Southern Bookman

Merry Christmas, the North Pole is melting

Listening to radio news that the Arctic is melting, I drove through Buckhead traffic.

Cars clogged the streets as a scientist said the North Pole's old ice is almost gone.

The old ice had been there for years, the woman said on NPR satellite radio. White and mysterious, the ice long believed permanently frozen reflects sunlight back into space.

Now, with it gone, the seas will  be warming in a continuous accelerating loop. The jet stream is disrupted. Rising seas, extreme weather, the long-term forecast. 

Humanity shouldn't give up hope, the scientist said, half-heartedly. Emissions must be reduced, but it'll take years. Information like the Arctic Report would help threatened places cope. For the polar bears, well, good luck to them.

On a pleasant late autumn afternoon, the Christmas wreaths hung on the fences of West Paces Ferry mansions, the loss of arctic ice seemed far away. Joggers and walkers pushed themselves down the street's broad sidewalks as cars backed up at traffic lights. Each destination, each piece of the economy, joined in a mass ballet of stop and go.

West Pace Ferry - the governor's mansion, those sprawling 1930s homes designed by noted architects, the Cherokee Club, the Atlanta History Center - it could be a signature street. Yet, like so much of Atlanta, it seems haphazard. 

The news continued. At a climate change conference in Poland, where coal reigns supreme, the Trump administration draws derision for pushing carbon energy, joining with Saudi Arabia, Russia and other oil producing countries. 

Add crimes against humanity to the cascading charges against Trump.

On Peachtree Road, hardhat workers trudge home. Another giant building rises where for years small businesses flourished. 

The drivers turn on their car headlights. Darkness is falling. 

 

More bad climate-change news: Carbon emissions out of control

The world is on a collision course with disaster.

After several years of leveling off, carbon emissions will increase by 2.7 percent this year, according to the latest shocking climate change report. That follows a 1.6 percent rise last year, ending a three-year period of no increases. 

The emissions jump is "a speeding freight train," according to one of the 100 scientists from more than 50 academic and research institutions who compiled the Global Carbon Project report, according to The New York Times.

China, the United States and India top the carbons-emissions list. The Trump administration is abandoning President Obama's successful efforts to curb emissions and taking steps to revive the coal industry, which will bring even higher emissions increases.

Despite China's efforts to switch to cleaner energy production,  its expanding economy still depends on coal. As in India, more and more of its population are driving gasoline-powered cars.

India's leap in emissions is also fueled by economic modernization, a mobilization to bring electricity to more of its people.

The emissions increase is the latest sign that the world is dangerously falling behind in the battle against climate change. As developing countries move toward acquiring modern conveniences the West has long enjoyed, humans have leaped aboard that doomsday locomotive.

Ben Fountain seeks restoration of America's civic virtue

Ben Fountain's "Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion and Revolution" sees Donald Trump's election as the triumph of fantasy over reality.

The Dallas-based author of the excellent 2012 novel "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" looks back on Trump's 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton from a broad historical and philosophical perspective.

Along with summaries of monthly news events that occurred during the turbulent campaign, the book gathers searching, deeply researched essays that Fountain wrote for the Guardian.

That a British newspaper would offer such thoughtful reflections on America's chaotic politics shows the deficiencies of the American media.

Rather than a blow-by-blow recap of the Trump and Clinton campaigns, the book analyzes the election from a broader historical viewpoint.

With solid grounding in literature and historical facts, Fountain traces the decline of the American middle class, GOP-led efforts to preserve white supremacy, police violence against blacks and the cultural dominance of entertainment and celebrity. He indicts American "amnesia" and an avoidance of reality.

In analyzing the erosion of American democracy, Fountain draws upon books from well-known and obscure writers. With sometimes sardonic humor and a readable style, Fountain gives a comprehensive summary of American political thought that would be a good primer for college and high school students who are so often deprived of a basic civics education these days.

Without endorsing Bernie Sanders's socialism, Fountain demolishes conservatives' war against government begun by Ronald Reagan. He demonstrates that governmental support of the economy and education led to America's glowing prosperity after World War II.

Fountain's title comes from Robinson Jeffers' poem "Apologies for Bad Dreams," sounding a call for political  and moral renewal. The California poet's jeremiad takes on deeper and ironic meaning after the recent devastating fires in Jeffers' native state and alarming climate change reports.

The book ends on a positive, if ambiguous, plea for a new commitment to America's "possibility." Countering the subtitle, Fountain places his hopes on rational thought, Jefferson's ideal of an informed, committed citizenry rather than violent revolution. 

While sounding a clarion call for progressives, Fountain expresses the belief that moderate Americans also will heed his message and restore reason and justice to the political arena.

Wildlife dying at alarming rate, WWF report finds

We're killing the natural world.

That means we're killing ourselves.

In the latest doomsday report, the World Wildlife Foundation finds a 60 percent decline in the Earth's mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970. Here's a Guardian article. 

While the loss of natural beauty and animal life is distressing, human life and civilization depend on nature, as a WWF spokesman pointed out.

Other reports have found similar mass extinction of insects such as bees, necessary for our food.

Coral reefs are also dying. 

The extinction is accelerating at a dizzying speed. Just four years ago, the wildlife death rate since 1970 was 52 percent.

The causes are an interrelated roll-call of disaster. Deforestation. Water degradation. Ocean acidification and pollution by plastic. Climate change. The loss of habitat. Overpopulation.

A telling fact: South and Central America have suffered an 89 percent loss in vertebrates.

That's a fundamental reason behind the migrations of refugees from Honduras and other countries. 

As South and Central America's environmental destruction reaches the point of no return, Trump wants to slash aid. He's sending an Army that once won world wars to terrify poor moms and babies. 

Now a right-wing thug elected president in Brazil wants to pave over the Amazon, which has already declined by 20 percent. That'll be the last gasp in the fight against climate change.

Perhaps we deserve to be extinct as well. 

 

Birds and bees not doing well

Our grandchildren will not see bees, butterflies, beetles and spiders.

Frogs, lizards and salamanders will be gone too.

The alarming decline in insects is even worse than previously reported, according to a new study.

Scientists doing research in a pristine rain forest in Puerto Rico found severe reductions in the number of insects, along with the lizards and birds that feed upon them, according to a Washington Post article.

The falloff was linked to climate change, the newspaper said.

Following a UN report last week that humanity has 12 years to forestall the worst effects of climate change, the loss of insect life is further evidence that the world needs a major effort like the Manhattan Project or World War II mobilization to reduce carbon emissions.

The Wall Street Journal's masters of specious reasoning sought to undermine the UN report in an editorial Tuesday.

Even ExxonMobil's support of a carbon tax drew rhetorical darts from the newspaper's furrow-browed munchkins.

Why fight climate change? In the long run, we'll all be dead was the newspaper's message.

Disputing the UN's call for concentrated government action, the newspaper editorial and a related op-ed piece put faith in the market to solve the problem, not that there really is one.

Perhaps the newspaper can now oppose research to cure cancer.

 

 

World has 12 years to avoid complete climate change devastation, UN panel finds

The world still has time to escape the worst devastation from climate change.

A UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released this week found that the world has 12 years to head off the most extreme disaster from climate change.

The report found that enormous economic changes are needed to keep the world at a 1.5 degree celsius increase in temperatures over the pre-industrial era, rather than 2 degrees, according to a thorough article in the Guardian.

That .5 degree margin will make a big difference, according to the report, saving hundreds of millions of people from poverty and death. Sea levels won't rise as dramatically, and ocean ecosystems will have better chances of survival.

But urgent political commitment is required, as the Trump administration rejects climate change science and seeks to remove the United States from the Paris climate change treaty. Brazil's new right wing president reportedly wishes to remove his country from the treaty, and open up the Amazon Basin to commercial development. 

Other countries are also backing off their commitment to reduce carbon emissions, as agreed to in Paris several years ago.

Biillonaire progressive Tom Steyer in an appearance on Chris Hayes' MSNBC show Monday night expressed optimism that a new generation of young voters will demand action. He also said the transformation from a carbon-based economy will increase prosperity, rather than causing the economic disruption claimed by conservatives.

While Steyer's views seem too rosy, the world must take action. Alas, the UN and other groups are new age Cassandras singing to an oblivious world.

"Lonesome Dove" hooks me again

Escaping from Rachel Maddow's daily political frenzy and the idiocy of Monday Night Football, I came across a "Lonesome Dove" episode on Starz Encore.

Thank goodness, it was the part that mainly takes place on Clara Allen's horse ranch near Ogallala, Neb., not the long and tortuous account of Blue Duck's kidnapping of the prostitute Lorie, which I can barely stand to watch. 

The 1989 CBS miniseries taken from Larry McMurtry's novel has beautiful scenery that brings despair over the destruction of the country's natural habitat and public lands. When the miniseries was filmed 30 years ago, the country was freer and more committed to common political action.

A New York Times article about the decline of the Rio Grande made "Lonesome Dove" even more poignant for me. Retired Texas Rangers Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae have established their Lonesome Dove ranch and livery near the great border river that once inspired the shared culture of Mexico and the United States.

Now sadly depleted, the river has become a symbol of turmoil, the locus of Trump and the GOP's political posturing.

The old Rangers decide on a cattle drive to Montana in search of the last untamed frontier. The quest narrative of McMurtry's novel and the movie echoes "the Odyssey,"  "The Divine Comedy,"  "Canterbury Tales," "Don Quixiote" and Western novels and Hollywood movies.  

The miniseries features a wonderful cast, directed by Simon Wincer. Watching Robert Duvall as Gus, I found it hard to believe that the same actor had played the slick Mafia lawyer Tom in "The Godfather." Duvall portrays the wry, cracker-barrel  philosopher and warm-hearted humorist with an underlying violent edge as readers envision him in McMurtry's novel.

Tommy Lee Jones plays the laconic Call with the right measure of repressed emotion that at times erupts in murderous fury. He exhibits the stiff, authoritarian ethical rectitude that turns deadly to those close to him.

The actors range from Robert Ulrich as the doomed former Ranger Jake Spoon to Angelica Huston as McCrae's wise and still lusty old sweetheart Clara.

As with the movie "Dazed and Confused," it's fun to identify then unknown actors who went on to better things.

The young Diane Lane as Lorie has a generic Hollywood prettiness, not the distinctive persona of her later film star years.

Chris Cooper shows up as the earnest sheriff July Johnson, and I did a double take to make certain that was the late Glenne Headly as his run-away wife, Elmira. Margo Martindale surfaces in an amusing cameo as a cynical, aging prostitute.

Already a well-known scene-stealer, Danny Glover glows as the good-hearted, competent scout Deets, whose tragic death is one of the show's most memorable moments. The young teen heartthrob Rickey Schroeder plays Newt, whom Call can't bring himself to acknowledge as his son.

I don't want 't invest the time to watch the rest of the miniseries, which tells of McCrae's harrowing death. But I say that about "The Godfather" as well. Those cable television staples always bring me in, despite my best intentions to resist.

Mourning Aretha, and waiting for fall

August drifts along, headed toward an autumn of hope or despair.

Waiting for the Manafort trial verdict, I saw the news shouted everywhere of Aretha Franklin's death.

Another beautiful person gone in the ugly age of Trump.

My heart soars whenever an Aretha song plays on my '60s satellite radio channel. She was a one-person choir of angels. 

Here in Atlanta, the kids are back in school, too soon. At dawn, a yellow school bus passing by lifts my spirits. 

Trump revokes Brennan's seccurity clearance because of "erratic conduct and behavior." Conduct and behavior! 

The big orange fool accuses Brennan of erratic behavior? Trump should have his security clearance revoked. And the presidency. 

College football comes soon, and I will watch for hours every Saturday. The Urban Meyer and Maryland messes put a pall on the new season. I know it's a wretched, crooked game, exploiting kids for the enrichment of coaches and TV networks, but I'll love it until the day I die.

When is kickoff?

Hoping for a blue wave in the midterm elections, I fear the GOP and Russia will find a way to steal them. Irrational, I know. Here's hoping democracy will prevail.

Yes, I'll follow baseball's playoffs too, although the game is more of an ordeal than pleasure.

With all the alarms over climate change, I'll awake one October morning and go outside to a crisp wind and champagne-colored sky. I'll take a deep breath, believing the world young again.

 

 

Global warming marches onward

Nathaniel Rich's history of how the country failed to stop climate change back in the late 1980s took up the entire issue of the New York Times magazine last Sunday.

Now someone like Rich needs to do such an extensive examination of what humanity can do now to save the planet. 

As wildfires consume large areas of California - the Mendocino Complex blaze is the largest ever - a distinguished scientific organization has warned that the world might already be on the path to doom from irreversible global warming.

In a Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists report, 16 scientists say that "feedback loops" - continuous global warming occurrences that multiply like cancer cells - could bring the globe to much higher than the 2 degree Celsius threshold adopted by the world's nations several years ago.

Even if human begins meet the goal of 2 degrees above average preindustrial temperatures, the "feedback loops" could be set off, and might already be under way. New York magazine's indispensable environmental writer David Wallace-Wells analyzes the report on the magazine's web site.

Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris climate change treaty pledging the world's nations to take action to meet the 2 degree Celsius goal. Even without Trump's rash action, the world is falling behind on meeting the standards, after initial progress.

The report makes clear that failure to halt global warming could make much of the world uninhabitable. 

Don't let it get you down, it's only the world burning

While Atlanta has experienced a relatively mild summer, if frequent 90-degree-plus highs can be considered moderate, temperatures have soared to unprecedented extremes across the world.

Wildfires rage from Greece to Yosemite. Even the Arctic withstands temperatures in the 90s. Sweden suffers through an alarming heat wave, as India cities grow inhabitable. A city in Oman hit 122 degrees.

As New York magazine environmental writer David Wallace-Wells points out, as climate change doom appears more and more real, the media treat the reports as old news and the public yawns. While the wildfires and high temperatures have been covered, they receive less attention than Trump's chaotic presidency and celebrity and sports news.

Cited by Wallace-Wells,  New Republic writer Emily Atkins criticizes the media, including The New York Times, for failing to link the heat and blazing fires to climate change.

The climate crisis is receiving attention: Harper's in its current edition looks at global wirefires. The problem is that the media are treating the heat as an anomaly, rather than a long-term pattern of climate change.

Along with failing to stop carbon emissions, the world is also depleting its water supplies. Esquire writer Charles Pierce cited a New York Times article reporting that 21 of the world's 37 underground aquifers are near collapse. In Arizona and California, corporate agriculture and real estate are using up underground water resources that have existed for thousands of years. Underground water is also running out in Asia and the Mideast. 

Goodbye to the aquifers. Goodbye to the coral reefs. Goodbye to the coastal cities. Goodbye to human life as we have known it.