On Turning 73 in 2019: The Future of No Future

I had a lot to say about how the the future looks at 73 in that particular year of 2019, in two long posts.  This one is about "the future" as a concept, which usually refers to the far future, and in some sense the ultimate future.  In late November 2024, these thoughts take on new relevance, probably for others as well as me.

As I approach another birthday, I mark also the fleeting paradox of living into one's seventies.  While each year seems to speed by faster than you can blink your eyes and see it, each year nevertheless has a greater, more consequential weight;  it takes us inexorably nearer the physical conditions that forecast the end.   So each year means more, and yet is harder to grasp.

Seventy-three--my upcoming milestone--is not 79, and in particular not what 79 often was in the 1940s.  Yet my response to external events of this time raises a question defined by the last book of H.G. Wells when he was that age at that time, and more contemporary criticisms of it.

Mind at the End of Its Tether is Well's shortest book by far, published the year of his death (August 1946) and of my birth (June 1946.)  In The Outsider, Colin Wilson calls it "the most pessimistic single utterance in modern literature, together with T.S. Eliot's 'Hollow Men.'"  Wells' forecasts the inevitable end of human civilization, perhaps of the human species, and perhaps of all life on Earth.

I find this particular Wells essay almost incomprehensible, but parts of it suggest forecasts he had made earlier with more evidence.  But first, I want to focus on a particular response to it.

It is present in science fiction author Rudy Rucker's foreword to the Provenance Edition of Wells' last books.  "When approaching their own deaths, some people fall into what I might call fatalistic synecdoche.  They conflate the whole (the world) with the part (themselves), and announce that the world is about to end."

Another science fiction author--Bruce Sterling--was even harder on Wells in his posts to the 2016 annual State of the World thread on the venerable San Francisco site, the Well.  "In this book, the great speculator is elderly, exhausted, politically disillusioned, fatally ill and also the Atomic Bomb has been detonated," Sterling typed.  "So he's like: Welp!  That's It!  No More Future!  For him, yes, that's true.  Personally, he's toast; no more HG Wells."  (And like us old folks are wont to do, I'm somewhat repeating myself.)

I don't defend that strange little book, but I do think all of this belittles Wells.  I spent the better part of a decade reading him and about him, and a recent return to commentaries on him hasn't changed my mind: Wells has to be one of the most misunderstood writers in modern history--with the precise misunderstandings saying a lot more about that writer or speaker than about Wells.

Nevertheless I take this seriously as a caution.  Because in this past year I myself have given up any faith that human civilization has much of a future, with the future of the species and life on Earth as we know it also in considerable peril.

For the moment at least, I try to separate my perceptions that might well be influenced by, if not age itself, simply having lived so long.  The repetition of the same idiocies gets very tiresome, and there doesn't seem to be much reason to believe that this complex of self-destructive behavior will change, before the collapse of civilization forces such changes.  And even then...

I start to resent my time being taken up by such idiocies, especially since there is rarely anything new about them, except some superficial novelty.  But at least at the moment I can still discriminate between my own reactions, and the evidence before me.

So taken together--a natural withdrawal to potentially more meaningful engagement (or at least less stressful and unpleasant), plus the informed sense that the course of the next couple of centuries and perhaps eons is set--I have ceased for one thing to read or write about what used to be called "current events."

Such political, cultural and social events and trends have consequences, and I keep enough of an eye on them to be warned of personal impact.  I still read the list of daily headlines that the Washington Post emails me, and when I think of it I look at Wikipedia's news of the day (which is usually very different.)  But that's about it. I no longer feel it is useful let alone important to follow and analyze these phenomena, partly because they don't matter much in terms of the likely outcome, and particularly since it is highly doubtful I can influence them (or the response to them) in any way.  Otherwise, I've done my bit.  I'm done.

The baseline of the future is set by the climate crisis, which is now having its first effects.  What has been done to address it is very likely insufficient, and there are any number of reasons for believing that nothing really consequential will be done in time to prevent the conditions that will likely lead to the collapse of human civilization, the end of the current line of "progress," and quite likely the end of life as we know it on Earth.

I note that the public voices who've been warning of these possibilities still dance around this inevitability.  Bill McKibben is saying that civilization has a decade to make the necessary changes. He and others have been saying that for 30 years. The differences are that the necessary changes get more drastic and comprehensive every year, and they will not determine the near future--they may at best save the far future.

  Are "enormous changes at the last minute" (the title of a book of stories by the wonderful Grace Paley) even possible?  Perhaps. But the "last minute" is now, or very soon.  Time grows ever shorter, if indeed there is time.  Meanwhile, the Earth's atmosphere gets hotter and the planet's climate changes, in ways that will essentially never change back.

Climate crisis is the baseline planetary physical condition that attacks the ability of the planet to nourish and sustain human and other life.  It accelerates the destruction of the web of life that has been ongoing for centuries, reflected now in the ongoing mass extinction.  Although books like The Sixth Extinction chronicle how much worse it has already gotten, and how extensive it is likely to be, it's worth noting that it's been going on a long time.  In his 1939 book The Fate of Man, H.G. Wells noted:

"The list of species extinguished in the past hundred years is a long one; the list of species threatened with extinction today is still longer. No new species arise to replace those exterminated. It is a swift, distressful impoverishment of life that is now going on. And this time the biologist notes a swifter and stranger agent of change than any phase of the fossil past can show—man, who will leave nothing undisturbed from the ocean bottom to the stratosphere, and who bids fair to extinguish himself in the process.”

Human civilization expanded across the planet at the expense of the very environment that ultimately sustains human life.  Over recent centuries, the wholesale destruction of forests, across Asia, the Middle East and Europe and still ongoing in the Americas, may itself doom the species doing the destroying.  It has doomed plenty of other species already.

Why can't civilization change to fully address this crisis?  After all, previous challenges were met--from the threat of tyranny in World War II to the self-inflicted apocalypse in the making of nuclear weapons.  One reason is leadership. At this crucial moment, there is none, and I see none on the horizon.

In the past few years I've been trying to wrap my head around the immensity of World War II, which ended just before I was born.  What seems clear is that those 20th century existential crises of the Great Depression and World War II were met only by the extraordinary leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt and (in the case of World War II) Winston Churchill, plus the contributions of lesser known but still essential and able men and women.  Still, World War II was enormously destructive, and the stories of its homicidal stupidities as well as its unknown and even accidental heroisms continue to emerge.

The fact that civilization has not yet been devastated by thermonuclear war is due almost entirely to the decisions of probably a handful of leaders.  When two superpowers were heavily armed with thermonuclear missiles and bombers on hair-trigger alert, only the decisions of fortuitously placed leaders as well as anonymous individuals at decision points,  prevented the full use of these weapons, on several occasions we know about.

 Sometimes it was a minor military leader who insisted on waiting for further evidence before launching a strike due to false information. But in better known instances, it was national leaders--in particular, Nikita Khrushchev in the Soviet Union and President John F. Kennedy in the United States, who both held off advisers and political pressures to avoid thermonuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.  They later signed the groundbreaking first Nuclear Test Ban treaty.

It could have been otherwise.   In the 1968 presidential campaign, interviewer David Frost asked Senator Robert Kennedy what he thought was his greatest achievement so far.  Kennedy hesitated a moment, and then answered: "I think the role in the Cuban Missile Crisis...The only reason I hesitated at all is because I felt strongly about the election of 1960 and having a role in that change, because I think that affected the course of action and the course of history..."

1960 was the election of John F. Kennedy to the presidency.  RFK returned to the point about the Cuban Missile Crisis.  He noted there were 14 people involved in making the decisions for how the US would respond.  "...if six of them had been President of the United States, I think that the world might have blown up."  He added that "if Mr. Khrushchev had been a different man at that time, the world also would have blown up..."

Right now, at what is likely the most crucial time in human history, we do not have in place anything like the leadership required. We do not have institutions--nor the people that lead them-- with the necessary degree of integrity or intelligence.  In fact, this country and many other nations have been going in the opposite direction, into territory so dangerous, so corrupt and so absurd as to beggar belief.  I don't think I need to say any more than that.

Even if such leadership were forthcoming, it is necessary but not sufficient to meet the crisis of this time.  It requires a society able and willing to follow.

Addressing the Depression and organizing forces for World War II required all of FDR's creativity, determination, political acumen and judgment.  Those who lived through World War II as adults are mostly dead now, so we have only books and other records to suggest the enormity of that undertaking.  Experts today say that addressing the climate crisis would take at least that scale of effort, and that level of concentration, not only by leadership and government, but by society as a whole.  That concentration and commitment was far from complete, but it was considerable--greater I suspect than generations alive today can imagine.

Yet leadership is ineffective unless followers agree with the goal and are willing to be led, even if it is for their own selfish reasons--particularly the more powerful agents of society.  War disrupts the conduct of business, but it also makes some interests rich, so big business largely fell in line.  World War II scaled up and created entire industries.  But most importantly, war (or Cold War) did not challenge the basis or conduct of corporate capitalism.

Addressing the climate crisis threatens large economic interests.  There's plenty of evidence that systematic climate crisis denial has been funded by fossil fuel corporations and those it has made wealthy. But more importantly, the changes necessary to save the planet fundamentally challenge the premises and conduct of capitalism, which today is virtually the only form of economic power in existence.

a former rainforest

Capitalism has always depended on these two elements: ignoring the future costs of destroying the ability of the natural environment to sustain life, and instituting some form of human slavery, which today is hidden in faraway sweatshops and countryside.

Exploitation in both of these senses continues on a massive scale, and it is that scale that has caused the climate crisis.  Resistance to ending that exploitation has been and remains overpowering.  The result is a divided and seemingly helpless society, its human weaknesses exploited to benefit current capitalist institutions.

Capitalism of this era, increasingly unfettered by legal or moral responsibilities towards society and the planet, has fed riches to the rich and deprived most others, resulting in deep divisions within society.  The political and communication tools of the entrenched rich have created, manipulated and exploited divisions, encouraging suspicions and rivalries.  Depriving people of economic security--and what's called income inequality is extreme right now--also tends to make them fearful and easier to exploit.

  Dividing elements of the exploited non-rich (on the basis of race, ethnicity,  gender, immigrant status, "intellectual elite" etc.) for their political benefit is one of the oldest and most successful strategies of these self-centered interests.  Popular failure to understand global heating, and to demand action to address it, has been one of their most conspicuous successes.  For these and other reasons, I believe that Kim Stanley Robinson is right: that effectively addressing the climate crisis is not possible in a world dominated by irresponsible capitalism.  No one seems to know who actually first pointed out that "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." However, we do know it was Ursula Le Guin who said (at the National Book Awards) “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings.”  Capitalism will end--I just don't think it will end soon enough.

There is another factor, perhaps even more profound. As big as World War II was and as much as was required, the nature of the task was thoroughly familiar: to fight and win a war.  Everybody understands that.  That's why every time a sustained effort is proposed, it's called a war on something.

(It is true however that, contrary to retroactive propaganda, many Americans weren't really sure why the country should go to war, particularly against Germany, other than because of the attack on Pearl Harbor.  That's why the US government commissioned the "Why We Fight" film series.  Further, there was a great deal of grumbling and obstructionism from big business and its political minions. Still, the general goal of winning the war was understood.)

The situation was a little more complicated in the Great Depression, but getting people back to work and the economy healthy again was an easily understood goal.  Plus the catastrophe was evident; it affected almost everyone's life in highly tangible and persistent ways.

The climate crisis is not so easily comprehended or accepted.  That's what makes it a particular challenge.  The basic goal is simple enough to understand: to save the planet.  To keep the climate from changing beyond what life as we know it can tolerate, the world needs to all but eliminate spewing any more C02 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.  That alone won't fix it--the destruction of habitat for non-human life must also be addressed--but it would be a start.

But there are conceptual problems.  One is the need to avoid the two common reactions to a fearful crisis: panic, or refusing to face it because it is too big and too scary to contemplate.  That second tendency, the one that is currently being exploited, is called denial.  Those of us who lived through the Cold War have seen both of these tendencies in reactions to the enormity of nuclear weapons.  There was also a kind of conceptual or emotional standoff between these two reactions, leading to numbed acceptance, and functional denial.

There is a secondary cause of denial: the basic changes necessary to confront the crisis seem too painful.  Giving up oil, which seems to mean cars, and giving up beef, for instance, are simply too much to accept on the say-so of some scientists.

Besides being exploited by those who feel they can't make enough money in a world dedicated to addressing the climate crisis and other ecological threats, this perfectly understandable denial is exacerbated by the nature of the climate crisis: until recently, and in large measure still, it is a phenomenon of the future.  Why worry about it if it isn't here?  It may never happen.  Worry about it then.  But because of the physical nature of the climate crisis, action must be taken in the present.  The future will be too late.  (I've written about this aspect before, as have others. I won't repeat it here.)

There is also the unfortunate fact that, in a sense, the climate crisis will never obviously happen.  The weather will just keep getting sporadically worse until it is worse nearly everywhere all the time, deaths and disease and disasters, likely including violence and war, will increase until over time the world has changed considerably.  But with nothing obviously pointing back to a cause called the climate crisis.

It is the difficulty that human societies and individuals have in seeing the present patterns of the oncoming future--and then acting decisively and comprehensively to meet the onrushing challenges.  But it is the ability to do so that humankind now needs, and has needed for a century.

Through a writing life that extended from the last decade of the 19th century to the 1940s, HG Wells focused on precisely this problem.  He saw that modern weaponry and other changes made strong international institutions necessary to prevent ever more powerful nations from destroying each other, and civilization with it.  His detailed warnings became realities that confirmed his analyzes and mirrored his fictions in two world wars.

Wells urged policymakers and citizens to think about the future consequences of human actions and of scientific discoveries.  He wrote about history as seen through such patterns. Above all, he urged everyone to think about the consequences of present actions on the future, and about visions of better futures to guide the present.

But at the end of his life he lost faith in the ability of humanity to change its way of thinking fast enough, including this approach to the future.  He had seen that human societies and human thinking could continue to develop to meet future challenges.  But the race between  anticipation and catastrophe had been lost, he felt.  Civilization had become so large and complex and destructive, and was changing so extensively and rapidly, that it no longer made sense, it was out of control--out of anyone's control. It was bound to destroy itself. The human mind had developed as far as it would ever develop, it would go no farther--it was mind at the end of its tether.

Maybe today the race between anticipation and catastrophe is more like baseball, and we can avoid the third out and score enough runs in the ninth to win.  (But then there's that old bumper sticker: Nature Bats Last.)  It seems more likely the game is football or basketball, and even if we are driving for the winning score, the game is over when the clock runs out and the fourth quarter ends, and we've lost.  

I don't think it's true that because I see the end of everything coming for myself, I see the end of everything for everyone.  But I was a great deal more anxious about all this thirty or twenty years ago when I was younger, and that's when it seemed possible that the world could grow up in time.  Now that it seems so unlikely that dire fate will be avoided, there's little choice but to accept it. (Bearing in mind the Scott Fitzgerald dictum: "One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.")  Being old probably makes that easier, especially since I likely won't live to see much of it.

But still, it's painful and--in the full sense--awful to contemplate: that this beautiful world will end, not just for me, but for all time.  This is perhaps a particular feature of my generation's old age, another of our firsts...though ours won't be the last to feel this.

I have however thought about the near future and the lives of those much younger than me--the coming decades and into the next century--and I see a world with positive possibilities, even without contemplating any difference in the ultimate outcome.  But I will save those somewhat happier thoughts for next time.

On Turning 73 in 2019: Living Hope

This is the second of two posts from June 2019, on the occasion of my 73rd birthday.  Both are about how the future looks at that time in the world, and from my age.  The first was on the far future.  This one is about the future that younger people now alive will live, and some unknown number of generations beyond that.   After the recent 2024 election, these thoughts assume new relevance.
There is no possibility of true culture without altruism."
Susan Sontag

"The absurdity of a life that may well end before one understands it does not relieve one of duty...to live through it as bravely and as generously as possible."
Peter Matthiessen
The Snow Leopard

“It is important to work for future generations, for our descendants. We must be proud to do something, even though people do not usually know its value.”
Shunryu Suzuki
founder of San Francisco Zen Center

We live in many kinds of time. We experience time differently, especially according to our age,  and the contexts of our experience are shaped by cycles we know, and that we don't know.  So any speculation on the future is bound to be vague, provisional and a bit of hit and miss.  But this is what I feel about the relatively near future, beyond my time.

As outlined in my previous post, the context of coming decades is likely to be dominated by the effects of the climate crisis, named or not.  Those persistent effects and the new contexts they create will change what people do and how they live.

When that happens in a widespread way (for it is already happening in relatively ignored parts of the world) depends on the climate.  What happens, and how it happens, depends to a great extent on future generations--probably beginning with those who are now young, who are now children.

Right now the impetus for efforts to address the climate crisis--such as the proposed Green New Deal in the US--is coming largely from the young.  Their leading edge is represented in government, and presumably in other influential institutions.  If their awareness becomes the standard for future generations, then responses can become more conscious and deliberate.

 But one way or another, the climate crisis will change just about everything, perhaps in the next few decades, probably by mid century, almost certainly by the end of the century.

There are two major aspects to the climate crisis: there are the causes, and there are the effects.  Societies may choose whether or not to address the causes of future global heating, such as greenhouse gases.  There will be less choice in whether or not to deal with the effects: the sea level rise, heat waves, droughts, floods, shortages, disease outbreaks, and the likely secondary effects of relocations, mass migrations and armed conflicts will demand attention--first local, and then as resources stretch and more people are involved, beyond that. Yet how societies and especially individuals choose to deal with the effects will make all the difference in how people live their lives.

There are those who imagine possible futures, mostly as stories.  While these stories may be visions that include new technologies and/or old forms of human society, or they may be mostly "what if?" explorations, cautionary tales or metaphors of the present, they offer a range of possibilities that cannot be dismissed.  I offer here only a few elements of a future I can imagine and foresee.

There are aspects of that future that can begin right now.  The young can prepare for the meaningful work of that future.  Many of the concerns of today will evaporate.  The consumer economy cannot be the focus of so many lives.  The emphasis will be on meeting needs, rather than in inciting and manipulating wants.

There will be increasing interest in finding technical means for addressing both causes and effects of the climate crisis.  The young can prepare themselves to participate in such research and development.  If I were advising adolescents today, I would suggest examining areas of study and possible occupations by asking the question, what will a climate crisis society need?

At this point, a stubborn refusal to surrender to some sense of the inevitable is healthy for the young. But denial is not.  They can dedicate themselves to possible means of addressing the causes as well as effects of the climate crisis.  But developing means to address future effects is also worthy and important.  In this way--the only meaningful way--they enact hope.  Hope is no longer principally a feeling.  It is a commitment, a set of activities, a life.

In terms of anticipating and dealing with effects, my guess is that the future will need managers of teams and resources responding to individual problems, and to develop strategies to address problems before they occur.

The future will need a greater proportion of dedicated individuals with skills for actions that today are often grouped under the name of first responders.  The future will need engineers and others in specific areas not yet prioritized by society's reward system.  Biological sciences will assume a new importance, especially in areas of innovative applications in energy, in forestalling a major extinction event.  Migrations because of climate will require innovative solutions in a host of areas.  And the list goes on.

The future will also need dreamers and storytellers, visionaries and critical minds, but using means and applying themselves in incalculable ways.  More broadly, when many occupations that today seem important eventually fall away as useless and wasteful, the need for currently undervalued skills will come forward.

Other needs will become the focus of more jobs, and even with increasing difficulties, those jobs can be more meaningful to communities and the individuals who do them. The perils and pains of this future may be great.  But individuals may find new purpose. Life may be harder, but less absurd. What will unite all these occupations is clear purpose, beyond making money to pay for the illusions fed to everyone, or to sustain the unsustainable.

This future, when so much that seems unavoidably important today fades into the sodden inventory of this failing period of history,  offers new opportunities for individuals to make basic commitments.  Some of these will be instinctive, but many personal commitments and choices will need to be made consciously, because they will be hard to make.  It will even be hard to know they can and must be made.

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives."
Howard Zinn

“Such hopelessness can arise, I think, only from an inability to face the present, to live in the present, to live as responsible beings among other beings in this sacred world here and now, which is all we have, and all we need to found our hopes upon.”
Ursula LeGuin

"…the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise."
F. Scott Fitzgerald

There seem to me to be two essential mysteries about humanity and its history.  One is whether humanity as a whole would develop in time to meet challenges of the changing present, particularly those very large ones that humanity itself has set in motion.  So far, when applied to the climate crisis, the answer seems to be no.

The other in some ways underlies the first.  It is the nature of human nature.  Is human nature based on selfishness, greed, lust, fear, envy, anger, the will to dominate and the passion to destroy and to kill?  Or is it based on understanding, a moral sense and sense of justice, compassion, empathy, courage and generosity?  Or is it an uncertain mix of both?

That last view is expressed in a fable, attributed to several Native American peoples, and may be familiar to some from the under-rated film Tomorrowland.  A version of it goes like this:

A grandfather talks to his grandchild. "A fight is going on inside me," he said. "It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego." 

"The other is good," he continued. "He is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith."

 "The same fight is going on inside you," grandfather said, "and inside every other person, too."

The grandchild thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"

 "The one you feed." 

Under greater pressure and in starker terms than perhaps we can imagine, people of the near future will face this choice.  Their choice may not alter the ultimate future that comes after them--perhaps centuries later-- but it will help characterize their present.  Human civilization is some ways has been a struggle to inculcate a fair degree of personal freedom and justice for individuals while meeting the needs of community.  Freedom is based on choice, and community is based on a sense of common humanity, fairness, decency and shared fate.

 How the needs of the individual and society are both met is an ongoing test of humanity as a social species.  Individuals need the support of community, as community needs the commitment of individuals.  Apart from institutional constraints, the balance is achieved by a sense of responsibility, empathy, compassion, generosity and kindness.  The ethic of "you'd do the same for me" is perhaps the most basic human statement.

Even in his bleakest scenario for the future, HG Wells kept reminding readers than nothing will prevent at least individual human beings from exhibiting qualities of courage and love.  In adverse times, the need becomes even greater for "mutual comfort and redeeming acts of kindness."

Redemption is a curious concept in this context, but there is something to it.  If humanity can't quite redeem its past by fixing its future, it can at least to some extent redeem itself.  Wells expressed his preference that, if the end is truly coming, he "would rather our species ended its story in dignity, kindliness and generosity, and not like drunken cowards in a daze or poisoned rats in a sack."

Humanity can go down fighting, and it can go down loving, both.  Perhaps it will even endure.  But its time of testing need not be one of unremitting pain and degradation. It can be a time that includes creativity, challenge, commitment and character, in which life is lived to the fullness of the moment.  For we live in many kinds of time.

so long, Florida Coast; goodbye, polar bears

Poetic justice for the Bushes, maybe, though Jeb will be long gone before global heating wipes out the Florida coast. But what have the polar bears done to deserve extinction? Yet more evidence on the onrushing consequences of global heating...

Arctic Melting Fast; May Swamp U.S. Coasts by 2099

Now and soon

It's hot. I haven't seen statistics on the season yet, but this summer right into September has certainly felt warmer than any since we arrived in Arcata almost exactly eight years ago. It feels hot because the humidity on this coastal strip is consistently high. It's not that noticeable most of the time, because the temperatures are cool. But when the temperature is warmer for days and weeks at a time, even a little, you feel the humidity, and so it feels hot. Not New Orleans hot. But maybe Pittsburgh summer hot.

Allergies seem worse this summer, too, for both of us. Whatever combination of humidity, dampness and the year round flourishing of flora and fauna is responsible, the "Humboldt Crud" kind of illness is as much a part of the local scene as redwoods, banana slugs and dairy cows.

It seems to me the warmer weather has had something to do with our bumper crop of tomatoes, too. When we were first here, growing tomatoes in Arcata was almost unheard of. But Margaret works at it, and we do have an apparent advantage in a cement driveway (used exclusively now for container plants with basketball quarter-court), which seems to reflect sunlight. So Margaret planted a number of varieties this year, hoping some would flourish, and some have in the past few years. But they all did this year, so we've got big tomatoes, small tomatoes, round ones, sort of oblong ones, as well as red, orange and yellow ones. And so I've been trying to keep up consumption with lots of salads, tomato sandwiches, fried peppers and tomatoes, and sliced tomatoes over pasta. And I'm not complaining.

Still, I don't like the heat or the allergies. And the forecasts for the future aren't too good. A recently released analysis of California cities shows increasing heatwaves even in San Francisco, with more heat-related deaths expected-as much as a 70% rise by the end of the century.

Sacramento will be worse than that, and Fresno worse still. San Bernadino--forget it. It's global heating, brought home.

Click here for the SF Chronicle story on this survey:

SAN FRANCISCO / 'Cool gray city' projected to turn murderously hot / Temperatures likely to rise by mid-century as a result of global warming, study warns

Like our summer here, there will be some relatively good things as well as the relatively bad things associated with hotter times, and that will help mask the eventual consequences. But of course it's not just heatwave-related deaths we're talking about, but the need for more electricity for air conditioning (one of the problems here when it gets hot is that nobody has air conditioning, not even the restaurants and movie theatres, because nobody needed it before), the need for more water when it may be dryer, and the likely increase in pest-borne diseases where cooler weather used to temper these outbreaks by keeping the insect population down. Then the whole ecology gets thrown out of whack. Wildlife hereabouts is already being affected by the years of drought and now the heat.

At the least it will all mean more demand on civic services, which will cost more money. It's a problem for cities losing population and businesses, and tax base. It's a problem for a state that already has fiscal problems, and an addiction to lower taxes and more services. And thanks to the G. W. Bush crowd, it's going to be a big problem for the debt and deficit-laden federal government for a long time.

We're already seeing that in the states (and countries) suffering the onslaught of hurricanes. Loss of life, of homes, of property are the most proximate and most obvious, but there's also the impact on the economy when so many people are dislocated; the economic impact of a loss of tourism for a year or more in some areas; plus the costs to government and NGOs like the Red Cross, which lessens their resources for the hurricanes yet to come. Somewhat similiarly, the costs to insurance companies will eventually mean more expensive and less available insurance for people and businesses, which will make the next round of hurricanes even more expensive, and so on. For if even if this is the return of an otherwise normal cycle, only augmented by global heating, damaging hurricanes will be such a regular feature of existence there that even the cable news stations will tire of sending reporters out in slickers to try to talk while being manfully blown around.

The hurricanes are dramatic and obvious in their effects, though even there we shortchange them. Florida has certainly been hard-hit but there have been other places too, that got it worse (Haiti) and bad enough, but fewer reporters were there (much of Pennsylvania had damaging floods from rivers and streams---including Pittsburgh and its three rivers; flooding in West Virginia was said to be the worst in its history.) Tornadoes, cyclones, all part of the disturbances, are also part of the larger cycles. Cycles within cycles, and global heating may not even be the largest in scale. However it is still shaping up to be the most telling. Recent research suggesting that carbon from natural sources is increasing because of the carbon from human-made pollution, further multiplying greenhouse effects beyond the usual projections.

The worst of these predicted scenarios for California's future would be mitigated somewhat by real attention to doing what has to be done to lessen global heating. But we've barely gotten to first base on recognizing the climate crisis, let along doing much about it.

John Kerry, with one of the best environmental records in Congress, has usually talked about this issue in connection with the Bush administration's failures in international cooperation (on Letterman, Kerry said the U.S. should rejoin the world on the global warming treaty) and especially in supporting science. He's exactly right in this regard, and only a level of understanding and confidence in science behind public support for the necessary policies has any chance of helping to head off the worst.

So for those of you who will be alive in 2050, and who will have children who are alive in 2090, I ask you to remember that some of us tried our best to raise the alarm.

That will probably be cold comfort, but anything cold may be a comfort by then.

The Real News continued

No, it wasn't the hundreds of thousands of people made homeless and without crops in Bangladesh and India because of floods. Nor the continuing fires in the tinder-dry west, including several up here in northern California that have destroyed---and this is usually the only thing that gets media attention---hundreds of homes.

And it certainly wasn't the study showing that increasingly hot summers are matching global heating models, as referenced here:
Guardian Unlimited Special reports Heatwaves here to stay

No, it was a hurricane in Florida. Maybe because they're named, the media treats them like celebrities. So the weather finally dominated the news for a few days, as we watched hapless TV reporters being blown around (even in wind tunnels, if the real thing wasn't available) and pointing to tree branches lying ominously on the ground, on all channels, all day, all night, all day, all night...

Cause Unknown

One isolated story after another, about the wildfires scorching thousands of acres in southern California, Nevada, Arizona and Alaska, derive their import as news items directly from the number and type of homes threatened or destroyed. Big fire but don't worry, no homes were destroyed.

Some recent stories from southern CA and the southwest mention that there has been six years of drought in the area, and that this spate of huge fires is appearing about two months earlier than past "fire seasons." Which certainly doesn't mean the season will be over two months earlier as well. They fear another season like way back in '03. That was a real bad year. Hey, wasn't that actually like...last year?

What causing the fires? It's either something very specific (one of them was reported to have been caused by a bird, electocuted on a power wire, whose burning body touched off the ensuing inferno) or it's "cause unknown."

So it's not just the deliberate ostrich heads of the Bush administration, refusing to believe in global heating and the climate crisis. It's the ostrich habits of the news media, brains full of sawdust that will eventually catch on fire, along with their permed hair, though of course by then it will be cause unknown.

You'd think that obvious and quite violent evidence that climate models have predicted would at least attract that level of analysis. But then you would be thinking, and that drops you right out of this happy nightmare.

The Real News Update

Most of the U.S. sweltering with temperatures in the 90s. Violent storms continue in many parts of the country. Torrential rains in New Jersey and Pennsylvania cause floods---13 inches of rain fell in Philadelphia in one day. Tornadoes touched down in Maryland and in Illinois. Dangerous storms moving across the Midwest into the lower Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, where they are expected to merge Tuesday evening.

Giant forest fires in Alaska and California. A huge dust storm in Phoenix. Scientists in the U.S. and Canada report that due to drought in both countries, the duck population has fallen by 11% in one year.

The Real News Update


Severe storms including tornadoes tore through large swatches of the U.S. midsections last week, as mega-forest fires rage in Arizona. Forecast for severe storms in Montana and Wyoming this weekend. Retail sales in U.S. down in June, attributed to "bad weather."

The Real News Update

Over the weekend, heavy rains and floods in Colorado.
Today, heavy rains and severe thunderstorms forecast for the southern plains.

expected high temperatures:
Honolulu 88F
Fairbanks, Alaska 95F

The Real News

Where do you go for the real news, the significant news, the news you need to heed? Well, you can get the latest on Britney's tour cancellation, the Lacy Peterson trial or Madonna’s name change, plus the furor over whether the voting is really fair for American Idol, in most any newspaper, TV network news, MSNBC, CNN and Fox. But for the real news, you might try the Weather Channel.

There you will see, day after day, a summer full of violent storms from the east coast through the Middle Atlantic States---particularly the Ohio Valley---and into the Midwest. Torrential rains, frequent and damaging thunderstorms. In much of the Midwest, this stormy weather has been accompanied by tornadoes---up to 100 in a day this spring, which NOAA has announced was the 3rd warmest spring on record. Storms in the mountain states, too. And in the West, the worst drought in 500 years. Get that? Since the continent was invaded, since it saw its first metal plow.

Nobody really knows how bad the global climate crisis will get, but it’s clearly underway. Not clearly enough for most people yet, it seems. Americans are incredibly literal---the only time they “got” global warming was the very hot summers at the end of the 1980s in the eastern U.S.---including the media capitals of New York and Washington. Hot summer equal global warming, get it? So the first flood of books and films made their way into the marketplace in 1990. But now there's just storms and floods in some places, drought in others, too scattered and slow for the pattern to look as real as a still photo, a special effects sequence.

Probably it will take a combination of extreme events and a new president to point out what the problem is. Or it might be the next international climate change report, due this year, though with a Bush-approved change in its leadership, probably not till after the election.

What really will matter is what the U.S. does or doesn’t do about climate change. Later it will also matter what China and other growing industrial economies do or don’t do. Much of Europe is getting itself into better position to both cope and begin slowing down the runaway train. But the consequences are likely to go on, and probably continue getting worse, for a hundred years or so. In twenty to fifty years, our children and their children will probably have a pretty good idea just how bad it will be---whether it’s going to be manageable, survivable or apocalyptic.

If it’s apocalypse in store, the half-full folks can cheer themselves by remembering that our species achieved its humanity, that we became pretty much what we still are, except with a closer relationship with nature and the realities of the universe now hidden to us, during the last period of major climate disruption---the most recent big Ice Age.

The kind of consequences outlined in the deadpan predictions of the last international report suggest there will be some big losers (in the Third World mostly) and a few offsetting winners (some in the U.S.), so this will be something we’ll just muddle through. I don’t really think so. For one thing, our current government is not only unprepared for any serious set of problems, but is bleeding away the financial resources the U.S. will need, even if incrementally over a very long time, to cope. The goodwill of the world to offer help that might offset what the U.S. can’t afford, is an even more precious resource being bled away. We could wind up with no recourse but to threaten people with our hydrogen bombs and other WMDs.

Or the whole nation-state vs. global corporation situation could come to a head, what with gigantic companies buying up fresh water and doing their best to destabilize governments that might stop them (I’ve even seen this charge applied to attempting to destabilize Canada, the biggest reserve of fresh water in the world.)

It’s all way beyond my meager knowledge, but my intuition does tell me that (and I suppose this is another half-fool move) a lot of the things people are terribly worried about in our technological future---wholesale genetic engineering, human cloning to order, etc.--—aren’t going to turn out to be problems, because society won’t be able to afford them (financially, in terms of energy or social stability), and technology is going to have to take quite a different turn.

There’s just no doubt that climate is going to shape how humans live in the future that is now beginning, for climate always has. And apparently we’ve usually been blind to that fact.

For the last half century or more, and certainly since the 1980s when coincidentally the “greenhouse effect” began to attract notice (although Arthur Miller notes in his autobiography that some scientist he met mentioned the possibility in the 40s) there’s been the drumbeat of the end of western civilization, one that has been growing so insistent that it seems a foregone conclusion. But we might have figured that, absent blowing ourselves up, this might turn out to be overly dramatic. Still, the end of a “civilization” is a bit abstract---a lot of people who wouldn’t agree with each other on what constitutes western civilization, believe it has already ended.

It’s “civilization” or “society” in the broader sense that’s now at issue---humanity that doesn’t shrink way down, that doesn’t go back to the caves and the deserts. Absent being overcome by barbarians---not an idle thought anymore, thanks to…well, let’s not get into that—we’re looking at biological threats. We might be poisoning ourselves fatally---I’ve always expected that my generation would be the litmus test of that, since most of this crap started when we were babies. Overcrowding breeding disease and spreading around the world in a flash, or even the coincidence of a few badly placed disasters that might have gone unnoticed in a less intensely interconnected and interdependent, smugly vulnerable time as ours---earthquake in LA, big volcano eruption somewhere else---or just another brazen meteor—there are lots of scenarios for the possibility of Armaggedon. I’ve even had the nasty thought that a fairly large human die-back is the only way this planet will survive without tossing out the last few million years of evolution: the Gaian enterprise. Still, it wasn’t until this climate thing that it truly seemed that major painful change became all but inevitable.

If it’s the end of the world as we know it, I can’t say I feel fine about it. I’d like to believe we’ve learned enough to make a conscious transition, to do what plenty of us know has to be done (and plenty of people smarter than me know how to do). We could even eventually go back for what we mistakenly jettisoned and see if we can’t recover what we lost in the process of developing certain other aspects of ourselves. At the edge of science and other thought, we seem primed for that.

Oh well.

I’ll keep plugging at this for as long as I’ve got the resources and the wits to do so, because I believe that the future is what we do and what we dream right now, so living in the future and living in the present are really the same thing, as far as our mortal lives go. There are a lot of people working that future more diligently, more knowledgeably and more effectively than me. But facing the climate challenge will take the whole society, and sooner or later it will change the whole society, maybe all societies and cultures on the planet. The longer we do nothing, the worse and the longer-lasting the crisis will be. The sooner people start taking in the real news, the better chance we’ll have to make the major changes that might keep this enterprise going with the least possible amount of pain and destruction.

Earth Day Essay: The Forgotten Apocalypse

by William S. Kowinski

Anybody here remember global warming? It's been more than a decade since a few horrendously hot summers in parts of the U.S. inspired a flood of books, articles and television reports on the grave dangers of climate change caused by fossil fuels and other "greenhouse gases." But now, despite continued rising temperatures, and increasing certainty among scientists that the climate change already underway will cause or at least exacerbate ruinous problems that may threaten humanity and the world as we know it for centuries, global warming has become the forgotten apocalypse.

It will undoubtedly be mentioned in various Earth Day perorations, and it is the subject of at least one new television documentary, "The Great Warming," which will be aired on April 22 (but only in Canada. A 90 minute version made by the same Canadian company---Stonehaven Productions---is tentatively scheduled for PBS in October.)

The real resonance test will come at the end of May when the world's first major global warming disaster movie, "The Day After Tomorrow," kicks off the summer season. Director Roland Emmerich has exchanged climate change for the alien threat of his blockbuster "Independence Day" (and the radiation monster of his unsuccessful remake of "Godzilla".) Though most scientific speculation on possible effects of climate change have evidently not limited the film's special effects, its web site includes some reference to the real problem. The film's ambition to raise awareness is suggested in the title's echo of the landmark 1983 television film, "The Day After," which changed public perceptions with its dramatization of nuclear holocaust.

But even big screen catastrophe may not be enough. The recent release of a Pentagon-sponsored scenario that described geopolitical as well as environmental effects of abrupt climate change---a few nuclear exchanges over water shortages, for example-- barely made a ripple in the news cycle. Nor has the growing concern beyond North America, which reached a telling apotheosis in the recent statement by Sir David King, chief science adviser to the British government: "Climate change is a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism."

So why are we so determined to be oblivious? The list of possibilities might include:

Monstrous message: Torrid temperatures for decades, abandoned coastal cities, food and water shortages, diseases, resource wars, not to mention no more SUVs---it's too big, too terrible, too far ahead in time; it's too extreme to believe, and if true, too awful to think about. Denial conceals despair: with no apparent easy solutions, we lack faith in our creativity or character, and probably in each other. Besides, after the Cold War's thermonuclear threat, and while trying to cope with international terrorism, we're suffering from apocalypse fatigue.

Dueling Experts: It's comforting as well as apparently sensible to buy the line favored by the Bush administration that if all scientists don't agree, it doesn't get on the agenda. Chronically indifferent media reporting on science adds to the impression that this is another case of experts saying coffee is good for you on Tuesday and bad for you on Wednesday. In fact, given the incredible complexity of what's involved in a number of scientific disciplines taken to their current limits, it's remarkable that a hefty consensus exists on the basic notions that climate change is real, that our fossil fuel use is largely responsible, and that consequences will be profound and possibly catastrophic.

The Usual Suspects: On the assumption that if Americans believed in global warming they might expect their government to do something about it, major elements of fossil fuel industries have conducted a skilled and relentless p.r.campaign of denial, while pressuring politicians to remember who is buying them. So a question of real economic as well as basic ecological consequence becomes part of the ideological and political shouting show, and America is either entertained or wearily tunes out.

Numbing nomenclature: In a world of warm and fuzzies, and "happiness is a warm puppy," it's hard to get upset about something that sounds so moderate and nice as "global warming." Even the old "greenhouse effect" sounds decidedly unthreatening. Who's afraid of a greenhouse? It sounds green, and warm. The currently popular "climate change" is similarly gentle and bland. People eagerly travel long distances for a change in climate. Various attempts have been made to heat up the nomenclature: "the climate crisis," "Thermageddon," but nothing has caught on.

No Rachel Carson: Books continue to be published that contribute solid information, but none has had the simple eloquence or impact of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," which got DDT banned and jump-started a new kind of environmental awareness.

Failed focus: Are increasingly bureaucratic environmental organizations dissipate their energies on their separate brand-name issues, refusing to set priorities and work together? So far it seems they've failed to focus on global warming as the keystone issue that not only is the most crucial, but addresses virtually every other significant environmental issue, from deforestation and pollution to species extinction.

What is newest and most challenging about global warming is that once its effects are clearly apparent, it's too late to stop them. This is where the fashionable concept of "the tipping point" transcends its usual trivial application. Once the tipping point of global warming is reached, nothing will stop it, and it will only get worse. We will then be forced to cope with it, and maybe slow down its progress. It is not the kind of crisis we're used to, that we can just wait until it gets bad, then fix it and go back to normal. It will change normal, probably for generations.

That's what makes leadership on this issue so dangerous, and so crucial. The basic tasks are easy to state but not to contemplate: first, face the problem. Then take the actions we can to slow down the warming, prepare for possible consequences, and foster the creativity and innovation that might blunt this crisis in ways now unforeseen. Not since Jimmy Carter challenged Americans to become more energy efficient during the last oil crisis has a president dared to risk the political consequences of suggesting such efforts and limits. Just how much this contributed to his failure to be re-elected is debatable, but in fact the combination of his leadership and the perspicacity of many American businesses resulted in a decade of substantial economic growth without using more energy. Now we're told this is impossible.

Now energy efficiency is no longer fashionable, excess is considered patriotic, and leaders avoid moral leadership by denying the dangers. Instead of building resolve and an emotional consensus, we are left with bewilderment. But not to engage, to inquire and do what we can, is to deny and damage the civic soul of America, long before we face the worst physical consequences.

Our failure so far to confront this threat exposes all our flaws, and so may begin our most profound tragedy. But here and there, some Americans are starting to notice changes---New Englanders who see the maple trees and the maple syrup industry dying, or Pennsylvanians who notice that the deer ticks are more active and virulent because of longer and warmer summers. If they begin to connect the dots on their own, will they demand leadership, or at least be ready to follow it? If so, they have in John Kerry someone who understands the issue and is ready to act on it.

This is an issue that more than any other tests our ability and willingness to think about and care about the future. The challenges are to think big, think ahead and take responsibility now. We have some tradition of taking responsibility for the future, in the Great Law of the Haudenosaunee: "In every deliberation we must consider the impact on the seventh generation to come." Thinking ahead together, and thinking for the welfare of the whole planet, are new to us. But we know what the future means when we look into the eyes of children, and the climate crisis will likely be felt by those who are children now.

"If I were a young person being handed this problem by indulgent predecessors, I would be angry," writes James Speth, co-founder of the National Resource Defense Council, in his new book, "Red Sky at Morning." Perhaps that's why the aforementioned new documentaries on global warming are being hosted by young singer Alanis Morissette, and actors Keanu Reeves and Leonardo DiCaprio.

In what remains for me the most cogent media treatment of the subject, the 1990 international television production, "After the Warming," host and writer James Burke examines the crucial role of climate in western civilization and presents a plausible history of global warming from the perspective of a citizen in 2050. (It would be plausible, that is, if humanity had delayed action until only the year 2000, as he supposed it would.) Burke's future self compares us today to the man who falls from the top of a tall building. As he passes the 17th floor, someone asks him how he's doing. "So far, so good," he replies.

West Nile Virus: Tip of the Global Heating Iceberg?

It's perhaps an intemperate metaphor-and one tending toward the wrong end of the thermometer-to suggest that the West Nile virus outbreak throughout North America is the tip of the iceberg. But so far, few seem to realize why this might be so.

Media attention has focused on the geographical progress of the virus which has infected hundreds and killed at least 45 by mid September, and whether the blood supply is contaminated. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont suggests it could be a bioterrorism plot. While there are many factors potentially involved, one is conspicuously unmentioned in most reports: global heating.

But even though the dots are all there, nobody is connecting them.
The September 14 San Francisco Chronicle reported the first confirmed case of West Nile virus in California. The front page of the same edition proclaimed "Hottest summer since 1930s" and "2002 drought worst since Dust Bowl."

Why press reports aren't making the connection is suggested in another pair of story in the next day's Chronicle: one story reports that the West Nile virus is killing more than 110 species of birds, including red-tailed hawks and great horned owls "by the thousands," and naturalists are worried about the endangered California condor. On the very next page, there's a story headlined "EPA report ignores global warming, with White House OK" by Andrew C. Revkin, reprinted from New York Times. It begins "Nearly every mention of global warming has been stricken from the annual federal report on air pollution..." quotes an EPA official "There's a complete paranoia [in the White House]about anything on climate...and everything has to be reviewed widely."

But at least one observer close to the ground at least alluded to the connection. When press attention was focused on the outbreak in Louisiana earlier this summer, a state health official commented, "As long as the warm weather lasts, we're going to have a problem."

As global heating continues, we're going to be having the problem for a long time. West Nile virus is only one of a number of diseases carried by mosquitoes and other bugs that are flourishing because of global heating. In many places in North America, the summers are not just hotter, they're longer. The winters are also warmer in places like Pennsylvania, so the usual diebacks in wood ticks, for instance, during the cold months isn't happening as much. Ticks can carry and infect humans with Lyme Disease, among other health hazards.

The drought in California is driving animals from their usual niches and into suburban and even city neighborhoods. Rats are drinking from the swimming pools in Beverly Hills.

The West Nile virus is in the news now, but the problem of mosquito-borne diseases has been quietly growing. Locally transmitted malaria outbreaks were recorded from Texas and Florida to New Jersey and New York, and as far north as Toronto in the 1990s, which was the hottest decade in 600 years. In September of 2002, malaria-carrying mosquitoes were found in Leesburg, Virginia, near the homes of two teenagers infected with the disease.

Malaria has also been found in southern Europe and parts of Asia and South Africa. Globally, the areas on mountain tops where it remains below freezing all year have shrunk; now mosquitoes are mountain climbing. Insect-borne diseases have reached the highlands of South and Central America, Asia and areas of Africa. There were cases of dengue fever in Mexico a mile from sea level.

The connection between global heating and the spread of these diseases has been made by scientists but hasn't yet reached the press or public. But if global heating ever becomes a major emotional issue in the U.S., it will likely be because of disease epidemics. Chunks of Alaska could sink into the vanishing permafrost without bothering anybody in Manhattan (NY or Kansas) but an epidemic of Lyme Disease in the Hamptons or malaria in Los Angeles might break the ice.

Note: This essay is also a kind of prologue to a longer piece, "Empire of the Ants," which enlists H.G. Wells and the 1950s sci-fi classic "Them!" to discuss the cultural evolution of human self-extinction. You can find it over at http://kowincidence.blogspot.com.