Southern Bookman

Amazon fires a threat to humanity

The Amazon burning looks like the apocalypse.

Fires bringing afternoon darkness to Sao Paulo, 1,500 miles away, were deliberately set, an activist seeking to save the rainforest said on the Chris Hayes show Thursday night.

She said the arsonists were encouraged by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the right-wing loon who wants agricultural development of the home of countless species and generator of 20 percent of the world's oxygen.

Hayes pointed out that the Amazon, which absorbs carbon as the world's main barrier against climate change, is now spewing tons of carbon into the atmosphere.

Rather than taking any effective action to stop the fires, Bolsonaro launched a twitter feud with French President Emmanuel Macron, who wants G7 leaders meeting this weekend to discuss action on the Amazon emergency. Bolsarno accused Macron of meddling in Brazilian affairs, while displaying total befuddlement about stopping the conflagration. To him, short-term economic gains take precedence over the world's survival.

While Donald Trump's plan to buy Greenland is fatuous, perhaps the world can purchase whatever's left of the Amazon from Brazil and other countries and make the rainforest a global preserve. Of course, Trump would object, seeing the Amazon as a great place for a hotel and golf course.

In April, Macon vowed to rebuild Notre Dame after the world watched in horror as the ancient cathedral burned. The Amazon can't be rebuilt. Once it's gone, it's gone forever

 

Jay Inslee's exit a blow to Democratic campaign

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee ended his presidential campaign Wednesday night, a serious blow for the Democratic Party.

Inslee based his campaign on climate change as the world's dominant issue, calling for a massive effort to reduce its threat to humanity. An articulate, informed and pleasant campaigner, Inslee presented a range of other progressive ideas.

The large number of candidates in the first two presidential debates gave Inslee less time than he deserved. Lesser candidates such as John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard and the goofy Marianne Williamson received more attention than he did. CNN was especially egregious in silencing Inslee.

Inslee in withdrawing told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow that he believed he'd succeeded in making climate change a main campaign issue. On the day after Inslee's withdrawal, Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a major green energy proposal.

But Inslee's loss will weaken future debates and lower the energy needed to defeat Donald Trump.

 

New Orleans, environs threatened by environmental catastrophe

New Orleans again stands on the edge of environmental apocalypse.

The city hammered by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 is now threatened by a new storm gathering strength in the Gulf of Mexico. Thunderstorms Wednesday brought massive flooding to the low-lying city, including the French Quarter, which escaped Katrina's flooding.

The tropical storm that will be called Barry is expected to develop into a weak hurricane by the weekend. Hurricane warnings have been issued for the entire Gulf Coast. Barry's threat comes early in the hurricane season. There have only been three July hurricanes historically, all in the last 40 years, according to media reports.

The arrival of Barry comes as the Mississippi River stands at unusually high levels for this time of year. Heavy spring rainfall has raised the river's level to 16 feet at the Carrollton Avenue gauge, according to media reports.

Barry, if hits Louisiana, could bring up to 18 inches of rainfall, swelling the New Orleans river level to 20 feet or more, according to reports. That will put severe pressure on the levees that protect the city, as reported in a New Republic article.

A Corps of Engineers official expressed confidcnce that New Orleans' levees would hold, according to a wire story. But The Times-Picayune Advocate reported that water might overlap levees in the city's lower Ninth Ward, Algiers and St. Bernard Parish.

The threat from Barry comes after an environmentally ominous spring in which Mississippi River towns farther north suffered catastrophic flooding. The turgid Mississippi brought an increase of pollution washing downriver, threatening Louisiana's fisheries, as detailed in a Huffiington Post article.

The opening of the Bonnet Carre Spillway an unprecedented two times caused a heavy infusion of fresh water pouring into Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico.

The nutrient-rich chemical, hazardous and human waste carried by the heavy volume of river water led to a profusion of algae in the gulf, forcing the closure of Mississippi beaches. Scientists are also reporting an ominous rise in dolphin deaths, and an expected widening of the dead zone that develops each summer in the gulf.

With Barry gaining strength in the gulf, officials in Plaquemines Parish south of New Orleans have ordered a mandatory evacuation, while New Orleans officials are waiting to see what happens.

The evacuation of Plaquemines brought to mind a notorious historical catastrophe. As the momentous 1927 Mississippi River flood rushed toward the gulf, the levees were dynamited south of New Orleans to ease pressure on the city, as memorably recounted in John M. Barry's definitive book on the flood.

While New Orleans was spared, Plaquemines suffered devastating flooding. The memory of that event, evoked in Randy Newman's anthem "Louisiana 1927," persisted in rumors during Hurricane Katrina that the federal government intentionally blew up the levees around New Orleans so that poor people's neighborhoods would be destroyed to save rich white homes.But affluent Lakeshore neighborhoods also were inundated.

Plaquemines, one of the south Louisiana parishes losing land to the Gulf of Mexico at alarming rates, now hopes to avoid an echo of the 1927 debacle. And New Orleans prays it won't suffer a catastrophe like Katrina.

But even if New Orleans avoids devastation, the long-term threats of climate change and human pollution remain. Extreme weather will become a normal event.

 

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' summer retreat goes on sale for $65 million

Another vestige of Camelot is passing away .

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' secluded estate on Martha's Vineyard is on sale for $65 million, according to an announcement by Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

The sale of the 300-acre compound with more than a mile of Atlantic Ocean beachfront was reported by the Wall Street Journal's Katherine Clarke in a fascinating article Friday in the newspaper's always excellent Mansion section.

Caroline Kennedy explained that the time has come to sell the home because her children are now grown, and she and her husband, Edwin Schlossberg, are ready for new horizons. The couple renovated the home for their family after Mrs. Onassis' death in 1994 at age 64.

The property is a short ferry ride away from the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis on Cape Cod, according to the WSJ's scoop, unreported by The New York Times.

The price would set a record for a single-family home on Martha's Vineyard, the WSJ said. The record was set in January, when the estate of the late Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham sold for $32.5 million.

Another icon from the Kennedy presidency appeared Friday with the The New York Times' obituary of noted black photographer John Shearer, who documented Martin Luther King's funeral, the Attica Riot and other 1960s events.

Shearer was also one of the several photographers who captured toddler John F. Kennedy Jr.'s salute to his slain father's casket as it passed by in Washington, D.C.  before his funeral. The photo also shows Jacqueline in black mourning clothes and a fidgety Caroline Kennedy.

Shearer's photo for Look magazine stands out from others taken of the scene because of its classical framing and the beatific light on Jacqueline Kennedy's face behind her black veil.

The grown-up John John had a glittering public career before dying in a plane crash near his mother's summer retreat. Now, with the the sale of her mother's beloved summer home, Caroline Kennedy is closing another chapter in the family's story.

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Tony Horwitz

Author Tony Horwitz's death Monday at age 60 was truly shocking.

Horwitz had just published his latest book, "Spying on the South," and was on a book tour. He died while walking in Chevy Chase, Md., on the same day that he was to appear at the famed Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.

After surviving Mideast battlefields, hazardous factories, Civil War re-enactments, Pacific voyages, Australian hikes and Southern dive bars, Horwitz succumbed to a heart attack while on a routine Memorial Day walk, according to his wife, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks.

Following the example of George Plimpton in the 1960s, Horwitz believed in participatory journalism, as his Washington Post obituary emphasized.

He was one of the lucky few who rise through the newspaper reporting ranks to establish careers as independent authors of books.

With a home on Martha's Vineyard, he could have enjoyed life as a public intellectual appearing on television talk shows and going to writers' conferences. Instead, he was a restless journalist driven to carry out difficult reporting in the field, as his friend, author Michael Lewis, said.

After stints at smaller newspapers, Horwitz won a Pulitzer at the Wall Street Journal for his on-site investigation of hazardous work at Southern chicken plants. He and Brooks also covered the first Gulf War and other Mideast turmoil for the Journal.

Wall Street Journal colleagues recalled that Horwitz possessed special talent for reporting and writing. Newspaper reporters traditionally excelled at one or the other, although that musty division fell away with the advent of college-educated journalists.

After working at the New Yorker, Horwitz broke free from the bonds of newspaper and magazine writing with "Confederates in the Attic," an examination of the culture of Civil War battle re-enactors.

The book was hailed as a modern journalistic classic, assigned in college and high school courses. A new generation of neo-Confederate sympathizers condemned the book, harassing Horwitz at readings.

"Confederates in the Attic" found that political and social divisions that split the country in the 19th century persisted in late 20th century America. The book's themes look even more prescient as conflict deepens.

Continuing a tradition established by de Tocqueville, Horwitz in his latest book toured the South to talk to its disgruntled working-class residents.

While de Tocqueville traveled across the then young United States, Horwitz was the latest Northern or European writer to view the South as an exotic land. Such attempts to interpret the South also have deep roots; Horwitz followed paths traced by Frederick Law Olmsted before the Civil War.

Donald Trump's support among Southern conservatives has made such sociological probes common. Whether they present an accurate picture is debatable.

The South's complexities are difficult to fathom, even for an astute reporter and writer like Horwitz. These  journeys to the Southern heart of darkness make Southerners roll their eyes, and hasten to replay Randy Newman's "Good Ole Boys."

It sounds as if Horwitz in "Spying on the South" made as good an effort at understanding the region as any, but what an alienating title. With the rise of Atlanta, Houston, Dallas and other cities in the 1960s, the South lost its strangeness and appeared like the rest of the nation. Or perhaps not.

Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina and Florida remain primitive, while their metro areas hurtle through the 21st century. Texas and Virginia look like vanguards until they don't. There is no Mind of the South, but many.

After an exhaustive journey across the region, Horwitz died young in the city known as the crossroads of the North and South,  where the country's violent divisions roil beneath marble monuments.

 

Brian Kemp fights Hollywood boycott

Now Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is a movie critic?

Mr. Shotgun is a multi-talented wonder, an expert on women's health and now a Hollywood insider.

After signing legislation that criiminalizes abortion, Kemp blasted Hollywood threats to boycott Georgia as coming from "C-list" celebrities.

Although Kemp's campaign commercials showed a gift for comedy, he undoubtedly knows as little about who's big in Hollywood as he does about medicine. Who would he put on the A-list, Mel Gibson?

Since Georgia gives unlimited tax breaks to film-makers, Kemp's probably right that a boycott won't gain much traction. The studios make too much profit from Georgia productions to stop shooting films in the state.

A Democratic woman legislator who fought he harsh abortion bill also opposes the boycott, pointing out that those working in Georgia's burgeoning film industry could lose their jobs, the AJC reported.

Georgia has begun an academy to train workers in different film industry specialties, such as lighting and makeup. Many film workers have moved from California to Georgia, attracted by the Peach State's lower cost of living.

Other Southern states with flourishing film industries have also passed harsh anti-abortion laws. Alabama's law is even more draconian than Georgia's, and Louisiana will probably pass a law similar to Georgia's. Louisiana's Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, an abortion foe, likely will sign the bill.

A Hollywood boycott against all of these states looks implausible. Restricting film-making to California and New York would burden the industry with unsustainable costs.

Instead of a boycott, some big filmmakers want to use profits from Georgia films to support the ACLU's legal challenge of the Georgia law.

Whatever happens, Kemp might have come up with a good marketing appeal for film stars. Imagine the Hollywood buzz if an actor or actress could brag "I was on Brian Kemp's c-list."

 

 

 

Australian "coal hugger" takes unexpected victory

The global battle against climate change suffered another blow with the unexpected re-election of Australian prime minister Scott Morrison, a conservative notorious for his anti-environmental policies.

Goodbye, Great Barrier Reef. Like the Amazon rain forest, threatened by Brazil's hard-right president, you're going down.

Morrison's election had the Wall Street Journal's editorial page chortling Monday. Australian native Rupert Murdoch's newspaper seemed giddy over Morrison's unexpected win over the Labor Party. Polls had consistently predicted a victory for Labor and its anti-climate change policies. A WSJ news story called Morrison a "coal-hugger."

Like Brazil, Australia is a sensitive flashpoint for the world's environment. Its Great Barrier Reef shelters a multitude of oceanic species. The reef's slow death is a barometer of the rapidly intensifying effects of global warming.

Media reports claimed that Australian voters were worried that Labor's green intitiatives would hurt the economy. Voters don't appear to understand the economic devastation of extreme weather, drought, loss of wildlife habitat and other climate change disasters.

The Australian election is another sign that the world is refusing to heed a rising chorus of climate change alarms.

Harper's Kevin Baker finds Green New Deal the best hope for American future

The Green New Deal offers the best chance for surviving climate change, Kevin Baker argues in a persuasive article in the May Harper's magazine.

Rather than the impractical, quixotic, absurd chimera painted by critics on the left and right, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's plan for a non-carbon economy outlines the most realistic course for the country's future, Baker says. While critics believe that half-measures can be taken, the Green New Deal expresses the truth that a total economic makeover is required. 

Baker turns to the Roosevelt New Deal for models of the full-scale action needed. Along with Depression-era Soil Conservation Service programs to restore dust bowl land ravaged by disastrous agricultural practices, Baker gives an extensive history of the Tennessee Valley Authority's transformation of poverty-stricken rural areas of Alabama and Tennessee.

Acknowledging that the TVA's damming of the Tennessee River looks environmentally destructive now, Baker makes a convincing case for a full-scale mobilization to end carbon emissions. Whether the TVA's massive electrification projects give the best model is debatable. Perhaps a proliferation of smaller projects would prove more effective.

While Baker ignores that World War II brought the biggest changes to the U.S. economy, his look back at Roosevelt's new deal illustrates that the United States once had the political will and social commitment to make major changes. While flawed, the Green New Deal offers a workable blueprint for that same level of unified action.

 

 

 

Katha Pollitt revisits 1969 Harvard student strike

Nation columnist Katha Pollitt attended the 50-year reunion of student strikers who shut down Harvard University in 1969.

Pollitt expressed pleasure that the aging radicals are still leftists who have followed socially conscious careers. None have become investment bankers or hedge fund sharks.

Displaying her usual wit and clear writing, Pollitt delves into the ideologies of competing left-wing groups whose dogmatic disputes all too often bogged down the era's campus politics.

Despite the internecine squabbles, the Harvard SDS took control, bringing such gains as an outstanding African-American studies program and the construction of affordable housing.  Pollitt also notes that the strike led to a longtime ban of ROTC from campus.

While I've read extensively about the 1969 student riot at Columbia, another center of Ivy League radicalism, and the free speech movement at Berkeley, I didn't know about the Harvard action until reading Pollitt's piece. The Harvard strike sounded a bit more well-ordered than the actions at Cal and Columbia.

Pollitt notes that the Harvard strike received little faculty support, crediting the eminent philosopher John Rawls for bailing out the students from the Cambridge, Mass., jail.

During the reunion, the old leftists from what was then the new left also met with today's student activists, whose main challenge is climate change, not the Vietnam War.

While Pollitt took a satisfied tone, I felt the same regret that rises whenever I hear on the '60s channel, "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius."

With all of its excesses, the '60s protests brought real gains in civil rights and concern for the environment.

But, capped by Donald Trump's excruciating win over Hilary Clinton, the country now appears in full retreat from those progressive accomplishments. With malevolent Mitch McConnell packing the courts with Trump's regressive judges, the reversals appear intractable.

A new generation of activists raises hope, but so far their efforts lack the momentum of the 1960s. The threat of climate change and mass extinctions is even greater.

 

 

Widespread species extinctions threaten human existence, report warns

The dinosaurs were killed off by a meteor. Now, we are the meteor rapidly destroying life on Earth.

Human activity at its present rate will bring the extinction of a million plant and animal species, according to a U.N. report.

The extinctions are the largest in human history, the report found. Human life depends on the threatened ecosystems, the report warned.

While climate change exacerbates the loss of life, the primary causes come from human activity like deforestation, poaching, and overfishing.

Natural habitat is being lost at accelerating rates. In Thailand, rain forests are being turned into palm-oil plantations, devastating wildlife habitats. The death of coral reefs threatens marine diversity.

The report had a ray of hope. "Through transformative change, nature can still be conserved, restored and used sustainably," concluded Sir Robert Wilson, who led the research for the Intergovernmental Seience-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

Such a transformative change will also be required to reduce carbon emissions and lessen the devastation of global warming.

Those sounding the alarm about climate change and widespread species extinctions keep saying that humanity has time to take action. Instead, the world accelerates faster and faster toward disaster.