Southern Bookman

Joe Biden and John Kerry seek to save planet for future generations

President Joe Biden and environmental envoy John Kerry led the global climate-change summit, two old men setting the economic course for future generations.

The 78-year-old Biden and 77-year-old Kerry called on world leaders to slash emissions and mitigate climate change's threat to the planet.

Biden pledged that the United States will cut CO2 discharges 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. That will bring a transformation in the U.S. economy, the New York Times reported.

Biden's administration is mobilizing the global campaign against climate change after years of inadequate response.

As U.S. senators and Democratic Party leaders since the 1960s, Biden and Kerry were members of a generation that refused to heed climate change warnings. Now, the world must act with urgency.

With carbon emissions soaring again as China and other Asian countries step up their demand for coal, even more drastic steps than Biden's plans will be needed, according to environmentalists.

The Biden effort to shift from a petroleum-based economy doesn't include a carbon tax, once considered essential in efforts to cut emissions.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said Friday that political opposition led to the shift away from the carbon tax. Krugman also claimed that technological innovation and lower costs for wind and solar power generation make the carbon tax less important, before conceding that the tax likely will be necessary in the future.

Claims that Biden didn't include a carbon-tax proposal because of political opposition are puzzling, since Biden didn't worry about the lack of GOP support in passing his massive Covid stimulus act. Petroleum companies now support a carbon tax, and even some Republicans might accept such a proposal.

Democratic Party progressives and environmentalists apparently have shifted away from the carbon tax, which would put a price on the production of carbon. Long supported by Times columnist Thomas Friedman, the carbon tax should remain a fundamental pillar of the campaign to reduce emissions. Under proposals by Friedman and others, the tax would not burden American households.

Democratic Party supporters hope Biden and Kerry remain active and witness the transformation of the U.S. economy they envision. But by 2030, a younger generation of Democratic leaders such as Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be in command. A younger, even more progressive generation will be emerging.

Perhaps the science-denying and reactionary Republican Party will by then shift course and join in the battle against climate change, along with conservative parties around the world. Once, GOP stalwart John McCain called for ambitious cap and trade legislation and a 60 percent reduction in emissions. That was in 2007, before the GOP turned to ignorance.

GOP intransigence on climate change and social reform makes the 2022 congressional election and 2024 presidential election vital for the nation and the world's future. Biden's climate change proposal is another ambitious effort to place the Democratic Party in the vanguard of the future, while the GOP remains mired in the past.

Both Biden and Kerry have overcome hardships and major political defeats to lead the world's efforts to survive climate change. They are atoning for decades of negligence, hoping to save the planet for unborn generations.

 

 

 

 

Globe returns to disastrous increase in carbon emissions

The gorgeous days of a late April cold snap counter the dire warnings of climate change.

Brisk wind, sunshine and a perfect blue sky mask our abuse of the Earth.

Last spring, during the worst days of the pandemic's lockdown, the sky appeared even bluer, as emissions plunged.

That progress has been washed away as the economic recovery accelerates.

Emissions will increase 5 percent this year, eliminating 80 percent of last year's carbon reduction, according to a report by the International Energy Agency. During 2021, a total of 33 billion tons of carbon will be spewed into the Earth's fragile atmosphere.

As emissions again rise to alarming levels, President Joe Biden on Thursday will lead a virtual climate change summit of world leaders, with a pledge for the United States to reduce carbon emissions 50 percent by 2030.

Chinese President Xi Jinping will participate. Biden's energy adviser John Kerry recently reached an agreement with China for joint action on climate change, a plan predictably blasted by the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Rising coal demand in Xi's China, along with other Asian countries, is a major cause of the resurgence in climate emissions. At the same time, China is stepping up renewable energy production.

Biden's summit demonstrates a return to American leadership of global climate change efforts. A return of GOP control of Congress and the presidency would shatter that progress.

 

Not so blue skies: Carbon emissions rise during pandemic

Carbon emissions rose during 2020, barely slowed by the covid pandemic.

The amount of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere has reached its highest level in 3.6 million years, according to a  new report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a Salon article said.

While the Covid economic shutdown impeded carbon emissions, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere rose to 412.5 parts per million, an increase of 2.6 parts per million over the year. Scientists say that the carbon level must be reduced to 350 parts per million if the world is to escape the worst effects of climate change.

The Biden administration seeks zero admissions by 2050, but that will not prevent damages from the carbon already in the air. Biden's massive infrastructure plan calls for a shift to electric cars and more efficient buildings, without seeking major changes in the U.S. economy. But the current economic model is no longer sustainable.

A total of 300 corporate executives representing companies ranging from Apple to Johnson & Johnson and McDonald's sent an open letter to Biden calling for the United States to double emissions-reductions standards by 2030 and move to zero emissions by 2050.

The letter appeared on the same day that corporate leaders and entertainment personalities signed an ad in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal opposing Republican voter-suppression laws.

Those actions indicate that the Trump-dominated, climate-change denying GOP is further divorced from corporate and mainstream America.

Representing a shrinking minority of American voters, the party keeps its stranglehold on power through constitutional manipulation and voter suppression.

Yet the divorce is not yet final: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce demanded that the Senate reject the Democratic Party's voting rights legislation. That position conflicts with the prevailing views of American companies.

President Biden has made reversing climate change a top priority, yet his ambitious plans remain too small. Corporate leaders and journalists such as The Times' Tom Friedman and Paul Krugman believe that the growth-oriented global economy can keep accelerating after a shift from carbon. That's increasingly doubtful.

 

Cheers for Atlanta's sanitation workers

Atlanta's distinctive blue recycling bins lined our neighborhood streets Tuesday night, bulging with discarded items.

The residents hadn't received the message that the city is now collecting recyclable material every other week, for 90 days at least. The same with yard trimmings, picked up on alternate weeks.

Garbage trucks, disposing of household wastes placed in green bins, will still make their weekly rounds.

But recyclable magazines, newspapers, cardboard, plastic and glass - although that's apparently just tossed in the landfill - will now accumulate for two weeks before pickup.

I'm surprised that Atlanta's sanitation department has been able to give full service during the now year-long pandemic shutdown. Each week, I give a silent cheer to the men and women who carry out their jobs with such joy. I especially feel connected to the recyclable crews because of the heavy load of newspapers, magazines and literary journals that I recycle.

Each day, I read three newspapers and toss them into the blue bin sitting beside the kitchen door. I also subscribe to several magazines and literary journals. They come in the mail, their information enters my brain, and I discard them.

Those bulging blue bins throughout the neighborhood show how much depends upon those city workers.

Maybe the money the city receives from the $1.9 trillion Covid stimulus program will restore weekly recyclable service.

Gee, $1.9 million. If I'm not mistaken, that's the amount the U.S. has spent in Afghanistan over the last 20 years.  It's the proposed expenditure for new missiles the Pentagon wants to keep the Russians and Chinese at bay.

While we've been wrenching Afghanistan into the 21st century - the Taliban refusing - our own country has fallen apart. The GOP doesn't seem to care.

As I took my walk Tuesday evening, I saw a young woman moving into one of the new town homes down the street and welcomed her to the neighborhood. Two moving vans boasted "we specialize in everything."

Instead of Katie Couric hosting "Jeopardy," I decided after dinner  to read Joan Didion's new collection of essays, some dating back to the "Points West" column that she wrote with her late husband, John Gregory Dunne, back in the 1960s for the Saturday Evening Post, one of the long-dead magazines that Americans used to religiously read. The essays are Didion light, but they're Didion.

The book arrived that afternoon, when the cheerful lady who brings the mail deposited the package ordered from Barnes & Noble on my doorstep. I tossed the cardboard box into the recycling bin, and held the beautiful book in my hands, knowing that I would keep it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Declining sperm counts a threat to human survival, scientist warns

More threats to the human race: declining sperm counts and a weakening gulf stream.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof last Sunday sounded the alarm about epidemiologist Shanna H. Swan's findings that human sperm is disappearing.

That's just part of reproductive system disruptions caused by chemicals found in common household products and other environmental factors, Swan says.

Swan, a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, "warns that the impending fertility crisis poses a global threat comparable to that of the climate crisis," the Guardian said in an article Friday.

In a new book Swan co-authored, "Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race," she says “The current state of reproductive affairs can’t continue much longer without threatening human survival.”

Swan in a 2017 report released her disturbing findings that sperm counts in western countries had fallen by 59 percent between 1973 and 2011.

By 2045, the median sperm count could reach zero, she said in media reports, not elaborating how that could happen unless some males have a negative sperm count.

The plunging sperm count is just one reason for declining fertility rates.

Economic difficulties, changing gender roles and fears about the planet's future are also causing women to have fewer children.

If the reproductive apocalypse is not enough to worry about, the Atlantic Ocean's circulation system that underlies the gulf stream is at its weakest in a millennium, according to media reports.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation system moderates temperatures. The system's collapse because of warming ocean temperatures could exacerbate climate change's extreme weather and the flooding of coastal cities, according to media reports.

From moments of human intimacy to oceanic systems, the world's intricately connected. One part depends upon the other. The carbon-based economy threatens patterns of life that developed over millennia.

 

 

General Motors goes electric as GameStop Soars: A wild week for U.S. economy

Gamestop me if you've heard this one.

GM's going electric.

As a merry band of guerrilla stock traders besieged the hedge-fund short sellers, GM gave the astounding news that it will quit selling gasoline-and diesel-powered cars by 2035.

Damn, that'll probably be too late for me. But GM vows to sell 30 electric-powered cars, 40 percent of its product line, by 2025. My next car could be an battery-powered Sting Ray. 

Does anyone but me remember the old Lil Abner song, "What's Good for General Motors Is Good for the USA?"

The company, blasted by the Japanese and European car invasion years ago, doesn't have that kind of power anymore. But thanks to a bailout from the Obama administration - led by then Vice President Joe Biden - the automaker has battled back.

GM chairman and CEO Mary Barra, the architect of the company's electric future, said, “General Motors is joining governments and companies around the globe working to establish a safer, greener and better world. We encourage others to follow suit and make a significant impact on our industry and on the economy as a whole.”

The GM move might come too late to make a significant difference in reversing climate change. But it offers hope for future generations.

Soccer moms driving those big, fuel-thirsty Suburban SUVs spew a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere. The next generation of moms will drive electric SUVs, if GM fulfills its vision.

The GM bombshell raised the intensity of a volatile week for the American economy.

Just as old-time movie theaters appeared headed for history's teeming dump, those outlaw traders who boosted GameStop drove up megaplex company AMC's stock as well. The hedge fund sharks were crying crocodile tears, as the excellent Matt Taibbi reported in an extensive Substack post.

The GameStop frenzy led to a trading site called Robinhood halting trading of the company. Wasn't Robinhood the name of the Internet startup on HBO's show "Silicon Valley?" The week's frenzy resembled an episode of the show.

As Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed out, Robinhood's action went against the eponymous Sherwood Forest outlaw's ethos to steal from the rich and give to the poor.

When the odious GOP Sen. Ted Cruz agreed with her, AOC rejected his support, accusing him of seeking to have her murdered by encouraging the Capitol rioters. 

The soaring stock prices of GameStock and AMC supported companies that flourished in the heyday of suburban shopping malls, now seen as dinosaurs. It's curious that the young traders would prop up those companies rather than some futuristic startup. And the GM news sounds a toll for the internal-combustible engine economy, which fueled - ha, ha - those malls.

General Motors is developing the new Ultium battery, which will make electric cars more affordable. The carmaker also is developing hydrogen technology, and plans to make all of its factories carbon-neutral by 2040.

Artificial intelligence, anyone? Well, robots won't unionize, at least for now.

Following Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal's editorial page skepticism about climate change, the WSJ played the GM story on its business front page, not on the newspaper's front page. It also dashed cold water by calling the GM plan "aspirational." In contrast, The New York Times made the announcement its lead front page story.

While the wild stock market wildfire is likely to burn out soon, the GM move from the internal combustion engine could bring major economic changes.

The move endangers Exxon and other big oil companies. In place of service stations, electric charging stations will be needed, but how will those be profitable?

Homes likely will be equipped with charging stations, which will generate excess electricity, drawing the ire of utilities like Georgia Power. And fossil fuels still will be needed to manufacture batteries, and keep those media streaming services going.

While Elon Musk's Tesla has pioneered the electric vehicles, GM's move looks like the proverbial game-changer for the economy. European automakers are also developing electric vehicles.

Illustrating the shift in corporate thinking, Ford executive Bill Ford signed a recent ad in The New York Times calling for the Biden administration to take action against climate change, along with Hollywood stars and environmental activists. The Ford company is also on the path to selling nothing but electric vehicles.

If the Sting Ray doesn't work out, an electric Mustang would be fine.

 

 

Louise Erdrich speaks for entire Mississippi River community in opposing oil sands pipeline

Writer Louise Erdrich in a New York Times article this week spoke about "the young Mississippi River."

She talked of visiting the sacred place where the river begins "in a stream of pure darkness" two hours north of Minneapolis, where indigenous people are protesting the imminent expansion of the Enbridge Line 3 oil sands pipeline.

Having grown up mesmerized by the "old Mississippi," near the river's end, I felt a kinship with Erdich's report.

By the time the river flows through my hometown of Baton Rouge and New Orleans headed to the Gulf of Mexico, it carries the nation's pollutants. A pipeline accident far upriver in Minnesota would also devastate communities downstream.

The Canadian energy company Enbridge's plan to expand the pipeline through Minnesota will pump oil sands and other forms of crude oil from Hardisty, Alberta to Superior, Wisc., crossing indigenous treaty lands, Erdrich said.

Distressingly, Tim Walz, the liberal Democratic governor of Minnesota, has approved final water permits for the expansion. Erdrich calls this a betrayal after indigenous tribes supported Joe Biden's election. The native people have also suffered disproportionately from Covid.

Although lawsuits have been filed by the White Earth, Red Lake and Mille Lacs nations and several environmental organizations, construction has begun. The indigenous tribes are mobilizing protests, chaining themselves to equipment and undergoing arrests.

The Canadian tar sands "are among the most carbon-intensive fuels on the planet," Erdrich said. The pipeline's carbon output could reach 193 million tons a year, she reports, citing Jim Doyle, a physicist at Macalester College who analyzed the pipleline's impact.

That much carbon would eventually be released into the atmosphere, exacerbating climate change, already bringing suffering to "the land of 10,000 lakes," she says.

Pure at its origins, the Mississippi is sadly ravaged by the time it reaches Louisiana. Agricultural chcmical runoff and industrial pollution lead to oxygen deterioration in the gulf, and loss of sealife. The pipeline's oil sands threaten the entire river. 

 

Thomas Friedman wants Kamala Harris to boost rural America

What's the future of rural America?

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman Wednesday called for Vice President Kamala Harris to make her top priority redeveloping rural America, which lags behind in education, health care, jobs and Internet bandwidth.

Rural Americans' support for Donald Trump and the GOP reflect their anger and despair, Friedman said.

The Democratic Party in catering to better educated urban and suburban voters have lost rural areas, according to Friedman. In concentrating on those needs, Harris can reclaim rural America for the Democratic Party, he says.

I don't fully agree with Friedman; Harris with her talent and experience should be given wider responsibilities. But the country should determine what can be done to improve rural America.

Those communities' failings have been a longtime problem, especially in the South. But as suburban areas spread after World War II and economic benefits broadened, rural America progressed.

Over the last 20 years, however, smaller communities have withered. Globalization, the centralization of agriculture, income disparities, chain retail and opioid addiction have devastated small communities outside of urban areas.

A possible future for rural America was revealed in a Times article Wednesday about Princeton University's major new study about how the United States can transition to a carbon-free economy by 2050 and alleviate climate change.

One of the five "pathways" suggested by Princeton's research, funded by British Petroleum and Exxon Mobil, is a widespread extension of wind and solar power.

With clean energy growing less expensive, the country can make the shift without exorbitant expenditures, the study found.

But a significant expansion of wind and solar power, as well as a major retooling of the electrical power grid, will require major acquisition of land for wind and solar farms, the study found.

Small communities appear a prime source for such sites, which would boost rural economies. But farmers and landowners often object to wind and solar projects, according to the Times article.

A similar major study should be carried out to determine what is meant by rural America.

Smaller communities have lost manufacturing plants to countries like China, Mexico and Vietnam, and won't recover, as  economists who supported globalization like The Times' Paul Krugman now admit.

Thanks But smaller cities like Greenville, S.C., have flourished by attracting international companies such as BMW.

Along with rural areas, major cities like Detroit, St. Louis, Chicago, Cleveland and New Orleans have declined economically, while cities like Nashville, Austin, Columbus and Atlanta have boomed.

Rural areas in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and other states have never overcome their historical backwardness. But other once rural parts of the South have made economic and social gains. For example, North Georgia above Atlanta has been an economic hotspot as areas below the "gnat line" have deteriorated.

The United States definitely needs a reckoning with rural America, however that's defined.

 

Jupiter and Saturn taking Christmas star turn

Jupiter and Saturn are coming together to make a Christmas star.

On Dec. 21, the winter's solstice, Jupiter and Saturn will align to their closest appearance in the night sky since 1226, according to an article by Daniella Medina in the Nashville Tennessean.

The planets' yuletide fusion will emit a brilliant beam of light resembling the star that led the Wise Men to Bethlehem.

Known as "the great conjunction," the event occurs every 20 years. But this year, Jupiter and Saturn will appear just 0.1 of a degree apart. The planets also drew that near to each other in 1623, but sunset likely blocked their visibility, the report said.

Youngsters who miss the planets' near embrace this year will have another chance in 2080.

Like shy lovers, the big, slow-moving gas planets are already coming together in the southwestern sky just after sunset. Last night, I walked outside to see them peeking through a tree's branches.

A telescope might reveal Saturn's rings and Jupiter's moons, but binoculars are fine, University of Texas astronomer Stephen Hummel told the Texas Monthly.The conjunction is visible for about 45 minutes after sunset.

The planets' alignment through the years has been considered an omen of momentous events. We have many to choose from: a new presidency, the pandemic vaccine, the Super Bowl.

In 1226, the world was a lot quieter than now. But the two planets' celestial show still brings wonder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remembering John Lennon, 40 years after his death

On the 40th anniversary of John Lennon's murder, the world hurtles further away from his message of peace and love.

In the years since Lennon was fatally shot outside of his home in New York City, humanity has failed to control carbon emissions and head off climate change.

Storms, fires and drought have worsened. Littered with plastic, the oceans turn acidic and sea levels rise as global ice melts. More and more species head toward extinction, and massive migrations proliferate as people flee deteriorating habitats.

Wars have multiplied, killing millions. The Cold War ended, but China and Russia turned from cooperative to threatening. North Korea, Iran, India and Pakistan bring nuclear holocaust closer. Racism, religious intolerance and political conflict explode.

Lennon's shocking death marked the end of youth for many in my generation. We were entering our 30s, launching families and careers.

But as we joined the "silent majority," we still kept Lennon's vision alive, even as the election of Ronald Reagan launched an era of bitter partisan politics, and the abandonment of bold progressive programs like those enacted during the Johnson and Nixon administrations. 

A new generation of young people gives the world what might be its last hope to survive climate change and nuclear war. They probably don't know much about Lennon, but they still sing his songs.