RANT: FALLING LEAVES AND POEMS

After Carthage

Begin with the ashes.

Rasp the air with tools of grit and despair

until the soft walls of the world are clear once more.

Then attend here, where the rot of wood

is coloured with dry skins whose pigments flake

and scatter beneath your rough hands.

Leave nothing of them behind.

Scour the pillars and pediments,

the brave arches and domes,

all the struts and mainstays

of once-proud architecture,

long-grimed by the hot fires of sacrifice.

“From days of glory,” as some would say.

Cleanse it; clear it all away.

Clean the temples, the towers,

the inns and hostels.

Sweep the roads and main ways,

and the alleys where beggars gather

with their trays of trinkets,

ready to sell to the new buyers of the world.

Have once all gone.

Then pack up your bright tomorrows,

those careful gifts of tribute

for our new lords’ altars and plinths.

By far our most precious, 

and fragile, of cargoes.

 

 

WELL, THEY'VE FINALLY STARTED CONSTRUCTION NEXT DOOR—right next door. I’d hoped they would put it off until next year when I’d like to move out of my current digs. Gentrification is in the air, and thars money to be made in reeeel estate, Billy! Arr! Next door was a large, vacant lot with lots of scrub brush and bush, and apparently not worth much on its own. I’d never walked around there—the lot was a hangout for party-goers and drug deals, but the citified wildness was a pleasant landscape to look at, and I miss it. It reminded me of places I played in as a child.

Then they brought in a backhoe and weed whackers and stripped it down to the dirt. A few days later a pile driver arrived to break up the soil and everyone’s sanity. When that machine started its business, man, I bailed out of my bunker! My place jumped around like a politician at a fundraiser. I took several prints off the wall, so they wouldn't fall while dishes rattled on their shelves like we were in the middle of an earthquake or something. Scheesh! But so far the old place is still standing. They finished a few days ago and I'm watching for what comes next. Life is exciting, until it’s not.

Is It Time to Wake Up, Yet?

In these gloomy days of Covid-19, when large numbers of people are homeless, or jobless, my little excitement pales by comparison, so I'd like to turn to the cheerier topic of climate change and our inadequate response to it. A few days ago I read an article by American journalist Max Blumenthal that examined recent criticism of the documentary Planet of the Humans, a movie I've discussed in a previous post. Max provides an important exposè on green financing within the mainstream environmental movement. By "green finance" I mean, the funders of those large, well-known NGOs that have been at the forefront of environmental activism for decades. His article elaborates on where the money to run many of the NGOs is sourced, and the findings are disturbing. Organizations like Greenpeace, 350. Org., the Rocky Mountain Institute and others, as well as so-called "green" foundations and start-up funders, take significant amounts of money from companies and individuals associated with the fossil fuel industry or other large corporate sectors such as "Big Ag" or "Big Pharma". Furthermore, a disturbing number of green NGOs have as board members, partners, 'advisors', etc. people from those same industries that the NGOs hope to transform or eliminate. When billionaires and mega-rich companies donate time and money to green causes and promote green political agendas, it begs the question: "What do they want in exchange?" And for me the simplest answer probably works best: 

They want what those in power invariably want—to remain in power. They want business as usual, but with a green smile-face as their logo. They want their profits wrapped with a bow inside a pretty, green package. They are willing to change their designs, product lines, manufacturing processes and so on, as long as they are free to sail on the (green) currents of today’s environmentalism, and as long as their business model remains securely in place. Blumenthal references this in his discussion on the growth of the solar and wind generation sectors:   

 

"But was the presentation of renewable energy sources in “Planet of the Humans” actually false? Ecological economist William Rees has claimed that 'despite rapid growth in wind and solar generation, the green energy transition is not really happening.' That might be because it is chasing energy growth instead of curtailing it. [Italics mine] Rees pointed out that the surge in global demand for electricity last year 'exceeded the total output of the world’s entire 30-year accumulation of solar power installations.'

Are there not reasonable grounds then to be concerned about the practicality of a full transition to renewables, especially in a hyper-capitalist, growth-obsessed economy like that of the United States?" (“Green Billionaires”, The Grayzone, 09/07/20)

 

Max’s article exposes the financial web that weaves its way through much of the environmental advocacy sector, and how this money may be shaping and co-opting the ideals and actions of many green organizations. The “Green New Deal”* being touted in the United States and elsewhere as the way forward in our struggle to combat climate change, may be leading us down the proverbial garden path. There is a great deal of money to be made transforming our economies using clean energy and renewables, hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars! But at the end of the day, having put all our eggs, so to speak, into the renewables’ basket (primarily wind and solar, and EV development) will we have altered the course climate change? Will levels of Co2 and other pollutants in the air decline significantly? And more to the point—will renewable energy prove to be the panacea as so many believe? Will it work?

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that I don’t think it will, and for this reason: As long as our economies are based on the capitalist/growth model of unlimited growth on a finite planet (our world, our home; our only home)—then our future will be a one-way dead-end into history’s dumpster.

Max’s article examines the efficiency claims of renewable power generation and its ability to scale-up to grid-level production, and there are more than a few questions concerning whether such an endeavour is possible. More importantly, a paradigm shift is needed—a fundamental re-ordering of how we live on this little blue planet, and how we live with each other and the other organisms that inhabit it. Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore, in their ‘inconvenient’ Planet of the Humans documentary and articles such as Max Blumenthal’s “Green Billionaires” challenge the green vision of today’s environmentalism, and they provide a needed corrective to what, in my opinion, is often greenwash and misaligned priorities.

It’s like we’re on-board a speeding train, and all of us have a single purpose—to make our train the most efficient, speedy and sturdy in existence. We work day and night to refurbish, streamline, and power it as it roars faster and faster down the track. We finally achieve our goal of making our train the greatest in the world. Unfortunately, there is a sharp bend in the tracks somewhere ahead, below which is an all but bottomless gorge. And no matter how perfect we’ve made it, our train cannot straighten out the tracks that lay before it or build a bridge across the shadowy gorge. So, instead of wondering where all the answers are, perhaps we should begin with the questions. And Paul Gauguin’s famous 1897 painting comes to mind, with the enigmatic words he added to his canvas: “Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?” Let’s begin there before we continue along on our journey. 

 

 

Cheers, Jake.

 

 

*Interesting aside: I was looking up Green New Deal online and the top search item provided in the new “Ad” section at the top of Google’s search page results was for  the webpage “New Ideal” found at the website aynrand.org. Which is ironic on so many levels. It reminded me that search engines, like corporations, powerful elites, and subscribers to the (barely-not) fascistic philosophy of Ayn Rand, will play both sides of the aisle, so long as there’s a profit to be made. The article, here, is of course critical of renewables, and lauds “the ability to harness energy on an industrial scale [using fossil fuels]… as an unprecedented liberating force, freeing mankind from the unrelenting hardship of brute physical labor,” which is hard to disagree with, as long as you don’t ask too many questions, of course, and is right as (acid) rain if you’re a member of the Übermensch class.

 

 

 

   

POEM: THE COVID-19 EDITION

Nero 2.0   

Burn. Burn away your empire—

Burn all of it.       

Burn down your sad towers,

with their jagged spires

that pierce the sky with illusions.

Watch them crumble and become lost

in the dust of their collapse.

Burn it all away!

But not with the flames of past thrones

that saw baths laid in the place of ruins.

Burn it with hotter fires

that are fueled by all the bent,

broke-backed and wearying days

that come with their ever-advancing 
tomorrows.

Then go among the ruins.

Look for the glitter of false joys.

Smash those carnival mirrors!

Break those gilded devices

with their painted stars

and clever surfaces 
that reveal nothing

of the true face of lives spent

furiously polishing time’s brighter reflections.

Make them gone.

Then scatter the heedless, the needless,

the vain and wayward.

Spill them like seeds upon stony fields

you will choose for your sacrifice.

Leave what remains for the carrion-eaters

and the small deciders of the world.

…

Then come away with me.

Come to where the air rims the world

with winds so pure and high,

and where there soon will be

other thrones and crowns

and banners for our sky.

I THOUGHT I'D END THE MONTH ON AN UPBEAT NOTE….I’m not sure I like this poem. Just finished it? [Progress in the writing process seems stalled. Ed.]

Yep, good ‘ol Covid-19 has spread-eagled the planet and everything has ground to mostly a standstill. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, after all viruses total 0.2 Gt of carbon*, and humans weigh in at a paltry 0.06 Gt! For those who need to know, the most biomass tonnage on Earth goes to plants, which are still on top even though we’ve been paving paradise and putting up a parking lot for some time now. Plants are followed by a bit of a surprise—Bacteria! Then come Fungi and microscopic Protists. Who would have thunk it? (Animals, including Humans are waaay down on the list.) And even though viruses comprise a much smaller amount of biomass when compared to the top contenders, there is still much more of it than there is human biomass around. Who knew?! (Not me.) So, watch out! Viruses can throw their weight around and we better start behaving!

I watched the new Michael Moore film (he’s the producer) on YouTube last night. It’s called Planet of the Humans and I highly recommend it. For anyone questioning the dominant tropes of modern environmentalism, climate change, global warming, etc., and who have grown tired of warn-out platitudes which always start off with something like ”If we  just [fill in the blank], then Bob’s your uncle!” If you’ve ever had concerns about how effective various environmental groups**—some quite well known—have been as far as making actual changes in the world; or if you have ever wondered why is it there is a great deal of talking and drawing up of “accords” and “manifestos” and so on, yet relatively little action on the horizon, and in fact things have been getting worse, environmentally-speaking; if such doubts have crept into your mind from time to time, then this is the film for you.

Released a week prior to the anniversary of the first Earth Day, it is a sobering examination of the real-world feasibility (and scaleability) of renewable sources of energy. Producer and composer Jeff Gibbs narrates this scathing, yet also compassionate and evocative journey through the difficult terrain of environmentalism and renewable energy.

Jeff Gibbs

He opens his film with a challenging question: “How long do you think we humans have?” In interviews with passersby on a pleasant, sunny sidewalk, the answers range from a chipper “two years” all the way up to “infinity” (a popular answer). There’s humour and honest deliberation from many of the respondents, but my favourite was one curmudgeon's reply: “Being kind, I’d say about ten years, unless we get to another planet—and then fuck it up like we’ve done this one.” And the overarching question the film asks is: How long do you think we humans have--going the way we’re going?   

Gibbs uses interviews, news reports, amateur and archival footage in his attempt to answer this difficult and seemingly unanswerable question. Throughout the film he examines various schemes for renewable energy—wind and solar in particular, as well as schemes deemed “green energy” like biomass generation, bio-diesel fuels, natural gas power plants, electric cars, etc. 

Michael Moore

One of the questions Gibbs kept asking activists and green-tech promoters was how much fossil-fuel was being used in the construction, maintenance and operation of each so-called “clean” energy process. Unsurprisingly, the use of fossil fuels—coal, oil, natural gas—was embedded in each and every one, sometimes much more than you would expect. And the EROEI (Energy Returned On Energy Invested) ratio that measures how efficient each process is in providing clean energy from the particular resource or system is not nearly as favourable as promoters of green tech would have you believe. Furthermore, each process comes with its own negative environmental impacts, some that are surprising, as Gibbs discovers. (His review of biomass power generation is quite revealing.) I won’t detail his findings—you can and should see them for yourself;  the film is free on YouTube, so what's your excuse?

Decommissioned Windfarm

The take home is that, as far as climate change is concerned, renewables will have only a modest impact and none of the processes to date—from old-tech waterpower (just how many rivers in the world are there left to dam?) to new-tech “micro-algae” oil and the like—can realistically scale-up to supply the vast energy requirements of our modern civilization. And if environmental movements and initiatives have, for the most part, been sequestered and put out for display like pretty, stone Buddhas in corporate Zen gardens, where do we turn? Who do we trust? Where do we go from here?

Refreshingly, Gibbs and Moore do not provide us with the standard list of environmental ‘to-dos’. The question we need to answer, they say, is much larger (and also more personal) than what to do about climate change or global warming or the horrible pollution of our environment and the mechanized slaughter of the living world. Yes, we’ve all seen the ‘hockey-stick’ graphs of Co2 emissions, population rise, industrial growth, rainforest clear-cutting, coral reef depletion, etc., etc., etc. We just don’t care. Too many of us drank the Kool-Aid laced with poison labelled: Infinite Growth on a Finite Planet. And while the drink is a long time killing us; kill us it will.

"Arr, Billy! Don't you be drinkin' thar swill!"

The question we need to ask is a simple one: Will we be masters of the world or masters of ourselves? It’s a question that’s always been with us, in all civilizations and all times. It’s one that’s even been answered, from time to time. Today, however—well really for the last, mad century or two after we'd discovered the “black gold” of coal and the “Texas tea” of oil—we’ve simply forgotten the question entirely. The time-out we’ve received because of Covid-19 could go a long way to help refresh our memories, though I doubt it will. But the world will thank us for this brief respite as our industries stand for the moment silent and shuttered.

Downed trees around Mt. St. Helens after erruption.

The movie's final scene of rainforest deforestation reminded me of photographs of the land around Mt. St. Helen in Washington state after the volcano erupted there in 1980. There was devastation for miles around! Trees were flattened everywhere from the force of the volcano's blast. But the images of the man-made devastation Gibbs records of a tropical forest cut down to make way for a coconut plantation were shocking. The lone stand of remaining woods held a group of orangutans, clinging precariously to the limbs of trees as they neared to toppling over. And later, the displayed bodies of the dead and dying apes was a scene as strikingly viseral as any taken of the liberated concentraion camps of  WWII. Both depict living beings being slaughtered. In this case it's because we've been told that biofuels are good to use in our cars.

The film ends with a quotation by famed environmentalist Rachel Carson. It was taken from an address she gave to the graduating class at Scripps University in California in 1962. Silent Spring, her ground-breaking study on the effects of DDT in the environment, the book that arguably started the modern environmental movement, had just been published. And though she had been diagnosed with with breast cancer (she would die in 1964 from complications resulting from the disease), and physically weak, she nevertheless undertook the arduous cross-country flight to present her thoughts on nature, "Man" and the sciences to the Scripp's graduating students that year. Her closing words include the quote Gibbs and Moore paraphrase for their film.

           

“I wish I could stand before you and say that my own generation had brought strength and meaning to man’s relation to nature, that we had looked upon the majesty and beauty and terror of the earth we inhabit and learned wisdom and humility. Alas, this cannot be said, for it is we who have brought into being a fateful and destructive power. But the stream of time moves forward and mankind moves with it. Your generation must come to terms with the environment. Your generation must face realities instead of taking refuge in ignorance and evasion of truth. Yours is a grave and a sobering responsibility, but it is also a shining opportunity. You go out into a world where mankind is challenged, as it has never been challenged before, to prove its maturity and its mastery—not of nature, but of itself. Therein lies our hope and our destiny. In today already walks tomorrow.” [from Scripps College Bulletin, July 1962—Rachel Carson’s speech to the graduating class.]

 Words as true then as they are now. But what about tomorrow?

Cheers, Jake.

*Gt=giga-tons of carbon (for those with a science-deficit, like me, “giga” is the metric system’s short-form for billion. The decimals I’ll leave to you.) Biomass “is the amount of living matter (as in a unit area or volume of habitat")—Merriam-Webster dictionary.

**Another question the environmental movement is incredibly uncomfortable being asked is who funds their organizations, initiatives and studies. The surprising (or perhaps not so surprising) fact is that a number of large, well-known environmental groups have big business donors, including Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Ag—which you’d think would be a serious conflict of interest. The long and the short of it is this: Listen Fats, where big business and environmental movements intersect, eventually profit wins out. Suffice it to say that greenwash is everywhere.

Premiering on April 21, already Moore's and Gibbs' film has garnered much pushback from environmental groups. It will be interesting to see how the producers weather the storm of criticism....[One helpful commentary on Moore's film is by Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti of The Hill's Rising news webcast on YouTube.]  

I feel that the environmental movement has failed, to a large extent, in its stated goal of arresting climate change and protecting the biosphere. There are a number of reasons why this is the case. One reason is because there is too much focus on "new-and-improved" techno-fixes and elaborate schemes for switching out fossil fuels for some either unproven (fusion power, anyone?) or unscaleable (wind, solar) energy sources or power distribution system. 
It's not our technology we need to re-examine--it's ourselves. We need to ask ourselves questions such as: what is it to live a good life? How much is enough? And how are we to share this world with our fellow humans and with the myriad other beings and lifeforms that surround and support us? We'll either find answers to these and other questions or we'll go the way of the Dodo, and deservedly so.  

 

"All righty! I want a clean execution, today. Any questions?

[UPDATE: As of late May, Youtube has taken down Moore and Gibb's film citing copyright infringment. Granted, the film has flaws, but its over-arching message remains.]