Tag Archives: climate change

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Writing

Monday Musings: Taming My Inner Eeyore

The hard part of getting back into posting isn’t the first post. It’s the second, and the ones after that. In part, I retreated from social media six or seven weeks back because I couldn’t imagine carrying the emotional load I had shouldered while simultaneously producing essays about things that mattered less to me, which was pretty much everything else. At the same time, I also knew that I didn’t want to post every Monday about our family problems or my mental health issues. Nobody wants to read that guy week after week after week.

I touched on this a bit back in May, at a time when I was also struggling to come up with essay ideas for these Monday Musing entries.

So, what to do this time around . . . .

In truth, right now there is lots to write about. And the world is a far more promising place today than it was in May. Which makes this blogging thing a little easier. Consider:

Our former Felon-In-Chief is twisting slowly, slowly in the wind (that’s a Watergate reference, for those of you too young to remember), and I will admit that I’ve enjoyed watching him flop about like a hooked fish on a pier (yeah, I know, I’m mixing metaphors — deal with it), searching for any defense that might save his sorry ass. “The documents were planted! It’s a hoax.” “I declassified the documents ages ago.” (Quite a neat trick — knowing to declassify documents that would be planted on his property without his knowledge years later . . . .) “This is all legal under the Presidential Records Act.” (Spoiler alert: It’s not.)

At the same time, our current President (legally and fairly elected) is having a summer to remember. Tumbling gas prices, inflation starting to come under control, continued historic strength in the job market, Democratic voters motivated and mobilized by the SCOTUS decision overturning Roe v. Wade, voters in ruby red Kansas rejecting an abortion ban, one piece of major legislation after another passed and signed into law, rising poll numbers, surprisingly strong Democratic performances in special elections. It all adds up to a changing political landscape, and the realization that November might not turn out the way most pundits were predicting only a few months ago.

On the other hand, drought and floods and fires serve as constant reminders that despite the passage of the climate change bill — a significant and laudable achievement for the Administration and Congress — our planet remains gravely at risk. With that in mind, I believe when historians look back on 2022 decades from now, they will identify as the most significant moment of the year this week’s decision by the California Air Resources Board to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered motor vehicles after 2035.

Yes, it’s only one state. Don’t let that fool you. If California were a sovereign nation, its economy would be the fifth largest in the world, behind only the U.S., China, Japan, and Germany. Alone it accounts for more than 1/7 of our country’s GDP, and its citizens own far more cars than do the residents of any other state. Where California goes, the automobile industry will have little choice but to follow.

At long last, someone in this country has stepped forward and said, “This way to climate sanity. Follow me.” I expect Gavin Newsom, California’s governor and a Democratic Presidential hopeful for 2024 or 2028, sees this as good politics, which is also telling.

Look, anyone who knows me well will tell you I have a lot more in common with Eeyore than I do with Pollyanna. I am all too aware of the threat Trumpism poses to our republic, of the damage the Supreme Court has done to our society and the further damage it could very well do in its next term, of the precarious state of our planet and the limited reach of even California’s dramatic actions this week.

I am also aware of the tough road that lies ahead for my family, for my older daughter in particular.

As a part-time essayist, I can choose to dwell on the negative, or, as the song goes, I can accentuate the positive. For now, I prefer to do the latter. My hope may prove audacious, fantastical even. But I embrace it anyway. I can also promise you I won’t always be able to do this. My inner Eeyore is strong and persistent. For now, though, he is quiescent, and I’m glad.

I wish you a week of hope, good health, and good tidings.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related

Monday Musings: A Nation In Need of Common Ground

A video surfaced on Twitter and social networks over the weekend. It came out of D.C. and the demonstrations there, and in its first iteration, slowed down for effect, it appeared to show a left-wing demonstrator sucker-punching a Trump supporter, who goes down in a heap on the street, unconscious, his phone falling to his side.

A second version of the video emerged soon after, this one longer and in real time. It begins with the Trump supporter attacking a counter-protester who holds a bullhorn and who is obviously saying stuff the Trump supporter doesn’t like. The Trump supporter punches the man, rips the bullhorn from his hand and then knocks the man down and tries to stomp on his head. Other counter-protesters come to the aid of their comrade, a lot of pushing and shoving and punching ensues, and THEN the demonstrator lands his sucker punch.

Finally, a third version of the video, also in real time, longer still than the second, shows that after the Trump supporter is knocked out, another counter-protester, darts in, grabs his dropped phone, and hurries away, bearing a mischievous grin, as if enjoying the violence and also the theft of the phone.

So who is in the right? Who is in the wrong?

The answer, of course, is that none of them is in the right, and that our country is verging on a very dangerous partisan dynamic.

I have struggled with today’s post, going back and forth between my own outrage and resentment, and my deeper fear that our divisions are insurmountable and are bound to spark more and more violence.

I am sick and tired of the extreme political right in this country denying reality in pursuit of their ideological agenda. They don’t want to wear masks or make any meaningful sacrifice that might impact their daily lives. So their answer is to call COVID a hoax and endanger the rest of us. They don’t want even to contemplate long-term changes in their social or economic activity. So they deny that climate change is real and doom our planet to a bleak, likely devastating future. They don’t want to admit that their incompetent, race-baiting President lost. So they call into question the integrity of an election that everyone, from election officials of both parties to international observers brought in by the Trump Administration to Bill Barr’s own selected investigators agree was fair and honest. And in doing so, they imperil our republic.

But I am also pissed off at the activist left. This weekend’s “Million MAGA March” on Washington was a total bust. The event attracted all of 17,000 people. It was a blip, an event worthy of ridicule, despite the laughable attempts of White House Press Secretary Kaleigh McEnany to claim that a million people really did attend. At least it should have been all these things. Lots of people warned counter-protesters away from the city. “Let them have their little protest,” people said. “It will be small, a non-event, and it will make them look that much more foolish.”

But no. Counter-protesters had to show up anyway, leading to brawls like the one caught on camera, and turning the event into something else entirely. Now the story, at least in some circles, is about violence in the streets, about the poor Proud Boys, who came for a simple protest and were attacked by BLM and ANTIFA. That’s a ludicrous narrative, of course. But they have video, which can be manipulated and made to fit their story, as the first version of the fight was.

So, how do we return tolerance, civility, and compromise to our politics and society? Seriously, I’m asking. Because I’m not sure I know.

I want to believe that some of the tension we see boiling over will ease as the passions of the campaign recede. I am fairly confident that certain elements of our nation’s political life will improve, approaching something we will all recognize as normal, once the current occupant of the White House is gone and Joe Biden assumes the duties of the office. Really, though, I’m not entirely convinced.

I hear many on the right say that Democrats and progressives spent four years challenging the legitimacy of the current Administration, and so we should expect them to do the same. Yes, they ignore Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign, and Trump’s illegal solicitation of aid from Ukraine, AND the simple fact that Joe Biden won the election. But they’re not likely to be swayed by my arguments. I understand that.

I also know that these divisions pre-date this Administration. I remember during the Clinton Administration hearing Rush Limbaugh rail against the President, questioning his legitimacy, running a nightly feature called “America Held Hostage.” Democrats still carry resentments from the 2000 election, which was a historically close election. To this day, many on the left believe the White House was stolen from Al Gore. And I still remember the pain of the 2004 election, which I was convinced would rectify that previous injustice.

Most of all, I remember the eight years of Barack Obama’s Presidency, during which he was badgered, insulted, and obstructed non-stop by Republicans in Congress. To my mind, whatever indignities Trump has endured are nothing compared to what Obama faced, in part because Obama did nothing to deserve them. Like a Black motorist being harassed by police, Obama’s only “crime” was governing while Black.

The resentments exist on both sides, and I know that my recitation of grievances could be countered by those on the other side of the political spectrum. There are slights and bruised feelings aplenty throughout the body politic.

The question is, how do we move past them? Or do we not? Are we doomed to spiral on and on into deepening hostilities and civil unrest? Are we witnessing the final years of the American republic as we know it? I don’t want to believe that, but when we can’t even agree on basic facts, like vote totals and election winners, or whether a deadly disease is actually real, what kind of future do we have?

I didn’t mean for this post to be quite so bleak. I take hope from nations that have faced divisions far more serious and lethal than ours. Northern Ireland has enjoyed two decades of relative peace and stability, after a violent conflict that seemed too bitter ever to be resolved. The divisions in the U.S. are not yet that bad. Surely, we can find a way forward as well.

First, though, both sides must commit to finding common ground. And it seems to me that we should begin with the pandemic. COVID is now attacking rural America with the same merciless ferocity it unleashed on New York and other urban areas earlier this year. The red state/blue state divide some sought to exploit for political gain back in the spring and summer doesn’t exist anymore. This disease is attacking everywhere, which means we need a national solution.

Wouldn’t the energy and ingenuity we currently pour into partisan bickering be better spent combating COVID and saving lives in all fifty states? Can’t we agree that dying from a virus is bad, that keeping people alive and healthy is good?

Seems pretty basic to me.

 

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related

Monday Musings: Breathe

Breathe.

In and out. In and out.

It’s finally over.

I am relieved, elated, a bit nervous about the shenanigans yet to come from the White House. Not because I believe they will succeed, but because I believe that even in failing, they could do lasting damage to our republic.

Many of my friends on the Left, while sharing my relief, remain unnerved by the relative closeness of the vote. To be honest, I’m disappointed, too. I hoped for a landslide, for a decisive repudiation of this Administration. I am horrified by the fact that more than 70 million people, 47% per cent of this year’s electorate, cast votes for a man who coddled White supremacists, flouted the norms of our democratic republic, and utterly failed to lead the nation safely through a devastating and deadly pandemic. How, I keep asking myself, can so many people not see him for what he is? How is it possible that, relative to 2016, the President gained support among Latino voters, among Black voters?

I have no certain answers to any of these questions, but I can offer a few thoughts, starting with a couple of obvious ones: First, Trump remains to many Americans a symbol of defiance against institutions that they despise — the mainstream media; Congress; faceless, poorly defined “bureaucracy.” These people see his outrageous pronouncements not as offensive, they way I do, but as a righteous response to what they call “political correctness” — a changing standard of speech and action and thought that challenges assumptions they have embraced, and privilege they have enjoyed, all their lives. They care less about the substance of what he says than they do about his willingness to say it. They see him as courageous and authentic. Even after four years as President, he still seems to them the outsider, the guy who isn’t a politician and who therefore can be trusted to do the right thing.

Second, people really do vote based on their wallets, and rightly or wrongly they believe that he would have been better for the economy than Joe Biden will be. I think this was especially a factor in the shift in the vote among people of color. Trump’s claim that he has done more for Black voters than any President since Lincoln is, of course, laughable. But before the pandemic hit, the economy was doing well. He inherited a strong economy from Obama, and for the first three and a half years of his Presidency didn’t screw it up. And related to this, I believe a lot of people think he has handled the pandemic poorly, but don’t actually blame him for the devastation. To my mind, the staggering numbers of infections and deaths, and also the catastrophic collateral damage caused by COVID, are all directly attributable to Trump’s inaction, denials, and incompetence. But to many, these are things that happened, rather than something he did.

People talk about the level of support Biden enjoyed among women — and it needs to be said that without the gender-gap, we would have a very different outcome. But the gender-gap cuts both ways. Lots of men, including many men of color, like Trump because they see in him a brand of (toxic) masculinity that remains popular with a segment of the population. The whole America-first, go-it-alone, screw-the-rest-of-the-world vibe is very attractive to some people, just as Ronald Reagan’s John-Wayne-esque masculinity was forty years ago. In my view, his actions have made our world less safe, our country less influential, our planet’s future less certain. But some folks, including a lot of men, like that he “stands up for America.” They credit him for taking on China in a trade war, and for removing the U.S. from the climate treaty, the World Health Organization, the Iran deal. Where I see recklessness, they see strength.

Certainly there are people out there who voted for Trump because he spouts racism and homophobia and sexism, because he calls the pandemic a hoax, because he incites people to violence. But I know a lot of Trump voters. I’m even related to a few. None who I know support him because of these things. None of them are bad people. They voted for him despite all of this.

And — plot twist — that disturbs me even more than if they supported his extremism.

If they shared his views, then at least I might explain to myself how they could vote for the man. But I can’t help feeling that by caring about these other things and ignoring the ugliness of Trumpism, they make themselves complicit. They may not hate, but they voted for hatred. They may be patriots, but they voted for a man who is still trying to undermine the pillars of our republic. They may lament the damage done by COVID, but they rewarded with their vote a President who made the pandemic infinitely worse than it needed to be.

Hence my bewilderment and dismay at the level of support he received. It will take some time before I can reconcile myself to how close we came to having four more years of this President.

But that is not how I wish to end this post. Because the fact is, Trumpism has been rejected. And while it felt close, in large part because Republicans in Pennsylvania and other states wanted it to feel close and arranged the counting procedures accordingly, the fact is that this was a broad and impressive victory.

Joe Biden’s popular vote margin is likely to exceed five million votes. He has already received more votes than any candidate in U.S. history, and will easily clear 75 million before the counting is done. His margin will also likely be in excess of four per cent, making it the second largest margin in this century (after Obama ‘08). He is the first candidate to defeat a sitting President since Bill Clinton in 1992. His electoral vote total, while not huge, should wind up north of 290, and (depending largely on the vote in Arizona) could reach 306, which is exactly the number won by Trump four years ago — a unique historical oddity were it to occur.

And, of course, thanks to his courageous and wise choice of Kamala Harris as his running mate, Biden has given us our first woman Vice President and our first person of color in that position. We are, we can hope, that much closer to having a woman as President. I still remember vividly the campaign of Shirley Chisholm for President in 1972. She was dismissed as a sideshow, a curiosity. A Black New York Congresswoman running for President? Absurd! And I remember as well the excitement of Walter Mondale’s selection of Geraldine Ferraro as his VP candidate — the first woman to appear on a major party ticket. Today, finally, the promise of those two pioneers has been realized. More cause for celebration.

Finally, I should point out that Donald Trump has made history as well. As the folks at CBS News pointed out this past weekend, just after the race was called, he is the first President in United States history to lose the popular vote twice.

Have a good week, all. Breathe.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related

Monday Musings: Through the Looking Glass

[Let me begin by saying this: I know the President is ill. I hope he recovers; I understand it’s possible that he’ll take a turn for the worse. I hope the First Lady and the growing number of public officials who have tested positive for coronavirus recover as well. None of what follows is meant to be insensitive to the President’s condition. But neither will I give him more consideration than he has given to the millions of Americans who have fallen ill, or to the more than two hundred thousand who have died from Covid-19.]

We are, at this point, through the looking glass.

2020 has become so ridiculous, so laden with crisis, so fraught with fear and anger and confusion, that it risks turning into a caricature of itself. The Presidential campaign alone has morphed into a farce — a farce with far-reaching implications for economic stability; for racial, social, and sexual justice; for the health and safety of all Americans; and for the very survival of the planet. But a farce, nevertheless.

In my recent posts and my minimal appearances on other platforms, I have hinted at the emotional struggles in my life. My family has been touched by Covid, which has been scary, but, so far, not nearly as bad as it might have been. I have struggled to write and grappled with industry-wide issues. Again, I’ve been luckier than some, and less fortunate than others. And I have been obsessed to the point of panic and despair with the campaign and with the constant bloviation of our infant-in-chief.

It is this last that has had me in retreat from social media and news over the past couple of weeks. Yet, this is also what I am musing on this morning. Because in stepping back from the febrile headlines that assault us day after day, I find myself lamenting a much deeper issue.

Donald Trump is a menace. We know this. He is a White supremacist. He represents an existential threat to the norms and customs of our republic. He is boorish and crude, unintelligent and incurious, corrupt and dishonest and utterly unconcerned for the well-being of the public he is supposed to serve. But perhaps most damaging is the simple fact that he is a spectacle. Each day we are subjected to some new outrage. This campaign, for better or worse, is about him, about his failures and his failings. The good news is that a hard focus on Trump may well be enough to end this shit-storm of a Presidency.

Unfortunately, such a campaign does a disservice to our country. We face serious problems. We should be searching for solutions to climate change, engaging in a meaningful discussion of systemic racism, cementing gains in the fight for LGBTQ rights, working toward pay equity and an end to systemic sexism, building a fairer, stronger economy, and tackling a host of other issues that will shape not only our lives, but those of our children and generations to follow.

Do I want the world to see Trump’s tax returns and the dark secrets contained within them? Sure. Do I see some Karmic justice in his positive test for Covid-19? Yes, I do, even as I hope that he and his wife recover. Am I disgusted by his nod and wink toward the White nationalist Proud Boys? Damn right.

Mostly, though, I’m pissed that these things are “issues.”

Politics is always messy, and Presidential campaigns always entertain their share of nonsense controversies and titillating distractions. The problem is, with this President those things are all we have. Because that’s what he wants. Sure, he complains of being mistreated by the press and demonized by his political opponents, but really all he cares about is attention. Positive attention, negative attention — he doesn’t differentiate. As long as he is the center of the conversation, he’s happy. He doesn’t want to discuss real issues. That would demand work, preparation, concentration. And then the conversation wouldn’t be about him. It would be about us, about our lives, our families, our futures — things that don’t interest him.

Maybe it was inevitable that we would elect a man like this. In an age of reality television and ubiquitous social media, it’s not surprising that we should have a reality-star President who is utterly self-involved. More, Americans often look for qualities in a new President that were absent in his (and someday, please, her) predecessor. Policy-wonk Bill Clinton was followed by George W. Bush, who was not a detail guy, and who was, in turn, followed by the wonkish, erudite Barack Obama. Trump is the anti-Obama: a white racist, devoid of charm, integrity, compassion, and erudition.

That might be too easy an explanation. Honestly, I am too exhausted to care anymore. This President has worn me down. I would love to be passionate about the prospect of a Joe Biden Administration. I wish I had been more excited about all the candidates who sought the Democratic nomination, but Trump ruined even that for so many of us. Yes, we had our preferences, and Bernie Sanders’ supporters were nearly as fervent this time around as they were in 2016. In the end, though, we cared only about finding someone who could beat Trump. Overcoming this blight on our nation was more important than the aspirations and enthusiasm that ought to animate an election season. Sad.

So, here we are, having been confronted with this clown-show, day after day, month after month, for four long years. And, if we’re smart and lucky, no longer than that.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related

Monday Musings: A Planet In Its Death Throes

Pray for the forest, pray to the tree,
Pray for the fish in the deep blue sea.
Pray for yourself and for God’s sake,
Say one for me,
Poor wretched unbeliever.

— James Taylor, “Gaia,” from Hourglass

This is what it looks like when a planet dies

milkovi SF Bay Bridge
The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge under skies turned orange by wildfire smoke. Photo credit: Milkovi, Unsplash

Cataclysmic fires along the American West Coast and the Australian East Coast, in the Amazon and on the Steppe. Once-in-a-millenium events occurring annually. Orange skies over California and the Pacific Northwest.

Storms of unprecedented destructive power striking with unnerving frequency, rendering the term “storm of the century” essentially meaningless.

Deepening cycles of drought and flood. Cities across the world literally being inundated by oceans and seas. Glaciers vanishing faster than even the most aggressive projections told us they would. Coral reefs dying. Species going extinct.

My older brothers turned me on to birdwatching when I was seven years old — a gift that has enriched my life for half a century. And over those same fifty years, North America’s population of birds has declined by nearly 30%. Habitat loss, pesticide use, careless architecture, and, yes, climate change — all have played a role. The result? Three billion fewer birds.

In the spring of 1985, my senior year in college, I took an ecology course for non-majors. It offered a survey of critical environmental issues facing the world, and discussed them in terms history and literature majors could understand. At the time, a scientific consensus had long-since formed around what was called at the time “the Greenhouse Effect,” what we later called global warming, and now global climate change. That was thirty-five years ago.

In 1896, a Swedish scientist named Svante Arrhenius theorized that the unfettered burning of fossil fuels, and the resulting release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, would lead to a warming of the planet. Four years later, in 1901, his colleague, Nils Gustaf Ekholm, coined the term “Greenhouse Effect” to describe the phenomenon. In fairness, Ekholm thought it might be a good thing, as it would stave off future ice ages. But the concept is not a new one.

For decades, global temperatures have been rising to record setting levels, only to be topped the following year. Global temperature records were first kept in a systematic way around 1850. Of the 170 or so years for which figures exist, nineteen of the twenty hottest have occurred since 2000. 2020 is on pace to join the top five.

I am willing to engage on most political and social issues. I enjoy a good discussion, a vigorous debate. There are, though, a few topics on which I will no longer engage. First among them is bigotry of any sort — racism, sexism, homophobia, trans bias, religious bias, etc. Climate denial is a close second. (And this year, Covid denial has joined the list.)

This is no longer theory. It hasn’t been for a long, long time. Climate change is real. Our planet is dying. If we do nothing — if we as a global community continue on the path we’re on now, we will bequeath to our children and grandchildren a burnt husk of what was once earth. Future generations will live in a world that staggers from ecological crisis to ecological crisis, from catastrophe to catastrophe, from flood to drought to famine to pandemic and back again.

We have had ample opportunity to address the issue, and we have squandered one after another. We have absented ourselves from vital global treaties and doubled down on the sort of short-sighted consumerism that got us into this mess in the first place. Like James Taylor in the song quoted at the beginning of this post, I have no faith in our ability to save ourselves. We are a society that cannot bring ourselves to wear cloth masks for the common good. How are we supposed to make the economic transitions necessary to change economic course?

And the tragic thing is, addressing climate change could be a tremendous boon to our standing in the world, to our economic fortunes, to our commitment to education. This is the challenge of our time. It demands bold thinking, new industries, innovation and invention. Implementing the necessary changes would generate hundreds of thousands of jobs, replacing and more the jobs lost in the coal and oil industries. Fitting ecological imperatives to our national love affair with cars and trucks could revitalize the American automotive industry. Does anyone really believe that the internal combustion engine, invented more than a century ago, is the be-all and end-all of technological ingenuity? Of course not.

But we have to have the will to change, the courage to say “Saving our planet for our children is worth whatever sacrifices we might have to make.” And, from what I can see, we don’t.

I wish I could end on a more hopeful note.

November’s election is about more than ending corruption, about more than beating back hate and prejudice, about more than the Supreme Court, about more than taxes and health care and social justice. It is about saving our planet. It is about keeping ourselves from a slow and painful march toward extinction.

Please vote.