Bay Bridge from the top of Yerba Buena Island (photo by Junko)
The winds stopped, the sky was cloudless and blue as it only can be in places like San Francisco and Perth.
A lone purple flower pushed up and bloomed among the bright yellow sourgrass and clover that coats our backyard.
I was mesmerized by a single orange butterfly as it visited the rich white blossoms that now coat our plum tree. So much of Nature's beauty is utterly silent.
("Paint the gesture, not the hand." -- Van Gogh)
I love the art and architecture that humans create, but none of it exceeds the silent loveliness of a butterfly or hummingbird or bumblebee at work extracting sweetness and pollinating our productive plants.
How can anyone pretend that global climate change is not the most fearsome challenge we face as a species?
It was so warm tonight that we decided to barbecue our chicken and eat it outside.
The sun was still high enough to be blinding if you looked to the west. There wasn't a breath of air, but the freshness of our coastal air kept the early evening comfortable.
Even as the sun set, we needed nothing more than T-shirts to be comfortable here.
I love this weather. San Francisco is not naturally a warm place; we are chilly much more often than hot. But even now, after 9:30 pm, this city is warm tonight. Just like the classic song by the Animals: "San Francisco Nights."
-30-
1 comment:
You had to ask, David...
I can pretend, no – BELIEVE, that global warming is NOT the most fearsome challenge that we face as a species. This I say for three reasons: First, to believe that we are yet in a position to do anything meaningful on a global basis to affect climate change of any kind is arrogant and faulted; Second, to focus our time and energy attempting to make many of the changes much touted under the banner of global climate repair reduces our ability to address the more realistic needs of our moment; Third, I am weary.
I am one who is convinced that the human species, as documented in its many and varied activities to date, is wholly incapable of competing with natural forces to claim preeminence as a risk to its own survival. By comparison, we are small and quite utterly insignificant. How can one view images, cleverly rendered by our advancing sciences, of material and motion fully 13 billion light years off and feel any sense of potency to add to or detract from such enormity? Similarly, who can ponder the mysteries, revealed in ever more fascinating detail - almost daily now, of quantum physics where our intuitive senses prove totally worthless, and believe that we are somehow equipped to meaningfully challenge those natural forces? We aren't nearly as great as the global climate change challenge would suggest.
We stand our puny bodies on an insubstantial and frightfully thin platform of ever shifting mass and energy capable at any moment of causing our extinction on a whim. From time to time this slim skin of materials has swallowed up, crushed down upon, vaporized, drowned, and sickened multitudes of people in less time and with less relative effort than most people exert getting ready to go to work in the morning.
We wander daily in an equally frail and flimsy sheath of gases upon which we are humbly dependent, and gaze at our sun of such huge and terrible hot power we can't even imagine. Sitting a mere eight minutes from us at light speed, it frequently hiccups and causes more warming than all of the combined fires of human history. Conversely, it has occasionally slowed the frequency of those hiccups to a point that our little rock has been almost wholly blanketed in ice. We're not that great.
Yet I hear this continuing din of the global warming alarm. It's our fault. We must change our ways or die. Do something...
Some scream out, “stop using incandescent lights... replace them with fluorescent...” totally ignoring that fluorescent bulbs require more energy to manufacture and carry poisonous toxins requiring special disposal.
Some scream “alternative fuels... use ethanol instead...” and then we learn that the actual trade off ends in loss of both dollars and energy, and worse begins to put market pressure on a food supply which brings harm to many in poor countries who now must face prohibitive prices. Some scream, “stop using CFCs... “ and we turn to products like HCFC-123 and HCFC-124 which, while being far less efficient cooling agents (using more energy, burning more fossil fuels) , caused acute hepatitis in workers exposed. And then we hear from the truly clueless that we should restrict ourselves to one square of toilet paper...
Yes, we can cause damage within our small world. When we apply ourselves we can do many things to increase our discomfort. Human history's greatest examples have always had at their core evilly motivated despots who seek power over others by offering false promises, twisting reality through emotional prisms to begin, then solidifying and perpetuating that power with fear and intimidation. Every time it has played out, this marvelously ignorant routine has caused more death and destruction than the very worst examples of pollution
so far accomplished by people of the free world countries.
This story continues to play out even now... you see examples large and small at virtually every corner of the planet today. Can you find justification for Putin amassing 4 billion dollars for himself in the wake of a quietly brutal reign over Russia? Do you believe that Hugo Chavez has been good for the citizens of Venezuela? Will Ahmadinejad embrace the people of Isreal one day or open for the citizens of Iran anything that resembles the liberty that you and I enjoy? How about those of the ruling family of Saudi Arabia? The core leadership of communist China? The thugs of the Democratic Republic of Congo? Sudan? Uganda? Angola? The list goes on and on and on.
No normal human being would cause harm to his neighbor. No normal human being will deliberately poison the waters or foul the air. Almost everyone on this planet would agree; the numbers of those who are malicious and uncaring to the point of willfully harming others are very small. But there have always been large numbers of people who are vulnerable to emotional appeal, many who are easily persuaded to pin their false hopes on the next despot seeking their support. There have always been too many who will cower in the face of reality.
Invent a cause for alarm. Trumpet the alarm to draw as many to your side as possible. When their numbers are great enough, consolidate your control be killing and brutalizing as many as necessary for as long as you can hold on to power. Over and over and over, in our long history it has happened, over and over and over. I would argue that the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Japan – countries of substantive democratic rule – offer the greatest levels of human rights and, as a direct consequence, the best environments to spawn growth toward continuously improving the human circumstance. I would further argue that our energies are pitted to greater good by strengthening that growth and spreading the examples to others on the planet.
We have had so many emotional knee jerk responses by politicians eager for the money and votes garnered from what they see as lucrative causes to champion. We've seen so many willing dupes anxious to be accepted or coddled by others who are heralding these causes as righteous. We've seen so many who want to feel better about themselves and latch on to causes that just feel good, in spite of any facts to the contrary. And we've seen so many who believe this country is full of terrible people who are selfishly depriving everyone else on the planet, and who need to be punished for it. The mystical call of global warming is just the current incarnation of misleading causes used to cloak the personal ambitions of those who would help humanity the least. I have grown weary of seeing the sword of “global warming” rattled to repeatedly rally persons so motivated. I am weary.
Dan
Post a Comment