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After the End of the World

Predictions about the end of the world have come and gone for millennia and we all know how those turned out. This latest one concerning misreadings of the Mayan calendar got its legs from social networking and the media, but like so many others, when the date on the calendar passed……..nothing. Having said that, it seems way past time we seriously addressed the real end of the world: the Climate Crisis. Going back decades and longer, the world’s leading scientists (and more than a few activists like myself) have been sounding the alarm about humanity being on a collision course with the natural world. Way back in 1992, exactly two decades ago, The World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity  stated: “The earth is finite. Its ability to absorb wastes and destructive effluent is finite. Its ability to provide food and energy is finite. Its ability to provide for growing numbers of people is finite. And we are fast approaching many of the earth’s limits”. Then the Scientists’ Warning went on to say: “No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished”.  That was two decades ago.

During the intervening years, in every avenue available to us, environmentalists and others have been sounding the alarm. When we launched The Enviro Show on Valley Free Radio in late 2005 we read from the World Scientists’ Warning on our very first show. Just this past summer we read those words again on this, the two decade anniversary of the Warning’s release. These days we have no shortage of warnings concerning the Climate Crisis. Activists like Bill McKibben and the folks at 350.org , Al Gore and even more mainstream groups like Greenpeace or the Sierra Club, as well as a growing student movement may be out in front on this, the most critical issue facing humankind, but governments and industry are not. Do we really need to ask why? In case you missed it, scientifically proven, human-caused climate change is a product of western civilization, industrial development. You probably won’t be hearing that from Bill McKibben or Al Gore, much less cable or network news. You can read about the numbers, about the need to return CO2 levels in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, down from its current level of 392ppm, or the need to transition to alternative energy and away from fossil fuels, but seldom will you read or hear about how our own industries, how Corporate America, is destroying the biosphere on our planet, how it is diminishing the lives of our children and future generations.

Recently we had wildlife biologist Guy McPherson on the show. His take on the Climate Crisis is even more grim than McKibben’s or The World Scientists’ Warning. McPherson’s position? Game over.  The link takes you to his recent presentation at Greenfield Community College. Rumor has it that he will not be invited back. Why? No one wants to hear about the end of the world. This is not to say that McPherson has all the numbers right, that his analysis is, dare I say, the last word. I enter it here simply to point out two important things: 1) the real end of the world (as we know it) is an ongoing process, and  2) everyone, everyone, needs to fight back. The time for denial or waiting for the UN or government or God to fix things is over. We are the savior we’ve been waiting for.  Regardless of McPherson’s gloom & doom, just the chance that we may lessen the effects of climate chaos, just the chance that we can give future generations more time, should be enough to motivate us into action. This is what is required: a massive popular groundswell, a movement even more powerful than the abolition of slavery or civil rights. It is the Rights of Nature, and our right to a livable planet that should empower us. Some Mayans have said the turning of their calendar was not “The End of the World” but rather the beginning of a new world. We need that new beginning now.

– d.o.  1/1/13  [Also published on the Arise blog]

Once upon a time....

Republicans kick vets to the curb

Remember the Bush era when right-wingers were falling all over themselves to prove their patriotism? In theory, they were all about supporting the troops and never saw a U.S. flag they couldn't wave. Never mind that the too few troops being sent needlessly into Iraq were ill-equipped and over-extended. The Repugnicans just loved them to death.


Well, as they say, some things never change. The far-right (now utterly synonymous with the GOP) still talks a good game about loving those troops at the same time they kick them to the curb. All those teabaggers in the U.S. House of Reps seem to have left vets out of the draconian budget they've been going on about for months. Surprise! Some twisted Repugs have even been nailed for stealing from vets! What happened to all that patriotism??


Apparently the far-rights' presidential hopeful is willing to kick vets to the curb as well. His poorly timed thoughts on benefits last Veterans' Day raised more than a few eyebrows as well as the ire of the VFW. But hey, these guys have been posing as deficit hawks for years now, even as anyone who cared to look would see they are simply shills for the filthy rich and the corporados. Did we mention most of them never served in the military?

The Devil's Still in the Details

I'd like to share my favorite Bertrand Russell quote with you. It goes: "It is only insofar as we renounce the world as its' lovers that we can conquer it as technicians." Russell wrote that in 1959 when a computer like the one which may be on your lap took up an entire room. He went on the say that falling under the spell of technology is like worshiping Satan - a losing proposition, if Satan even exists. Plutonium, the most toxic radioactive substance known, a product of nuclear fission named after, well....the Devil, certainly exists.

However, a good many folks may not need a philosopher or even a Unabomber to clue them in on a growing uneasiness among their neighbors toward over-dependence on things we plug-in or fuel-up. Anyone who has found their harried lives stretched all the more thinly by computer malfunctions or mechanical breakdowns may have the growing suspicion that the Devil's in the details.

This March 28 will be the 33rd anniversary of the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant on an island in the middle of the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A moment when the population of the east coast of the United States seemed to stand still just long enough to ask: what exactly have we gone and done? The answer, after all the official damage control, was never quite clear to most of us. A whole lot of people scrambled for one form of cover or another. The young family I was with wound up in Florida where we met more than a few fellow refuges who had fled the Mid-Atlantic states. To get there we passed directly through the major undeclared evacuation zone late at night....in the rain. The fear was palpable.

As anti-nuclear activists we assumed such a day would arrive, but for folks who had gone about their lives leaving things to the experts, Three Mile Island became a sort of silent monster in the closet. What else could turn on them? What other technologies might bite the hand that feeds?

Today we see other, even more frightening examples that generate such fears. The horrifying ongoing multiple meltdowns in Fukushima, Japan and the fact that a similar type of nuclear reactor and highly radioactive fuel storage pool sit on the shore of the Connecticut River just a few miles from us at the Entergy Corporation's Vermont Yankee nuke. So it is that much of our anxieties and fears may have more to do with the "things" we've created physically rather than those we've dreamed up in our minds.

What exactly is the price of advanced technology? How much of a "good" thing is too much? I believe I'll stand with the Hopi Elders who long ago warned us of the clever path of invention, the one that wanders off into oblivion. Traditional Native elders pretty much agree on the need to walk in balance with the natural world. I guess the individual decides for her or his self precisely where that balance lies, but finding that balance sure beats worshiping the Devil.

The trees

"Loggers in Brazil captured an eight-year-old girl from one of the Amazon’s last uncontacted tribes, tied her to a tree and burned her alive as part of a campaign to force the indigenous population from its' land"

-- The Daily Telegraph

where do i start, with you
rising in the flames, in smoke?
the tree holding you? all
the trees knowing you
knowing your name, first
walking in the forest, laughing
drinking from a leaf, hearing
your voice and listening
evergreen with hope, never
having heard the strained
voices and ugly din as the hope
fell to the ground, all the
hope all around, all the pain
smoke and bodies, all the sneers
the dull thoughts, the rawness

if you rise with awful heat
high above all you know
and see beyond the crowns
beyond rivers and plains
and unimagined seas to
other lands with scenes like
these, forests taken down
en mass, machines grinding
the life out of us, the
careless boys, the men
in suits, senseless shoppers
the shrugging giant and
too many lost children to count
and all the paths not taken
beneath the trees

the trees that know the air
as well, that treat it with
respect, changing needs and
degrees of honor unknown
to any congress, any office
in this bad atmosphere who
will rest in peace?

Not so like Father - The Right-wing Vilification of Occupy

QUESTIONER: Did you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country, is envious? Is it about jealousy, or fairness?

ROMNEY: You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on 99 percent versus one percent, and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent, you have opened up a wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God.

During The Summer of Love in 1967 I was in the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco where the anarchist Diggers did a free feed for their fellow hippies every afternoon. Given that I was more-or-less homeless and flat-out broke, free food worked for me. It worked for everyone. We were in love remember. Share and share alike. We were also not so much in love with the "establishment" and materialism, but given that flower children weren't big on hatred, we tolerated the occasional straight tourist and lovingly accepted their donations so that we might continue our Occupation of Haight-Ashbury (is this starting to sound like the Occupation of Liberty Park?). On this particular day one of those tourists came with an entourage, though no one seemed to take much notice. I had a passing interest in national politics at that point in my life, so I did notice who the tourist in the tie and sport coat was, the soon to be announced Republican presidential candidate and former Michigan Governor George Romney.

Given that Life Magazine, the Networks and a long list of assorted mainstream media had recently discovered Haight-Ashbury, hippies and The Summer of Love, it was apparent that Romney was there out of curiosity, what we now call a fact finding mission. Running for president of the United States of America surely must require getting a sense of where America's young people are at, right? Romney was only weeks away from coming out against the war in Vietnam after another fact finding mission he was to publicly compare to "brainwashing" by U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Vietnam. I'm sure he was aware of the pervasive anti-war sentiment in the Haight. No one could walk half a block without seeing peace signs. Maybe he was courting the young peace vote? Doubtful. Many of us wouldn't have been able to vote until we were 21 back then, many who could didn't.

George Romney, while a classic waffler like his son, was a descent moderate Republican, something like a vanishing breed today. Romney would later champion affirmative action and housing desegregation as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. I've always been of the opinion that George Romney was actually interested in finding out what that new social moment growing across the nation was all about. Bear in mind, we're talking America of the mid-60s. Extremists had assassinated the President, his brother who was running for president, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Public reaction, in most parts of the nation, tended toward shock and dismay. The resulting tenor in Washington and on the campaign trail was, by today's standards, civil and restrained. George Romney seemed, at least to me at the time, to reflect some of that restraint and civility.

Flash forward to 2012. Guess who appears to not care one bit what the growing Occupy Movement is about, who has not even taken the time to visit an Occupation during his presidential run? Guess who hypocritically accuses Occupy and its supporters of class warfare, when his own class has been waging an escalating class war against workers and the poor for decades. Guess who increasingly reflects the extremist punitive, anti-social positions of the far-right to further his political ambitions? That, of course, would be the son of George Romney, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. This Romney's "wave of approach" to politics being all the more "entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God", further divides us between the obscenely wealthy and all the rest. All the positions he takes reflect that division. But if you actually want to discuss issues of inequality for instance, Romney says we should only speak of income inequality in "quiet rooms". Why all the secrecy? Is there something Mitt Romney doesn't want discussed on the campaign trial, out in the open, something that was once avoided in polite conversation? Something maybe that gave the lie to the so-called "American Dream" and the "Land of Opportunity"?

Mitt Romney brings "God" into the political conversation (something we could probably do without), but it was the "Son of God" who allegedly said: "Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me." Does this sound familiar? Don't the positions espoused by Romney and most of his running mates seem to fit the agenda of the "cursed"? Conversely, it was George Romney who said, "We must practice our fundamental principles of mutual self-respect and brotherhood with every citizen enjoying full and equal citizenship". What would Mitt's father say if he could hear his son today?

Back there in Haight-Ashbury I doubt there was much "envy" of the filthy rich. Quite the opposite. Beyond all the drug use and naivete that would eventually prove damaging, our music, the other arts we used to express our thoughts and feelings on a world growing more and more materialistic, spoke about the dream of a better world, one based on mutual aid and respect, on equality. We are seeing that sentiment rise once again in the Occupation Movement. We are not seeing it on the campaign trial or in congress, much less on Wall Street or in the corporate boardrooms. Perhaps a yearning for mutual aid and equality skipped a generation. That might explain what happened to Mitt Romney.

Conservatives who don't conserve

[Time to bring out the classics and dust them off for a new year. I wrote this six years ago during the Bush era, but it applies even more so today. Soooo, a little editing and a little pathos for 2012]

It seems as if nothing is sacred for today’s so-called conservatives. The very root of their philosophy is utterly ignored as rightwing politicians, pundits, and their corporate sponsors hack their way blindly across the political landscape and the planet. Their true conservative predecessors must be rolling in their graves.

“MORE” is the motto, as legions of automatons crank up the thermostat, oblivious to the winter wind howling through the open door. That’s Congressman Bernie Sanders’ North Country metaphor, one he used in the past to blast the Bush administration for its shortsighted energy policy that places little emphasis on energy conservation. It’s an apt metaphor today for people who have lost sight of reality and whose attachment to the planet and their fellow inhabitants seems all but lost.

In a nation that consumes 30% of the world’s resources with only 5% of the world’s population, it’s actually criminal to ignore conservation. And, quite frankly, that is how we are viewed by that other 95%. The United States is the real Evil Empire. The nation where the laws of thermodynamics are ignored. An outlaw nation. Corporate America and their cronies in government squander the gifts of the planet, letting much of it fall to the wayside unused and irretrievable. And these people call themselves conservatives?

They conserve only their own privilege in a world running short on ecological options. Two decades ago the World Scientists' Warning to Humanity stated: "No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished." Now those 20 years have passed and conservation remains on the back burner. A true conservative knows the value of conservation. A true conservative practices thrift; using whatever resources they require with care and foresight, keeping future generations in mind. Does that sound like the present occupants of corporate boardrooms or Washington? Is that the mentality guiding proponents of corporate globalism as they seek to undo environmental safeguards, claiming them as restraints against fair trade? Is that the thinking behind an industrial assault upon the Artic National Wildlife Refuge, the proposed Keystone pipeline, hydrofracking or a renewal of the ill-conceived nuclear power industry? And, for that matter, does that sound like your overweight neighbors with the jetski and snowmobiles parked in the driveway next to the giant SUV? We don’t think so!

Actually, some Democrats' energy plans read more like a conservative’s idea of energy policy. This is not surprising, given how far to the right the Democrats have wandered. Why don’t they simply skip the pretense and claim the mantel of conservatism for themselves! That done, the denizens of the far right can be pegged for what they truly are: Enemies of the Earth and its inhabitants; former conservatives who have gone over to the dark side.

Given that scientists around the world have sounded the closing bell, one might hope that sanity would prevail and people across the globe would rise up and demand an end to planetary suicide, but it's a highly flawed species and sanity is not one of our high cards. All recent Conferences of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have been pretty much dismal failures. With a few exceptions, the numbers on CO2 and other levels of pollutants are rising still, yet far-right Republicans deny the evidence while calling for more of the same.

How do we turn this ship around? Occupy the pilot house? Prayer? Plague? Maybe the Mayans were right, maybe the world does end now. On the other hand, many archeologists say that's a misreading of Mayan Calender. Maybe we'll just go out with a whimper rather than a bang, or maybe, just maybe, we'll come to our senses and get on with some real conservation, but we have to do it NOW.