Earth On Fire

What comes around goes around. I met some people I work with face to face this week for the first time. We did it outdoors and we have all been vaccinated, and while the delta variant is raging all around us, people are once again dying unnecessarily, and it may not have been altogether perfectly safe, we did it anyway. In a couple of weeks it probably wouldn't happen would be my guess, but it was good to finally talk to each other. One of the things people who are relative strangers do in this scenario is to talk about their families, and it made me thing back to when I started having kids. It was something I definitely did not want to do. The Cold War was coming to a close, but there were still a lot of nuclear weapons in the world, and the fact that one of them might bring about the end of a habitable planet was something I had to face, but I wasn't sure I wanted to bring someone into the world to face. I was and still am hopelessly in love with my spouse and so we did indeed have kids. What I did not see coming at the time, but is now abundantly clear, is that we don't have to detonate a bomb to ruin the planet, we just have to go about business as usual, making few if any changes in how we operate, and the planet will self incinerate. Today is my youngest child's birthday, a child who survived cancer when he was five, only to face this. I hope he can grow old on this planet, but to do so will require real change.

The Midnight Sky (2020)

This movie has been nominated for an Oscar in the category of visual effects, and as is almost always the case, is competing against other moives that are nominated in only one or two categories. This year none of the visual effects nominees is nominated in sound, which is reflective of just how deep the field is in sound this year and in no way implies that the sound here is to be found lacking. George Clooney portrays a nearly dead man (I imagine that his now three year old children will be surprised by just how ancient dad looked in this film), Augustine Lofthouse. He is a scientist on an Arctic station at the end of the world. The Extinction Level Event is not clearly described, but when we get a look at the planet from outer space, it is entirely brown with so much dust swirling up that visibility is quite impaired. Climate change comes to mind, along with a possible nuclear mishap. Either way, a man made event. Augustine stays behind while others evacuate to be with their families at then end in order to reach a space ship and warn them against coming back. The space scenes are beautiful and dangerous to behold, and the back story about why Augustine is so intent on saving this particular crew makes for a moody film indeed. It is not m y choice in this category, but worth watching.

American Indian Drumbeat

Let us turn the government land over to one of the first Americans to manage, now that we we have decimated not just the United States but also the whole planet. Deb Haaland is a member of the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, and if confirmed as the Secretary of the Interior, would be the first Indigenous person to manage the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bureau of Indian Education. Both are part of the Department of the Interior. She would also oversee more than 480 million acres of public lands and nearly a dozen federal agencies, including the National Park Service. Her nomination has been contentious, austensibly because of the fear that she will not be a friend to Big Oil, but that will be the case for any Biden nominee, so the next thought is that there is a racially motivated resistance to her nomination in the guise of protecting business interests. The Senate has forwarded her nomination onward, and there is hope that America will take steps in the direction of healing, which does not come with bipartisanship, because the McConnell directed GOP is firmly opposed to it, but with an eye towards history.

Divorcing Fossil Fuels

It was a year ago, more or less, that I made the break away from a car that solely depended on fossil fuel. 
At that moment, I was thoroughly tired of how inadequately our country and government had moved to protect our future, not just as a nation, but the existence of humans on the planet.  As I am fond of saying, there is no planet B.  We have to save this one.  Not for me or my parents, it will last our lifetimes.  We need to save it for our children and grandchildren.
So I took a tiny baby step, and bought a plug in hybrid.  I was not ready to go all electric.  I had a very hard time finding one.  the dealership had to trade for it, and I waited a month to get it.  Now looking back, if I had it to do over again, I would have gone a step further, but this is now, and then I couldn't do it.
Over the course of the year I have used about twenty gallons of gas all told.  Heat seems to burn through it at a rate of about a gallon every two weeks, but since March I have used only about a gallon and am now thinking for the summer, I should just have a small amount of it in the tank.  The next step would be solar panels I think.  Spend the money I would have spent traveling conserving energy instead.

Al Derecho

I learned a new word this week.  After months of learning things like convalescent plasma and proning, and figuring out how vaccine development and strategies work, now i know a word that means an inland hurricane.  A derecho.
We had a storm roar through the center of Iowa and into Illinois, flattening nearly everything in its path.  A clinic we have had the air conditioners blown right off the roof.  Trees were downed, on top of houses, on top of cars, and occasionally on top of people.  The 100 mile an hour wind was accompanied by fierce rain, and power lines were down for days.  Fiber optic cable was severed, and I finally got a taste of what it was like in New Orleans after Katrina.  Climate change couldn't take a vacation for a pandemic. 

Earth Day's 50th Birthday

A pandemic is very bad for the human race, but for the earth it has been a good thing.  There has been less industry, less air and water pollution, the oil market is collapsing, and the atmosphere is maybe not as clean as it was 50 years ago, but it is far better than it has been in decades.
In the months ahead, as we go back out into public and ramp up our use of energy, what lessens can we take with us from this time when we stayed indoors and tried to save each other?  Clearly there are forces of evil that want it to all go back to the way it was.  Captains of industry, who are no doubt hunkered down in safe places, are trying very hard to get people back into the work place.  The meat packing industry is Iowa should be a cautionary tale where that is related.  We have had a huge surge in COVID+ cases in the last week related to not improving safety there, in hopes of not interrupting the food chain, but failing to see that the way we protect health care workers needs to apply to all essential industries.  The industries that plan best for the return to the workplace will fare the best.
And today, say a prayer for the survival of our home, the planet Earth.

Fire Up Close

On a recent trip to Northern California, we happened upon a wild fire that was not yet under any sort of control, including not having yet closed the road, despite the fire being on the highway.  It was an up close and personal exposure to what Californians as well as Australians are experiencing on an all too regular basis in the era of rising carbon dioxide levels and the consequent changes in climate.
Our future is here and from the looks of it, will continue to get worse.  In the midst of this, I notice that those on the denying side of the aisle seem to gain satisfaction and perhaps even glee from posting divisive memes on social media.  It is of no comfort that they are wrong and will know so soon enough.
So like it or not, on this day when we remember Pearl Harbor and the war we entered that was all about hatred, racial and otherwise, we are continuing to have difficulty focusing on what matters.  We either have to ignore big oil and get our act together to save the country and the planet, or suffer the consequences, says this boomer.

Let's Talk About the Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system composed of about 3,000 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,300 kilometers over an area of approximately 344,400 square kilometers. The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, Australia, and it is one of the living wonders of the world.  And it is almost a certainty that it will die in the not too distant future.

I was in Queensland last summer, which was the first time in 35 years that I had been there.  It is still well worth visiting, and the natural beauty as well as the shear vastness of it is a thing to behold.  The lighter color in the photo above is the reef as I saw it one day that summer.  And the fish abound at this point, even if some of the coral is dead. 
The reality of climate change is everywhere, if you are just paying attention.  Great is right.  The injustice that we have done to her generation by ignoring it is inexcusable.
This is one gigantic example of it.
The young are coming for us for this inattention to the health and safety of our only home, and their fury is understandable.

We All Need to Be Greta

Two things.  The fury that Greta unleashes is so real, so deep within her, and so inspiring.  Her speech before the United Nations brought tears to my eyes.  The second is that people who disagree with her are afraid of her. So afraid that even though she is just a girl they treat her with such anger that you know she has them running for cover.  She is right, and very soon, everyone will know it.  As it stands the oceans are rising.  There are heat waves that course through the water.  The skies are less predictable and the wind and rain that form hurricanes will be common place.  The coastlines as we know them will disappear and unless we start changing things right now, we are in in bigger and bigger trouble.
It is clear that the fury of youth will be the wave of momentum that will wash us towards change, just as it did in the late 1960's.  She is one of many, but her fearlessness and ferocity makes her stand out above the rest.  She has adoring eyes for those who have been working for the planet for decades.  The picture of her with Jane Goodall is priceless.  Everything they are thinking is so transparent that a caption if completely superfluous.  She is the change I want to see in the world.