Yesterday I rose early and headed over to Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge to look for the graves of two key figures in the 1846 discovery and implementation of sulfuric ether, which rendered surgery painless and ushered in a new era of medicine. It was about 80 degrees at 8 a.m., so with a minimum of dilly-dallying I located the burial sites of W.T.G. Morton and Charles Thomas Jackson, M.D. Instrumental in this search was a map found in a 2011 issue of the Bulletin of Anesthesia History.  Just another Sunday morning ramble...actually yesterday's adventure flowed from a book I had just finished, Ether Day by J. M. Fenster (2002), as well as my personal experience of having undergone several surgeries, most recently a spine operation called a laminectomy.

​Next I scooted to Trader Joe's and then home. Soon enough, temperatures hit 93 degrees, pretty hot in these parts but not a record. On June 6, 1925, Boston wilted in 100-degree air. But records were broken yesterday in Burlington, Vermont; Newark, New Jersey; and Syracuse, New York. The day before, Minneapolis soared to a daily record of 99 degrees, and before that Las Vegas broke its June 3rd record with a reading of 108 degrees at 4:45 p.m. at the airport where tourists get off air-conditioned planes to ride air-conditioned transport to air-conditioned hotels and casinos where they are plied with alcohol and gently separated from their money. 

Yes, such records are at least partly related to climate change. (Here we pause for a data point: the recent all-time high reading of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, 419 ppm, taken by instruments atop the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii.) And, of course, more frequent and intense heat waves only induce folks to crank more air conditioning which means more burning of fossil fuels, which produces higher temperatures via climate change, and 'round and 'round we go on the Armageddon Carousel. 

But that's not the gist of what I'm struggling to communicate here. I'm wondering, actually, how major changes occur.

​Sometimes it's sudden and surprising, as with anesthesia. One day, surgery exists as a painful and often fatal horror show. Then, within a very short time, a few plucky people harness the power of existing chemical compounds and surgery becomes a painless procedure with boundless potential. Human suffering is lessened greatly. No matter that the major players scrapped so desperately over credit for the epic discovery that they destroyed themselves. No matter that Jackson was an obnoxious snob, Morton a scheming conman. And to heck with their motivations: they did it. They unburdened multitudes, born and unborn. We should note, too, that the rivals received help from several fascinating and faulty characters also buried in the leafy confines of Mount Auburn Cemetery.

But it's not likely, alas, that climate change will be solved with a "game-changing" discovery; sorry, John Kerry. The clock is tick-tick-ticking; temps are rise-rise-rising. Waiting for some undiscovered technology that will, say, whisk greenhouse gases from the atmosphere seems a sucker's bet. More so, while 19th century surgeons eagerly adopted anesthesia, 21st century protectors of the fossil-fuel status quo have so far failed to end their destructive practices and embrace existing and affordable clean energy solutions such as wind and solar.  

If this scourge is to be tamed, we may well need millions of Jacksons and millions of Mortons, all over the world, each doing their small part. The alternative is pain, and more pain.    ​

There we were, at a table outside the Spring Street Market & Café in Williamstown, Massachusetts, enjoying a wonderful lunch on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in May, and this truck hauling a tangled load of uprooted buckthorn pulls alongside us. The engine, alas, does not turn off. Just a few feet away, it idles, belching  blue-black diesel fumes. Soon the driver's window rolls down and I can't make out the face from my vantage point, but I can see a meaty, tattooed arm protruding from the cab. It holds a cigarette, with almost dainty flair. Once, twice, it taps the ash. Then the arm retracts, the windows rolls up and the loud, noxious idling continues. Altogether it's a big Trump You to the tourists from the big-bad city as well as the entitled kids attending elite Williams College, this town's major employer.

A few more minutes pass. I want to get up and knock on the driver's-side window and ask him to cool it, but I don't because I'm a flatlander/out-of-towner and I've already passed my confrontation limit for the month. Besides, we were almost done eating when the truck showed. The flavor of the fossil-fuel fumes only marred my last savorings of turmeric rice, avocado, poached eggs, black beans, Vermont cheddar and green chile sauce -- the gently melded ingredients making up the sublime Brunch Bowl. 

The guy in the idling truck, I bet, harbors a good bit of anger. He's found a clever way to release it on a bunch of pansy-assed, vegan liberals who deserve it because we want to stop him and other patriotic Americans from owning guns, praying without masks, building walls (which make good neighbors) and burning stuff to make the world go around. Plus, he's supposed to feel bad now for grilling animal meat and gnawing on it, like that's destroying the world or something? He's supposed to eat a goddamned Brunch Bowl?! Well, fine, isn't that America today in all its red vs. blue glory. Or gory. What interests me isn't so much the man's unneighborly behavior, but the load of buckthorn that, we'll assume, he'd spent the morning yanking from Mother Earth.   

Buckthorn, in the USA, is considered a non-native invasive species, a degrader of ecosystems. It's often referred to as common or European or glossy buckthorn, of the Rhamnacae family of flowering plants. According to the Friends of the Mississippi River, who regularly organize parties to pluck the buck, this tall understory shrub is "extremely hardy and able to thrive in a variety of soil and light conditions." Indeed, it's apparently evolved to both grow wildly and resist predators, with masses of leaves that hang on through fall and black fruit that makes most animals and birds wretch or get the runs (buckthorn is a mean purgative in herbal medicine). When reduced to stumps, buckthorn will shoot back up, phoenix-like, which is why buckthorn hunters are advised to cover stumps with a black plastic shroud.  

Extremely hardy, indeed. In fact, they remind me of a certain stubborn species I've encountered...humans! Hardy humans, expanding madly across the planet. Indeed, perhaps the human species has become the most invasive species on Earth, unnaturally expert at overwhelming biospheres with powerful growth and defensive powers. Buckthorn, however, is invasive by virtue of having been moved by Homo sapiens from its original habitat, where it coexisted in relative balance with the flora and fauna with which it co-evolved. Here it doesn't fit and runs amok. Humans, by contrast, are invasive by virtue of our intellect and opposable thumbs, not necessarily in that order. We run amok everywhere. And so far, plants and animals have displayed no ready response to our vigorous dominion, unless you consider climate change as a total-systems response to our onslaught. It'll take awhile, but we'll cook them out. For more on these theories, see two provocative books: The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock (2006) and Defiant Earth by Clive Hamilton (2017). 

Back to buckthorn in Vermont, as well as other misplaced and therefore invasive plants and animals such as kudzu in Georgia, Asian carp in the Great Lakes and cane toads in Australia. Eradicating these fiends is considered a green-virtuous deed, one that even employs people, such as our idling truck driver, who probably don't belong to the Sierra Club. If you've gone on an invasive species hunt, you know there's something satisfying about ripping the interloper from the soil or knocking the troublemaker on the head. It's a job well done, indeed, and then we all return to our regular occupation of acting a lot worse than the fiend we just slayed. 

It's also worth noting that buckthorn can't help but act like buckthorn. It doesn't realize that it's dominating and destroying its unfamiliar surroundings. It can't stop itself. Humans, on the other hand, now have a very good idea of what we're doing to Earth's biospheres and civilizations. We can stop ourselves. But, so far, we won't. We just won't. 

Our old gas stove, here when we bought our old house, had become a clunker. She was dirty, stained beyond cleaning. The oven heated unevenly and leaked carbon monoxide to unhealthy levels, 18 ppm, when activated. The cooktop flames worked fine, but were powered by a fossil fuel, natural gas, that contributes to climate change. And, regrettably, more than once we'd left a nearly invisible flame burning after dinner was done.

So recently we said sayonara, baby to Old Bessie and bought a new stove, an electric from LG, which will be powered sustainably by the solar rig on our roof. Unlike the electric models of yesteryear with glowing coils for burners, upon which our moms unceremoniously slammed down their ten-ton iron pressure cookers, this one has a flat, glass stovetop with heating elements beneath. The oven features a newfangled convection option, superior for baking.

Yes, I  know, gas flames are easy to modulate on a stovetop, but it's hasn't been hard to figure out -- relearn, really, as I grew up with an electric stove -- how to boil water and sauté veggies with electricity. It's nice, too, that the controls, some digital and some good-old-fashioned knobs, are all up front. Hence, there's no need to reach across hot pans to make oven adjustments.

She's pretty stylish, don't you think, in a brushed-steel kind of way.    

Now, you may be wondering: what energy source does America use to cook its flapjacks? I figured it was mostly natural gas these days, but DailyEnergyInsider asserts that almost two-thirds of households get cooking with electricity.  In the Northeast, about half of households contain electric stoves. As of 2019, only one percent of stoves in the U.S. feature the latest cooking innovation, the induction stovetop (powered by electricity). That's because, perhaps, most people can't bring themselves to fry up their bacon with electromagnetism. Let the microwave do that weird-science thing behind its closed door.

Regardless, that's still tens of millions of polluting gas stoves that gotta go. Without rapid electrification of stoves and other major household appliances -- clothes dryers, water heaters, outdoor grills -- it's hard to imagine the U.S. achieving the ambitious climate-change goals proposed by the Biden Administration.  

​Time was, of course, when stoves were powered by firewood. Last month my wife and I took a trip to southern Vermont and made our way to Hildene, the mansion built in 1905 by Abe Lincoln's only child to live into adulthood, Robert Todd Lincoln. As president of the Pullman Car Company, at one point the largest manufacturer in the world, Lincoln could afford the most "modern" appliances. Everything's relative, I suppose, but it must have been tricky regulating temperatures in the wood-fired behemoth that dominated his butler's pantry. Once you stoked that baby with a couple of split hickory logs, there was no going back.

​Burnt flapjacks, anyone?