wouldn't cry too much if one of those teams wound up facing San Francisco in the SB, because this year the quarterback is the story.  Peyton Manning is the biggest potential story, but you've also got Tom Brady, Colin Kaepernick, even Andrew Luck, Cam Newton, the ancient Brees and Rivers  or the Seattle phenom Wilson.

You have to like Denver at home over overmatched San Diego.  Indianapolis and New England is a potentially fun game, especially since both teams--and both quarterbacks--can come back big in the second half, the fourth quarter.  That game won't be over til it's over. Kevin Seifert is picking the Niners to win it all, much like the Steelers did when they were the first to get there on the road.  They'll have to get past Carolina, and western fans particularly are looking forward to a San Francisco-Seattle game the following week.  So the dream matchups are Denver-New England and SF-Seattle.  If the past is a guide, at least one of those teams won't be there.

Now I'll shut up about football, an increasingly troublesome game, with more injuries and bad behavior than ever in the NFL, and the truly awful stats on repetitive brain injuries at any level. (Seifert praising the Niners for wearing short sleeves or their coach for not wearing his parka in near-zero temps at Green Bay is sickening. Is frostbite so manly? What kind of example is that?)  It's potentially still a good game, but not as it is played today on any level.

The Dreaming Up Daily Weekly Quote

“Peace begins in thought. Thoughts enworded go from mind to mind, and mind makes the world. Peace, illusive, abstract, negative Yin, dream, would take a long writing-out to make real. Its book has to be longer than war books—longer than a bumper sticker, longer than a sound bite. As we read, neuropeptides in the brain grow longer, longer than in nonreaders. Thought becomes body. Sudden fast change is a method of war. The logic of peace has to be spoken out at length.”

Maxine Hong Kingston
The Fifth Book of Peace

Common Thread

European Parliament building in Strasbourg, France via Flicker

Here in the U.S. when we wring our hands about our rabid right wing, its racism, violent rhetoric and embrace of ignorance, we tend to see it as a local aberration, a national failing.

But it's not entirely limited to the U.S.  Thanks to the Mayor of Toronto, we're more cognizant of a Tea Party rightist trend in Canada, which has affected national as well as local politics and policy.

Now an oped in the New York Times asserts a widening of something similar in Europe, and not simply within countries.  It is deliberately attacking the European Union, so it is happening to Europe.

Andrea Mammone writes:

 It may seem bizarre that two far-right, nationalist politicians — Marine Le Pen of France and Geert Wilders of the Netherlands — have reached across borders to form a Pan-European group dedicated to weakening the European Union. Their aim is a transnational political alliance that would compete in the May elections for the European Parliament; once in power, they would cooperate to try to rein in the power of Brussels.

While the Tea Party in Canada may be partly an American import, Mammone traces the history of the European model:  "But in fact, since the early 20th century, Europe’s far-right nationalists have often united in search of an “other” to oppose, exclude, resist, restrict or oppress... "

The most extreme and famous example is the Nazis.

This vision did not die with the end of World War II. Transnational links among right-wing parties, based on common fears of minorities and immigrants, endured. The right-wingers, while speaking different languages, borrowed ideals, strategies, slogans and theorists from one another... 

So when observers marvel about the “new” nationalist parties of Europe, they are capturing only part of the truth. These right-wingers mistrust or even detest the Continent’s core institutions — the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the European Parliament — but they are perfectly happy to join up with extremists in other countries to weaken those institutions. 

Anti-immigrant racism and a deathly hostility to government characterize European as well as North American far rightists. They seize upon economic troubles:

Soaring youth unemployment, stringent fiscal policies, German-led monetary clout and the presence of Muslim immigrants have created a perfect target for the likes of Mr. Wilders and Ms. Le Pen, who blame outside forces like the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Union for their nations’ woes. Conveniently, they overlook structural problems like the costs of social welfare and pension programs, declining birthrates, aging populations, stagnant labor productivity and intensifying competition from the economies of Asia and Latin America. 

But Mammone also suggests that bureaucratic remoteness has left the European Union open to such attacks. These parties may gain enough votes in coming elections to cause trouble. "Even as a tiny, noisy voice within the European Parliament, this alliance could create a lot of trouble. Just think of the successes that Tea Party Republicans have had in impeding decision making in the United States."

How would these right-wingers reshape Europe? They say they would give power back to nations by dismantling the technocratic decision-making power amassed in Brussels and returning powers back to individual member states. They would pause, if not quite reverse, six decades of growing integration.

Two elements in this analysis seem especially appropriate to a more cogent analysis of what's going on in the U.S.  First is relating it directly to movements in the American past.  Some efforts have been made but none seem as effective as the vigorous pushback in the 1960s to the extreme right surge during the administration of the first U.S. President to be of the alien Catholic faith (while today's rightists include many Catholics). Richard Hofstader's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life comes to mind, a history of ignorance-proud extremism, and a best-seller in the early 60s.

The second is related: the inability of defenders of government and liberal democracy to respond to the challenge.  President Obama has been eloquent in his redefinition of this political ethic, and while the media establishment etc. ignores him (and even liberals criticize him for not saying what in fact he is saying.)  In policy and political terms, there are some political signs: the elections of progressive populists Senator Elizabeth Warren and Mayor of NYC de Blasio.  The rabid right as a more extreme version of the policies born in a new flurry of right wing think tanks a few decades ago suggests that new progressive organizations, notably the Center for American Progress, may be crucial in creating more momentum .  But at the moment, the progressive defense seems insufficient.

Here's Mammone's conclusion about Europe:

Tragically, in the face of this assault, calls for European solidarity are few. This is a sign of how far Europe has come from the dream that helped lift it from the ashes of war. It is a sign of the fading of the vision — common markets, democratic institutions and societal integration — promoted by the postwar founders of European integration: thinkers and statesmen like Konrad Adenauer, Winston Churchill, Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman and Altiero Spinelli.

The European Union must reclaim its reputation as a champion of the people. Its leaders should abandon their embrace of technocratic solutions, their support for the banking sector and their stoic austerity. Unless they deliver more jobs, and more of a sense that citizens are in charge, the far right will only keep growing."

It's about more than Europe. It's global economic policy that favors the wealthy, that sets the rest against each other for the crumbs, gets the majority poor to hate the minorities and vote against those who might use government to constrain the rich and enforce economic justice. That's the common thread, isn't it?  Encouraged by needless austerity, racial flashpoints, and a comfortably complacent or otherwise helpless governing class. 

Snowy New Year

 Winter storm from the midwest to the northeast coast so far yields massive snow totals in New England with more to come for New York on Friday, accompanied by wind and followed by subzero temps. Gov. Cuomo declared a statewide state of emergency. Air and highway travel have been disrupted.  More photos from the first day of this storm.  Meanwhile, the Midwest is bracing for a blast of very cold air that could reach into the South.

Engage! 2014

This is one big reason I voted for the guy for President (twice, primary and general) in 2004.  From the New York Times:

But while the public’s attention has been on his diplomacy in the Middle East, behind the scenes at the State Department Mr. Kerry has initiated a systematic, top-down push to create an agencywide focus on global warming. His goal is to become the lead broker of a global climate treaty in 2015 that will commit the United States and other nations to historic reductions in fossil fuel pollution. 

The story by Coral Davenport notes that as Senator and so far as Secretary of State, John Kerry has a long record of commitment on addressing climate crisis but with only a short list of successes.  However, there is one potentially significant one recently:

 As a result of midlevel talks Mr. Kerry set up to pave the way for a 2015 deal, the United States and China agreed in September to jointly phase down production of hydrofluorocarbons, greenhouse gases used in refrigerators and air-conditioners.

“He’s pushing to get climate to be the thing that drives the U.S. relationship with China,” said Timothy E. Wirth, a former Democratic senator from Colorado who now works on climate change issues with the United Nations Foundation. 

China is making some moves on climate issues, including an internal cap and trade scheme (not noted in this story.)  If the two biggest greenhouse gases polluters in the world can work together on this issue, it could well have a positive effect globally.  It's still a long shot but there's that possibility.

Institutional change in Washington is often slow, but it does often start at the top.  A new emphasis on climate began in the Energy department in 2008, and in the EPA arguably a few years later. Those changes as they work their way through the bureaucracy now make it possible for enforcing as well as creating rules regulating greenhouse gases produced for power generation.

 Now Kerry is changing State:

Shortly after Mr. Kerry was sworn in last February, he issued a directive that all meetings between senior American diplomats and top foreign officials include a discussion of climate change. He put top climate policy specialists on his State Department personal staff. And he is pursuing smaller climate deals in forums like the Group of 20, the countries that make up the world’s largest economies. 

Other nations are taking notice, the story says, and it details John Kerry's unbroken series of efforts to address the climate crisis, some including his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, whose own advocacy on this issue predates their marriage.  

With John Kerry at the helm of the State Department to deal with other nations, and now John Podesta in the White House to encourage domestic action, it could be that in the next two years, even against overwhelming odds, the fight for the future may be truly engaged.  Davenport's story notes:

It has not gone unnoticed that this administration is now much more engaged on climate change,” said Jake Schmidt, the international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Every international negotiator understands it.” When Mr. Kerry took office, Mr. Schmidt said, “The dynamic changed quite a bit.”

Get It Straight 2014

Addressing problems begins with defining them correctly.  Mistakes even in categories (let alone facts) lead to errant solutions or more likely, cynical but very windy and useless controversies.  These days the mistakes are often made by substituting the most repeated, most fashionable category for the one that's correct but slipping away fast, even out of consciousness.

Two examples of this tendency jumped out at me recently.  The first was in one of the conversations about prospects for 2014 and the future generally on NPR.  This one was "What Does the Future Hold for Climate Change." Host Steve Inskeep interviewed Andrew Steer of the World Resources Institute. Steer was putting forward the Consumer Goods Forum as a hopeful sign--a group of companies that want to be "the good guys" and reduce carbon, not buy tropical oils that lead to deforestation, etc.  He said they were responding to customers who "increasingly want them to do the right thing." Then this exchange took place:

INSKEEP: It's the image thing. It's public relations.
STEER: Well, almost so because - so the moral thing. I mean the reason that I recycle is not for my image. It's because I actually think it's the right thing to do. 

Giving Inskeep his due, he was probably talking about the motivation of the companies, and he's probably right to be cynical in assuming they're responding to customer pressure for p.r. purposes.  But Steer makes the right distinction.  The reason is not public relations, it's moral.  And that's the important distinction.  If the commitment isn't moral, it won't be real--even if Steer had to explain that somebody could do something because "I actually think it's the right thing to do."  So advocates can't be talking about companies improving their image.  They must keep to the correct category: the morality of destroying the Earth and the human future.

On a different subject, Michael Wolff in the Guardian reports on the New York Times effort to keep competitive on the Internet by including "native advertising"--those weird ads and "links" that are actually advertising.  Their quality is usually that of the kind of ads you used to find in the back of sleazy magazines. Now they're on virtually every Internet site. The Times is going to include them, Wolff says, but in ways that separate them from editorial content.

Wolff (not always the most reliable of reporters) seems pretty astute on the clash of advertising models on the Internet vs. print, but he goes frothing at the mouth haywire asserting that newspapers and magazine that insist on a distinction between editorial content and advertising are doing so because they are elitist.  The easy-entry, click-happy Internet threatens the Times ability to '"demonstrate its quality bona fides or cast its snobbish spell."

But the issues aren't elitism or snobbery, however potent they may be in even an Internet outlet's appeal.  They are the independence of the editorial voice, and readers' confidence that they know who is talking--is it the Times, or is it an advertiser with its agenda?

The threat of advertising encroaching on editorial independence and on the clear difference for readers of editorial content and paid-for advertising content has been ongoing in print and broadcast media for at least my quasi-adult lifetime.  The Internet is already swamped with dubious information, dominated by sensationalism and cheap momentary emotions, as well as by complete fraud.  With a few exceptions, the only semi-reliable news comes from the Internet sites of established print and broadcast news organizations that at least try to take journalistic ethics seriously.  But starting with the native ads cluttering up the page and insulting you, and the links that may lead to a real story by that publication or far afield to another site where you get cookied and possibly virused, these outlets too are becoming distressingly less reliable. (And the popup ads etc. make them very discouraging.)  The situation is going to continue getting worse especially if people can't frame the issues correctly, but fall back on fashionable business-based cynicism.

Both of these category "mistakes" have a couple of things in common.  They favor corporate, B-school fashionable concepts instead of older principle-based ones that apparently have to be dredged shamefaced out of the forgotten deep.  And these "mistakes" have something in common with a broader one expressed by the Canadian Native writer Thomas King.  He relates (in verse) a Coyote story in which Coyote is tricked by Weasel into tying his tail in a knot so tightly that it fall off, because Weasel convinced him it was the key to being able to whistle well.

King concludes: "Elwood told that story to the Rotary Club in town/and everyone laughed and said what a stupid Coyote./ And that's the problem, you know,/seeing the difference between stupidity/and greed."

R.I.P. 2013

Among those we lost in 2013: Doris Lessing, Peter O'Toole, Julie Harris, Roger Ebert, Jonathan Winters, Joan Fontaine, Karen Black, Annette Funicello, Chinua Achebe, Elmore Leonard, Lou Reed, Dr. C. Everett Koop, Frederik Pohl, Deanna Durbin, Jean Stapleton, Ray Manzarek, Esther Williams, Eleanor Powell, Philip Slater, Nelson Mandella.

More on them and others we lost at Books in Heat, Stage Matters, Boomer Hall of Fame and Soul of Star Trek.   May they rest in peace, as their work and example nourish and guide us into the future.

Our Year-End Newsletter

It’s the end of another dull and lurid year. Grandson Holden was kicked out of another prep school, while his aunt Emma divorced her fourth husband and ran off with the assistant producer of a reality show about producers of reality shows. Here at home, our town was declared pre-bankrupt and turned over to a state-appointed Manager who sold it to Google which digitized it, and so we now live in a replica that was manufactured in China—at least until somebody buys our 3-D printed house on EBay. On the bright side, we’d have a week to move, unless the buyer has Amazon Prime, in which case just overnight.

I was finally able to leave my job writing nasty comments to Internet articles about global warming and other “liberal conspiracies” for something I could believe in: correcting the appalling grammar and spelling in email spoofing.

We had a fascinating experience in local politics working on a campaign to outlaw assault weapons in our bathtub, but even though we lost that one, we are confident that our new project to combat global warming by getting everybody to wave recycled cardboard fans simultaneously will reach critical mass in the coming decade or two.

Culturally this year we attended a YouTube film festival via Skype—our favorite was the one about the new sport of texting while skydiving from drones—a real thrill ride! Although some of those space-walking cats were really cute!

Santa was good to me this year too, so consequently this letter was entirely written by my new robot!

Happy New Year from Our House to Yours!

painting: The Bear Dance at the Moulin Rouge by Gino Severini

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

  "Raccoons read alone and baboons read in bunches.
   And llamas read dramas while eating their llunches."

from Wild About Books by Judy Sierra, illustrated by Marc Brown, which one little girl on my list will be opening soon.  Merry Christmas!

Constitution Days

Two significant U.S. court cases, for the good for a change:

A U.S. District Court in Utah struck down that state's ban on same sex marriage as federally unconstitutional discrimination.  The judge's decision made prominent use of a Supreme Court dissent by Antonin Scalia.  Apart from instantly permitting same sex marriages in Utah, this decision is significant because it is based on the U.S. Constitution rather than a state constitution or other laws.

Getting much less press but possibly of great significance as well:  the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down major portions of the law that enables drilling for natural gas anywhere in the state.  This law, practically fascist in several of its provisions and its overall spirit, overrode the power of individual municipality to zone. Under the state law, drilling could be forced anywhere--in neighborhoods, near schools, anywhere.  The law enabled corporations to exploit the Marcellus shale formation for natural gas.  

 The Court  specifically cited the PA constitution's Environmental Rights Amendment. According to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette: "By any responsible account," Chief Justice Castille wrote, "the exploitation of the Marcellus Shale Formation will produce a detrimental effect on the environment, on the people, their children, and the future generations, and potentially on the public purse, perhaps rivaling the environmental effects of coal extraction." He goes on to say that although the state's regulatory powers are broad, they are "limited by constitutional demands, including the Environmental Rights Amendment."

The Court also addressed another totalitarian provision:

The court's decision, on a 4-2 vote, also sent back to Commonwealth Court for review and disposition challenges by a physician to the Act 13 provisions that would have prevented doctors from telling patients about health impacts related to shale gas development, and a constitutional challenge that the law benefits a single industry.

Drilling and fracking under draconian laws passed by corrupt state legislatures and governors has been virtually unrestrained across the country.  This is a single state decision but its basis is important: health and environment.  That opens to the door to arguments on those issues everywhere.

Hummers in Humboldt December 2013

Winters here are normally wet and mild.  But after two relatively dry winters (last winter being very dry), the old pattern has been broken in another way: we had several nights in a row of sub-freezing temperatures.

Since it hardly ever goes below freezing, and because of the rain, we have flowers of one kind or another virtually year round.  I recall our first Christmastime here, when we were invited to dinner and afterwards took a walk through the neighborhood to look at Christmas lights and decorations.  But what we saw also included lots of flowers.  Someone remarked that here it is already spring.  That's not quite true but the scene was certainly striking to folks recently arrived from western Pennsylvania.

But this year the freeze has visibly killed the flowers in our yard, and no new flowers have appeared.  That may be why the hummingbirds are sticking so close to my feeders.  They're usually around more at this time of year, before they disappear some time after Valentine's Day (though I suspect they don't go far.)  But this year they are around the back porch almost constantly.

I suspected there were four of them but never saw more than three at the same time.  But this month I've seen four several times.  One afternoon all four were even stationary at the same time--three perched on the clothesline and one on a feeder.  Another day three were at the same feeder while the other flew around.

Today started sunny and mild, and when I refilled one of the feeders all four came around.  They were much more concerned with each other than with me.  They were flying right in front of my nose at one point, and it seemed even around me.  It was dazzling.

Now in mid afternoon the wind has picked up and it's turned colder.  The trees that shed their leaves have mostly just begun the process.  Brown leaves are blowing by.  A chilly scene of winter, anywhere.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

“Without Imagination we should have no knowledge whatsoever, but we are scarcely ever conscious [of this.]”

Kant

painting by Gino Severini

Climate of War

One more point about climate before moving on for now...The potential for social conflict because of the climate crisis has been anticipated, especially by the Pentagon.  But the possibility that it is involved in current conflicts, including wars, rarely grabs attention.

Few for example think of the Darfur crisis and the ongoing and brutal conflicts in that region in relation to sudden and persistent drought, though more than one knowledgeable observer has asserted this.  And now at least one lonely voice is making the same point about the war in Syria.

On Monday the UN estimated that three-quarters of the Syrian population would need humanitarian aid in the coming year.  Savage civil warfare has destroyed economic and social infrastructures and created huge numbers of refugees.  International Rescue Committee president David Millibrand calls it an "absolute catastrophe." Others call it potentially the worst humanitarian crisis in modern times.  The UN is making the largest appeal for relief funds in its history.

But it's not so severe only because of a particular set of political circumstances.  It's also climate. The lonely voice--actually voices, of scientists --are pretty substantial on the subject:

Drought was a key factor contributing to unrest and civil war in Syria, and the severity of the drought was probably a result of human-caused climate change, new research presented here Monday (Dec. 9) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union suggests.The study analysis suggests that the drought was too severe to be simply a result of natural variability in precipitation."

The drought led to food shortages and high food prices which often leads to unrest.  Perhaps the narrative of a citizenry finally rising to assert their freedom against a brutal dictator is more romantic than people rebelling against a government because they're hungry.  But such has happened before:

"There is a clear connection between the price of food and governmental stability, and in the long term, it is not hard to see how these year-to-year fluctuations can influence the long-term stability of even stable governments," said Brandon Lee Drake, an archaeologist at the University of New Mexico who was not involved in the study, but who has studied past climate change impacts on other civilizations."

The contribution of the climate crisis to Middle East drought--which is expected to continue--can't be quantified, but that's hardly the point.  The point is that it is a global phenomenon that in some places makes drought more likely, longer lasting and/or more severe.  Drought should not come as a surprise in the era of the climate crisis.  Ignoring its contribution is functionally the same as denying it.  Being aware of its possibility could sensitize responses to be quicker and more effective.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Democracies need not merely freedom to think and talk, but universal information and vigorous mental training...The choice is a plain one now: Train yourself for freedom or salute and march."

H.G. Wells 1937
in an unpublished article recently discovered

Now we return to our regularly scheduled bad news which is already in progress

Let's get it over with and then douse ourselves with holiday spirit.

There's retrospective bad news in the sense that scientists are revising various gloomy estimates upward.  On the heels of climate scientists suggesting they've underestimated global heating since 1997 by, oh, 50%,  the EPA says they've underestimated the amount of methane emitted in the U.S., also by 50%.  Methane is perhaps the most potent of the greenhouses gases, and the EPA is preparing to regulate these gases for the first time.

The National Research Council released two studies that remind us that while the predictions of effects used by planners is based on gradual change, abrupt climate change is possible.  That's how things typically happened in the past--big sudden changes, which means over decades or years.  The reports are full of warnings that we're not addressing any phase of the climate crisis fast enough or as comprehensively as needed.  But they also rate most of the scenarios for abrupt change as not likely in this century.

Wonder why the latest UN climate report hasn't made more of a difference?  Only parts of it have been released, but the executive summary is supposed to galvanize attention.  The Real Climate site says it hasn't, possibly because it's poorly written for its purpose.

That's been an ongoing problem, from counterproductive jargon to a reluctance or inability to state the facts in a usefully actionable context--emotionally, politically, humanly.  But that's hardly the only reason.  Another may well be embedded in another very clearly stated conclusion that nevertheless didn't make any headlines, let alone go twitteringly viral: according to the Climate Accountability Institute, there are but 90 companies responsible for two-thirds of the greenhouse gas pollution in the world.

Since they include the richest corporations in the world with a huge proportion of the world's wealth, it doesn't take a communications genius to see that there's unlikely to be a lot of money advertising this fact, and a whole lot of money available to obscure it.

We can vary the old story, attributed to various Native American tribes and possibly other Indigenous cultures, and say that in the understandable struggle between an internal animal that wants to focus on addressing the climate crisis to save the future, and another internal animal who wants to deny its place in consciousness or even in reality, the one that wins is the one you feed.

American Exceptionalism

The United States has arguably been declining and falling for years, but occasionally there are new markers.  Apart from internal measures--decline in relation to principles and ideals, decline in relation to the past--there are comparisons with other countries.  Some of these are discounted, thanks to the collapse of the economic power of Japan, the country that scared America in the 70s and 80s.  But discounting everything is perilous.

We note this week that there is a new robotic rover on the surface of the Moon, and it is from China.  There was an apparently successful orbit of a living being and safe return, conducted by Iran.  At least some of the space activity these days is due in part to the U.S. outsourcing its own technology, and others quickly adapting it.  That technological and intellectual capital is being spent, and may not be renewed.

May not if trends in U.S. education continue.  There have been scary headlines and warnings for years, so what's new about the latest?  For one thing, the U.S. had fallen behind in average math achievement, but our best were still among the best.  No more.  Our best students languish "in the middle of the pack" internationally.  They can't keep up.

Add this to other downward trends, if not spirals: infant mortality, longevity, and above all, the enormous gulf between rich and everybody else--very likely the source of much of the rest, along with the retrenchment of governmental resources.  With even the modest advance in healthcare coverage in the Affordable Care Act under intense political fire, our healthcare system remains near the bottom of the industrialized world.   Instead the U.S. leads the world in gun violence and captial punishment--with no fear of relinquishing that dominance.

Despite this country's residual strengths and the advances in less quantifiable qualities, this all has the distinct aroma of decadence.  America is exceptional in its self-satisfied paralysis, its furious conflicts that stalemate action or even enough of a common diagnosis to proceed.

From the  New York Times editorial on Sunday:

In a post-smokestack age, there is only one way for the United States to avoid a declining standard of living, and that is through innovation. Advancements in science and engineering have extended life, employed millions and accounted for more than half of American economic growth since World War II, but they are slowing. The nation has to enlarge its pool of the best and brightest science and math students and encourage them to pursue careers that will keep the country competitive. 

But that isn’t happening. Not only do average American students perform poorly compared with those in other countries, but so do the best students, languishing in the middle of the pack as measured by the two leading tests used in international comparisons.... 

On the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment test, the most recent, 34 of 65 countries and school systems had a higher percentage of 15-year-olds scoring at the advanced levels in mathematics than the United States did. The Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland all had at least twice the proportion of mathematically advanced students as the United States, and many Asian countries had far more than that.

Other tests have shown that America’s younger students fare better in global comparisons than its older students do, which suggests a disturbing failure of educators to nurture good students as they progress to higher grades. Over all, the United States is largely holding still while foreign competitors are improving rapidly."

Meanwhile, the Chinese are talking softly about their rover on the Moon (the peaceful exploration of space) which they are conducting methodically, with plenty of resources committed to it.  But their longer range plans may be more complex.  This BBC story says they are looking at future potential for the Moon's minerals. This is not really a new or necessarily sinister idea, unless the fact that the Bush administration expressed interest in the same thing tilts the balance for you.  But it shows that while these days the only Americans thinking that far ahead are science fiction writers, the Chinese aren't just wondering, they're exploring.

"Good" News on the Climate Crisis

Well, the bad news on the climate crisis is piling up, along with the snow across America.  So it's past time to pass on some of the "good news" on the topic.

After much agitation, at least some folks believe the Warsaw climate meetings finally did work, to put the nations of the world on track to a meaningful treaty at the big meetings in 2015.  These appear to be procedural victories, which participants say are important.

And in the wake of disappointing news on actual deforestation, a multi-nation agreement also forged at the Warsaw talks is aimed at slowing future deforestation:

According to Paul Bledsoe, an energy research fellow at the German Marshall Fund, who is attending the talks, it is a significant step. "The ministers have been working for almost 10 years to finalise the rules which will allow donors to invest in forest management practices in the developing world and get a way to verify the emissions reductions," he said."I think this agreement allowing for investments in forests in developing countries is probably the signature achievement of these talks."

International agreements or almost agreements may or may not significantly change things in the future (because it's not clear they have so far) but as usual the actual action is being taken on the regional, state and local level.  California's cap and trade system has been in effect for a year and seems to be working well, causing no noticeable catastrophes for us Californians.  Recently CA joined with other western states and a contiguous province of Canada in coordinating climate crisis efforts:

Saying that the West Coast must lead the way in battling climate change, the governors of California, Oregon and Washington, along with a representative of the premier of British Columbia, signed an agreement Monday committing the Canadian province and the three states to coordinate global-warming policies.

Each state and the Canadian province promised to take roughly a dozen actions, including streamlining permits for solar and wind projects, better integrating the electric power grid, supporting more research on ocean acidification and expanding government purchases of electric vehicles."

 Meanwhile the governors of eight U.S. states (California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon, Maryland, Rhode Island, New York and Vermont) signed a pledge to get 3.3 million electric cars on the highways (presumably to replace carbon-spewing cars) by 2025.

More broadly, Benjamin Barber is out with a new book entitled If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities.  That pretty much states his thesis, as he sees cities as the polities that will govern the future.  This is not only because mayors are closer to specific problems and find pragmatic and collaborative ways to address them, but because cities form alliances across national borders to address common problems.

Cities (especially coastal cities) are in the forefront of studying likely future problems caused by the climate crisis, which in the near term means includes anticipating and preparing for disasters as well as doing what can be done to prevent the disasters from the climate change already inevitable.

To help with this process, President Obama signed an executive order to urge along disaster preparations:

The executive order establishes a task force of state and local officials to advise the administration on how to respond to severe storms, wildfires, droughts and other potential impacts of climate change. The task force includes governors of seven states — all Democrats — and the Republican governor of Guam, a U.S. territory. Fourteen mayors and two other local leaders also will serve on the task force. All but three are Democrats.

The task force will look at federal money spent on roads, bridges, flood control and other projects. It ultimately will recommend how structures can be made more resilient to the effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels and warming temperatures.

(Reference to party affiliation is telling--not because Republican governors and mayors weren't asked, but because their ideology apparently forbids them from protecting their citizens and infrastructure.  Another point--it's being called the "task force on resiliency"--"resiliency" being probably the least offensive and most expressive buzz word currently being used by those concerned with the climate crisis.)

This was an executive order not requiring congressional approval.  There could be more coming, with Tuesday's news that John Podesta is joining the Obama White House for a year to work on climate and energy matters (maybe healthcare too--depending on the story.)  As White House Chief of Staff in the final Clinton years, he knows his way around executive action, and is on record advocating that President Obama do more of it.

Disaster prediction is a growing science, says this New Yorker piece, although prediction alone doesn't do much.  People have to read the reports and do something about them.  The writer also believes that if people took predictions seriously, they'd move.  In most cases I wouldn't say that's the point.  The point is read the damn report and do something about it, and don't ever, ever say "Nobody could have predicted..." especially when somebody did.

The Fifty Year Handshake

As retro rightists convulse over President Obama shaking hands--gasp!--with Raul Castro in South Africa,  I return to a late November theme...the difference that the assassination of President Kennedy made and continues to make.  Or in this case, the difference not traveled.

Both the two books I cited in my post here (and review in more detail here) confirm that in 1963 President Kennedy and Fidel Castro were in touch through intermediaries, looking for ways to return to a more normal nation-to-nation relationship.  Apparently a key element in Castro's receptiveness was JFK acknowledging that the Batista presidency was garbage and the Cuban revolution understandable.  JFK wanted a pledge that Cuba would stop trying to export revolution to other countries and some movement towards less dependence on Moscow.  Castro was himself interested in that last proposition.

The two leaders probably would have met after the 1964 election, had JFK been reelected, which he almost certainly would have been had he lived.  And this current idiocy would be fifty years quaint.

Maybe this is a reason the rabid right is so rabidly against evolution.  They can't evolve.

Always Impossible--Until It Is Done

At the memorial service for Nelson Mandela in South Africa, "There was only one speaker who made everybody stop and listen."

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

“The only effect I ardently long to produce by my writings is that those who read them should be better able to imagine and to feel the pains and joys of those who differ from themselves in everything but the broad fact of being struggling erring humans.”
George Eliot