The Great Convulsion

"Before the Deluge" was of course written by Jackson Browne, but I like this Joan Baez version.  The lyrics are copied at the end, following some thoughts about denialism.  I'm not referring to those despicable advocates of unregulated pollution that has been altering the atmosphere with invisible gases for over a century - or contaminating the earth and water and medical patients with untested chemicals - or unfettered destruction of habitat through deforestation, mountaintop removal, deep water drilling, the tar sands, and fracking.  Nothing will change their minds as long as there is money to be made from peddling ruinous activities, no matter how unsustainable.  What alarms me is the denialism that leads some of the most knowledgeable among us to close their eyes to trends nothing short of disastrous that are clearly discernable, even in the models that don't include amplifying feedbacks like methane and the albedo effect.

Ocean acidification is often referred to as the "evil twin" of climate change, but I am starting to think it is  surreptitiously treated more like the "bastard child" by many climate scientists better versed in physics - because the existential threat it poses is generally as unacknowledged as it is inevitable.  Which is too bad, because it scares the hell out of the industry deniers, precisely because it is an indisputably and inevitably existential threat for any number of reasons, chief among them the loss of a major protein source for a large portion of humans (leading to famine, refugees and war), and loss of a primary source of oxygen, to breathe.  It's proven virtually impossible to get climate experts to give even a passing thought to the equally inevitable loss of forests, our other source of oxygen - not off in the future from temperature changes but very soon, within the lifetime of anyone reading this, from tropospheric ozone.

Almost as soon as I learnt about the imminent disasters of climate change and ecosystem collapse to be unleashed upon a largely unsuspecting and hoodwinked public, I was puzzled to notice a long-standing and fundamental rift dividing environmental activists, environmental poseurs, and scientists.  It's anecdotal to say so but lately it seems to me,  that rift is widening.  As news from the frontiers of climate chaos - of floods, and desertification, of tornados and food shortages - worsens for those who are paying attention, and it becomes ever more apparent that technological advances to fix the problem will be far too little and implemented far too late, arguments are erupting in comments on various self-designated Important and Serious websites between those who believe the future is so dangerous for survival that it is (past) time for action, and those who should know better but continue to caution against merely sounding "overly alarmist".

I suppose some people's motives might be less than altruistic, since there is money and prestige and entrenched ideology at stake for some individuals (they should know who they are but probably don't!) - but I think most are genuinely and sincerely trying to follow what they believe to be the most effective path to mitigate and adapt.  However, every human with a heart is susceptible to suffer from their own version of denial.  So personally I think it's tragic that people who almost all have the same fundamental concerns are wasting time and energy quibbling over tactics, such as whether climate science and models and discussions should focus solely on global warming from CO2, or include other emissions from burning fuel that also add to the greenhouse effect (never mind causing pollution that is killing trees and people - not to mention factoring in the feedback effects of demolished carbon sinks like forests).

Another deepening disconnect is on whether to explicitly link free-market capitalism (as it has run amuck in the developed nations, and trampled over the rights of developing countries) with the unavoidable steps necessary to reduce emissions significantly enough to make any sort of dent in, by way of examples, catastrophic ice melting and sea level rise.  The youth who carried signs at Copenhagen, "System Change Not Climate Change" understand that a vast cultural shift is critical, and bravely made the connection...but many of their more powerful elders prefer to ignore it.  Some members of the educated elite also prefer to relegate issues of social and generational justice to the fringes of discourse, and frantically denounce any mention of the exponential and cataclysmic overpopulation of the human species.

All this squabbling over the scraps just plays into the hands of professional deniers and their corporate puppet masters who are profiting every minute that the rest of us dawdle, some paralyzed by fear - or hope, as the case may be.

Paul Gilding has been writing about the "Great Disruption", which he predicts will be followed in time by a better social construct.  I think it's far more likely at the rate we are (not) going that we will have something more akin to a "Great Convulsion" from which there will be little if any life extant.  So, in homage to all of us who care, and despair...Here are the lyrics to

Before the Deluge

Some of them were dreamers
And some of them were fools
Who were making plans and thinking of the future
With the energy of the innocent
They were gathering the tools
They would need to make their journey back to nature
While the sand slipped through the opening
And their hands reached for the golden ring
With their hearts they turned to each other's heart for refuge
In the troubled years that came before the deluge

Some of them knew pleasure
And some of them knew pain
And for some of them it was only the moment that mattered
And on the brave and crazy wings of youth
They went flying around in the rain
And their feathers, once so fine, grew torn and tattered
And in the end they traded their tired wings
For the resignation that living brings
And exchanged love's bright and fragile glow
For the glitter and the rouge
And in the moment they were swept before the deluge

Let the music keep our spirits high
Let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal its secrets by and by
By and by--
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky

Some of them were angry
At the way the earth was abused
By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power
And they struggled to protect her from them
Only to be confused
By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour
And when the sand was gone and the time arrived
In the naked dawn only a few survived
And in attempts to understand a thing so simple and so huge
Believed that they were meant to live after the deluge

Let the music keep our spirits high
Let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal its secrets by and by
By and by--
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky