Last week, at the university where I work as an instructor, I attended a research rumble on the topic of sustainable energy. Put on by Boston University's Institute for Sustainable Energy, it came with this balky title: "Accelerating the Energy Transition: Transformative Pathways to Decarbonization and Sustainability." For academics, actually, that's pretty jazzy. So the room was packed with about 150 folks -- roughly half bore that "Where's the free pizza?" expression common to grad students -- and the event proceeded with nary a tech-glitch. Ten researchers got 3.5 minutes each to slap up a couple of slides and yak about their work, and then everyone shuffled to the lobby for wine, beer and an impressive buffet from which I scarfed orange cantaloupe and mini egg rolls. This method of rapid-fire presentation, followed by a leisurely graze and gulp, is called "Research on Tap."  

One researcher was hell-bent on getting the feds to measure methane leaks with sensors on low-flying aircraft rather than making some poor sod walk around the fracking works with a wand and gauge. Another said we need more public charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, and boy did he have the graphs to prove it. A researcher named Emily Ryan -- three of the ten presenters were women -- spoke very quickly about the interfacial stability in high-energy-density batteries. Upshot: we're maxing out the capabilities of lithium-ion batteries and may need to transition to metal-air varieties. Cutler J. Cleveland, who goes as Cleveland J. Cutler in his side-career as a hip-hop DJ, told us how he's sort of in charge of decarbonizing all 86,000 thousand buildings in Boston by 2050. Good luck with that, CJC, and, yes, I'm kidding about the DJ thing. "The usual complaint," said a fellow researcher, "is that if we close the coal plant we'll destroy the community." But it doesn't have to go down that way, and he put up a chart delineating the complex interactions between a couple dozen stakeholders. It was shaped like my living-room ceiling fan.

And so on, and so forth. Fun, in a nerdy way. 

I was intrigued, especially, by Jon Levy's research on the public health consequences of the transition to green energy. One of his slides noted that the incidence of SIDS -- sudden infant death syndrome -- can be higher within urban heat islands. These are "hot spots" in cities, generally paved over and unshaded by tree cover, typically in low-income areas. Urban heat islands, of course, are exacerbated by the scorching temperatures resulting from climate change And low-income areas are often left behind as cities green-up in response. So, do we actually have a meaningful link between climate change and babies mysteriously dying in their cribs? I can see one of my writing students going to town on that premise and, in her activist ardor, exaggerating the dynamic.

After the last  presentation, not far from the mini egg rolls, I asked John Levy about the SIDS-climate change connection. Is it causation or correlation? And isn't SIDS mostly about infants that tragically incur blocked airways when they sleep on their stomachs? Levy acknowledged that public health epidemiology is hard, but insisted that studies have teased out variables such as sleeping position and found a link between the adverse conditions of urban heat islands and SIDS. A key contributing factor: people living in urban heat islands often have inadequate air conditioning to beat the heat. So, I wonder, perhaps more AC could reduce the incidence of SIDS. And, ironically, contribute to climate change if those AC units are powered by fossil fuels. Oh my, it's never easy.

Way to go, BU, for tackling these crucial issues. And pouring out your research, on tap.        

Last night, not five feet inside the front door, her coat flecked with snow, my usually imperturbable wife exclaimed, "They're predicting eight inches!" Elahna stamped her black boots on the grubby little throw rug that I've been meaning to replace, but it's not that bad. "Three to eight inches," I returned, "and who's 'they'?" She replied, "The people in the radio." Ah, the Radio People. The Acu-Weather Doppler-Radar Know-It-Alls, the Storm-Team-Seven Super Alarmists. Probably the same people who decided to color the pages on my Weather Channel App in Run-to-the-Root Cellar-Red just because a few flurries are floating down. (The Weather Channel App, by the way, boasts that it's "Powered by Watson," the smarty-pants computer who beat Ken Jennings on Jeopardy by cheating the answer buzz-in protocol. Just saying.) Yes, the same panicky folks who cowed officials in our town to cancel school today over said fluffy three-to-eight inches. A neighbor walking his dog claims it's because of the buses, somehow the buses don't like snow. His dog, the beautiful Saphira, sat happily in a little snow drift as we codgers chatted about the old days when we walked to school in blizzards, uphill both ways. 

Viscerally, I get annoyed at the media hysteria over normal weather. I actually like the varieties of New England weather, snow storms and hot summer days alike. There's nothing like a big-whopper wind nudging leaves off a tree in autumn or a cleansing, springtime thunderstorm sending gushers of water down our slanted street. I sit on my porch, watch it unfurl. And if you don't like our seasonal variations, well, that's just another reason to move to Florida, isn't it? Goodbye, and don't let the door hit you on the...on the other hand, from the perspective of a climate-change agonizer, maybe all this weather agitation stoked by media outlets hungry for ratings and clicks isn't such a bad thing after all.​

Climate change is putting extreme weather events on steroids. Hurricanes are bigger, rainstorms deliver more rain, heat waves spike higher and for longer duration. So maybe -- stick with me here -- if the weather-climate change connection becomes cemented in people's minds, and then folks incorrectly and hysterically start blaming normal weather events (a bit of snow, for instance) on climate change, well, that might raise public awareness of climate change's many threats. I mean, good things can happen for stupid reasons, right? Also, it seems like payback for that politician from Oklahoma who stood on the floor of the U.S. Senate brandishing a snowball as evidence of the pernicious conspiracy that is climate change. ​

Just a thought. That's it for today. Now I'm gonna shut this computer down, bundle up and go outside to take a walk in the soft, sweetly falling three-to-eight inches of snow. 

Once every few weeks, while reading my digital edition of The New York Times, I dip into the reader comments sections. I know, I know, what's wrong with me? Why descend into that sewer of partisan bickering and cherry-picked misinformation? Well, maybe in the NYT Comments section can be found the true, ragged pulse of America...who knows. Anyway, some of the comments are actually quite bracing and witty. Such as this one, attached on November 9, 2019, at 11:01 a.m. to an op-ed warning about the dangers of climate change:

Samantha
Elk Cove 5h ago
The planet changes. Wow, what a revelation. A planet "experts" say is billions of years old is irreversibly "changed" due to one species' proclivities for a mere 150 years? Is THAT the posit? Or rather, is it another of this species' proclivities -- herd behavior -- at work in the "scientific community"? Tell you what, concerned persons -- when the one percent adjust THEIR lifestyles to that of the rest of us, and that includes the Hollywood swells, the Windsor whiners, the loudmouths on daytime inculcation shows -- we'll start listening. Until then, the birdcage needs lining.
3 Replies 3 Recommend

I get it, Samantha. It is a little hard to believe that we can screw up our massive planet so massively in such a geologically short period of time. And people do run in herds, it's true. Kudos, too, for the old-timey reference to lining the birdcage with your copy of The New York Times. Reduce, reuse, recycle -- Sustainable Sam, you are.

Hey, do you really keep a bird in a cage? A tweety little parakeet? I see you as a spinster receptionist at a struggling insurance agency in Elk Cove...wait a second, Elk Cove is a meadow near Mount Hood in Oregon. As a town, it only exists in a fictional sense -- specifically, in the 1987 film Overboard starring Goldie Hawn and her husband Kurt Russell. Samantha, for all your railing against "Hollywood swells" have you dreamed yourself into a corny, slightly creepy '80s rom-com in which a rich heiress gets amnesia and is kidnapped by a slob carpenter who convinces her they're husband and wife?

Sheesh, talk about denial. 

Today, I did it again. Stuck my toe into the swirling pool of commentary attached to a NYT article about a new, depressing UN report. This one details the world's failure, four years after the Paris Accords, to make any progress in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. One comment, noteworthy for its despair, floated up:

N
NYC 3h ago
​It’s all too late. Something should have been done in the 1970s when global warming emerged as a problem. Eating vegan, using reusable bags, and driving an electric car will do absolutely nothing. Fossil fuels are indirectly used to produce all of the above.
1 Reply 15 Recommend

N, that's some attitude you got there. By the way, what does N stand for? No, nyet, nunca, nein? Negative Norbert? Perhaps you should leave the grimy confines of your megalopolis and travel upstate to an apple farm. Breathe the cleaner air, step in a methane-emitting cow flop, watch a few birds that aren't pigeons. And, please, read the rousing rejoinder that your comment elicits from Rose of Seattle. Patiently, she explains how being vegan, reusing bags and driving electric cars reduce a person's carbon footprint. We're not looking for perfection here, N.

​Rose also recommends that you read something called "Planetary Hospice." Hmm, that doesn't sound very rosy. Perhaps you guys aren't so different after all. I see a movie, Planet Overboard. The wacky adventures of a burnt-out New Yorker who comes down with amnesia on a camping trip to Elk Cove and is kidnapped by a sweetheart from Seattle who convinces him to eat sprouts, tote a NPR tote bag and drive her Nissan Leaf with a smile -- even though mankind has entered its hospice stage.

I'd watch that, wouldn't you?  

​A couple of nights ago, the Democratic pretenders to the presidential throne once more assembled inside my boob tube to debate. Some wanted Medicare for All. Others, Medicare for All Who Want It. Still others, Medicare for Apathetic People on Alternate Days of the Week. Tom Steyer was one of the ten contenders, seated on the far-right edge of the stage near the exit sign. A billionaire and environmental activist, Steyer stated that the U.S. Congress has never passed significant climate change legislation. My older brother, parked in my favorite purple wingback chair and glancing between the TV, his cellphone and his laptop; my brother, a multi-thousandaire and author of Hawai’i: Eight Hundred Years of Political and Economic Change; my brother, rarely shy to interject his opinion, muttered, “That’s not true.” Brilliantly, I responded: “Yes, it is.” His riposte: “No, it’s not. Ozone legislation.” I returned: “That was environmental legislation, not climate. Climate has a different chemistry.” He grumbled dismissively.  

Oh no, here we go into the ozone – battling brothers edition. The upshot is that he was wrong, and right, and I was right, and wrong. Turns out, ozone is complicated.
​
As a popular meme, ozone first appeared in the early 1990s when President George H.W. Bush (RIP) labeled vice-presidential candidate Al Gore “ozone man” for his preoccupation with climate change. Tarring Big Al as kooky green was a family project, with George W. Bush snidely employing “ozone man” in the 2000 presidential election. Maybe it won him Florida.       

Ozone is three oxygen atoms bonded together. It exists naturally in the Earth's atmosphere, as a layer in the stratosphere that protects us from full bombardment of ultraviolet radiation. Chemicals called CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), used commonly as aerosols and refrigerants, degraded strastospheric ozone in the second half of the 20th century, causing a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica. This allowed more UV rays to penetrate, which is very bad because UV radiation plays a major role in causing non-melanoma skin cancers (basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma) and malignant melanomas. Rich people couldn't think of a good way to buy themselves out of this fairly immediate threat to their health and still enjoy the sunshine, so they allowed the international community to produce the Montreal Protocol in 1987, which phased out CFCs and most other substances destroying the ozone layer. And it worked; the ozone layer stopped declining around 1995.      

The Montreal Protocol, technically, was not legislation produced by Congress. It was an international treaty that the U.S. signed and then Congress ratified. Moreover, the treaty wasn't designed to fight climate change; the focus was almost entirely on preventing cancer. However, CFCs also happen to be potent greenhouse gases. They are far less abundant than CO2 but more powerful and longer lasting in the atmosphere. So, by happy accident, or lucky happenstance, the banning of CFCs did reduce the emission of a category of greenhouse gases that contributes to climate change. But it did not address the main driver of climate change: the burning of fossil fuels. And it wasn't hard to do, giving up cans of explosive hair spray and putting new chemicals in refrigerators. Limiting climate change by radically changing the global energy, transportation and agricultural sectors -- that's gonna by a doozy.    

So, this Thanksgiving, if your contentious brother or wacky, denialist uncle or persnickety gramma starts up about ozone, you're ready. Check out the Skeptical Science website for quick comebacks about 197 global warming myths! The idea that the ozone layer is somehow causing global warming is covered in myth #137. Finally -- relax, class, we're almost done -- there's also a form of pollution called ground-level ozone. It has nothing to do with the ozone layer, but is a major component of summertime smog caused by the interaction of heat, sunlight and industrial byproducts associated with fossil-fuel combustion. Okay, that's it, there's the bell, bye-bye everybody. 

I don't fully understand my electrical bill. Really, who does?

Okay, diving in, first you got your supply charge, or generation service charge, which is the product of the kWhs they send you times your electrical rate. Easy enough, but does that mean the amount you receive at home or what leaves the power plant, since between five and 15 percent of electricity is lost along the way depending on voltage? Dunno. Then you've got the delivery charge, which is comprised of intangible sub-charges they invent to pad the bill, especially for ingrates grabbing free energy from the sun. Namely: customer charge, distribution charge, transmission charge, transition charge, revenue decoupling charge, distributed solar charge, renewable energy charge, and energy efficiency charge. Not to mention bureaucratic intransigence charge, fat cat vacation house charge, repair van idling in front of your house charge and WiFi winking out when house guests arrive charge. Yes, I jest in that last sentence. And to be fair, the revenue decoupling charge on our last bill was negative, coughing up two plump pennies. 

You see, my wife and I are considering installing an electrically powered heat pump to mostly replace the natural gas-powered furnace that warms our home. But how much would that reduce our carbon footprint, and thereby make an incredibly tiny contribution to fighting climate change, if the electricity running the heat pump comes from burning fossil fuel? Then I remembered that years ago I signed up through my electricity provider, Eversource, for the green supply option via a company called Dynegy. The very same Dynegy that's recently been bought by Vistra. Eversource, Dynegy, Vistra; Eversource, Dynegy, Vistra. It's kind of hypnotic to say aloud, Eversource Dynegy, Vistra, and the upshot is that any electricity I get off the grid, by the magic of the renewable energy credit market, is produced by renewable means (wind, solar, hydro) somewhere in the windblown, sunburnt, rushing-water USA.

Whew! And the price is nice, too, thanks to my town of Somerville which negotiated a community-choice electrical aggregation rate. I think. Well, I know this much: I did not reply to a scamming come-on from a company such as CleanChoice Energy who, like the cable TV companies, will snag folks with a sweet intro rate and then jack up future charges. Because, they claim, renewable energy costs more than polluting energy. Which, you should know, it usually doesn't anymore.

Skeptical? Take it from Forbes, a notoriously leftie publication.   

Speaking of Vistra, headquartered in Houston, Texas. That energy company, historically a prodigious burner of coal, claims in an October 2019 press release to be going green. They can do this, in part, thanks to their recent purchase of Dynegy, which of course partners with Eversource. Vistra, Dynegy, Eversource. Anyway, Vistra promises to reduce its CO2-equivalent emissions by 50 percent by 2030 (with 2010 as a baseline). Moreover, they aspire to an 80 percent reduction by 2050 -- assuming, that is, and here's the usual corporate wiggle-speak, "necessary advancements in technology and supportive market constructs and public policy."

​That last bit means they want a carbon tax. They practically beg, later in the press release, for the government to regulate the economy in such a way to force them to produce green energy. So, you might ask, why not just do it now? Why do you have to be made to do the right, and smart, thing? For the same reason, I suppose, that NBA owners came up with the Ted Stepien rule, prohibiting the trading of first round draft picks in consecutive years. It's named for the former owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers who couldn't resist mortgaging the future of his team in order to win games now. 

Of course, Ted Stepien was just screwing up a basketball team. The profit-obsessed jokers who own our polluting energy companies are playing with the futures of our children. 

Last weekend, a few days before I turned 59, I went for a walk around Walden Pond. My wife was away for the weekend and it was sunny-autumn-crisp out and I was being a total slug on the couch, watching old episodes of M*A*S*H, so, what the hell​, I drove west to Concord and circumabulated the pond that Henry David Thoreau made famous in his 1854 book Walden, or Life in the Woods. It was uncrowded. A few strollers strolled and a gaggle of giggling Chinese students, wait for cliche, took photos of everything. Two fishermen, still as logs, floated in row boats. A swimmer in a wet suit churned across the pond, bisecting it the long way. The trees' leaves had turned weeks ago, but some retained hints of dying color, and the water's flat surface winked like a blue diamond. My counter-clockwise jaunt included a stop at the site of Thoreau's cabin, long ago dismantled. As per tradition, in homage to the writer/recluse I tossed a stone on a pile of millions of stones sinking into the resistant earth.  

About a half mile from the cabin, in Thoreau's time, a train had rattled by now and then. All that infernal locomotion got him thinking: "We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us." 2019 update: "We do not use the Internet; it uses us." Thoreau also advised us to simplify: "Keep your accounts on your thumb nail." 2019 update: "Get offline, already." 

Near the parking lot at Walden Pond there's a new visitor center powered entirely by a rack of solar panels. Here I was reminded that Thoreau succumbed to consumption. In old-timey speak that means he died of TB -- a very writerly demise. Perhaps staring at a blank piece of paper inhibits the immune system. I also realized that Thoreau was only in his late 20s when he stayed for two years alone at the pond. Somehow, I thought he was older. Perhaps because his photos make him look aged; or perhaps because it's hard to imagine a young man having the patience and fortitude he exhibited. Thoreau kept meticulous logs of flora and fauna at the pond, which are now used by Boston University Professor Richard Primack to pinpoint the degree to which spring comes weeks earlier to Walden Pond than it did in the 1840s. The quickening spring, caused by climate change, has produced a cascade of problems for birds, bugs and flowers -- details are available in this short NPR radio report.     

Something stuck with me, the other day at the pond. I stopped on a rise above the main beach, a grassy area among several towering red oaks. Acorns crunched underfoot. The wind picked up and I stood beneath one of the trees as dozens of leaves freed themselves from the tips of branches yawning 40, 50 yards above my head, and down the reddish-brown leaves floated, twirling down, down, down. Suddenly I recalled doing this as a child, in the 1960s: standing under a tall tree as a wind-gifted flurry of leaves fell toward me. Then, as now, I wanted to grab a leaf before it hit the ground; to accomplish this goal, then as now, I  settled on two techniques. One: pick out a single leaf and race about in pursuit, following its zigzagging, wind-whipped chaotic path. Not easy, for a nimble kid. Absurd, for a gimpy semi-oldster. Two: just stand there and wait, hand outstretched. Sooner or later, a leaf will come to you. As a kid, of course, I could never wait long enough for this miracle to occur. As an adult, the same.    

In 2019, on the cusp of my 60th year, I tried to catch a spinning, falling leaf and failed -- at first. Then I faked left, ducked right, jumped up and, snatch, got one! I brought it home, took its photo. Now you might say that the best way to catch a falling leaf is to pick it off the ground after it finishes falling...yes, you're right, but you don't get it. Then it's not falling anymore. And here's where I assert that addressing climate change is like standing in wind under an old-uncle red oak that's stubbornly, generously shedding its leaves, and the wind is time and the leaves are policy ideas, or people, or maybe greenhouse gases, and the leaf-catcher symbolizes our crazy world overwhelmed by...

A few months ago, a professor at Notre Dame wrote a fascinating opinion piece in The New York Times that explored the growing practice of casting the fight to prevent climate change as the equivalent of war, and specifically World War II. It's a good read for today, Veteran's Day, when we honor men and women who've served in our nation's many wars, right up to the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The author, Roy Scranton, reminds us of the vast and bloody upheaval of the World War II years, at home and abroad, and then goes on to say that full-scale mobilization against climate change, while certainly necessary, may in fact be an "order of magnitude larger and more complex than America’s military mobilization during World War II" and may bring with it "social upheaval, violence, censorship, curtailed freedoms, dubious compromises and radical changes in American culture and politics."

It's the kind of hard-headed, pessimistic op-ed that pleases no one, except perhaps the fatalistic who will respond, see, it's just too much trouble. Let's let it ride. Hope for a (techno) miracle. G-d's will and all that.  

Professor Scranton may be right, that tackling climate change will be a real ferocious bear and not some win-win scenario denied us by recalcitrant politicians. Let me add that Americans seem far less willing to make sacrifices for the country than they were in the patriotic WW-II era. For all our whining, we've got it pretty good compared to our grandparents. We're kind of spoiled, actually. There's no required national service or draft, and few rituals other than watching the Super Bowl or fireworks on the Fourth of July bind us together as a people. Granted, we claim to be worried about climate change, but support for going "over the top" to stop it falters when the bill comes due. In a University of Chicago poll last year, less than a quarter of folks are willing to pay $40 per month to clobber this enemy. Fifty-seven percent will contribute a buck monthly. Buy Climate War Bonds!?  

War metaphors have been overused by politicians in recent decades. In 1964, President Johnson declared "unconditional war" on poverty. President Nixon declared a War on Drugs in 1971. President Carter referred to the nation's struggles during the Arab oil embargo as "the moral equivalent of war." Then there's the perpetual War on Cancer, featuring valiant doctors and patients "fighting" the disease (with the offensive implication that anyone who succumbs to cancer didn't battle hard enough; news flash, survival is due to luck and the quality of medical care). I'm sure there's more; the wars against this and that problem -- all unsolved -- keep piling up. Perhaps it's best that we avoid these war metaphors, just as we should shy from characterizing our political opponents as Nazis. Let's leave war in the literal realm, where its awfulness can remain brutally undiluted by comparisons.  

So, then, what do we call it, the epic national and worldwide response to climate change that is required? A campaign? No, too weak. A crusade? No, too controversial. The Green New Deal is catchy, but has acquired a socialist-commie tinge. Movement, mobilization, jihad? How about The Great Awakening? Whatever term is used for this period of rapid change, it should convey the sense that it's gonna be exciting, rough, tumultuous and unprecedented. Live Green or Die?

For all you Cixin Liu fans out there, an English translation of his Supernova Era is finally available. Written in 2004, this bonkers novel about a celestial event that kills everyone on Earth over the age of thirteen is probably not the best place to start reading Liu, the master of Chinese science fiction. (With Stephen King and Haruki Murakami, he ranks as one of the world's most popular and translated authors.) A couple of years ago I began with Liu's epic trilogy, The Three-Body Problem. After catching up on sleep, I next sampled his mind-twisting short stories in The Wandering Earth, gobbled up Ball Lightning and just last week found Supernova Era. This time-reversed consumption of the author's work was a bit like hurtling backwards 13.8 billion years to the Big Bang, when all the craziness, leading to us, began. 

But we're not a book-review blog. We're all about climate change here, about hanging in the Anthropocene Era, so make sure not to skip Liu's illuminating Afterword to Supernova Era, written recently. In it, he asserts that "China used to have no sense of the future. In our subconscious, today was the same as yesterday, and tomorrow was going to be the same as today. The future as a concept doesn’t really appear in traditional Chinese culture…But today, ‘futuristic’ is the most salient impression one gets from China. With everything changing at a blinding pace, a breathtaking future rises like the sun from the horizon, fully compelling, yet suffused with terrifying uncertainty and danger…"  

I've never been to China, but it's always fascinated me. As a kid I eagerly followed news about ping-pong diplomacy and Nixon's voyage to meet Mao. A copy of Life magazine with a cover photo of cyclists flowing through Tiananmen Square, every person dressed in identical gray uniforms, sat like a portal to another world on the round, marble coffee table of our suburban Connecticut home. Today, I understand fully that China -- now a nation of automobile drivers and meat eaters, of people buying their first air conditioners -- is the most prolific current emitter of greenhouse gases. What they choose to do in the next several years will greatly determine to what degree climate change wrecks havoc on human civilization. 

​So what are they going to do?  ​ 

I don't know; nobody knows. Maybe China will build hundreds of new coal plants. Or carpet the Gobi Desert with solar panels. So far, it looks like they're doing both. Could they be willing, given new American leadership in 2020, to enter into a climate agreement that's more binding and effective than the Paris Accords? Will President Pete Buttigieg and his two rescue dogs make an epic mission to China that culminates in a World New Green Deal? Or will it be just more superpower ping-pong: back and forth, tit for tat, tariffs up, tariffs down. Hong Kong, Taiwan, perpetual cyber war. And billions of crappy-plastic Happy Meal toys, made in carbon-belching Chinese factories, floating across the Pacific to our grateful shores...

China, which prizes conformity and tradition, is changing at warp-ten speed. Confusion reigns, especially among middle-aged and elderly folks. But the younger generation, writes Liu in his Afterword, "is wholly integrated into this new world as native inhabitants of the information age. They are deft users of the internet with no need for instruction, and have quickly adopted it as an inseparable external organ. To them, this is the way the world ought to be, and change is a matter of course." And yet -- my observation, not Liu's -- China represses free speech and basic human rights. And yet it remains a totalitarian country run by a gang of corrupt old men.

China: dizzying and contradictory, inspiring and depressing all at the same time. Liu, however, has tastier cosmic fish to fry than one burgeoning country. He circles back to mankind's fear of abandonment, a wild emotion that he sees as the ultimate driver of behavior. "Humanity," he states, "is an orphan unable to find its parents’ hands." ​If this is so, perhaps it's time we stop looking up at fading icons or down glumly at our feet or with catatonic rigor at our omnipresent screens,. Rather, maybe we should look to the sides, to the flailing hands of our brothers and sisters, here and across the seas, as we like it or not step together into the breathtaking future. 

Why, my father-in-law asked calmly, are you a vegetarian? Is it for health reasons? We were in the middle of dinner -- can't these questions be asked before or after the actual chewing? -- and I looked across the table where my wife's stepmother was starting a hunk of meat on its grim journey from fork to alimentary canal. Next to her, Elahna sipped her wine. No, I answered, just as calmly, it's to lower my carbon footprint -- meat production expends a lot of greenhouse gases. Also, I have problems with the cruelty toward animals that's a feature of industrialized agriculture.
​
Coleman nodded, and so reigned a moment of long, greasy silence in their cramped dining room on Long Island. Then Marilyn easy-morphed into stepmonster, asserting how she, at least, turns out lights when leaving rooms, unlike Elahna who had left a bulb burning down Western Civilization in the guest bedroom. I defended my wife by reminding Marilyn of her huge carbon footprint as she flies around the world clutching her bucket list -- Ghent altarpiece, check; blue-footed boobies of the Galapagos, check -- and she snorted, the planes are going there anyway, and then Elahna chimed in with her firm-but-tolerant voice and Coleman kept eating, munch, munch, munch, and I reminded myself not to answer questions about being a vegetarian in front of meat eaters, never ever again.  

The very practice of abstaining from eating animals is an affront to many people. It hits a chord, and so has arisen the meme of the sanctimonious vegetarian making everyone else feel bestial and selfish. But in my experience, just refusing to dig into the roast beast is enough to unhinge a lot of people. And if you're a vegan -- Good G-d! Don't tell me, you're off-the-grid, too?

I thought of that dining encounter the other day after reading an article about the thousands of fires, primarily set by ranchers, now burning in the Amazon rainforest. The goal is to clear more land for cattle grazing. Simple as that, and to hell with the consequences: one of the planet's great carbon sinks is being destroyed to meet growing worldwide demand for steak and hamburger. Supposedly there's an agreement, negotiated by Greenpeace, requiring Brazilian meatpackers to avoid cattle raised on lands cleared by fire, but this regulation is got around by laundering the animals from ranch to ranch. Then I tripped upon another article; it seems that deforestation in the Amazon may altar the rainforest's weather system, converting much of the multitudinous habitat, reservoir of 100 billion tons of carbon, into scrubby savanna.  

​Could mankind's skyrocketing appetite for spare ribs and sirloin steaks doom us to runaway climate change and worldwide species decline (including our own)? Yes, it's possible. I'll spare you the statistics today as well as the nanny lecture about cutting down your meat consumption, embracing Meatless Monday and Fishy Friday and generally being more mindful of what you cram down your craving-craw. But I will say that I've eaten meat for most of my life and enjoyed it, with a growing background sense of unease in recent years. As a kid I loved Oscar Mayer Wieners and their commercial jingle. I ate hash from cans and even tried the dog's horse meat from his bowl -- not bad, a bit salty. I made the switch to vegetarian (including ocean-caught fish) at age 55, and fairly suddenly, during my recuperation from open-heart surgery. One day I picked up Yuval Noah Harari's amazing book Sapiens, read the chapter on our relationship to animals, and that was that. 

Why, you ask, am I a vegetarian? Oh, that's a long, boring story. But what a nice brooch you're wearing! And how about those Mets...   

Don't change horses midstream, the old saying goes, but it's a probably a good idea when traversing the endless desert that is the nominating process for the 2020 presidential election.

​Last spring, inspired by his laser focus on climate change, I supported Governor Jay Inslee for president. So did his mother; that was about it. When Inslee dropped out, my allegiance switched to Senator Cory Booker, who made an excellent showing at CNN's climate town hall. Alas the senator has not found traction with many voters -- his polling tires, you might say, are as bald as his head -- and I've grown tired of his endless texts and emails to join some contest to have dinner with him and his girlfriend, actress Rosario Dawson. After a while, it got a little creepy. Breaking up, it turns out, wasn't that hard to do, and off I sallied yesterday in search of a new candidate who is both committed to addressing climate change and who can defeat, soundly, our current president. 

It was clear sailing north on I-93 from Boston, but not for the poor souls stuck in southbound commuting traffic, a car clog stretching to the New Hampshire border. Along the way I learned from NPR that the House of Representatives would vote to authorize impeachment proceedings of Donald Trump. There's a new children's book about fry bread and Native Americans. The Celtics beat the Bucks at the Garden! And the Chinese are beating us to 5G phone technology, which basically means it's time to download Chairman Xi's digital Little Red Book.

Soon I pulled off at the Derry, NH exit and parked behind Mary Ann's diner, where I ordered the #2: two eggs over easy, two fat slices of french toast, and too much home fries, beans and toast, all for $6.99. Fifties music played and the table was plastered with ads for local businesses. "Score Big -- Get Cash for Scrap Metal!" promised one. The eagle emblem for Wayne's Tattoo World contained an acronym that either refers to a computer process, File Transfer Protocol, or to a lack of faith in local law enforcement.  

Then down Broadway I strolled to the Derry Opera House where 37-year-old presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg -- at 18 percent in the latest Iowa poll, just the toss of a cow chip behind front-runner Elizabeth Warren -- was slated to speak. Dutifully, I took my place in line outside an old brick structure that looked more like a million local libraries than the Sydney Opera House. It had started to rain, lightly, and a young campaign worker told me that hearing Mayor Pete in person was a "magical" experience. I certainly hoped so, because he comes off a bit stiff in TV debates. 

Not here, not on this day. The Mayor of South Bend, Indiana seemed relaxed on stage. Warm, personable, and almost dynamic. Not magical, certainly but I guess I've grown cynical over the years. I could be the grandfather of that idealist campaign worker. Good G-d, I could be Mayor Pete's dad! It was especially heartening that Buttigieg introduced climate change just three minutes into his stump speech, and then again several minutes later, calling the issue "the global security threat of our time." I also liked the way he didn't shy from speaking about freedom and patriotism, words that Republicans have "captured and caged." Patriotism, for Mayor Pete, is a shared national value. "But you can't love your country," he stated, "if you hate half the people in it."  

He didn't make a big deal about being a veteran who served in Afghanistan. He didn't make a big deal about being gay and married to a schoolteacher named Chasten.  He didn't even mention his adorable rescue dogs, Buddy and Truman. He was articulate, thoughtful and a bit corny. None of the questions from the audience were about climate change, but he still managed to weave the issue into a response about partisanship. Our fast-changing climate, he reminded us, is a fact that should not be believed based on party politics. For his full climate plan, here's the relevant page on his website. 

Then I hustled back to the car, drove home, and sent Mayor Pete fifty bucks. We have a new horse for the next leg of our desert journey. 

If you're a just a casual newsreader who keeps eyes peeled for news about climate change, it can be depressing. If you contemplate in any depth humanity's woeful response to the gathering crisis, it can make depressing seem like a sunny skip along the summery seashore. That's no fun, no way, not even with serotonin re-uptake inhibitors to blunt the blow. So, let's go a'lookin' for some good news about climate change -- even if we have to dig through the bad news to find it. 

Perusing The New York Times over the last few days...oh dear, wildfires are going wild in California again. The Getty Museum is under fiery siege, an evacuated Lebron James and family roam the Santa Monica hellscape seeking lodging (wondering why he ever left Cleveland, twice) and the good news is...well, climate change is actually cited in the NYT article as a contributing reason for the conflagrations. A second piece goes into detail about winds and soil dryness. That's progress, right?

Okay, here's an interesting article about how several populated coastal cities will be inundated by global sea level rise by 2050. It's three times worse than previously believed, according to a study appearing in Climate Communications.  So Mumbai, goodbye. That's 19 million people displaced. Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, Alexandria in Egypt -- gone, too. We're not even talking about little cities washed away, like Miami and New Orleans. The really populated ones lead the underwater erasure list -- Shanghai, Bangkok, Basra in Iran. At least 150 million people "are now living on land that will be below the high-tide line by mid-century," according to the article. And the good news portion of this news nugget is...well, you've been warned! Sell high, move inland. And for those who are just scratching out a living -- most residents of most cities -- stock up on flotation devices. Sporty new models are available for the kids.  

Sorry about the sarcasm. All righty, here's something uplifting: Rex Tillerson, former CEO of Exxon Mobil and Secretary of State/Whipping Boy #7 for President Trump, is testifying in a lawsuit against his former company. The charge: conspiring to hide the facts about climate change from shareholders and the public. Good news: the prospect of justice is always good news. Yes, it's about past misdeeds, what's done is done -- but on the other hand maybe a truly massive fine could induce Exxon Mobil to stop hunting for new sources of oil and pour money into renewable energy...and we wake up from our dreamy dream. We keep scanning...GM and Toyota side with Trump in fight to get California to lower its vehicle emission standards. Good news: Ford and Honda say screw you! 

I'm stretching, I know. So let's be more direct, let's go to the Google! Siri, or Lexi, or Jeeves (remember him?), give me some honking good news about climate change. The first website up is Al Gore's Climate Reality Project. They've got a slick video praising humanity's response to climate change and it's kind of uplifting  until you notice it was made five years ago, before President Trump started to actively dismantle U.S. contributions to the effort. 

Okay, next up: goodnewsnetwork.org. Here we learn that Scotland is planting million of trees, someone developed a seaweed drink for cattle that reduces their methane emissions (burping, farting) by 99 percent, and a member of Pink Floyd has auctioned his guitar collection, raising $21 million for climate change. Okay that's more like it. Little stuff, granted, but good. (All in all another brick in the wall...) And off we go to the third curated item, dailyclimate.org/good-news/, for hopeful stories about rooftop meadows, a cleaner marine bio-fuel and Tesla's new solar roof that may actually work this time. 

Excellent! Feels good, huh? Now go take a walk but first make sure you don't read this, unless you want to get back on that bummery bad-news train. (Hint: the climate techno-fix that the rich guys want to employ, and make us poor schmucks pay for, will probably just make things worse.) 

A while back I walked to the local library. It's a few miles, mostly uphill coming and going. My mission was to return David Wallace-Wells' grim but fascinating book on climate change, The Uninhabitable Earth, and find The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. The latter was next up for the library's monthly sci-fi/fantasy book club. I don't usually attend because I 'm either busy, traveling, forget about it or didn't finish the book, but I keep lurking along with the selections. The Master and Margarita was a Russian slog featuring starving poets, the devil, Jesus Christ, Pontius Pilate and a snarky, talking cat -- I skimmed most of it -- and then I forgot to go to the book club, probably on purpose. I may have been busy or out of town, too. Anyway, up to the second floor of Somerville's main library I climbed to retrieve a copy of Bulgakov's bulging masterwork from behind the reference desk, and here comes the part that relates to climate change, kind of. Please be patient. 

Two librarians, a man and woman, stood behind the desk. I asked for The Master and Margarita and the man swiveled to the shelf behind him. Two copies were left. He pulled out both. One copy was tattered, the cover ripped and taped back together. The other copy looked newer, cleaner, less abused. He considered, for a micro-second, and handed me the crappy copy. I didn't take it. I said, "I'd like the nice copy." I think I said it nicely, who knows. Without a change in expression he handed me the decent book and I nodded and started away. That's when the woman said to her colleague, in a flat tone: " It's too bad he has to ask for the nicer copy." I hesitated, glanced back, saw them doing their librarian things, and continued downstairs to check the book out at the main desk. 

What'd she mean by that? 

• Oh, what a world we live in where all book copies aren't equally nice.
• What a schmuck you are, handing him the torn copy. 
• What a schmuck he is, not accepting what he's given.
• Two of the above three.
• All three
• Something else I haven't considered. 

Next I walked to Bloc, a hipster coffee shop in an old bank building. It's very popular, with its bitter coffee and expensive baked goods. I ordered a small coffee and the cheapest cookie, a lemon-frosted thing, $2.95. (Remember those tubes of cookie dough you could just slice onto a tray and pop into the oven? Did they cost $2.95? Do they still sell them?) So the clerk, a young woman with a plastic smile, grabbed a pair of tongs and reached for a tray holding four glazed lemon cookies. Three were identical, of medium cookie size, and one was clearly smaller. A bit overcooked. The runt of the litter. She's gonna give me that one, I thought, it's that kind of day. So the tongs closed on its prey. And she picked the runt, of course. This time I didn't object, but I didn't tip either. The cookie was dry. 

Why'd she do that?

• She hates men. She hates tall men. She hates tall, white men. She hates tall, white, middle-aged men who remind her of her father who, oddly, she loves most of the time. 
• The last two customers refused the small cookie. It's driving her crazy, sitting there all day. 
• That's life: accept what you're given. She knows this and passes it along. 
• Two of the above three.
• All three.
• Something else I haven't considered. 

Why we do things, it's hard to figure. But, regarding my little misadventures, I'm going with option three as the biggest factor. In this 21st century world of monopolistic corporate power, ultra-fractured politics and ad-driven hyper-consumerism, it's all about taking what you're given and pretending you're given what you really want. Sure, fine, maybe climate change is here, and maybe we're bequeathing our kids and grandkids the rawest deal in history -- but hey, get used to it. Get over it. Like Coach Belichick says, It Is What It Is. Besides, there's not much we can do, not without the iron hand of socialism choking all that's good and growing in this great land. 

Now eat your shriveled cookie, read your tattered book and shut up. 

A few days ago, after a wonderful vacation lull, my wife and I found ourselves waiting on the platform at Paris' dark and dingy Gare du Nord (Station of the North) for a train to the airport. On the walls beyond the tracks hung 42 colored panels featuring mathematical equations. Not for sale, but for your consideration. It is, we learned, an artwork by Liam Gillick and it's been there underground, gathering grime, ever since the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference at which the Paris Climate Accords were signed by almost every country in the world. Great cheers went up, a florid fleur-de-lis of hope and camaraderie between nations bloomed.

These train-track equations, it turns out, are selections from the scientific pursuits of Syukuro Manube, a pioneer in developing computer models for the Earth's climate as it undergoes changes wrought by mankind. In a 1967 paper, Manube and Richard Wetherald presented a model of the interacting atmosphere-ocean-land systems that predicted today's degenerating state of affairs with a remarkable degree of accuracy. Genius graces the walls. 

I don't pretend to understand the math. I don't even understand people who do understand the math. But I do understand dirt, a little bit, as it slowly accumulates on surfaces. The 42 number-strewn billboards, once shiny and new, are now fairly dirty. Getting to filthy they are, four years on from the big climate pact that has yet to produce any reductions in worldwide emissions of CO2 or other greenhouse gases. In fact, we keep adding greater amounts every year. We keep making it worse. 

Why? What's wrong with us? It's safe to say that we're screwing up for reasons related to human nature and our path-dependent institutions, but the Paris treaty itself is flawed for being entirely unenforceable. It operates like a team of basketball players who huddle up, stick their hands together in a messy mass and yell "Hustle!" Then the players jog around the court like it's Sunday afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte and the coach isn't allowed to take them out of the game. 

Time goes by, as Sam sang in Casablanca. Dirt coats the math. And the climate goes haywire according to principles that care not one ripe, juicy fig for politics, economics or the next train to the Charles de Gaulle Airport. Oh well, what was it Rick said to Ilsa at the end of the movie? 

​We'll always have Paris. 

When considering the high rate of climate-change denial among senior citizens -- see previous blog post -- it's easy to dismiss them as out-of-touch, preoccupied with their signature issues (protection of Social Security and Medicare, primarily) and, in the case of the conservative elderly, wedded to the science-doubting policy positions of their political tribe. While those assertions contain some truth, they're also glib and superficial, lacking in context. As we know, or should, context is crucial.

​How do most senior citizens in the United States actually live? Not together -- only seven percent of seniors live in nursing homes, assisted living facilities and supportive retirement communities. Not with their kids and grandkids -- only 20 percent of seniors live within so-called intergenerational families, dramatized for this viewer by 1970s TV shows such as The Waltons. Today, almost three-quarters of seniors live alone or with a spouse/roommate in a house, condo or apartment. 

And then the spouse, friend or sister dies. Another person is added to the nation of solitary elderly, segregated from mainstream society. In fact, half of women over 75 live alone. Alone, watching TV for an average of seven hours per day. Alone, struggling to care for themselves and their property. According to a 2019 Pew study, Americans over age 60 exist alone for more than half of their waking days, not including time for personal grooming. Alone, with their thoughts and memories. Alone, with their anxiety and grudges.  

​Is there a TV show that dramatizes this sad reality? Who would watch it?   

You might say that many seniors don’t want to live with their children. They want their independence, don’t want to be a burden – and I understand that. That's how my mother felt as she moved from house to condo to independent living facility to nursing home. But here's the flip side of that equation: who wants to live where they’re not wanted? Where they're considered incompetent, helpless and complaining. It's no wonder Gram and Gramps have been nuked from the nuclear family. Perhaps it's also no wonder that many seniors are not inclined to embrace grand initiatives, such as preventing further climate change, that will benefit the very people who have exiled them.

​On a simmering, subconscious level that's just too painful to access, many senior citizens are angry at their children and grandchildren. Screw 'em. Let 'em figure it out, invent some fancy App to fix the planet. Then the big shrug: what's the difference, I'm gonna die soon anyway. Such feelings are understandable, but also run counter to the powerful, universal urge that motivates most parents: to create a better future for their children. Moreover, abdicating responsibility violates the rules of courtesy, a virtue prized among older generations. You clean up your mess before bugging out.  

Screw 'em, help 'em. Screw 'em, help 'em. As the Israelis say, it's a real balagan. Oh, what churns beneath the surface of every long-lived human being! Now, I don't pretend to know how to resolve such dissonance, to bridge a generation gap swirling with mixed emotions, but I do know that discussing these dynamics is a good start. Sometimes it can be liberating to reach across the divide and acknowledge our motivations and behaviors. 

Yesterday, after visiting my mother at her nursing home, I stood in the lobby waiting for my ride. Grimly I mulled over the difficulties of getting her the hearing aid that she needs and will probably reject. Nearby I spied Rose, one of my mom's bingo pals, in her wheelchair. Across from her sat a young man in his twenties. He was dressed in black, his hair cut in a slant that seemed both futuristic and retro. His arm was stretched out and in his hand he held Rose's hand. He looked into her eyes, nodding as she talked. No glances at his smart phone, nothing else but her.

Okay, I thought, there's hope yet.   ​

Senior citizens have the highest rates of climate-change denial of any demographic group in the United States. But it isn't primarily due to stubbornness, a quality that old folks are unjustly tarred with in the meme-ridden judging chamber that is popular culture (which means youth culture). There are, I believe, many reasons for old folks' reluctance to accept the facts about climate change, ranging from political affiliation to personal struggles that are exclusive to their group. As my mother-in-law Hadassah Paul, dearly deceased, used to say: getting old ain't for sissies. It's a distinct and challenging life phase, and I write these words with a bean-baggy heating pad, inherited from Hadassah, layed across my right trapezoid because it aches today for no apparent reason. 

Let's compare the Millennial Generation (ages 23-38) to the Silent Generation (ages 74-91) -- young people and their grandparents, roughly. According to a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center, two-thirds of Millennials agree that there's solid evidence of global warming caused by human activity, compared to only 40 percent of Silents who concur. Among Millennials, one-third declare positions of climate-change denial: that the world is not warming, or that it's warming but due to natural phenomena unrelated to the burning of fossil fuels. A whopping 56 percent of Silents, however, display climate-change denial. Altogether, that's quite a spread between grampa and grandson, a generation gap if you will. 

​Ignorant old folks, you might scoff. But how is scoffing going to help?​   

Unfortunately, climate change has become a political issue -- not so much what to do about it, but whether it exists and is in fact caused by people. So let's dig down a little further. According to the Pew study, only 12 percent of Millenials who are Democrats (or lean Dem) are climate denialists, while 87 percent see solid evidence of human-caused climate change. At the same time, in the same country on the same planet, 78 percent of Silents who are Republican (or lean Repub) are climate denialists, while only 17 percent acknowledge human complicity with climate change. Those are close to inverse realities! That's a yawning, nearly unbridgeable generation gap -- one that even Evel Knievel might have had a hard time jumping across on his turbo-powered motorcycle. How do people with such divergent views even talk to each other? Is there room between them for mutual respect?    

A few more political stats and I'm done for now. Seniors citizens (over age 65), not surprisingly, are more conservative than young people. According to a 2019 Gallup poll, 43 percent identify as conservative, with 30 percent as moderate and 22 percent as liberal. So, clearly, conservatives are the biggest group among the 54 million senior citizens in the USA (a number slated to rise to 83 million by 2050). Moreover, old folks have an outsized influence at the ballot box. In the last presidential election, 71 percent of seniors turned out to vote, an especially stupendous result when you consider how many are disabled, live alone or spend their days in nursing homes. In contrast, citizens aged 18-29 dropped their Xboxes to vote for Trump or Clinton at an underwhelming rate of 46 percent.  

Politics, however, is just one way to understand seniors' often misguided attitudes on climate change. As I mentioned above, several profound and deeply personal issues appear to be at play, and it is in that realm that we may find the opportunity for education and outreach. Stay tuned.