Southern Bookman

Season's greetings: More bad news on climate change

As the Christmas lights grow more opulent and ubiquitous commercials hawk gas-guzzling autos as gifts, alarming climate change reports mount.

Despite an impassioned plea by Greta Thunberg, Time magazine's Person of the Year and  Donald Trump irritant, the UN's COP 25 conference in Madrid collapsed, torpedoed by the United States, Brazil and Australia. The conference's purpose was to reaffirm carbon-reduction goals set by each country in the 2016 Paris agreement.

New York magazine writer and "Uninhabitable Earth" author David Wallace-Wells in a report on the failed UN conference outlines the folly of Australia denying climate change as wildfires burn, droughts grow worse and coral reefs die.

Trump has pulled the United States from the treaty, making the U.S. the only country refusing to make a commitment to cut carbon emissions. But no country has taken significant action to meet its carbon reduction goals.

Carbon output rose to an all-time high in 2019, breaking the record set in 2018, according to reports.

In a ray of good news, the global increase in fossil fuel emissions fell to 0.2 percent, after a 2 percent rise in 2018, Scientific American said. The reduction came from a 10 percent reduction in U.S. coal use, despite the Trump administration's campaign to revive the coal industry. Much of Europe also had a similar reduction in coal burning, the magazine reported.

But India and China boosted its coal dependency. A rise in natural gas usage also played a part in the emissions increase, although the fuel emits less carbon than coal.

Another message in this season of bad tidings: The ocean off the coast of California is turning acidic much faster than other ocean areas. That's a death knell for the spiny lobster, the market squid, the Dungeness crab, The New York Times reported. Hear the sea lions honking?

As the oceans absorb more carbon dioxide, they are turning more acidic, with the process going faster off the coast of California. And one more ominous report found that the oceans' oxygen levels are declining, raising the threat to sealife, not to mention our own.

Tidings of comfort and joy? Arctic melting accelerates. Greenland's ice disappears, raising sea levels. Soon the carol will be "'I'm dreaming of a white Greenland, just like the one I used to know."

We keep ignoring those urgent wake-up calls.

Still, we must hope, as the Christmas carols say.

 

Leonardo Da Vinci exhbit at Louvre reflects unity of his artistic, scientific work

Leonardo da Vinci's astonishing life unified art and science, which later tragically split into separate realms.

A monumental exhibit at the Louvre in Paris that opened Thursday reflects how Leonardo's art and scientific endeavors reflected each other. The exhibit is a major cultural event, with extensive reviews in The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and other publications.

Marking the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's death, the exhibit gathers 160 drawings, manuscripts, sculptures and paintings organized to trace Leonardo's development from youth to old age.

Adding to the Louvre's collection, major museums from around the world lent works to the exhibit, the result of intense negotiations, as detailed in a recent Wall Street Journal article.

A last minute court ruling in Italy allowed Leonardo's delicate Vitruvian Man diagram to travel from Venice to Paris. Its artistry and scientific precision is on a spectrum with his great paintings such as John the Baptist, the Madonna of the Rocks and the Virgin and Child With St. Anne.

Leonard's most famous painting, the Mona Lisa, remains on another floor of the Louvre. The enigmatic painting receives a throng of visitors, which would make the exhbit's crowds unmanageable.

A portrait of the elderly Leonardo drawn by one of his assistants comes at the close of the exhibit, a testament to Leonardo's humanity.

The Louvre has gathered a bountiful selection of Leonardo's scattered works into a comprehensive whole. As humanity's worst attributes gain prominence, the Leonardo exhibit shows our highest aspirations.

 

 

 

Thinking about climate change at a luxury beach resort

I tried to enjoy our visit to a resort on the Atlantic Ocean last weekend.

Before our trip through Georgia to north Florida, a U.N. report said that the world's oceans are endangered by climate change. The oceans have exhausted their capacity to absorb carbon. As the oceans warm, acidity rises, threatening sealife. Melting ice will raise sea levels, eventually flooding the luxury condos and hotels at places like Amelia Island, where we stayed.

Witnessing the Atlantic's majesty gives the illusion that the ocean is invulnerable to human activity. But Islands of plastic foul the Pacific. The Atlantic is warming. Coral reefs and fish are dying.. Already, cities like Miami experience regular flooding. Unable to break my habit of reading a newspaper, I saw something about right whales dying after hurling themselves onto dry land.

Like the other guests, we enjoyed the ocean, the swimming pools, the restaurants, the luxury shops. We walked along the golf course, which requires gallons of water to stay green.

On a cruise to Cumberland Island, we saw dolphins, a shark, ospreys and other birds, and Cumberland's feral horses. The tour guide said wild shrimp flourish. Long polluted, the Amelia River is now clean, and oyster beds have returned.  Nature seemed fine.

Looking at the waves crash against the beach, I couldn't stop thinking about that U.N. report.  The ocean, from where human life emerged, is in serious trouble.

We kept seeing small children, newborn babies and pregnant women. Congratulating a mother with a 4-week-old infant, I realized that the child likely wil live until 2100. If the world doesn't act soon to stop climate change, the baby during her life will experience a far more desolate world than ours.

I did well enjoying the luxury surroundings until I saw sprinklers spraying an abandoned tennis court, which received more water than the surrounding shrubbery. Gallons of water wasted.

Before heading home, we filled up with gasoline. As we reached Atlanta, the gas tank was almost empty. Along with the others hurtling down the highway, we had sent emissions into the atmosphere. A radio talk show said that a country plans zero carbon emissions by 2050. I said to myself, "2050? We don't have that much time."

The 90-degree days march into October.

 

 

Hospital stay shows benefits of business-based health-care system

Back home after nine days in Piedmont Hospital, I'm grateful for life's daily blessings.

My stay in the Buckhead hospital where my three children were born and received care for a series of childhood scrapes and where my wife and I have undergone several medical procedures made me even more skeptical about Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren's Medicare for All plans.

I'm covered by Medicare, supplemented by the private insurance company I kept when I accepted a buyout from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution now 12 years ago. Piedmont's quality of care strengthened my support for our private-based health-care system.

As David Leonhardt noted in Monday's New York Times, Sanders and Warren's plan to abolish private insurance companies is highly unpopular except for a narrow segment of Democratic supporters. I don't know how a profit-based hospital like Piedmont would fare under the Sanders-Warren plan, but making it a public hospital like Grady would be a mistake.

During my Piedmont stay, I was amazed at the number of people employed by the hospital, from nurses and personal-care attendants to dining service employees, physician's assistants, nurse practitioners and doctors. The Piedmont staff is a microcosm of Atlanta.

Two years ago, I spent a week at Grady because of the same heart condition. Grady's care was excellent, but I found Piedmont's more comprehensive and responsive to my needs. I fear the Sanders-Warren proposals would bring an erosion of care in both hospitals.

Joe Biden's public-private health care system would preserve the strengths of the present system, while enhancing Obamacare's gains. Rather than Medicare for All, a Medicaid expansion would benefit millions. As Leonhardt points out, the Sanders-Warren plan would be disastrous for the Democrats' effort to win back the White House and Senate.

After receiving another up-close view of the American health system, I'm happy to be back home, grateful for the benefits of our health-care system.

 

 

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

 

Trump lays waste to Endangered Species Act

The Endangered Species Act is another American institution trashed by Trump.

Passed during the Richard Nixon administration, the act showed that the country cared as much about its natural heritage as it did about economic exploitation. The act protected animals like the bald eagle and Florida alligator that are part of our national identity.

Trump doesn't care. George W. Bush sought to weaken the act, but it survived. The Reagan administration and its anti-governmental philosophy didn't overturn the law. Now the Trump administration will let developers have their way in destroying natural habitat.

As CNN reported, Trump had already tossed aside EPA scientists in allowing an oil and copper mine at Bristol Bay in Alaska. Environmentalists fear the Pebble Mine will destroy the bay's salmon. Trump apparently personally approved the mine after a meeting with Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who cares nothing about his state's natural resources.

The EPA is another Nixon administration legacy that Trump is gutting. The GOP once listed conservation as one of its cornerstones. Beginning with Reagan, the party of Theodore Roosevelt has boosted mining, oil, natural gas and construction over the environment.

But the GOP never fully realized its anti-environmental agenda. It still when politically necessary followed voters' desire to preserve natural areas.

Now, with Trump, the GOP is fulfilling its dream to drill in every natural area, drain every wetland, concrete over every forest and meadow.

The new Endangered Species Act regulations will let developers for the first time present alleged "economic benefits" of a project. To Trump and his cronies, natural habitats have no economic benefits. The economic benefits will be what a developer says they are. That means whatever profits can be squeezed  from a place where wildlife once thrived.

Can Atlanta keep wasting water?

A neighbor watered his lush green lawn Thursday night, just after a new report on the earth's vanishing resources.

Four nozzles sent sent streams from every corner of the yard. Down the street, another neighbor watered his front yard with an old-fashioned back and forth device attached to a hose.

The watering in North Atlanta has tenuous connection to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report that deforestation and poor land use will cause a global food crisis. The New Yorker's Carolyn Kormann produced a full summary, connecting land degradation in Africa to Amazon deforestation.

Poor areas in Africa, Asia and South America will be the most hurt by water scarcity, soil degradation, and once fertile areas turning into desert. Rich countries like the United States will be less affected, although migration from countries like Guatemala, El Salvadore and Honduras will burgeon.

While I understand my neighbors' desire to keep their lawns green, the watering struck me as wasteful. Atlanta had received a heavy rainfall only a few days before. Was the excessive watering necessary?

For years, experts have warned that Atlanta's torrid population growth would threaten its water supply. Georgia, Alabama and Florida have battled for years over Atlanta taking more and more water from the Chattahoochee River. Over the years, Atlanta has undergone severe droughts.

When I covered the Georgia Legislature several years ago, I never heard any mention of climate change or global warming. The Republican-controlled General Assembly and then Gov. Nathan Deal believed economic growth would last forever, and that the state will be immune from global climate changes.

Savannah might sink under rising Atlantic waters, but at least it will have remnants of the port. Jekyll and Cumberland islands will lose beaches. The Chattahoochee will be reduced to a trickle.

As temperatures grow hotter and emissions rise, Atlantans build bigger homes, drive larger cars, and keep watering heir lawns. Some day, the bill will come due.

 

 

A morning walk, as the planet burns

I've been walking in the morning, enjoying cooler temperatures and low humidity in Atlanta.

Those I meet along the way comment how nice it is, compared with the 90-plus days of a week or so ago.

Morning brings hope: The newly risen sun shining through the trees. People walking their dogs. Folks driving off to work.

Meanwhile, in Paris, temperatures rise above 100 degrees. Paris!

In London, insufferable heat has replaced the mild summers of Shakespeare's plays.

A new report in the British journal Nature found that warming is now uniform across the globe. For most of the last 2000 years, warming and cooling have occurred at different places at different times, even events like the Little Ice Age. But now, temperatures keep rising at the same time over most of the globe.

It's a beautiful morning. They used to not seem so rare.

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.

 

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.