Nasa astronaut NASA astronaut Megan McArthur shot this picture of Hurricane Henir swirling towards Long Island on Saturday, Aug. 21, 2021, from the International Space Station.

Sorry this is getting a late start, I was traveling back from Baltimore where I attended a nostalgia convention as part of my duties as the editor of a magazine whose mission is to delve joyously into the recent past.

A terrible time for such an event, airplane travel is even more of a stress with everyone masked, the Delta variant blossoming and airlines struggling to find enough pilots and flight attendants, not to mention having to contend with a soaring incidence of in-flight mayhem. At the convention the air conditioning was out, the hotel waiting for parts to ship in from Europe; enormous fans had been rolled in, but unless you stood in front of one they didn’t make much difference in the rising swelter.

And yet the faithful were there, gobs of money in hand as they bought vintage lobby cards and James Bond board games and pulp magazines from the 40s in plastic sleeves. The convention had been cancelled the year before due to the pandemic, so the faithful came out in droves,  devoted to their fanciful (and some might say obscenely selective) past. Past issues of my magazine sold like hotcakes. In my mind’s ear I still hear those giant fans like the propellers of B-17 bombers ambling down run runways as geek legionnaires slowly peramubulated the hall’s circumference, walker- and wheelchair-bound Herculeses harrowing Hell.

Fans line up for photo ops with long-ago celebs.

I flew in with the remnants of Tropical Storm Fred petering out over Baltimore after dumping oceans on Tennessee, and Hurricane Henri roiling up the coast for a New England-y spin. Neither storm had gathered much magnitude of wind but both were lumbering rain-giants. The city of McEwan, Tennessee recorded 17 inches of rain on Saturday, and much of the Northeast is still under flash-flood warnings as Herni devolves and pours.

When Superstorm Sandy came up that way in 2012, the windfield circled from Canada to West Virginia, dumping massive snow in the holler for Halloween.

While these events pressed in nearby, a research station at the top of the Greenland ice sheet, some 2 miles above sea level and 500 miles above the Arctic Circle recorded rain for the first time ever; just a few drops or a drizzle but in a steady stream that lasted for hours as temperatures hovered above freezing. Ice core samples dating back 2,000 years show that above-freezing temps at that location are exceedingly rare – only six times — yet in the past decade, it’s happened three times. The warming event which occasioned the rain this past week melted about 50 percent of the sheet’s surface.

And while one extreme soaks, the other burns: the great wheel of megadrought in western North America has California fighting 11 massive wildfires. Authorities have had to close 9 national forests. Small towns in Nevada, California, Oregon and Montana are facing evacuation due to the fires. The Lake Mead reservoir has shrunk so low that the federal government announced the first-ever Colorado River water shortage, implementing mandatory consumption cutbacks which will drastically affect farmers in Arizona, California and Nevada.

Last week in The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert reported on taking a boat trip through this shrinking spectacle. The damming of the Colorado back in the 1950s which created Lake Mead drowned miles of sublime canyons and waterfalls. Edward Abbey was one of several writers and artists to float through Glen Canyon before its inundation, and called the closing of the dam’s gates “a crime.” “Imagine the Taj Mahal or Chartres Cathedral buried in mud until only the spires remain visible,” he wrote. Just 75 years later, the naturals cathedrals are returning, along with ecosystems that had been drowned for human purpose. Lake Mead recreational boaters aren’t happy (the reservoir sees 4 million visitors a year, collectively spending $500 million), alfalfa growers in Central Arizona are giving up the ghost and the city of Las Vegas is tearing out “useless turf” in medians and along sidewalks. The forces of megadrought — whipped to greater magnitude by global warming — are pitting Great Nature against Grand Humanity. Our engineering feats begin to resemble broken wheels wobbling in their mounts.

Earth returning in Glen Canyon as Lake Mead evaporates.

The emptying of Lake Mead just decades after it was dammed reminds me of when a new pressroom was built for the Orlando daily newspaper back in 1980, just after I stared working there. For months huge pilings were pounded into the sandy soil to stabilize the concrete pad which would hold 100 tons of roaring presses. It was a wonder to behold that titanic effort; for months I rolled my mail cart around the buildings hearing the ka-chung, ka-chung of those merciless drills. For more years the whole building throbbed when the presses were printing their 300,000-paper runs. Then came the Internet and just 40 years later all those presses are gone, sold off to a paper in South America after print circulation fell below 50,000. The emptiness of that building is just as impressive. Human ruin is like that, here today, gone tomorrow, leaving ghost landscapes still turning and visible from space.

Flying back from Baltimore yesterday on a filled-to-capacity Southwest Airlines jet — flights to Orlando are always packed, with many families headed to the Disney imaginarium — I re-read some of Patricia Anthony’s World War 1 novel Flanders in Kindle while listening to Lyle Mays 1986 solo album on iTunes (the jazz piano legend died last year at age 66). An odd combination — jet roar in packed consumerism mixed with modern horror and the hopelessly sublime. Jets are an annoyance on my morning walks around my small Central Florida town, leaving those vast contrails of carbon exhaust in the sky’s first light; now I was aboard one, carving the sky and heating the atmosphere for petty capitalist reasons — selling nostalgia soap, seeing the world, visiting Disney.

In Flanders, the protagonist is a Texas farm boy who joins with British forces to serve as a sharpshooter in the killing fields of Flanders, trenched in such awfulness as only modern warfare can summon. (As Theodor Adorno said, the Kantian sublime of human mastery led not to loftier peaks but rather the ovens Auschwitz—stopping, en route, to fester in the trenches of Flanders). The young Texas soldier cowers in bunkers with his mates as shell after shell after shell of an unending bombardment explode up and down the line. Every tree in the salient is but a charred splinter and the whole area reeks of death for miles — soldiers, horses and rats rot amid piles of human waste. All for the dream of nation-states spinning madly in the minds of monarchs.

I was listening to “Mirror of the Heart,” Mays’ masterpiece, as the plane slowly lowered toward Orlando, cutting through puffy clouds and the nearing a green expanse scarred every whichway by roads, farms and subdivisions, all preterit of the living earth they cut into. How beautiful the music, how gentle the falling, how inexorable the sense that the wheels we have set into motion cannot sustain the Earth they were extracted from. “There is no questions of artificially separating the time of the Anthropocene from the human time of our lives and history,” Dipesh Chakrabarty writes in The Climate of History in a Planetary Age (University of Chicago Press, 2021, p. 11). “In many ways, our capacity to act as a geophysical force is connected to many modern forms of enjoyment.”

This morning I got back out with my local trees walking as I usually do from my house down to Lake Dora and back, a preamble of several miles. Trees are the whales of my local habitation, sprawling trunks of truth with canopies blent with late starlight. It was very warm and humid, as you might expect for Florida mid-summer, and made me think of standing hours in the sweltering confines of the past just days ago. How different the big wheel of the American Dream to trees in massive standing silence up and down the street, their flukes heavy with summer leaf. How at rest the lake was at that early hour, so devoid of the engines of growth. Overhead a passenger jet was crossing, angling down for the Orlando airport 40 miles away. That was me up there, spinning fast around with the blade of human irruption; I was also making the circuit of a local habitation, a green man who believes the work of the earth is my work.

And then I was here, tapping out the last words of a challenge I post late (apologies), cats mewling around in the kitchen while my wife brews coffee for her first cup. One house on earth waking to its next daily round.

For this challenge, write of BIG WHEELS TURNING, however the metaphor moves you.

— Brendan

Greetings and welcome to earthweal open link weekend #80.

Share a favorite poem and visit your fellow linkers and comment.

Links open to midnight Sunday, when the next weekly challenge rolls out. (Or thereabouts. I’m traveling so the post may not roll out til sometime on Monday.)

Happy linking!

Brendan

by Sherry Marr

“The opposite of extraction capitalism
is deep reciprocity.”
– Leanne Betasamosake Simpson,
from As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance

Recently, I watched a documentary titled The Sixties, and found myself in tears, remembering who we were then, how hopeful, how my generation thought we’d change the world. I have lived through a lot of movements in my life: the civil rights movement, the anti-nuclear movement, the anti-Viet Nam war movement, the hippie movement, the back to the land movement, the women’s movement, and all that has happened since.

After the Depression, followed by WWII, when boom times hit North America, our turn towards materialism left us feeling disconnected from the earth, from Mother Nature. We forgot that we are part of nature, like every other being.

In the 1980’s, I helped run a coffeehouse in Kelowna, B.C., full of lovely folk who lived gently on the earth. Among them was my friend Jeane Manning, who has devoted her life to the clean / breakthrough energy movement, described as “connecting the dots between technology, consciousness, health, the economy, the environment, grassroots activism and crowdfunding.” Jeane feels “consciousness” is the key word here. Where we once believed the transformation of consciousness would occur in time to turn things around, Jeane now wisely believes it may well come in reaction to the cataclysmic events by which Mother Earth is trying to awaken us.

Jeane has traveled the world interviewing scientists and inventors, and speaking at energy conferences. Of her several books about breakthrough energy, the most recent is titled Hidden Energy: Tesla-Inspired Inventors and a Mindful Path to Energy Abundance, co-written with Susan Manewich. The world has so many natural sources of energy that are cleaner and kinder than fossil fuels. Why are we so slow to make use of them?

When she first began studying the energy possibilities, she met many amazing inventors, whose inventions were suppressed by government and industry. (The first electric cars were developed in the 1800’s. A modern electric car was set to hit the market in the 1990’s [ remember the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?”]; production was thwarted because of opposition from the gas guzzling car and oil industries.) I am encouraged that more people are now turning to electric and hybrid cars.

Jeane made we coffeehouse folk aware that climate was being impacted by human and industrial behaviour. She told us about the HAARP project, which had the capability to manipulate the environment, change weather patterns, disrupt global communications systems and negatively impact the earth’s upper atmosphere. I ponder the possible connections between this project and subsequent extreme changes in weather.

Some of us, in the early 80’s, studied with a futurist, William Floyd, at Okanagan College. Bill closed the doors when he taught, because back then he was considered completely radical when he spoke about how – even then – everything was already set in place to inevitably lead us to where we are now – if nothing changed. As we know, change has been for the worse.

We invited him to our homes to tell us what he could not say in class. He predicted at some point the melting ice caps would tilt the planet on its axis, and the sea would rush through the Fraser Canyon in B.C.  Indigenous people up north have already reported that the earth has tilted somewhat; the sun is setting slightly off where it set before. The moon now has a “wobble” that NASA says may lead to massive flooding along coastlines.  As temperatures rise, polar ice is melting faster. The only surprise is, Bill Floyd thought climate breakdown would begin sooner than it has.

I fear we have passed the tipping point, though, were world leaders to take the steps so urgently needed, we could perhaps at least slow its progress. No one seems very agitated, even with massive flooding in India, China, and Europe, while much of North America and places in Europe are in flames.

We are now seeing human and animal deaths from unlivable temperatures. In B.C., in one week in June, more than 800 human deaths were attributed to the heat dome. A biologist reported that a billion sea creatures baked to death on the beach during that week. People near the wildfires can hear the screams of the animals, dying horrible deaths. This haunts me.

Another heat wave is on the way and the wildfires in my province are out of control. Each of the last five summers have seen the highest temperatures ever recorded. This extreme heat is not a one-off. It drives me crazy when leaders talk about lowering emissions by 2035, with the apocalypse on our doorstep. If anything, emissions are higher than ever. My sister is scrambling to secure hay for her horses; there will be no second crop this year, as the ground is too parched. We can expect shortages of food and produce as the heat continues. Things can’t grow in an oven. And water sources are already drying up.

As a child in the 50’s, I remember swinging on my grandma’s gate, under the rose arbor, as a huge truck rumbled down the street spraying DDT “to kill the mosquitoes”. Oh my goodness.

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring sounded the alarm about pesticides in 1962. Her book met with fierce opposition, needless to say, from chemical companies. But her work sparked a grassroots environmental movement, and led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“Man is a part of nature,” Ms. Carson said, “and his war against nature is, inevitably, a war against himself. …  We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost‘s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.”

We young people of the ‘60s and ‘70s were so full of hope, so eager for change. But as we watched our most inspiring leaders get assassinated one by one, the world took a dark turning. It chose greed, materialism and capitalism that did not care about the future. In short, corporations won. And now the bill has come due; climate refugees are on the move on every continent.

We are farther down the wrong road than Ms. Carson could have foreseen. I don’t understand, as a rational human, how governments have not legislated prohibitions against pesticides and chemicals in our food. (And humane treatment of the animal victims of the meat industry.) What are we eating, on our pretty plates? Is it a coincidence that cancer cases have increased over the 100 years we have been eating more processed foods, grown with pesticides and additives?  Almost half of the food we eat every day has been significantly changed from its original state, with salt, sugar, fat, additives, preservatives and/or artificial colours added. The jury is still out about genetically modified food, but you can be sure I steer clear of them.

(That animal “farming” produces more greenhouse gases than cars do is a whole other topic I will address soon. Reduced meat consumption is one choice we can make towards a more sustainable world.)

The climate crisis is accelerating, and there is a domino effect that, when it occurs, could well be cataclysmic.

James Hansen was well known for his research on climatology in the 1980’s. His 1988 testimony raised awareness about climate change. He advocated action then, to avoid a dangerous outcome now. We had all the information, but governments cared more about re-election than taking the difficult stand that was and is needed. Each of them leaves it to future politicians to step up. I love Bernie Sanders, who tells it true, over and over, doing his best to effect change. Had he (or Al Gore some years back) been elected, we would be in a better place right now.

(source)

But here we are. In B.C., since April, more than 1,427 wildfires have gobbled vast tracts of forest, and impacted several towns. As I type this, the CITY of Vernon is on evacuation alert. A whole city of 40,000 potential climate refugees. (148 fires are burning, mostly out of control, during the week I am typing this. Some large fires are meeting each other and joining together.) Yet corporations still plan to clearcut the forests that survive. Can no one connect the dots between tree loss and rising temperatures? The best cooling agents on the planet are mature, long-standing trees, which are swiftly disappearing. Meanwhile, militarized police violently arrest peaceful land defenders. (Over 500 arrests to date at Fairy Creek.)

Strange storms and tornadoes strike at random, mutating viruses are gaining strength, and in the stress of climate breakdown, and a pandemic, we are watching human behavior deteriorate.

My frustration – as climate breakdown accelerates in front of our eyes while governments fail to act – is that we had all the information 40 years ago. No changes were made. The choice was to follow the money. And now here we are.

My wondering is: what kind of world would we have now, had Rachel Carson’s warning been heeded? Had Bill Floyd been recognized as a visionary instead of a lunatic? Had James Hansen’s information fallen on receptive governmental ears?  What will be left by 2035 if we wait that long to act? How hot will it be? I am actually relieved to be old. But I have grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and I fear for the world they will be living in.

It would have been so much easier to reduce emissions forty years ago, to legislate against the use of pesticides and poisons in our food, water and air. If only governments had not given corporations free reign over all resources, allowing them to get too big to be controlled. Had they been required to operate sustainably, and to clean up the messes they left behind, had governments set limits on carbon emissions, imposing a hefty carbon tax from industry and a more modest one from the general population, how different might our situation be?  Had the transition to clean energy sources begun back then, and had we been more awake, and vocal in demanding these changes, we might have handed our children a world they could at least survive in, as we continue to address the demands 7.9 billion people make on a finite planet.

In 1980, I remember laughter and song, summer days filled with organic gardening and hope – so much hope. The world felt good, problems seemed solvable and Jeane and I believed the transformation of consciousness would happen in time. It was on its way.

I see hope again in the grassroots movement at Fairy Creek. There is joy there, and power, as people sing and dance around the road for the trees. More people are coming, and activists are finding ingenious ways to delay access to the forest. The folks there say a shift is happening, a recognition of the high cost of capitalism, and how our governments have sold us out. Change will have to come at the grassroots level, from the bottom up. We are awakening, even though a bit late in the day; our votes, our voices, our civil disobedience and the changes we make personally have an impact.

“Funeral of Trees” (Facebook meme)

For our challenge: Envision the world as it might have been had early warnings been acted upon forty years ago. What might living with Mother Earth in deep reciprocity have looked like? (I don’t have to look far. My neighbours, the Tla-o-qui-ahts, lived this way for ten thousand years.)  As always, write whatever this information sparks in you. Take any direction it steers you in.

Here is a poem that really spoke to me this week:

We who burned our brand
into the uncomplaining flank
of creation, begin to hope
for what may yet survive us…
and as the animals grow
smaller, moving off into a blue, inhuman
distance, we dare not call out
after them: ‘Good luck!’
for fear our best-meant words, straight
from the heart, will follow them
as they depart, and curse them.

— Eleanor Wilner,
Preface to The Donkey Elegies by Nickole Brown