In David Wallace-Wells March 6, 2024 New York Times interview “John Kerry: ‘I Feel Deeply Frustrated’,” Kerry was quoted about global public climate apathy, “I’ve likened it to a kind of de facto signature on a suicide pact.”
Well, yeah.
In my 2018 book Carbonfish Blues the end of my poem “Welcome to the Future” noted:
“as Arizona’s wild horses die of drought, and
sooner or later we must individually decide
if we will take suicide pill of apathy with others.
The brown eye of a raven up close
is enough to convince us otherwise.”
Kerry’s frustration also reminds me of Eisenhower’s farewell address cited in my 2015 book Industrial Oz in my poem, “Why All US-Made Nuclear Waste Must Be Stored at the White House”:
Eisenhower, in his
farewell address,
spoke the truth
about dangers
of the military-industrial complex,
but to whom? Sparrows?
His words were recorded
by reporters
and microfiched in libraries.
I saw a film praising
the two-time president and 5-star general
for his courage to speak
and thought it ridiculous.
Give the guy credit for D-Day,
but his farewell address was like
if Jesus had said at Gethsemane,
“Father, instead of being crucified,
I just say Satan is bad, okay?”
Eisenhower’s conscience, like Oppenheimer’s
and ours, is a dreaded glowing
that can never be buried deep enough
to avoid leaching into groundwater.
I would have respected John Kerry more if instead of calling UAE appointment of oil chief Sultan al-Jaber to oversee COP28 UN climate talks “a terrific choice,” Kerry said, like former President of Ireland Mary Robinson tweeted about COP26, “[ . . . . ] While millions around the world are already in crisis, not enough leaders were in crisis mode. People will see this as a historically shameful dereliction of duty.”
Kerry’s self-described “Deeply Frustrated” voice could have said, “COP28 is mostly over even before it has begun” then, as I wrote in my December 14, 2023 post, “[but] given billions of human and nonhuman lives at stake, one possible solution would be for the global community to incentivize ‘Saudi Arabia and allies’ with huge economic and social benefits to get a fossil fuel phase-out approved at COP29 November 11-24, 2024 ‘[tentative]’ in Baku, Azerbaijan, or COP30, 2025, in Belém do Pará, Brazil near the Amazon forest. Otherwise, small-scale geoengineering seems likely with significant risk of wars due to intended or unintended effects on different countries. Large-scale geoengineering, if even possible over 1°C [above year 1850 baseline], would bring a financial burden for many, or all, future human generations, and serious risk of the dreaded “termination effect” if financing were cut for any reason. Tim Krueger, a James Martin Fellow at University of Oxford Geoengineering Programme, made a great Youtube about 3 minutes long explaining “The Termination Effect on GeoEngineering.”
This level of honesty is needed for families in island nations, Somalia, Syria, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Yemen, Chad, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Pakistan, and many other places as carbon emissions keep rising according to “The Global Carbon Budget Office [ . . . ] led by Professor Pierre Friedlingstein from the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute with the support of more than 100 people from 70 organisations in 18 countries.”
I told a group discussing the climate issue, “In politics belief is reality. In physics belief is irrelevant. The global climate only responds to actions.”
My favorite recent climate item is Bill McGuire’s March 7, 2024 cnn.com, “Opinion: I’m a climate scientist. If you knew what I know, you’d be terrified too.” Recently, I told different groups “The reason to keep trying is that some climate scientists noted every tenth of a degree matters to humans and nonhumans.”
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