3/13/10: Leaving Berkeley
Forty years ago Seymour Melman pointed out again and again in The New York Times that the cost of the Vietnam War was approaching the value of the built American landscape. From the 1960s through 2000 the United States lost the opportunity to create a new world: a more egalitarian society, living comfortably within its natural limits. But this was a time without limits, when the United States dominated the world, much of which was developing at an unprecedented pace. In 1960, carbon dioxide levels were rising but not unreasonable; human populations low enough that much natural landscape, with its fierce large animals, was left (fierce wild animals, through their predatory behavior, are thought through a trophic cascade of effects on herbivores and smaller predators to keep the world green; in 1960 in developed countries like the United States the land was now largely empty of such animals, which were replaced by human hunters); songbird populations collapsing but still relatively high; chemical use low (DDT new and popular), if growing; medical care largely affordable; the country relatively rich. Berkeley was creeping out into San Francisco Bay; the Mississippi being hemmed in by dikes, the Everglades drained off to the sea. The sea still had fish, the sky hawks. During full moon at nighttime high tide, millions of silvery grunion spawned on the beaches of southern California.
From its founding amidst the unfolding of capitalist economies in the West, the United States has been ruled by its economic interests; most often, the economic interests of wealthy individuals and corporations (which largely replaced wealthy individuals; the 1930s were an apparent exception). So from the sixties on, corporations like ExxonMobil, General Motors and United States Sugar, with their financial connections to politicians (who needed money for reelection, to put their children through college, to entertain their mistresses, impress their colleagues, or for a comfortable retirement) determined the country’s priorities. The result is that our prosperity, in a much less egalitarian society than in 1960, depends on our producing chemicals that cause developmental anomalies in children (ambiguous sexuality, autism, low IQ) and cancer in adults (perhaps partly as a result of depressed immune systems, with similar effects in fish, marine mammals, birds and the other creatures with which we share the planet); on our eating cheap industrial foods that produce life-shortening diseases (obesity, diabetes, atherosclerosis); on world trade that haphazardly introduces strange plants and animals to new places; on processes that produce carbon dioxide, methane and other gases that are changing the climate. While all this is known, little changes: a recent plan by the State of Florida to buy land to add to the Everglades turns out to be a plan to prop up United States Sugar, a company which survives through the use of cheap Haitian labor, through import duties on sugar (which raises its price to us and harms poor farmers worldwide), which is a major polluter of the Everglades with its releases of phosphorus, and which was only able to farm at all because of public works projects that drained its land. The Everglades will not survive anyway: a two foot rise in sea level will turn the fresh water marsh with its alligators and shorebirds (already reduced 90% from the 1930s) into a salt water one with crocodiles and manatees. Sea level is predicted to rise three feet by 2100 (though ten feet is more likely). A changing climate will make all plans to save habitats, plants and animals moot, as the creatures move and their habitats change and disappear. The forests of the western cordilleras of North America from Arizona to Alaska are collapsing from insects and fire, partly as a result of drought, partly from 100 years of human mismanagement. Boreal forests across the northern hemisphere may soon join them. Tropical forests continue to be logged and cleared for agriculture. Methane bubbles up from the warming Arctic Sea (or perhaps it always has). Blister rust, a fungus disease of pines (it inspired a program of hand eradication of native gooseberries, an alternate host in the eastern United States in the 1920s-1930s) has reached the white bark pines of high altitudes in the Rocky Mountains, whose seeds, robbed from rodent nests, are a major autumn food of grizzly bears. The bears survive because they live high up in the backcountry. If they descend to lower altitudes to feed they will be shot. Eastern forests change as the climate warms, heavy cutting continues, cloud ceilings (the boundary between deciduous and evergreen forests) rise, and as several of its species (green and white ash, eastern hemlock, beech) join chestnut, red spruce and the elms in decline from imported insects, air pollution and diseases. Coyotes however, have moved into habitats abandoned a century ago by gray wolves and, growing ever larger as they adopt white tailed deer, along with rabbits and mice, as a prey animal, are doing well. What a changing climate will do to people (a species as opportunistic as coyotes) is uncertain. Rich populations may survive without too much difficulty. But if I were to buy land, I would do it at least 200 feet above sea level, out of river flood plains, and north, perhaps in walking distance of water with fish. Much may depend on how much the chemical soup in which we live, and the industrial food we eat, costs us (and of course in the case of the United States, the costs of our pointless foreign wars): modern life may not be cost-effective or survivable.
What all this implies for conserving the landscape is uncertain. Habitat for individual animals (grizzly bears, tigers, shorebirds) may not be worth saving: habitats are changing too fast. Land in large quantities is worth saving, especially lands near large rivers and coasts (and inland of coasts) and any extensive, connected pieces of open land. Lands in continental interiors are probably going to get drier (deserts will expand, land for photo-voltaic panels become a dime a dozen) and northern lands warmer. Northern lands may remain well watered and so desirable for agriculture, despite their relatively poor soils. Coastal regions (the lands east of the Appalachians, the coast of California) may become too stormy to be easily habitable by people. An orderly retreat from the effects of a changing climate, demolishing or moving buildings as we go, leaving much open land for nature, would be the best strategy; but we won’t do it. The cities of older civilizations slid under the sea and were adopted by sponges and fish but our more toxic buildings may be less friendly to wildlife and us. In 10,000 years bacteria will have broken down or sequestered the toxins, the sea diluted the radioactivity in the storage ponds of nuclear power plants, buried the asbestos insulation, oxidized the iron, the action of the waves turned the concrete to sand.
* * *
The day we left Berkeley dawned clear and cool, the air washed clean by the previous day’s rain. There was an invisible skim of frost on the car’s windshield, momentarily confusing the locals. The sun was going to be hot, the air cool, with a slightly sour smell of damp and redwoods. The plane banked over the bay, revealing pale green hills, with darker oaks and firs in the hollows, the blue sky, a pale blue or muddy green sea. Large areas of the southern parts of the bay are still used for the evaporation of salt, diked rippled flats red with salt tolerant micro organisms, and more areas of natural wetland are left, if with no natural flow from the San Joaquin River, all of whose water is allocated to people and agriculture. I missed California already. Who would want to leave on such a day, such a beautiful and ruined landscape?
We were returning to our black and white late winter world. When we landed in Albany, parked on the side of the airport tarmac were several huge planes, diverted from New York City airports because of tremendous winds earlier that day. Global warming gives us a more energetic atmosphere, of which this may or may not be an example. But perhaps more difficult and unreliable air travel will be another part of our warming world.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
3/1/10 Berkeley
We went down this morning to visit Daui's grandnephew at Santa Clara University. Santa Clara is at the foot of the Bay, near San Jose. The Santa Clara River once flowed freely and contributed major amounts of sand to the beaches of southern California. The land around the lower Bay is flat and completely developed, perhaps once sea bottom, or high marsh: strip malls, warehouses, several story apartment buildings and hotels, single family houses. I suppose the flats were originally wooded with Douglas fir and redwood, with some pine, cypress and coastal scrub near the water, some oak and bay along the brooks, serpentine meadows. The campus consisted of tall yellow stucco buildings, on wide lawns decorated with dying redwoods. Against the mission church was a walled rose garden. A black phoebe flitted from shrub to shrub in an alley. We took the kid to lunch at a "pedestrian mall" set down with its own parking garage off a major road, a totally fake urban scene: America as Disneyland.
We drove there from Berkeley, also totally built up, with its tiny yards, scattered redwoods amd palms, unkempt old gardens, a totally mixed and wild vegetation, redwoods growing up against house walls, wild orange bushes, palms two feet thick and sixty feet tall growing out of three square feet of soil, with stone steps laid around the fibrous trunk to a front door; Berkeley with its parks, organic amaranth, sustainably fished salmon, fresh greens, mushrooms smelling of the woods, round topped trees pruned by the wind, happy eggs, bottles of fresh squeezed blood orange juice, affordable apartments set among million dollar houses, round soft green hills fading away to the east from Inspiration Point, the swirl of plastic bottles amidst swimming ducks where Strawberry Creek enters the Bay. A few days later, in early morning we drove Daui's niece and her husband to the airport, through flat gray light, eight lanes of traffic, rain washed buildings visible above the elevated highway, water from the streets running into the Bay. Real life in our capitalist world was along the walled interstates leading down to San Jose.
We drove there from Berkeley, also totally built up, with its tiny yards, scattered redwoods amd palms, unkempt old gardens, a totally mixed and wild vegetation, redwoods growing up against house walls, wild orange bushes, palms two feet thick and sixty feet tall growing out of three square feet of soil, with stone steps laid around the fibrous trunk to a front door; Berkeley with its parks, organic amaranth, sustainably fished salmon, fresh greens, mushrooms smelling of the woods, round topped trees pruned by the wind, happy eggs, bottles of fresh squeezed blood orange juice, affordable apartments set among million dollar houses, round soft green hills fading away to the east from Inspiration Point, the swirl of plastic bottles amidst swimming ducks where Strawberry Creek enters the Bay. A few days later, in early morning we drove Daui's niece and her husband to the airport, through flat gray light, eight lanes of traffic, rain washed buildings visible above the elevated highway, water from the streets running into the Bay. Real life in our capitalist world was along the walled interstates leading down to San Jose.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
1/30/10
1/30/10
For the past month I’ve been cutting up a load of logs for firewood. They came from Schroon Lake, maybe thirty miles away. Most of them are sugar maple, tall slim trees, each yielding three or four sixteen foot logs, knotty, with a small core of rot. The bark on some of them flows like a river around the lopped off branches, covered with frilly pale green lichens and bright clumps of moss. Logs from the deep woods. For good measure the logger threw in a couple of hemlock logs – maybe he thought I wouldn’t know the difference. Hemlock and sugar maple often grow together. Crushed against one log was a long strand of princes pine, a club moss of the forest floor, kept bright by the cold. If it isn’t too cold, I can smell the sweetness of the blocks as I split them. The wood inside the logs is slightly pink. I feel slightly guilty at using these offerings from the forest – at least I should pay attention to them. One tree is a species I don’t recognize – perhaps red elm.
* * *
Now everyone is moaning about the deficit. Okay! How about paying for our current wars? (Bush and the Republicans never thought this necessary.) I think a universal draft is the best way to keep American foreign policy honest, and the U.S. a republic rather than an empire, but if we must have wars, we should pay for them. Everyone’s wars – everyone should pay. Perhaps a 1% surcharge on income taxes to start, the percent rising as incomes rise, to a maximum of - what? 100% on incomes over $2 million? 200%? Those poor bankers will need even larger bonuses….
For the past month I’ve been cutting up a load of logs for firewood. They came from Schroon Lake, maybe thirty miles away. Most of them are sugar maple, tall slim trees, each yielding three or four sixteen foot logs, knotty, with a small core of rot. The bark on some of them flows like a river around the lopped off branches, covered with frilly pale green lichens and bright clumps of moss. Logs from the deep woods. For good measure the logger threw in a couple of hemlock logs – maybe he thought I wouldn’t know the difference. Hemlock and sugar maple often grow together. Crushed against one log was a long strand of princes pine, a club moss of the forest floor, kept bright by the cold. If it isn’t too cold, I can smell the sweetness of the blocks as I split them. The wood inside the logs is slightly pink. I feel slightly guilty at using these offerings from the forest – at least I should pay attention to them. One tree is a species I don’t recognize – perhaps red elm.
* * *
Now everyone is moaning about the deficit. Okay! How about paying for our current wars? (Bush and the Republicans never thought this necessary.) I think a universal draft is the best way to keep American foreign policy honest, and the U.S. a republic rather than an empire, but if we must have wars, we should pay for them. Everyone’s wars – everyone should pay. Perhaps a 1% surcharge on income taxes to start, the percent rising as incomes rise, to a maximum of - what? 100% on incomes over $2 million? 200%? Those poor bankers will need even larger bonuses….
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
1/27/10
1/27/10
The Democrats are losing their nerve again. Goodbye health care! Goodbye cap-and-trade! Hello Afghanistan!
It’s too bad no one can figure out that a carbon tax can also be a jobs program. Half the money collected goes back to those who can least afford the increased cost of goods and fuel (say those families earning less than $80,000 a year), half goes to reducing our dependence on carbon – wind and solar power, new transmission lines, electric cars, better electric motors, more home insulation.
If we don’t steer capitalism in a new direction, it will continue with its frontier mentality, swallowing up resources, as though the whole world were still out there, unspoiled.
The Democrats are losing their nerve again. Goodbye health care! Goodbye cap-and-trade! Hello Afghanistan!
It’s too bad no one can figure out that a carbon tax can also be a jobs program. Half the money collected goes back to those who can least afford the increased cost of goods and fuel (say those families earning less than $80,000 a year), half goes to reducing our dependence on carbon – wind and solar power, new transmission lines, electric cars, better electric motors, more home insulation.
If we don’t steer capitalism in a new direction, it will continue with its frontier mentality, swallowing up resources, as though the whole world were still out there, unspoiled.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
1/19/10
10/19/10
We don’t do anything about carbon emissions because we have no real motivation to do so. What’s wrong with Jim Hansen’s plan of a carbon tax whose money goes back to the people? We could also put it toward universal medical care. (It amounts to the same thing.)
Say, $100 a ton, from oil and coal companies directly into our pockets.
Climate change isn’t going to be an apocalyptic event out of a film but a slow moving catastrophe.
But we may regret every wrong move we make from now on.
We don’t do anything about carbon emissions because we have no real motivation to do so. What’s wrong with Jim Hansen’s plan of a carbon tax whose money goes back to the people? We could also put it toward universal medical care. (It amounts to the same thing.)
Say, $100 a ton, from oil and coal companies directly into our pockets.
Climate change isn’t going to be an apocalyptic event out of a film but a slow moving catastrophe.
But we may regret every wrong move we make from now on.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
1/4/10
1/4/10
The NY Times a few days ago had a photo of a river of electro-shocked carp leaping into the air. These asian carp (bighead and silver carp) were introduced by southern catfish farmers to control algae in their fishponds. They escaped during floods to the Mississippi, an entirely predictable event. These carp also leap into the air when boats pass—the pressure wave must indicate a predator to them—so boaters going by at 5-10 mph may get whacked in the face with a 20-50 pound fish. The carp breed prolifically and have been moving up the Mississippi drainage for years. They are now poised to enter Lake Michigan, via a canal from the Illinois River. The other Great Lakes’ states are in an uproar since the carp are likely to dominate the ecosystems of the lakes. (And while carp have a good reputation in Europe and Asia, they don’t have one here.) The other states insist the canal be closed. Building the canal, partly for transportation, partly to send Chicago’s sewage and stockyard waste away from Lake Michigan, was never a good idea. But why wait til now to do something? I think fish from the Mississippi are edible. Couldn’t McDonalds sell carp fillets in a bun instead of Alaskan pollock? Eco-fish? Can’t we make use of these “invasive species?” Florida panthers prefer to dine on invasive European feral hogs.
During the Reagan years I watched the progression of a pandemic of raccoon rabies up the East Coast. It had started with the release of Florida raccoons by coon hunters in West Virginia. One animal was rabid. I guess there aren’t enough raccoons in West Virginia. Wild animals in general die horrifying deaths but hunting coons with dogs seems an unnecessary addition to the scene. At any rate, no one did anything and the epidemic, now also affecting foxes and skunks, eventually reached us in upper New York State. There were stories of foxes walking up to people or being shot in barns. People were bitten and had to be vaccinated. One died. Rabies is a public health problem but the Reaganites seemed to think people should take care of themselves. Now New York State and Vermont try to prevent the spread of new outbreaks by spreading bait spiked with a vaccine around the area with the disease.
This fall we were visited nightly by three raccoons. They pulled down the bird feeder if I left it up. They also visited my neighbor who doesn’t put up with this sort of thing. He trapped one for a friend who was training his hounds. Let’s not think about what happened to that animal. The others, one as big as a small bear (50-60 pounds), disappeared in a few days. I suppose he shot them. The big one was too big to trap, he was too big to climb up the side of the house to reach the bird feeder. I would have preferred the coyotes to get them. Coyotes are one positive sign in our natural environment—our evolving small wolf, tolerant of humanity and smart enough to live among us. And perhaps also the moose, who, during much debate by state game departments on their reintroduction, began reintroducing themselves.
* * *
As for that article in the Sunday NY Times for January 3rd, What’s a Failed Bailed out Banker Worth? — what a red herring! It’s hard to put morality into capitalism. The banker’s worth what he can get. Any income over $1 million? $2 million? $2.5 million? should be taxed at 90%.
The NY Times a few days ago had a photo of a river of electro-shocked carp leaping into the air. These asian carp (bighead and silver carp) were introduced by southern catfish farmers to control algae in their fishponds. They escaped during floods to the Mississippi, an entirely predictable event. These carp also leap into the air when boats pass—the pressure wave must indicate a predator to them—so boaters going by at 5-10 mph may get whacked in the face with a 20-50 pound fish. The carp breed prolifically and have been moving up the Mississippi drainage for years. They are now poised to enter Lake Michigan, via a canal from the Illinois River. The other Great Lakes’ states are in an uproar since the carp are likely to dominate the ecosystems of the lakes. (And while carp have a good reputation in Europe and Asia, they don’t have one here.) The other states insist the canal be closed. Building the canal, partly for transportation, partly to send Chicago’s sewage and stockyard waste away from Lake Michigan, was never a good idea. But why wait til now to do something? I think fish from the Mississippi are edible. Couldn’t McDonalds sell carp fillets in a bun instead of Alaskan pollock? Eco-fish? Can’t we make use of these “invasive species?” Florida panthers prefer to dine on invasive European feral hogs.
During the Reagan years I watched the progression of a pandemic of raccoon rabies up the East Coast. It had started with the release of Florida raccoons by coon hunters in West Virginia. One animal was rabid. I guess there aren’t enough raccoons in West Virginia. Wild animals in general die horrifying deaths but hunting coons with dogs seems an unnecessary addition to the scene. At any rate, no one did anything and the epidemic, now also affecting foxes and skunks, eventually reached us in upper New York State. There were stories of foxes walking up to people or being shot in barns. People were bitten and had to be vaccinated. One died. Rabies is a public health problem but the Reaganites seemed to think people should take care of themselves. Now New York State and Vermont try to prevent the spread of new outbreaks by spreading bait spiked with a vaccine around the area with the disease.
This fall we were visited nightly by three raccoons. They pulled down the bird feeder if I left it up. They also visited my neighbor who doesn’t put up with this sort of thing. He trapped one for a friend who was training his hounds. Let’s not think about what happened to that animal. The others, one as big as a small bear (50-60 pounds), disappeared in a few days. I suppose he shot them. The big one was too big to trap, he was too big to climb up the side of the house to reach the bird feeder. I would have preferred the coyotes to get them. Coyotes are one positive sign in our natural environment—our evolving small wolf, tolerant of humanity and smart enough to live among us. And perhaps also the moose, who, during much debate by state game departments on their reintroduction, began reintroducing themselves.
* * *
As for that article in the Sunday NY Times for January 3rd, What’s a Failed Bailed out Banker Worth? — what a red herring! It’s hard to put morality into capitalism. The banker’s worth what he can get. Any income over $1 million? $2 million? $2.5 million? should be taxed at 90%.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
1/3/10
1/3/10
How awful to read of the University of California cutting its budget by hundreds of millions of dollars! The American Empire is such a bore! What happened to the American Republic of which we were all part? Would we have such useless, dehumanizing wars if we had a universal draft? Instead of public education, a decarbonizing economy and affordable medical care we have gated communities, a “volunteer” army, the merrily partying super-rich, floating above a sea of poverty, drugs, abused prisoners and abused illegal immigrants. Every man for himself! So we have community restrictions on rooftop solar collectors and hanging laundry out to dry. Those drafted kids could be working in hospitals and planting trees. Instead we throw our money away on wars and the “war on drugs.”
Then it occurs to me, what is the carbon footprint of a dollar? If we divide the U.S. GDP of about $14.2 trillion into the carbon dioxide emissions of about 5.8 billion metric tons, we get about .8 pound. (Thanks, Jimmy Wales!) This is a measure of the carbon intensity of the economy. But there are only about $400 billion (bills and coins) in circulation. So the dollar in your pocket weighs about 35 times that, or 28 pounds, about 8 pounds in pure carbon. Or if you take account 200 years of fossil fuel combustion, many tens of times that.
I hope I got the zeros right. It’s hard carrying around 230 pounds in my wallet.
How awful to read of the University of California cutting its budget by hundreds of millions of dollars! The American Empire is such a bore! What happened to the American Republic of which we were all part? Would we have such useless, dehumanizing wars if we had a universal draft? Instead of public education, a decarbonizing economy and affordable medical care we have gated communities, a “volunteer” army, the merrily partying super-rich, floating above a sea of poverty, drugs, abused prisoners and abused illegal immigrants. Every man for himself! So we have community restrictions on rooftop solar collectors and hanging laundry out to dry. Those drafted kids could be working in hospitals and planting trees. Instead we throw our money away on wars and the “war on drugs.”
Then it occurs to me, what is the carbon footprint of a dollar? If we divide the U.S. GDP of about $14.2 trillion into the carbon dioxide emissions of about 5.8 billion metric tons, we get about .8 pound. (Thanks, Jimmy Wales!) This is a measure of the carbon intensity of the economy. But there are only about $400 billion (bills and coins) in circulation. So the dollar in your pocket weighs about 35 times that, or 28 pounds, about 8 pounds in pure carbon. Or if you take account 200 years of fossil fuel combustion, many tens of times that.
I hope I got the zeros right. It’s hard carrying around 230 pounds in my wallet.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)