I agree. There is much to be grateful for in the passing of legislation affecting climate change at the state and federal levels. Much of the money will be directed toward mitigating our climate crisis.
But it’s not nearly enough to begin to push the now oversized Sisyphean boulder of global warming over the top onto the downward slope on the other side to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The time for achieving that has long gone by because of addiction to constant growth fueled by the criminal appetite for more. To be classified as a crime, the act of doing something criminal must usually be accompanied by the “intention to do something criminal.” These have been the intentions of all the Exxons throughout the world and of every “business” that defiles nature in the quest for profit over planet.
As I review the various initiatives to slow the destruction of our environment, I note that most of these efforts are attempts to get us back to the fossil-fueled “normal” that we, the privileged, feel is our right. We have ignored the voices that have warned us repeatedly that the underlying cause of today’s climate crisis would be, and now is, carbon emissions.
Long before today’s insane political divide over climate change, and even before the U.S. Civil War, American scientist Eunice Foote wrote a brief scientific paper in 1856 that was the first to describe the extraordinary power of carbon dioxide gas to absorb heat — the primary cause of global warming.
We did not need the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988 to certify the reality of global warming. Foote conducted a simple experiment in the mid-1850s that kids could do in science class today (if conservative school policies did not prevent exploring the causes of our climate crisis). She put a thermometer in each of two glass cylinders, pumped carbon dioxide gas into one and air into the other and set the cylinders in the sun. The cylinder containing carbon dioxide got much hotter than the one with air. Foote realized that carbon dioxide would strongly absorb heat in the atmosphere.
Over decades past, there have been plenty of similar warnings. Perhaps the most famous, also in 1988, was when James Hansen — then a NASA scientist — told Congress, “The evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.” Scientists worldwide concur and polls show that three in four Americans agree that human activity is the cause.
But give up our current fossil-fueled lifestyles to live in harmony with our fast-disappearing natural environment? What do you think? My view is rooted in the undeniable history of male domination over everything being the cause of our climate crisis. The domination of other nations, the earth, space, women, “different” people and anything that stands in the way of growth … and being in control.
This is why the poem that Northfield poet Margot Fleck sent me in response to my Aug. 20 column has taken up residence within me.
“I know civilizations die, but I didn’t think I’d see it happen to my own,” my granddaughter to me, 2018.
What do you do
When your country dies?
I have no expertise.
I didn’t live in Czechoslovakia
or in Germany. I didn’t ride my pony
across grass plains when the soldiers
and the buffalo hunters arrived.
I’ve never watched a civilization
be destroyed.
I know the platitudes,
how reality
can be embellished
prettified.
Naïve encouragements
abound in cards
on plaques
in books.
So many myths.
So many lies.
You love.
You touch. Remember.
Oh, remember
the summers at the lake
the winter wonderlands
that still dazzle your dreams.
Friends.
Laughter.
Beauty.
Trees.
The sweet air you breathed.
Your ambitions invited to diversity.
Hope no sour fruit of futility.
But really,
I want to know.
I need to know.
What do you do?
Wait? Crouch
in the darkness
of a cellar
somewhere?
Await the fire
to burn you alive?
For the terrors to twist
your tongue in agony?
For the prison bars
to slam with finality
and shatter your limbs?
Or do you drive nails
into your ear? Deny.
Seal your swollen eyes?
Deny. Clamp your mouth
inside an iron cage?
Deny.
Millions of souls
have walked this path.
We read of them.
They left us notes
on hides
and on soiled paper scraps
at Auschwitz
but not one left us instructions
on how to face apocalypse.
Another poet, Wendell Berry, wrote: “Expect the end of the world. Laugh.”
Connecting the Dots is published every other Saturday. Comments and questions may be sent to John Bos at john01370@gmail.com.