Southern Bookman

52nd anniversary of Earth Day raises urgency of climate change action

Bursting with spring beauty, LSU celebrated the first Earth Day in 1970.

Like Vietnam Moratorium Day six months before, also held on the Ole War Skule's Parade Grounds, Earth Day changed my worldview.

A freshman carrying out a misguided passive-aggressive protest against my ROTC class and close to losing my student draft deferment, I wandered through the Earth Day exhibits, instantly turning into an environmentalist.

Millions across the globe marked the event, protesting air pollution, species extinction and the destruction of the ozone layer. Climate change was an unknown concept, outside of a few academic research offices.

The Vietnam War still raged, dividing the country. But the environmental movement received nearly universal support, even in the Republican Party. The Environmental Protection Agency was created during the Nixon Administration, and action was taken to preserve the ozone layer.

That momentum waned in succeeding years, and the fossil fuel industry criminally impeded efforts to fight climate change. The world recently has begun action to reduce carbon emissions that should have been taken years ago.

The Biden administration, ambushed by rising gas prices and the Ukrainian invasion, recently retreated from its promises to move toward solar and wind energy. The climate change-denying Republican Party's culture war appears on course to retake the Congress and presidency.

On Earth Day's 52nd anniversary, the Earth is in greater peril than ever.

 

Apocalypse arriving soon if carbon emissions not slashed, U.N. panel warns

Cassandra keeps on singing.

In its latest apocalyptic alarm, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that the Earth will reach the point of no return in eight years.

As emissions soar higher and higher, the world is rapidly burning through its "carbon budget" for limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees celsius over pre-industrial temperatures, according to a Washington Post article.

The world can release just 500 more megatons of carbon to have any hope of meeting that threshold set at the Paris Climate Summit. At the present rate, the budget will be blown in less than a decade.

Failure to slash emissions will result in the earth heating to 3.2 degrees Celsius, or 5.8 degrees Farenheit, by the end of this century.

That'll make most of the world uninhabitable.

Monday's report was the third warning issued recently by the panel.  The New York Times ran a page-one article on the report, but the panel's in-depth assessments  by scientists from across the globe have yet to generate urgency among world leaders, especially developed countries.

Russia's massacre of Ukraine has led to a renewed commitment to oil and gas drilling more than a green economy. Opposition from Joe Manchin, the senator from coal, killed President Biden's climate-change plan. With gas prices rising, Biden abandoned reducing emissions by announcing  the release of oil from strategic reserves.

The Ukranian disaster is horrifying. Climate change is more so.

Discovering Antonio Carlos Jobim's "The Waters of March"

The red and white azaleas bloom as another March hastens away.

Those ancient colors of war and love arrive earlier now, waning in early April, once their triumphant moment.

This March, I discovered a new song that expresses the month's jumble of sunshine, wind, rain and flowers.

Melancholy at the end of the haunting, if flawed, Norwegian film "The Worst Person in the World," I was lifted out of my reverie by a Bossa Nova melody and lyrics charged with imagery. The song riveted me as the closing credits rolled across the screen.

Google research revealed the song was "Aguas de Marco,"  or "Waters of March," written by the Brazilian songwriter Antonio Carlos Jobim, who wrote one of my all-time favorite songs, "The Girl From Ipanema."

Art Garfunkel performed "The Worst Person in the World" version, one of the songs on a solo album Garfunkel recorded after the breakup of Simon and Garfunkel. His lilting voice and bemused/bewildered air summed up the season's confused mellowness.

Later, I discovered a more introspective version by Susannah McCorkle, the jazz singer who ended her own life.

For years, I've listened each March to Ella Fitzgerald's definitive recording of "These Foolish Things Remind Me of You," with its lines "The winds of March that make my heart a dancer."

"Aquas de Marco" will enrich that tradition.

"The Waters of March"

 

A stick, a stone, it's the end of the road
It's the rest of a stump, it's a little alone
It's a sliver of glass, it is life, it's the sun
It is night, it is death, it's a trap, it's a gun

The oak when it blooms, a fox in the brush
A knot in the wood, the song of a thrush
The wood of the wind, a cliff, a fall
A scratch, a lump, it is nothing at all

It's the wind blowing free, it's the end of the slope
It's a beam, it's a void, it's a hunch, it's a hope
And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the end of the strain, it's the joy in your heart

The foot, the ground, the flesh and the bone
The beat of the road, a slingshot's stone
A fish, a flash, a silvery glow
A fight, a bet, the flange of a bow
The bed of the well, the end of the line
The dismay in the face, it's a loss, it's a find

A spear, a spike, a point, a nail
A drip, a drop, the end of the tale
A truckload of bricks in the soft morning light
The sound of a gun in the dead of the night

A mile, a must, a thrust, a bump,
It's a girl, it's a rhyme, it's a cold, it's the mumps
The plan of the house, the body in bed
And the car that got stuck, it's the mud, it's the mud

A float, a drift, a flight, a wing
A hank, a quail, the promise of spring
And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the promise of life, it's the joy in your heart

A snake, a stick, it is John, it is Joe
It's a thorn on your hand and a cut in your toe
A point, a grain, a bee, a bite
A blink, a buzzard, a sudden stroke of night

A pin, a needle, a sting, a pain
A snail, a riddle, a wasp or a stain
A pass in the mountains, a horse and a mule
In the distance the shelves rode three shadows of blue
And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the promise of life in your heart, in your heart

A stick, a stone, the end of the road
The rest of a stump, a lonesome road
A sliver of glass, a life, the sun
A knife, a death, the end of the run
And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the end of all strain, it's the joy in your heart

Amazon Rainforest headed for extinction, according to report

The news articles all agree that the Amazon Rainforest is near a "tipping point."

That's when the world's lungs will hit code red. Tipping point seems a droll term to describe the impending death of the rainforest.

The Amazon’s demise is one of the many threats to humanity caused by climate change. Some enterprising journalist should compile a summation of all of them.

A recent avalanche of doomsday climate-change alarms agree that emissions must be radically reduced if humankind has any hope of avoiding extreme devastation.

When the Amazon’s point of no return arrives in the next few decades, the rainforest's disappearance into savannah will be irreversible, according to a new study.

Instead of absorbing carbon, the changing rainforest will release tons of greenhouse gases  into the atmosphere. The grasslands replacing the forest will no longer act as a carbon "sink."

Based on monthly satellite observations from 1991 to 2016, 75 percent of the rainforest has lost the ability to recover from drought, fire, deforestation and climate change, according to the study published in Nature Climate Change. The research was carried out by the University of Exeter, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Technical University of Munich, according to a BBC report.

The Amazon’s loss of resilience is higher near areas of deforestation for agriculture, encouraged by the Brazilian dictator Jair Bolsonaro.

Poet Joyce Kilmer in a much ridiculed poem said that only God can make a tree.

Only God, or nature, can make a rainforest. Once it's gone, it's lost forever. And the world will shuffle closer to doom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Apocalypse is now, U.N. climate change panel warns

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued another apocalyptic warning that the world likely will ignore.

Climate change, extreme heat, species extinction and soaring human deaths are already under way, the 3,500-page report concludes, as reported by the Washington Post.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres accuses wealthy nations of planet-cide. "This abdication of leadership is criminal," Guuterres said in the Post article. "The world's biggest polluters are guilty of arson of our only home."

Undeveloped African and Asian countries that produce the least carbon emissions will suffer the most from extreme heat, which will make parts of the world uninhabitable. The wealthy nations have failed to reduce carbon emissions, raising the threat to the rest of the Earth.

As Putin commits mass murder in Ukraine, with an appalling number of innocent children dying, the U.N. report finds that an increasing number of children will suffer stunted growth because of climate change.

Reefs will die. Mount Kilimanjaro's glaciers will disappear. Rising seas will sink island nations, and threaten wealthy coastal cities. Warming oceans will devastate fish species.

Despite the drumbeat of alarming reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other agencies, the amount of carbon spewing into the atmosphere soars higher and higher.

The report estimates that 3 million tons of carbon have been sent into the air since the Industrial Revolution began.

With the rising likelihood of wildfires, and the destruction of humanity, fossil fuel proponents call for more drilling.

How long will the world ignore the fire alarms that keep sounding?

 

Reading Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" on Daffodil Day

Daffodil Day arrived Thursday, heralding an early spring.

Taking my afternoon walk, I welcomed the small yellow flowers that had risen throughout the neighborhood. As I passed, I imagined them singing, nodding on their green stalks.

A strenuous older lady walked by, followed by a nanny pushing a stroller holding two sleeping babies. Then came a young mother with her small son and daughter, who headed down the nature center pathway that runs beside Nancy Creek.  A couple I see often, whose names I do not know, said hello. "Spring's here," the man exclaimed. Yes, winter had already passed away, weeks before the new season's official arrival.

Before leaving my house wearing just a summertime golf shirt, I'd been reading Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway," which begins with people walking in a London park on a balmy June morning in 1923. The sorrow of the Great War shadows them.

Putin's invasion of Ukraine added to the presence of Woolf's characters. As Woolf's generation did 100 years ago, we act out our daily lives in the crescent of history.

The beauty of the spring morning, the flowers Mrs. Dalloway purchases for a party she's giving that evening, the joy of events like a car passing that might hold the prime minister or the queen and the sighting of an "aeroplane" writing messages in the sky, are tinged with sadness. All of them alive then are gone now, as we will be.

At home, I saw that the tulip tree in our front yard was again arrayed with white blossoms. The flowers used to come in early March, but now appear in February. Already, the wind had blown some of petals down, lying on the roof and on the ground like snow.

Golf fans at TPC Scottsdale cheer and toss beer as Soutwest bakes in worst drought in 1,500 years

The American Southwest's worst drought in 1,500 years made me wonder about those lush fairways at the TPC Stadium course in Scottsdale, Ariz., the site of last weekend's Waste Management Phoenix Open.

Global warming is worsening the Southwest's 20-year drought, according to a recent study, as reported by the Guardian. The extended dry conditions are the worst since 800 A.D, according to The New York Times.

Watching the WM Open, I wondered how much water the course uses to stay so green. The TPC does make an effort to conserve water, and recycles "gray water" to flush porta-potty toilets for the beer-guzzling spectators during the tournament, according to reports. Opened in 1986, the course sits on land reclaimed from a garbage landfill and features several presumably man-made lakes.

But hundreds of gallons of water are needed to keep the grass from turning back into the desert that surrounds it. The TPC does make an effort to use environmentally sustainable techniques, according to its web site, but its water consumption appears out of bounds as the drought worsens.

The tournament is famous for its par 3 stadium hole, enclosed by stands filled with drunken spectators who cheer good shots and boo those off target.

When golfer Sam Ryder made a hole in one Saturday, the crowd tossed a deluge of beer cups onto the green. The spray of beer was the most moisture seen in years.

Those cheers won't continue too long if the drought persists. It'll seem like 800 A.D. again.

Blue heron sighting recalls memories of Thoreau

A young woman stood on the 1941 bridge over Nancy Creek, shooting video with her phone of the water below.

I hurried to the bridge and looked down to see a blue heron standing motionless in the shallow water near the bank.

For years, the strange beautiful birds came to the area, inspiring the name of the nearby Blue Heron Nature Center. But the herons had vanished in recent years.

The young woman pointed out a small hawk perched on a branch hanging over the creek beside the heron. Neither bird moved. I tried to imagine what communion they shared.

I was on my way to the supermarket. When I returned to the creek, my bag loaded with items, the woman had left, but the blue heron remained in its same spot, as did the hawk. I watched for a few moments. The heron lunged its head forward, and began wading. I assumed it had spied a fish or some other prey.

Years before, I'd observed a blue heron wading in a pond at the other end of the creek. Now, the pond is overgrown, turned into a meadow. Suddenly on that day long ago, the bird took flight, majestically spreading its wings as it rose into the sky.

I was reminded of Henry David Thoreau's account of seeing a flock of blue herons flying overhead while on a river journey with his brother, John. The two brothers were on the Merrimack River when summer turned into autumn overnight. Through the years as I've walked through our neighborhood, I've imagined Thoreau beside me.

The blue heron and thoughts of Thoreau led me to write the following poem, which I read at the opening of the Blue Heron Nature Center.  I was  a young man then. Commonweal, the national Catholic literary and political journal, published the poem, which I rewrote countless times. 

After Reading "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"

By Louis T. Mayeux

At the pond by the condominiums,
the great blue heron
stalks the shallow water,
slow, lugubrious dance
almost beautiful.
Head speared for fish,
disturbing his own reflection,
he hunts along the edges.

One day, he stood, perfectly still,
as if at prayer,
then broke and flew
toward his endless blue freedom.

A flock of them in flight
astonished Henry and his brother John
as they prepared the raft
for their journey home,
strange, fierce wind behind them,
world changed to autumn overnight.

"Now comes good sailing,"
Henry said, death near,
as his sister, Sophia, read to him
his own words about that morning.

Ocean warming sets another record

The world was a bit cooler last year: 2021 was the sixth warmest on record, breaking a streak of all-time annual highs.

Don't cheer too loudly: Ocean temperatures again reached all-time highs, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

If extreme ocean warming isn't somehow reversed, seafood will boil without needing to be caught. Even creatures in the darkest depths will die. A few jellyfish will keep floating on dead waters.

"During 2021, the oceans absorbed about 14 zeta Joules of additional heat energy — the equivalent of 440 billion toasters running 24 hours a day, every day of the year," John Abraham, a professor of thermal sciences at the University of St Thomas in Minnesota, told Forbes magazine. Another analogy is seven Hiroshima atomic bombs detonating each second, 24 hours a day, all year, the magazine said.

The ocean's surface has grown hotter every year since the 1950s. That burns away more polar ice, increasing sea levels and dramatically changing weather patterns.

Such depressing news no longer makes the front page, or the TV news. It's part of the numbing onslaught of climate change alarms. 

Yet action must be taken to stop emissions. The oceans are the crisis point of global warming. When the oceans are gone, all hope will be lost.

Blackbirds bring a winter gift

I thought the sound was rainfall.

Rain wasn't falling. Looking up, I realized the sound was hundreds of wings, united in symmetry. Flocks of small birds flew above me, passing over my neighbor's house across the street and filling the branches of trees. They kept coming, foraging from tree to tree.

I watched in wonder, until at last they vanished into the distance.

They were probably blackbirds, as identified by AJC wildlife writer Charles Seabrook in a column several years ago describing a similar experience.

A normal part of nature for hundreds of years seemed miraculous to me. In a major city, on a winter's afternoon that felt like spring, they appeared, magnificent in their intelligence.

When they disappear, the world will lose such beauty.