environment Politics: apocalypse economics edward abbey oceanic acidification
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Month 2, Day 18: “…Heard the Roar of a Wave That Could Drown the Whole World”
I was reading about oceanic acidification in another alarming piece at DK — the diarist FishOutOfWater specializes in ocean stuff that’s hair-standing-on-end scary. Another commenter made some powerful suggestions about what humans have to do if we are to head off this catastrophe, and eventually that comment turned into a substantial diary, which you should definitely read. Anyway, I was thinking about all that when I sat down (rather late in the day, actually) to write my LOTD.
I didn’t sleep a lot last night, and I’m too beat to think of a new recipient for this one…so I’ll send it to Time Magazine, and after they don’t print it, I’ll send it somewhere else.
Edward Abbey said it well: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” Our national models of prosperity are built on a foundation of quicksand: the notion that endless economic growth is both possible and a good idea. It is a sad commentary on political realities that simply stating the obvious truth that we live on a finite planet is electoral suicide. But if we don’t face that inconvenient fact sooner rather than later, we will be facing a much messier suicide, as the Earth’s resources fail us. Take the world’s oceans, for example.
Oceanic acidification is indisputably caused by human CO2 emissions, and has already reached levels not seen on this planet for fifty-five million years; the entire marine food chain is at risk — and half of humanity depends on the sea for sustenance. If excess acid kills the phytoplankton that provide significant proportions of our oxygen, we can add mass suffocation to the mix. How many people would die? Give or take a few hundred million, we’re looking at something like three billion. That’s a hundred and fifty times the size of the Nazi holocaust; one hundred and fifty Hitlers.
Americans were ready to go to war in the aftermath of 9/11, a tragedy that cost us around five thousand lives. Are we prepared to make drastic changes in the way we live to forestall a slow-motion tragedy equivalent to six hundred-thousand 9/11’s? Are we prepared to radically re-evaluate the way we understand success? Prosperity? Progress? Humanity in general, and America in particular, must effect a profound transformation in our economic thinking if our species is to survive.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: James Inhofe ninety-seven percent Republicans
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Month 2, Day 17: More Hatin’ on Inhofe
Continuing with the “97” theme for today’s letter, which will go off to the Boston Globe.
This one is a pretty standard unfurling of my general talking points. I’m trying to have one or two genuinely creative letters a week, with the rest being permutations and combinations of the themes I’m recycling. Since yesterday’s letter went to Inhofe’s flunkies, I figured I’d go on dumping on him for another day or so.
By now it’s utterly predictable: more snow will bring Republican climate-change “skeptics” out in full force. Sure enough, James Inhofe has built an igloo in front of the U.S. Capitol with a sign on it mocking Al Gore. Since Washington is the only place in the world that counts, Inhofe doesn’t care that the Winter Olympics had to import snow, or that temperatures elsewhere in the world are at record highs. The Oklahoma Republican refuses to admit the existence of a slowly unfolding disaster that will dwarf any crisis humanity has ever confronted. If ninety-seven out of a hundred inspectors called a restaurant unsanitary, you’d be crazy to eat there. If ninety-seven out of a hundred counter-terrorism experts told you that Al-Qaeda was planning a major operation, you’d be crazy not to take it seriously. But if ninety-seven percent of climatologists say that global warming is a real and present danger, they are mocked and derided by G.O.P. denialists. Our grandchildren will not be kind to the memory of Senator Inhofe and his ilk.
Warren Senders
Jazz music: jazz vocals Mildred Bailey
by Warren
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Bessie Smith’s Overtones: Everybody Should Enjoy Mildred Bailey Every So Often
I acquired Henry Pleasants’ wonderful book, “The Great American Popular Singers” at Manny’s Books in Pune, where it rested, long-ignored, on a small shelf with other publications about Western music. The books on Indian music were in another section of the store; the only customer who went routinely to both shelves was me. I bought the book and began reading it in the rickshaw to Deccan Gymkhana. By the time I got home I’d learned things I never knew about Bessie Smith, Al Jolson and Bing Crosby (all of whom I’d heard, and heard of), and about Mildred Bailey, an unfamiliar name. Pleasants rhapsodized about her musicality, whetting my appetite.
Opportunities in India to hear Mildred Bailey’s music were nonexistent….so it wasn’t until a couple of years later that I found a 10″ lp in the collection of my friend Gene Nichols, and taped it for my own enjoyment.
And enjoyment was definitely what resulted. Bailey’s pitch, her sense of swing, her deceptive melodic simplicity, the subtlety of her ornamentation and phrasing…she sounded like a trumpet, or an alto saxophone.
Leonard Feather: “Where earlier white singers with pretensions to a jazz identification had captured only the surface qualities of the Negro styles, Mildred contrived to invest her thin, high-pitched voice with a vibrato, an easy sense of jazz phrasing that might almost have been Bessie Smith’s overtones.”
(Feather — The Book of Jazz)
Or, as Leonard Feather says, like Bessie Smith’s overtones.
Thanks for the Memories
environment Politics: buffoons James Inhofe
by Warren
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Month 2, Day 16: To The Dwarves Who Attend The Evil Buffoon
A DailyKos diarist named “Historian” produced a wonderful piece a few days ago, called “Ninety-Seven”. I admired it greatly, and wondered about incorporating parts of it into one of my letters. This is the first pass, and I decided to send an email/fax/letter directly to the Evil Moran himself, James Inhofe. Or, rather, to the people who answer his email, read his faxes, open his envelopes.
Because I figure my letter will never reach him, but it might actually get read by a human in his office. And who knows? Somebody might actually do some thinking. Stranger things have happened, albeit not very many.
Dear Staffers in Senator Inhofe’s Office —
Let’s say a hundred health inspectors went over a restaurant. And ninety-seven of them said, “This food is unsafe; it’ll probably make you sick.” Would you eat there?
Or let’s say you were buying a house, and a hundred home inspectors looked at it — and three of them said, “It’s probably okay,” while the other ninety-seven said, “This building is definitely unsafe.” Would you buy the house?
Or let’s say you found a lump. And a hundred oncologists looked at it. And ninety-seven of them said, “It’s cancer. Let’s get started on treatment.” Would you get started on treatment, or would you go with the three who said, “Maybe not?”
Or let’s say you’re the President, and a hundred C.I.A. counter-terrorism experts came to you…and ninety-seven of them said “Al-Qaeda is going to carry off a major operation,” while three of them said “It might not happen.” Would you put our national security system on high alert?
I’m asking you this question rather than Senator Inhofe himself, because I don’t believe this letter will reach him…but there’s a chance one of you will read it, and perhaps wonder:
Given that the answers to the first four questions are pretty obvious, why is it that when ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that humans are causing climate change, Senator Inhofe is so strongly in favor of doing nothing?
He wouldn’t want to eat tainted food, or buy a house that was going to fall down around him, or ignore a cancer diagnosis…or put the nation at risk by ignoring a warning of a terrorist attack. Would he?
Then why is he putting our nation (and our planet) at risk now?
And, more to the point, why are you helping him do it?
Our grandchildren will not be kind to the memory of Senator Inhofe and those who assisted him.
Just ask yourself this question: What if the ninety-seven percent of climatologists are right?
Think about it. Please. For all our sakes.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: filibuster Harry Reid wimp
by Warren
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Month 2, Day 15: Prodding Harry Reid
Thought I’d send Harry Reid something. I knew when I first read about him that he would be trouble for the Democratic Party. It seems hard to believe he was once a boxer. Maybe he took too many punches to the head? It’s really unbelievable that he’s the point guy for our party in the Senate.
Dear Majority Leader Reid,
Although as a Massachusetts resident I am not one of your constituents, I am a lifelong Democrat — one who has followed your tenure as Majority Leader with interest and frustration in equal measure.
It was obvious from the start to me that the Republican minority would be utterly and completely focused on obstructing Democratic legislation — and it’s unbelievable that it wasn’t obvious to you and your colleagues in the Senate. The fact that it’s taken many Democrats this long to recognize that the G.O.P. has no intention of cooperating on anything does not reassure me.
Nowhere does this obstructionism have further-reaching consequences than in our unwillingness to tackle a meaningful climate-change bill. With denialism rampant on both sides of the aisle, with Health Care and Jobs initiatives currently on the menu for Democratic delay and Republican blocking — it’s “not the right time” to deal with a climate bill.
Unfortunately the laws of nature pay little heed to the laws of man, and even less heed to the blinkered behavior of U.S. Senators. Regardless of what Fox News’ talking heads may say, a freak snowstorm in Washington is not irrefutable evidence that global warming is a myth. Scientists predict more such extreme weather events as the climate spirals past tipping point after tipping point — but as long as the gap between climate action and climate effect is five or six times longer than the election cycle that rules the life of a U.S. Senator, we can expect change-averse lawmakers to avoid dealing with the issue.
Failure to confront this looming disaster is not just a failure of governance. It is a moral failure, and our grandchildren will not be kind to the 210th Congress. On the other hand, our great-great-great grandchildren will be too busy trying to survive to spend much time assigning blame for the catastrophes we could have averted, but didn’t. And who knows? Maybe James Hansen’s “Venus Syndrome” will come to pass — in which case there will be nobody left to do any blaming.
Mr. Reid, it is time for you to confront Republican obstructionism head-on. They and their collaborators on the Democratic side are playing political games while the largest existential crisis humanity has ever faced is unfolding outside their windows. I know that you are risk-averse and prefer not to seek controversy — but in this case, it’s time to stand up and throw a few punches at those who would trade the lives of our descendants for the promise of a Senatorial sinecure.
Please support Bernie Sanders’ “10 Million Solar Roofs & 10 Million Gallons of Solar Hot Water Act.” This is an idea whose time has come. And please do something to reform the use of the filibuster. We need to get this done. There is no time to waste.
Yours sincerely,
Warren Senders
India Indian music music photoblogging: Amjad Ali Khan Hindustani instrumentalists Shahid Parvez Shivkumar Sharma Sultan Khan Zakir Hussain Zarin Daruwalla
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Hindustani Instrumental Photoblogging
As part of my continuing drive to provide visual, auditory and intellectual content, here is an assortment of the photographs I took of Hindustani instrumentalists during the 1980s. Zakir was performing a great deal in Pune during that time, and I got many good images of him.
Amjad Ali Khan and Zakir Hussain. Sawai Gandharva Mahotsaav, Pune, 1985
environment Politics: Bernie Sanders energy John Kerry Solar
by Warren
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Month 2, Day 14: John Kerry Gets a Valentine
It’s getting easier to dash these off. As I predicted, I now have a stock of rhetorical devices and constructions that can be strung together to set off whatever new material I’m including. Here, for example, I’m asking Kerry to co-sponsor Bernie Sanders’ wonderful “10 Million Solar Roofs & 10 Million Gallons of Solar Hot Water Act,” and calling his attention to Bill Gates’ recent statements on energy. These two nuggets are set in a nest of apocalyptic boilerplate.
Dear Senator Kerry —
Thank you for all your efforts in advancing the cause of meaningful legislation on climate change. This issue is without doubt the most important existential threat humanity has ever faced. Yet a significant proportion of the American public doesn’t believe it’s happening.
Our population’s tragic indifference to the fate of the planet is partly the fault of the media, which is obsessed with short-term phenomena, and partly the fault of our corrupt political system. When the time lag between climate action and climate effect is five or six times longer than the electoral cycle that rules the life of a U.S. Senator, we can see why it’s always “never the right time” to deal head-on with the issue of global warming.
And when Washington is under many feet of snow and the Republicans are mocking Al Gore on the Capitol lawn? It must be incredibly frustrating.
Please don’t give up. Keep speaking out. Keep working to educate your constituents and audiences around the country. We need to have advocates for even stronger climate measures than are presently on the table; our goal should be atmospheric CO2 in the 350 ppm range. Bill Gates just stated that we should stop all CO2 emissions by 2050, and this is a laudable goal. There is no greater threat to all of us than runaway climate change; Dr. James Hansen’s worst-case scenario can be summed up in one word: Venus.
I urge you to co-sponsor Senator Sanders’ proposed “10 Million Solar Roofs & 10 Million Gallons of Solar Hot Water Act” legislation. That’s a great place to begin: by putting people to work and transforming our country’s energy equation.
Thank you again for your commitment to confronting climate-change issues. It is crucial for our children’s children and their children’s children in turn that we take effective action now. There will not be an opportunity to try again if we screw it up.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
India Indian music music: genius Jaipur Gharana Kesarbai Kerkar khyal
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Kesarbai Kerkar’s Music Is, In Fact, Out Of This World.
One of the greatest voices of the twentieth century belonged to Kesarbai Kerkar, the legendary singer of Jaipur-Atrauli tradition, who bestrode the narrow concert platforms of India like a colossus until a few years before her death in 1977. To listen to Kesarbai is to experience intellectual, emotional and artistic depth in a way that can hardly be matched anywhere else.
Nat Kamod
environment Politics: Barack Obama denialists Republicans
by Warren
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Month 2, Day 13: Invite the Republicans to Talk in Public About Their Climate Stupidity.
It’s Saturday. Time for another email/fax/letter to the President.
It’s late. I’m tired. This letter is kind of a mishmash. I like the “swollen belly of a starving child” analogy so much I’m using it for the third day in a row.
Dear President Obama,
It is crucial for our country that you continue highlighting the obstructionist tactics of the G.O.P. minority. Your upcoming bipartisan conference on health care will do a great deal to make it clear to the American people where their real allies are. We need more such events, each focusing on different critical issues for our country.
It is absolutely crucial that our nation’s citizens learn the truth: failure to pass meaningful climate legislation will lead to a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. Right now support for robust regulation of Greenhouse Gases is low; there are not enough Americans who are convinced of the reality of anthropogenic global warming. Recent events like Washington’s amazing blizzard have inflamed climate denialists, who are trumpeting the ludicrous notion that a snowfall somehow disproves global climate change. This is analogous to claiming that the swollen belly of a starving child disproves the existence of world hunger!
Please, Mr. President. Do a public bipartisan conference on climate issues. Bring expert climatologists to speak about the likely consequences of continuing our present level of Greenhouse emissions. Bring people from the Department of Defense to speak about the sociopolitical scenarios they envision as a result of catastrophic climate change. Bring people from the insurance industry to describe how they are refusing to insure properties in areas likely to be affected by rising sea levels. Bring economists to testify about the cost of action versus the cost of doing nothing. The American public is watching you more intently than any president has been watched in a long time; if you do something like this it will have a huge effect.
It is absolutely vital that we fight back against the climate-denial lobby and those members of our government who are in their thrall. This issue is too important. Waiting for the Rapture may be Senator Inhofe’s preferred environmental policy. For good and obvious reasons, it cannot be the policy of a rational Administration.
Your recent approach to dealing with the Republicans has been galvanizing. Please keep it up. Please intensify it. And please apply your keen focus to transforming our national understanding of the climate crisis. If ever there was an issue that calls for the Fierce Urgency of Now, this one is it.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
Education environment: video
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