2020 started off on fire. Literally. The bushfires that burned more than 45 acres in Australia were so destructive of wildlife that koalas and other marsupials may never recover as species. The fires were so destructive they garnished world attention, and reminded people of simple facts like that Australia is about three thousand miles from west to east, similar to the United States.
As fires raged across a continent the most deadly, destructive, and disruptive pandemic since the Spanish Flu began to catch people’s attention. By March COVID-19 was in almost every country; most countries responded by closing down, which led to a situation where “essential workers” still worked and traveled and spread the virus.
At the same time the word began to notice the COVID-19 virus Fiji was hit by a Category Five Hurricane, an article in Nature says (they appear to be referring to Tropical Cyclone Harold).
Between the fires in Australia, Category 5 Hurricanes, and COVID-19 the rest of 2020 should have been obvious to everyone; a degree in seeing-the-future not required. Contrary to what we might hope and believe, 2020 was not an accident, an aberration, or a fluke.
By the time we got to the end of summer in 2020 as COVID-19 continued to affect the economy and society of every country, much of the western states in the U.S. were on fire as California experienced its most destructive fire season on record, Oregon and Washington – also with the most destructive fire season on record – lost entire communities. At the same time, the Amazonian rainforest was on fire – often set by humans – and would remain so for months; in Africa Sudan experienced flooding that displaced 150,000 people; southern France was flooding, and in the U.S. the Gulf States were suffering a hurricane season never seen on record for intensity or frequency. Not long after this, Korea was hit by two cyclones (hurricanes) within a week. Many of the storms that led to hurricanes and the requisite flooding were labeled “unprecedented” or “unheard of”.
All the storms, as well as the drought that leads to fire conditions, are based on weather patterns. All the storms have been made stronger by climate change. In fact, it’s believed that COVID-19 and other pandemics will increase in frequency, and perhaps in potency, as climate change increases. One of the few advantages that COVID-19 has provided us as a global society is that the pandemic forced people to travel less. This has created less pollution with less vehicles on the road and allowed animals to return to their natural habitat without being disturbed by humans.
Bill Gates suggests that as bad as COVID is in terms of death, disruption to the economy, and it’s global effect, climate change will actually be much worse. One of the best known billionaires in the world, Gates said in August that in real terms, because of COVID, “we will release the equivalent of around 47 billion tons of carbon [into the atmosphere], instead of 51 billion. That’s a meaningful reduction, and we would be in great shape if we could continue that rate of decrease every year. Unfortunately, we can’t.” What’s remarkable, he says, “is not how much emissions will go down because of the pandemic, but how little.” Brilliant with numbers, Gates compares climate change to COVID:
As of last week [in August], more than 600,000 people are known to have died from COVID-19 worldwide. On an annualized basis, that is a death rate of 14 per 100,000 people.
How does that compare to climate change? Within the next 40 years, increases in global temperatures are projected to raise global mortality rates by the same amount—14 deaths per 100,000. By the end of the century, if emissions growth stays high, climate change could be responsible for 73 extra deaths per 100,000 people. In a lower emissions scenario, the death rate drops to 10 per 100,000.
In other words, by 2060, climate change could be just as deadly as COVID-19, and by 2100 it could be five times as deadly.
Gates refers to the end of the century what would happen if emission growth stays high. The reality is that 2020 is projected to be the coolest year (it was hot this year) in the next hundred years, even if we reached net zero carbon use in the next fifteen years. Economically, Gates says, regardless of which model you use, “in the next decade or two, the economic damage caused by climate change will likely be as bad as having a COVID-sized pandemic every ten years. And by the end of the century, it will be much worse if the world remains on its current emissions path.” This article extends beyond Gates’ thoughts, but I would suggest you read his article, which has real suggestions and solutions to mitigating climate change and avoiding climate and economic disaster.
Climate change also has has a great effect on human migration and displacement. Tens of thousands of people were displaced by fire (happening as late as December, in California), hurricanes in the Gulf States, cyclones in Korea and Japan, and flooding in Kenya. Climate change, driven by the emissions of carbon by developed countries, has a disproportionate effect on on poor people, both in “undeveloped” countries and the poor people in developed countries. It’s likely that climate change will alter the cropland of the United States; it’s also well-known that climate change is causing sea rises and will cause frequent flooding for the hundreds of millions of people who live near the coast, or a river.
Contrary to what we might hope and believe, 2020 was not an accident, an aberration, or a fluke. COVID-19 will continue next year, pandemics will increase, the fires and floods that were unprecedented this year will continue to become stronger due to climate change. 2020 has been a hard year for many people with society, and the economy, completely altered by the ongoing pandemic.
The advantage that the pandemic has provided us as, locally and globally, is that we have an opportunity to build a society that is interested in mitigating man-made climate change and thereby preventing the next pandemic, and economic shut-down. We have an opportunity to rethink how we want to live and what we must work if we want to survive as a society.
The solutions exist. The climate crisis does not need to be solved. The lesson is that if we do nothing to prevent climate change, nothing will change and 2020 will be the new normal.
Seventy-nine years ago, on this day, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and the United States was compelled to enter World War II. A day o infamy.
A great deal of domestic and international achievement and strife – the strife often resulting from the achievement – has happened since that day. From a U.S. perspective the country became an industrialized, mechanized, superpower. This has led us to the Cold War, all the wars (undeclared) since we were attacked by Japan, and it led to great prosperity which has led to an uncaring ruling oligarchy. In a connected way, it has led to globalization – define at risk! – and an increasingly connected but disjointed world. The war ended with the only two nuclear bombs ever used in war; it has led to new nations and peoples being freed from oppression, while others have become oppressed.
A date which will live in infamy the United States of America seems to be disappearing in our collective memory. Many newspapers chose not to publish an article about Peal Harbor Day in the front page of their online news articles; some published a story in print. The story online and print that’s readily findable is the AP story “Survivors remember Pearl Harbor at home this year amid virus“.
It is interesting what the media chooses to not remember or remind us of. The day will always be infamous, but will it be remembered?
This writing from ten years ago is still an accurate description of how some things on the internet don’t change, while others change too fast.
I used to play KingsofChaos, an online mmorpg (massively multiplayer online role playing game). As far as games go, it fulfilled its purpose, or at least was quite addictive and consumed time that could have been spent on academia. But it’s been around since 2003, and is currently in “Age” 14. I played “Age” 1-7, or thereabouts, and when after more than four years of dedicated interest to a game where I knew about three people in ‘real life’ the challenges of the game had not changed past the first week I played, I finally – about four years later – lost interest. The “Age” always lasted more than six months; the overworked high school nerds (about my own age) who created the game probably didn’t have enough time to dedicate to it.
Another nerd about my own age, within several months of the creation of KingsofChaos (KoC), created…
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To put it mildly, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists wrote a couple days ago, “Biden will have a lot to do to fix the nuclear mess left by his predecessor.”
Trump has, The Bulletin continued “made the prospect of nuclear proliferation, a new nuclear arms race, and even the use of nuclear weapons more likely.” His nuclear legacy alone “will be tainted by a series of failures including, but not limited to: eviscerating decades of trust-building between the United States and Russia, and withdrawing from the landmark multilateral deal to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons,” along with his “sheer disregard and contempt for diplomacy, science, expertise, and professionalism.”
The Bulletin emphasizes that one of the first acts of the Biden administration, which it continues to be quite ready to address nuclear issues, must be “the extension of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START).” New START, the Bulletin reminds us, “is the last remaining bilateral arms control agreement between the United States and Russia, providing an anchor of strategic stability between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.”
The The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between Iran and the P5+1 countries (China France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), which set conditions on the nuclearization of Iran was abandoned by Trump. This is the next immediate nuclear issue that The Bulletin recommends a Biden administration addresses.
The U.S. imposes sanctions on both Iran – a country without nuclear weapons – and North Korea – which has nuclear weapons. Although Biden promises, according to The Bulletin, to engage in ‘sustained, coordinated campaign with our allies and others, including China, to advance our shared objective of a denuclearized North Korea’ the Bulletin makes no mention of of why North Korea might want to have nuclear weapons.
For almost twenty years the United States has considered North Korea to be part of an “axis of evil” that is going to destroy the world with weapons of mass destruction. (The “axis” just happens to include Iraq, which we’ve been fighting over we-don’t-know-what for fifteen years, and Iran). Before being part of the “axis” North Korea has been a foe of the United States for more than seventy years.
It’s commendable that Biden, according to The Bulletin, wants to reduce U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile and only use nuclear weapons for defense any use of nuclear weapons would be devastating. It’s clear that The Bulletin thinks Biden will engage in diplomacy to re-enter nuclear treaties. He actually needs to go further and remove any reason for a country to want nuclear weapons.
A year ago I shared this article from DesertPeace about the deportation and permanent expulsion, from Israel, of Omar Shakir, the Human Rights Watch representative in Israel and Palestine.
Although this was a one-time event, it is a continuation of policy of the demonetization of people who advocate for human rights.
“Israeli High Court Upholds Expulsion of Human Rights Watch Director Omar Shakir Over Alleged BDS Support” ….
Nine years ago I wrote this timely article about the perennial threat of Israel bombing Iran, and the threat – or the lack thereof – of nuclear weapons.
This is a great snapshot of history, and many of the same people are still involved in this game of risk.
In 2007, then-candidate John McCain blew any chance of serious foreign-policy discussion when he reverted to singing “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.” Bombing a country is generally considered serious. We’re long past this faux-pas of McCain’s in the middle of another round of Republican primary season, in which foreign policy is completely ignored. That’s not the point though. Bombing Iran is a frequent theme, and if candidates for office aren’t discussing it, policy-makers and observers of international affairs are talking about it.
In July of this year, MJ Rosenberg wrote a fascinating article about the near future. My experience is that he’s not given to hyperbole of scaremongering, and wasn’t writing to get people excited or vitriolic. He may have been writing to put the world on guard; or even, to write what would happen in order to prevent it from happening. Rosenberg was writing, or course, about…
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The Fifth of November has been remembered as the “Gunpowder treason and plot” since Catholics Guy Fawkes, Robert Catesby, and others attempted to blow up the British Parliament with Protestant King James I and the lords of parliament inside.
Yasmeen Serhan in The Atlantic says that after the failed plot, the word guy developed to mean a grotesque person. Londoners celebrated the survival of the king by lighting bonfires. It has become an official day in Britain where people light bonfires and burn effigies (a ritual, Yasmeen says, that has expanded to effigies of Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, and Boris Johnson).
The reputation and portrayal of Guy Fawkes has changed over the centuries. He became the basis for V for Vendetta and is now viewed as a popular underdog fighting the government. The iconic mask worn by protesters around the world represents Guy Fawkes.
History, Yasmeen Serhan, says…
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There are hours that will last a year
“There are hours that will last a year.” So read a line in my beautiful copy of The Three Musketeers.
I chose to disengage myself from the internet on the day after the election, while we’re all waiting for more definitive results, and to engage myself in finishing The Three Musketeers (as well as some recent television drama).
As we continue to wait for election results it feels like there are hours that will last a year.
We are all waiting on the sometimes-swing-state Nevada. A lot of people are pressing refresh every few seconds and nothing is happening. Remember that if you want to continue to click refresh, an hour will feel like a year.
When I dared to check social media again I found this, which surely explains what’s taking so long.
While we are waiting for the Count to finish, remember to engage in self-care by reading a classic like The Three Musketeers (I wrote about some of what you’ll find here), or binge-watch your favorite show.
November 3rd was when the the voting happened. By law and regulation, every state has days or weeks to count every vote. The election isn’t over until the count (Count?) is done. It might feel like it’s taking so long but we’re right on time.
It’s election day! Today is “the most important election of our life,” numerous people will say. Politico points out, as numerous other people will, that “the most important election of our life” happens every four years.
From a political point of view, all elections are important. Some elections are decided by ten votes. Still, it’s likely everyone is feeling a little shpilkes about this election.
Shpilkes, a Yiddish word, means “nervous energy, anxiousness, restlessness”. I have little doubt that everyone feels a little nervous, anxious, and restless waiting for the results of “the most important election of our life”. (To read a comedic, but accurate description of shpilkes see Hey Alma).
The current administration wants you to feel shpilkes about this election. It’s therefore important that the nervous feelings that you have, which should not turn into worries and suffering (tsuris), are cast aside and put instead instead into positive thoughts and actions. To overcome the the shpilkes the administration wants us to feel we must not act as the administration wants us to.
This article about how to overcome Trumpism is inspired by today’s day trip to Seattle. During that trip, two days before the election, there was the spread out – but obvious – caravan of Trump supporters, with huge flags on their car, driving the other way. The caravan prompted the jeering comment of “what are you going to do about it [the caravan being there],” and the retort of “well, what is there to do about it?”
Trumpism is driven by fear, nihilism, and to some extent, fatalism. While there is some case that Trumpism is based on the rejection of fact, the rejection of fact stems from fear, nihilism, and fatalism.
I think that the fear Trump supporters and conservative republicans have is a result of a drastic fear of change, like I summarized in an article about Oakeshott recently. I showed that we’re all more comfortable with a lack of change, but moderate, “slow rather than rapid pace,” of change is tolerable to most of us.
More than one definition applies to what appears to be nihilism in the ultra-conservative Trumpites. It appears that both “extreme skepticism maintaining that nothing in the world has a real existence,” and the rejection of all moral – but not religious! – principles on the grounds that life is meaningless.
This leads to an attitude of fatalism; at the same time the attitude of fatalism lead to the circular outlook of the attitude of the rejection of moral principles. Fatalism itself, as Hannah Arendt brilliantly summarized and demonstrated, arises from a loss, or fear of loss, of social norms. With the loss, of potential loss of everything familiar in the world, such as a job or a community, people conclude that they have nothing to live for, but will not die until they inflict their rejection of morals upon everything around them. In this way fear, nihilism, and fatalism are connected.
What can we do about the caravans? What do we do about a rather large swath of society that is propelled by fear and looks to push its nihilism on the rest of us, while acting with a fatalistic attitude?
The answer is that we need to address the social, or socio-economic, and political issues that impels people to feel hopeless. My response, to the utterances of “well, what can you do about the caravan” is that we need “systemic change”. I don’t remember my other exact words, but we need to address what people are fearful of, and fix why people feel like hope and reality should be rejected.
When I say system change I mean exactly the opposite of what the Trump administration dreams of where the wealthy get wealthy and the poor get poorer. Systemic change means a system where everyone is able to reach their full potential; a system where people don’t fear the loss of income or community.
