Water heaters, those plug-ugly tubes in our basements from which our glorious hot showers come forth. We don't think much about them until they break and then we call Mike the Plumber. Or Bob or Ivan or Angelica if you happen to corral the one out of a hundred plumbers who's a gal. In our case, soon after we bought our house in the summer of 2011, our water heater cracked like an egg...Mike the Plumber to the rescue! Having just spent a pretty penny, we opted for the lowest cost replacement, a gas-burning unit. Flash forward eight years and that sucker cracks, too. Mike recommends a do-over, you just can't expect more than eight years what with the hard water in these parts, but I pause this time. What about electric?

Slowly, Mike shakes his head. He's skeptical and explains that electric water heaters are more expensive and not as economical per thermal unit or something. Then I tell him that we've put solar panels on the roof, which produce an excess of electricity that Eversource just takes for its own. An electric water heater would allow us to tap into that surplus and, therefore, heat our water for free. Mike is psyched by this twofer -- save money and stick it to the grabby Man. Let's do it! When I mention that it'll also lower my carbon footprint, he sorta nods/shrugs. As in, fine, if you're into that kind of thing. 

The next day, he installs the new unit and it's clear he's been thinking about those long showers his kids take. What did your panels cost you? he asks. I tell him, adding that prices have fallen significantly since then. Plus you get federal and state tax rebates. Mike nods, thinking, calculating, laying mental pipe from paycheck to that damn Eversource bill. Who'd you use? I point to the yard sign the company stuck in the front lawn while they worked, now propped in the basement corner next to the solar inverter. Out pops Mike the Plumber's phone. Flash, he takes a photo. 

Let me know what you save on gas, he says on his way out of the house. Sure thing, replies Hal the Homeowner. Will Mike go solar? That's hard to say, but if he does take the leap it probably won't be because of an article he reads about climate change or a speech he hears from a politician. It'll be because of a conversation in a basement between two people. Because it makes sense. And maybe for his kids' future, too. 

​By the way, here's my latest gas bill. This August my wife and I spent 58 cents on natural gas to power our stove. That's it, and we weren't on vacation. Eversource still got its $10.37 delivery charge -- twenty times the cost of the product! -- but you know the old saying. When you stick it to the Man, he has a habit of sticking you back. Still, 58 cents ain't bad.  

Walking down Somerville Avenue yesterday, on my way to the T station, I noticed bird tracks set in sidewalk concrete. They were too big for little birds, and not arrayed in the hop-hop pattern you see with sparrows and robins. A quick check on Google confirmed it: wild turkey tracks. These tracks were set about eight inches apart, indicating a casual trot. They reminded me of dinosaur tracks, and of course we all know that birds are descended from dinosaurs. Will they meet the same fate someday? Impossible, you say, especially for those wild turkeys making themselves a nuisance on golf courses and across suburban parks. In fact, wild turkeys are doing fine in New England, although their numbers are starting to fall off nationally after a strong resurgence in recent decades. The reasons for the decline are manifold and include more frequent and intense spring storms, related to climate change, that kill off hens and offspring.   

Birds in general, however, are faring poorly in the Anthropocene. According to a recent study in the journal Science -- which you can't read unless you're a subscriber, so here's a NYT article about the study -- the bird population of North America has fallen 29 percent in the past 50 years. That's almost three billion fewer birds in the skies over the U.S. and Canada since I was an eight-year-old child watching woodpeckers, crows and finches in the backyard with my grandfather. In the evening, we'd listen for the rapid call of the whip-poor-will. Sometimes I'll still absently make that call as I'm walking alone, and I always listen for a call-back and never hear one. 

​It's not just exotic birds; common species such as robins, starlings and sparrows are taking big hits. The major culprits is us, of course -- specifically, human development encroaching on bird habitats and widespread use of pesticides. (In a cruel twist, pesticides known as neonicotinoids reduce the appetite of sparrows, causing them to slowly starve to death.) The connection to climate change can be specific; for instance, many migrating birds return in springtime to find conditions on the ground altered. Early onset of spring due to climate change can mean that the usual food sources have come and gone. The connection to climate change is general, too. All the expansionist, industrial activities that produce climate change also make the world less hospitable to birds. 

House cats allowed to roam outside, poorly-sited wind turbines and glass skyscrapers also contribute to bird death. Three more things we're responsible for.  

Anecdotally, fewer sparrows visit the feeder in my backyard these days. It used to be a feasting frenzy some mornings; now it's a casual brunch with friends -- until, that is, an impetuous squirrel comes by to jazz up the party. Thankfully, the family of starlings in one of our roof eaves are still camped there, and cardinals, mourning doves and blue jays continue to drop by. Blue jays often make a discordant, scraping call that sounds like the opening and closing of a rusty gate. It's a vaguely disturbing sound, repeated over and over and over. I wonder if they're trying to tell us something.     

Maybe it's not always such a bad thing, after all, anxiety.

I got to thinking this way after last weekend's LadiesCon at the Somerville Armory, brought to you by the Ladies of Comicazi. By mid-morning, fans of comics, pop culture and artistic/crafty ventures based on those themes were already filling the place with an infectious energy. I was on hand as special emissary from the Land of Tall, Bald, Middle-Aged Men -- no, actually I was helping my daughter set up her artist's table, arrayed with unique perler and jewelry creations. Next to her, another young woman named Gillian Daniels was selling her hand-drawn comics and zines. One caught my eye: Undertow -- Grief for a Changing World. Its drawings and captions dramatized Gillian's struggle to keep her head above water, so to speak, even as the spectre of climate change -- as well as other threats -- loomed menacingly.

Yet she wasn't at home, curled in a ball. She wasn't staring at her phone, binging on presidential outrages and the latest IPCC report on summer Arctic ice melt. She was here, spreading her message. Granted, it wasn't outreach to a skeptical crowd, but it was something. Something to build on. 

Also this week, 16 young people from around the world (including the famous Greta Thunberg) filed a legal complaint about climate change with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. Besides detailing the tangible negative effects of climate change on their lives, now and in the future, the petition cited psychological harm. Specifically, it referenced studies on "climate anxiety" and "habitual ecological worrying" that can “elicit dramatic reactions, such as loss of appetite, sleeplessness, and panic attacks.” Moreover: “Chronic stress from the acute and ongoing impacts of climate change may alter biological stress response systems and make growing children more at risk for developing mental health conditions later in life, such as anxiety, depression, and other clinically diagnosable disorders.”

Not good. Not what we want for our kids. So should parents downplay or even lie about climate change to their children? Delete the fear emoji from their phones and double up on the participation trophies and random high-fives?

I don't know. But I do know that it's probably too late to fool to most children once they go to school. When I was young, my mother insisted that our leaders wouldn't let a nuclear war happen, and did I really have to read those radical articles by Carl Sagan in Parade magazine? Well, nuclear Armageddon didn't occur (barely didn't, a few times), but that was a binary situation. Launch, or don't launch. Climate change is ongoing and gradual (so far -- tipping points are coming, which may greatly accelerate matters). Despite what you thought of Nixon and Brezhnev, neither wanted a nuclear exchange. Each man loved his kids. But today many of our leaders don't seem to care about climate change -- at least, not enough to do anything dramatic. So should parents soft-soap that fact, when it's so obvious and so anxiety-causing? Again, I don't know. 

But I do suspect that anxiety, effectively harnessed, can be tempered into a powerful tool. The generalized anxiety that typifies young people today -- anxiety over everything from grades to social media standing to school shootings to ecological doom -- can perhaps be weaponized against adult intransigence on climate change. Maybe the free-floating stress that is seen as a generational flaw will aggregate into a means to attack a problem zooming down the pike at us, from the imperiled future to the complacent present. Maybe Greta's glare at Donald Trump, captured on video at the UN this week, is more powerful than the corpulent status quo.

​Just a thought. Here's hoping.   

On Friday, I ambled a few miles to a plaza just outside Harvard Yard. There, in the shadow of a science building built with a donation from Edwin Land and shaped roughly like his invention, the Polaroid Camera, I looked around for a climate change protest scheduled to start at 11 a.m. It was 10:45 and no sign of a hubbub. That is, except for a a half-dozen students marching away from the plaza and chanting, "You say climate, I say strike! You say climate, I say strike!" Then an old woman dressed tail to claw as a lobster appeared, grasping a sign that read "Lobster Stewed" on one side and "Cooked by Climate" on the other. She wandered among the food trucks, as if seeking a pot. 

I veered east and wandered among brick buildings and stately oak trees, then returned to the plaza. It was eleven o'clock now and a crowd of about 200 folks had suddenly appeared. Students, kids, older folks -- instant protest. They gathered in a circle around a young person on a riser who was talking too rapidly into a microphone. I couldn't hear much. The mood was upbeat, the day warm and cloudless. 

Scores of people had brought protest signs. They held them high, they posed for selfies and group shots. I cruised about, making a survey. Hey, nice job, makers of One Earth, One Chance with the Os in emergency red. Divest Harvard -- simple, direct. Liar, Liar, Climate Denier -- fun if frivolous. Then there was Climate Justice is Racial Justice, brought to you by the intersectionality crowd. Capitalism is Not Sustainable -- nice pun there. Like the Sea, We are Rising -- an earnest sentiment raised by a couple of middle-school students. From the awkward wording department: Act Like Your Home is on Fire Because It Is. Actually, your home is flooded or blown down or uninsurable or sliding into a morass of melting permafrost, too, but let's not quibble. It was hard not to smile at this oldie but goodie: RESPECT YOUR MOTHER with Earths for the Os. A Harvardite clad in black hoisted Use Privilege Responsibly -- a bit didactic, don't you think? Two or three signs reminded us that There is no Planet B, even though Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk might not agree.

And the day's winner for me was the multi-layered, multi-colored poem just above.     

Speaking of teenage climate-icon Greta Thunberg, several children held up signs announcing Climate Strike in Swedish. I briefly chatted with one Greta fan, a little girl named Charlie. We shook hands and I wished her good luck. I meant good luck carrying that sign around all day. Plus good luck keeping the protests going in the months and years ahead when others lose heart. And good luck growing up in a stormy world severely compromised by...oh, just good luck, kid. You're gonna need it.  

Speakers kept speaking, so I squinted my ears real hard to hear. One passionate Harvard student expressed disgust for her university's refusal to divest from the fossil fuel stocks in its 39 billion dollar endowment. "Harvard is profiting off all this," she declared, with a measure of surprise. "I'm beyond angry, just tired." She finished by lamenting that Harvard -- always a deeply conservative institution, versus the liberal paradise I guess she  imagined when she opened the golden acceptance ticket -- would never feel like home.

Man, that made me feel sad for her, up to her knees in the scales falling from her eyes. I doubt little Charlie will ever have such debilitating illusions.

So, anyway, the protest continued for awhile -- at some point, Obama's EPA director got red-faced hollering about hope and change -- and then, presto, done. Everyone went home or to class or to meet more protesters at Boston City Hall. Even the lobster lady bugged out. I stood in the sparsely-populated plaza, making notes beside the odd, enduring rock-field sculpture by Carl Andre -- who, it turns out, was babysat by my mother in the 1930s. They're both still alive, holding on for their dear lives. He liked peanut butter sandwiches, she recalls. 

If you Google "Greta" these days, the first item up is Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old icon of the Climate Movement. Next comes Greta Garbo, the Swedish Sphinx, who achieved international fame in motion pictures in the early 20th century but tended to recoil from crowds -- like today's Greta  -- and retired early. Item #3 is a rock band called Greta van Fleet. Who knew. 

Torrents of words -- as voluminous as the meltwater spilling off Greenland's ice sheet --  have been penned about Greta's amazing life and mission. David Wallace Wells, author of the best-selling book Uninhabitable Earth, calls her the Joan of Arc of climate change and suggests that her story fits squarely into the epic-journey template crafted by Joseph Campbell in Hero with A Thousand Faces. In short, Greta's become the stone-serious face of young people around the planet appealing to older generations to take action on climate-change.

Yesterday, after traveling across the Atlantic Ocean in a zero-carbon sailboat, Greta appeared before the U.S. Congress and told its members, quite simply, to "face facts." One congressman from Louisiana, oozing condescension, tried to trip her up by asking how she'd feel if other sailboats were throwing more trash into the ocean than hers, and she countered him not with feelings -- not fair, they get to pollute more than us! -- but logic. Not that he listened to her answer; rather, the oleaginous representative segued into a canned speech about developing innovative technologies while waiting for other countries to show leadership on curtailing greenhouse gases. It was impressive, too, how Greta introduced herself with the Swedish pronunciation of her name, which sounds something like Getty-etta Toonbury. This is me: Greta with Asperger's, Greta with the twerky name, get used to it.   

Greta also met Barack Obama, who fist-bumped her because he still thinks that's cool, and appeared with other child-activists at a press conference about tomorrow's global climate strike (see super-cute video of little boy protecting Greta from ravening photogs). Surely she'll continue her zealous,  awkward star-turn at Monday's climate summit at the United Nations. 

Oh, and earlier this week she appeared on TV for an interview with Trevor Noah, host of The Daily Show. ​Trevor is an amiable, cocksure comic, stylistically the Ying to Greta's Viking Yang, but he treated her with generosity and never condescended. And yet, alas, a bit like the congressman whose district is packed with oil refineries, he couldn't resist asking her about her girly feelings. Trevor noted how her mother, an opera singer who has traveled abroad to perform, has out of solidarity with her daughter forsworn flying -- a particularly potent means to eject greenhouse gases. Do you, he asked, "sometimes feel bad that she can't perform?" A tiny beat, and Greta responded: "I don't care, honestly, how she performs." Much laughter from the audience, chuckles from Trevor. Greta then added that her mother is doing fine belting out songs in musicals. 

Yes! No apologies! No being manipulated into backing off because mom or dad or assorted elders may actually have to "face facts" and put real effort into salvaging civilization. No being made to feel bad for adults who are perfectly capable of singing pop arias in Stockholm rather than opera in Auckland. Perfectly capable of foregoing new kitchen cabinets for solar panels on the roof. Of not voting for climate deniers or go-slow incrementalists. And certainly no feeling all squishy bad for the plight of comedians like Trevor Noah who jet around the world doing stand-up when he's not filming his show in NYC. This fall Trevor will be appearing in Orlando, Austin, Tucson, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Abu Dhabi and Medford, Massachusetts.

Hold on: Abu Dhabi? Really? Abu Dhabi, renowned for its mistreatment of foreign workers; Abu Dhabi, devoted to expanding production from its massive oil and natural gas reserves; Abu Dhabi, its air a toxic swirl of small particulates belched by oil refineries; Abu Dhabi -- you really have to travel 7,000 miles to perform there? Okay, Trevor, we get that you're not giving up flying, but why not honor Greta's "powerful" (your word) message and skip that very dubious jaunt?

As for Medford, Mass., that's easy green. Just take the Acela train from Penn Station to Boston's South Station. Try the quiet car, so fans and detractors can't bug you. Then I'll pick you up in my electric vehicle, powered by rooftop solar panels, and zip we go your swanky hotel. Or straight to the Chevalier Theater in Medford -- it's four miles from my house! I'll even call you Mr. Noah, sir, and avoid eye contact if you're one of those celebrities. But I hope not. I'd like to hear what she's really like, the amazing Greta. 

This is about the company called Amazon, not the Amazon rainforest. Those two entities are very different, of course, but what they have in common is an unfathomable massiveness. One lurks on the underside of the Earth, super-dense with life even as it's being eroded and burned down at an accelerating rate. Out of sight, often out of mind, and oddly fragile. The other one, nominally headquartered in Seattle, is ubiquitous and mutating, its super-efficient tendrils spreading into communities and homes almost every-damn-where. One is the great carbon storehouse of the planet, under threat and threatening us as it declines. The other is the great warehouse and delivery system of the planet, supplying us with stuff we may or may not need from a to z (see progress of penile-arrow in the company's logo). Plus they store our vacation photos at vast server farms and make cool TV shows like The Man in the High Castle.  

One might argue that one Amazon's rise is perpetuating the other's demise, but that's an economic and philosophical discussion for another day. On this day I received a mass-email from a Kat Dellinger, a member of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice. She and about a thousand other captives/happy workers at Amazon have pledged to walk off the job this Friday, September 20th, as part of a global strike to demand action on climate change. Specifically, Kat and crew want Amazon to stop giving money to politicians who deny climate change, stop working with oil and gas companies to optimize fossil fuel extraction, and start toward a zero-carbon company by 2030. 

Also, this morning, I received a package from Amazon. You see, recently we ran out of our favorite coffee, Peet's Major Dickason's Blend, and how could we possibly survive without it? So my wife went clickity-click at Amazon Prime and, boom, one day later a package arrived. A few days earlier, I'd ordered a magnetic whiteboard for my daughter -- the online search took about five minutes and G-d knows how many stores I may have gone in and out of otherwise to find the right-sized  whiteboard and a decent price. A few days before that, presto, a box full of Yehuda Shabbos candles (product of the Dominican Republic!) arrived just in time for...you get the idea. We use Amazon, we like Amazon. 

And yet, I have mixed feelings. It's just too easy, getting whatever you want dumped on your doorstep. Something's not kosher here; someone's gotta be paying for this. Maybe the bill comes due on the heads of Amazon's warehouse workers, on their feet all day, regimented into flesh-and-bone robots. My daughter claims that the poor souls barely get bathroom breaks; could that be true? On the other hand, the company is to be commended for paying a $15/hour minimum wage. Or maybe I should lament the Amazon delivery trucks ceaselessly cruising neighborhoods, gushing greenhouse gases. On the other hand, maybe ordering online causes a lot more greenhouse gases not to be gushed because consumers aren't running to the strip mall to pick up coffee, whiteboards and candles. 

Like I said, mixed feelings. I'm not ready to cut the e-commerce chord. But I can wish Kat and all the climate-striking Amazon workers good luck trying to force change at a company that could meet all their demands and still be world dominant. Hold on, wishing isn't enough, is it? Perhaps a bold threat is in order. Jeff Bezos, richest man on Earth and master-lord of Amazon, Inc., get your freakin' green act together or I'll never order Yehuda Shabbos candles from you again! Take that!     

About a year ago the United Nations issued yet another alarming report on climate change. This one stipulated that the scientific consensus to limit the increase in global average temperature to two degrees Celsius (above pre-industrial levels) in order to avoid significantly bad effects was a bit off. Two degrees, it turned out, would very much suck; keep it under 1.5 degrees, the new report advised, in order to avoid the most severe climactic effects. (We've now passed one degree Celsius.) Then in November of 2018 I traveled to Iceland and hiked across the rocky, muddy debris of a receding glacier. When I returned from that marvelous island, I had an awkward conversation with a smart person who failed to grasp (refused to grasp?) the fact that global warming is effectively permanent. The warmed-up atmosphere won't begin to cool down for thousands of years. Yes, we could reverse climate change if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases and reforested the planet and deployed millions of yet-to-be-invented devices sucking CO2 from the sky -- but what's the chance of all that? The chemical dynamic of climate change is absolutely unlike what happened in Los Angeles when the sulfurous smog dissipated within a generation after measures to control industrial and vehicular pollutants were enforced. Realistically, we're stuck with the global warming that we generate. No do-overs. 

Finally, that autumn, I had several friendly sidewalk interactions with my Millennial neighbors and their cute babies and toddlers, and I couldn't help thinking: In twenty years, what are those kids going to think if the global warming monster isn't caged, if not slayed? If the temps soar past 1.5, then two, then 2.5, then three and beyond? Will the children blame the parents? 

Put all that together and the result was an opinion piece that I couldn't get published in major newspapers because, one, I'm a relative nobody, and two, who wants to read a piece warning you that your children may grow up to hate you? So I converted the op-ed into a longer, more relaxed essay, added photos of that Icelandic glacier trek, and here's the result. This link actually brings you crab-sideways on this website to the  heading Generation Chasm -- a reference to the Generation Gap that was a catchphrase in the '60s and '70s when I was a youngster collecting bugs and frogs in shoe boxes, reading Vietnam War casualty reports in The Hartford Courant and watching Room 222 to get a sense of what high school would be like (but wasn't). ​

Last week I became a carbon criminal by buying round-trip airline tickets to Europe.

Wait, I got reasons. In October my wife will speak at a medical conference in Venice so I thought it was a good time to tour some World War II sites in Germany -- to research a writing project; hey, Dachau and Nuremberg aren't fun -- and then why not meet Elahna for a romantic vacation in Paris since we're in the neighborhood, right? Like they say, a happy wife is a happy...  

I know, I know. Greenhouse gases don't care for excuses and don't come with a provenance. Expelled in a noble cause. Burped up to put to food on your family (in the surreal words of George W. Bush). Emitted with extreme privilege and hedonistic abandon. None of that matters to the gases. Bottom line: if you really want to cut down your carbon footprint, don't go flying to Paris. 

Or -- workaround! -- buy carbon offsets. That's what I've done for several years now when I ride in planes and trains. Sure, it's not as good as staying put, but it's not nothing either. This article in The New York Times does a fine job weighing the pros and cons, economically and environmentally, of buying offsets as a way to make up for burning greenhouse gases. 

Carbonfund.org makes the process pretty easy. You can choose to spend your money on a variety of reforestation, energy efficiency or renewable energy projects, and they even send you a nifty certificate. The average American has a carbon footprint of about 50,000 pounds of CO2, including, according to the website, emissions from "home, car, air travel and everything you use." Offsetting two round-trip tickets to Europe made me feel better about burning around 16,000 pounds of CO2 and cost $72.65. This total included radiative forcing, which accounts for the warming effects of nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, black carbon and water vapor expelled at  high altitude.

However, a word of caution. A few years ago, I gave one of my older brothers a carbon offset as a present -- big mistake! Sumner roams the globe in retirement, attending economic conferences and visiting friends, family and exotic places. Therefore, his carbon footprint is huge. Anyway, he did not appreciate, not one whit, my emailing him a certificate absolving him of a round-trip from Honolulu to Boston. "There's more to life than a carbon footprint," he snapped back, which is certainly true as well as an effective dig. But Sumner, what about that letter you signed with a hundred other economists calling for a carbon tax? You boasted about it on Facebook, so shouldn't you at least try in your own life...oh shut up, Hal. People don't like didactic gifts and they don't like being made to feel more guilty about stuff they already feel guilty about -- especially by their little brother.  

Besides, there's something spiritually questionable about offsetting carbon. It's a bit like throwing a nickel in a jar every time you yell "Get a job" at a homeless person and then sending the proceeds to the local shelter. Or like rarely voting for women, but tossing a hundred bucks to Emily's List. Or, for a severe example from the Middle Ages, buying indulgences from the Church and then setting off on the Crusades.

Nonetheless, it's better than nothing. Ah, four nights in the City of Lights...  

In our never-ending search for submarine films, last night my wife Elahna and I watched Around the World under the Sea (1966) starring middle-aged Lloyd Bridges with his wet suit zipped to the navel. Much of the film concerns the sexual dynamics of having one sexy female scientist – Dr. Maggie Hanford – and five lusty men on a sub, that woman played by the Cockney blonde bombshell Shirley Eaton. At the time she was famous for being a Bond girl in Goldfinger; later she would star as a bisexual supervillain in The Million Eyes of Sumuru (also available on Amazon Prime Video). Lloyd Bridges gives a nice speech about how guys have to get used to working alongside gals, very progressive for 1966. When he yells “It’s an underwater volcano!” you can discern the deadpan comedic chops he would later display in Airplane! Also, fans of furry friends will love the two klutzy guinea pigs that Maggie brings on the around-the-world-under-the sea voyage.

​But what does this have to do with climate change?  

This: if you really stretch it, Around the World under the Sea can be seen as a cagey commentary on humanity's response to global calamity -- in this case, a sudden rash of typhoons caused by undersea earthquakes and erupting volcanoes. No reasons for this change in ocean climate are given, no one even asks, and all aboard the Hydronaut! The big idea is to give people extra time to evacuate coastal cities (like that’s easy) by placing cheesy-looking sensors around the ocean floor. Lloyd Bridges assembles his team, including cantankerous Keenan Wynn and that guy from The Man from U.N.C.L.E., who’s also Maggie's ex-boyfriend. There’s a ridiculous encounter with an eel the size of the sub and a daring rescue of Shirley Eaton’s Nordic boyfriend by the hunky American who, by 1966 dramatic logic, becomes her new boyfriend.

So the crew drops its sensors and that’s pretty much that. Technology to the rescue, I guess, even though the typhoons keep coming and the semi-evacuated coastal cities are destroyed. Will monitoring events be enough for us? Will we settle for elaborate warning systems regarding the multiple threats of climate change? Real time, around-the-clock calamity data as a second-best for not doing much about it? Wind-him-up Wolf Blitzer blathering on and on and on about hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves – will that have to be enough?

Oh, by the way, cantankerous Keenan Wynn saves the guinea pigs when Lloyd Bridges blows up the sub to save it. It's that kind of movie.  

This chart was sent to my wife Elahna by her cousin Alex. He's a former fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force who moved to The Land as a boy, from Brooklyn. Right now he's in a big fight with the Israeli government about plans to build an airport not far from his house. 

Here's a rough translation, from the Hebrew. The title is Climate Change Timeline. Then, going right to left as they do in the desert, we identify the blue segment with There is no such thing as climate change. Time goes tripping by and folks in the orange period have to admit: Okay, climate change is real, but there's simply no proof that it's caused by the hands of people. I really like the use of the Hebrew word yad here. Yad means hand but also memorial, as in the Holocaust museum at Yad VaShem. As in, we perpetuate climate change by our own hand and the world we leave behind will be our monument for better, as they say, or worse. Back to the timeline: more years scud by and now we're in the short-lived Red Era: oops. (English transliteration). Then, not long after, we're knee-deep in yellow: shit. Or as the Israelis pronounce it, sheet. 

It's a fun meme, right on the mark, but perhaps this timeline misses a key aspect of present history. Let's insert a purple segment between orange and red. Its pithy message: Fine, we're responsible, but (fill in excuse for inaction/indifference). Pretty pathetic, those purple people, no?

Thanks, Alex. I hope you win your latest battle.  

Months ago, because of his singular focus on climate change, I chose Governor Jay Inslee of Washington State as my candidate for president in 2020. I sent money and received back an Inslee-Our Moment for Climate Action t-shirt, which got noticed twice in public. First at a swimming hole in Israel, where a fellow American and solar-power installer gave me the big thumbs up. Then a lady in Somerville, Massachusetts who supports Kamala Harris pointed at me and asked, "Are you from Seattle?" Alas, the gallant governor recently dropped out of the race after failing to hit two percent in polls, and now I have to find another candidate.

Last night's town hall on CNN, devoted exclusively to the climate crisis, seemed a perfect venue for auditions. I took to You Tube and watched ten Democratic candidates, each appearing separately for about a half hour, as they answered questions from the audience and CNN personalities. Here are capsule reactions, recorded while wearing vintage, wrinkled Inslee gear:

1) Julian Castro. Gives shout out to Jay Inslee. Smooth talker, lots of zip. Maybe too nice, offering subsidies to a woman questioner wanting to rebuild her home in a flood zone. A bit squishy on banning fracking. Pauses for twenty long seconds when asked about environmental decisions he regretted while mayor of San Antonio, then tells story about how he once quit his job at a law firm because a client wanted to build a golf course on an aquifer. Fun acronym for his wildlife protection plan: PAWS. Great smile, smart guy. Not bad, overall.   

2) Amy Klobuchar. Also speaks well of dearly departed Jay Inslee. Calls climate change a "monumental crisis" but comes off as barely energized, even when criticizing Trump. Which is strange, because she's supposed to have a nasty streak. Makes a few rehearsed, corny jokes. Hits peak-animation when telling us that "Granpa was an iron ore miner" and we'll need Minnesota iron to build all those newfangled batteries. Old-school Amy uses Fahrenheit instead of Celsius. Meh. 

3) Beto O'Rourke. Gangling, glib, garrulous. Says all the right things. Still, don't trust him. No way. 

4) Andrew Yang. An awesome appearance. Innovative thinker, teller of "brutal truths," slinger of  technocratic solutions cutting across conventional policy grain. Wants constitutional amendment to safeguard the environment for future generations. Calls for serious consideration of ocean seeding (with iron, to promote CO2 absorption) and other geoengineering tricks. CNN's Wolf Blitzer mournfully asks if people will "have to drive electric cars." "You'll love driving them," shoots back Yang. So maybe...

5) Kamala Harris. Tough, intense, engaged. "Look at the babies in your life," she lectures climate deniers and Republican Senate colleagues. Prepared to kill the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal.  "Leaders have to lead." Fight, fight, fight. Quotes Jay Inslee (everyone loves him now) about how wind turbines don't cause cancer, they cause jobs. You see, Trump said they cause...anyway, Kamala's impressive. One suspects she gets equally worked up about potholes and lunch. Another maybe... 
​
6) Elizabeth Warren. Tough, intense, manically engaged. Bounds off chair, bounces on toes, looks ready to shadow box CNN's Chris Cuomo. Very articulate, oddly folksy for Harvard professor. "Washington is corrupt!" she hollers. Knows her stuff and then some. Praises Inslee, of course. Lizzie turns questions around artfully, especially when Cuomo obsesses about Americans' inalienable right to buy polluting, incandescent light bulbs. "Oh, come on, Chris. That's what THEY want us talking about." And yet, I can't quite commit. 

7) Pete Buttigeig. A very thoughtful man, therefore unqualified to be president. Kidding, sorta. Vows to "unify the country around this project" of combating climate change, which he says may be harder to do than winning WW II. So true; it's hard to know exactly who to attack. Ourselves? Also smart on the moral and religious aspects of the crisis. Even refers to ruining Earth's biosphere as "a kind of sin." Wow, it's hard not to like Mayor Peter for president -- of a more enlightened country.
 
8) Bernie Sanders. Just came out with $15 trillion plan to address the "egg-stential threat" of climate change. Bernie's a weirdly gruff yet lovable man, especially when he assures those fretting over the Senate filibuster that we won't need "sixty votes to save the planet" because he'll use the Budget Reconciliation Act. Oh, right, the good old BRA. CNN's Anderson Cooper frets that electric cars are "slower and less powerful." Get a grip, AC, my EV is a rocket! As for Bernie, probably not. 

9) Joe Biden. The way he talks, the way his mind leaps about as it marshals thoughts and the poor, sad words burdened with carrying them, I can't help but think of my 96-year-old mother. Joe says "here's the deal" a lot. Okay, Joe, here's the deal: you try, but you don't quite get it. Low point occurs when he spars with audience member about taking money from some fossil-fuel-loving rich guy. Mentions Obama a lot. And issues this mixed metaphor: "You can't sing to the choir if you can't sing." I suppose you can't. No, and no. 

10) Cory Booker. Passionate, informed, idiosyncratic. Admitted when he didn't know something, which makes him unqualified to be president. Kidding, sorta. Cory speaks with rhetorical ease and impact, promising the equivalent of a "moonshot" to tackle climate change. "Everything I do will be through a green lens," he tosses out, almost casually. Doesn't mention Jay Inslee and doesn't pander to the people: "I'm going to ask more of you than any other candidate on this stage." Wants to revive FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps and, for a Jersey guy, is surprisingly knowledgeable on farming and food. Says he's competitive, "a baller." Nimbly quotes Brene Brown on engaging opponents and mentions that he likes Star Trek. Mostly importantly, he seems to really care.

Yes! I have a new candidate. ​Time to order the t-shirt.          

Catchy, huh? Anthropo means human and cene means epoch. Coined by scientists Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in the year 2000, the Anthropocene is the historical period in which human activity has become a fundamental if not the dominant influence on the planet's climate and environment. (See anthropocene.info for timelines and tidbits, courtesy of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and  friends.) So, obviously, given that basic definition, we've entered the Anthropocene Era -- but when did it start? Not yesterday, not 25,000 years ago when man was chasing mastodon across the ice. When? Well, if you're expecting the International Commission on Stratigraphy or the International Union of Geological Sciences to lead a hand, forget about it. They're still squabbling, what a bunch of pointy-headed rock hounds. We're gonna have to do this ourselves. 

Maybe the Anthropocene started when mankind invented farming, ten or twelve thousand years ago? That was a big deal, but we were still relative pipsqueaks. How about 1492, when for better or for worse humans and their stuff went global courtesy of the heroic/evil (you choose) and rather ill-tempered Christopher Columbus. Maybe 1712, with the invention of the coal-powered steam engine in England. Or did our dominion begin in 1859 with the first oil well in Pennsylvania? Perhaps 1913, when Henry Ford's Model T assembly line gave fossil-fuel burning a turbo boost. Many scientists put a pin in 1945, when the first atomic bomb exploded in Alamogordo, New Mexico, and henceforth a radiometric signature from nuclear testing appeared as a thin line in the geological strata.

​If awareness is the key factor, then Congressional hearings in the 1980s put the idea of climate change into the public sphere, or perhaps Al Gore's 2006 documentary film An Inconvenient Truth should get the credit. Need a number? Let's start the Anthropocene in 2014 when atmospheric concentrations of CO2 passed 400 ppm (parts per million). A year later the world banded together in Paris to sorta, kinda agree to limit greenhouse gas emissions, on a completely volunteer basis.  

Or we could make it today -- fresh start!

It's confusing. So permit me to call it. The Anthropocene Era began on December 7, 1972. On that fateful day, the Apollo 17 spacecraft floated 18,000 miles away from Earth, moon bound. One of the astronauts on board – Eugene Cernan, Harrison “Jack” Schmitt or Ron Evans – took the famous Blue Marble image of the earth, the first photograph of the planet as a fully illuminated globe. Each of the three men claims to have shot that iconic picture, perhaps not entirely unlike the way members of an execution squad debate whose bullet was the one that did the killing. 

Before that photo, the world outside one's door seemed an endless, infinite sprawl. Even with our maps, who could fathom it no less make a dent in it? But after that photo, the world acquired undeniable borders. We saw it as it was, all of it. Look everybody, there's Earth, hanging in space like a Christmas ornament. Really -- Earth! So beautiful and round and oddly vulnerable. What a gem. Try this: you can put your thumb over it and it's gone. 

Then maybe some folks started thinking, hey, wait a second, let’s stop screwing it up. And with apologies to grouchy Columbus and the steam engine, so began the Anthropocene.     

Thirty years ago tonight, my daughter Kelsey was born in a hospital in Worcester, Mass. She came out a bit yellow around the gills, jaundiced, indicating an excess of bilirubin in the blood. No sweat, her mom and I were told, and soon Kelsey was taking a bath under a blue, ultraviolet light, flanked on each side by smaller but equally cute Vietnamese infants from the local immigrant community. One of the Vietnamese mothers had screamed with such bloodcurdling abandon during delivery that, if I just go still for a second, I can hear the echoes. 
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A few years after Kelsey's birth, perhaps in 1990 or 1991, I became fully aware of global warming as a threat to modern civilization. I recall avidly reading Bill McKibben's book The End of Nature in the upstairs study/guest bedroom we had renovated ourselves -- new wood floor and moldings, walls plastered and painted, a mahogany rolltop desk bought at auction and polished to a gleaming brown. As I read, a cloud of doom wafted from the book's prophetic pages: climate change causing sea-level rise, wildfires, drought, crazy weather. It was awe-inspiring, too, the realization that mankind -- people just living their lives -- was capable of altering the planet's climate on such a grand scale. Of the more imminent disaster, the end of my marriage, the abandonment of the beautifully restored room, I had no clue. 

So the years stampeded by bringing grief and joy and, gulp, now I have a thirty-year-old daughter. Recently I helped her get a new vehicle, the Prius Prime, with hybrid motor and electric battery providing 25 miles of range. It plugs into the outlet outside her garage which, strangely, is too small to contain a car. Granted, her electricity is provided by a local coal-burning power plant, but it's a step in the right direction, right? Maybe solar panels will go up on the roof in the not-too-distant future.  
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What can our children reasonably demand of us? UV light treatments if they come out jaundiced, yes. Ongoing love and support, surely, but that's not enough anymore. They should also expect that we at least try to leave them a world that is not irrevocably damaged by a universal practice, the burning of fossil fuels, that we've known for all of my daughter's life is epically harmful. They should expect us to care not just about our own children, but about all of our children all over the world.

On this special day, am I a pessimist or an optimist? Hmmm, good question. ​

​Happy Birthday, Kelsey!