Lunacy, Stupidity & Climate Change
Do truths from the past or truths in the present even matter?
I am warned this post is too long for email, likely because of much artwork and photos, not too many words. Please read it in your browser or the app if it cuts off.
A warm welcome to new readers. The Normalization of Madness struck a nerve with many of you, and the reaction was inspiring. This work is a labor of love for our planet and our future. Thank you.
Lunacy
Kurt Vonnegut knew something of human insanity. Taken prisoner by the Germans on December 19, 1944, he was transported through German territory via unmarked railway car which was consequently strafed by Allied forces, to one of its largest prison camps, Stalag IV-B. Although the Geneva Convention specified POW officers weren’t required to perform labor for their captors, the rule didn’t apply to privates. Vonnegut was selected with 150 others for a labor detachment destined for the city of Dresden, 30 miles south. From January 10 to mid-February, he and fellow prisoners were forced to work in a malt-syrup factory run by malicious guards. The detachment was housed in a slaughterhouse with subterranean levels, which turned out to save his life. The address of the slaughterhouse was Schlachthof 5. Slaughterhouse-Five became the title of his incredible and best-selling semi-autobiographical 1969 novel. Dresden was fated to be obliterated.
In four air raids from February 13 to15, 772 of British Royal Air Force (RAF) bombers and 527 of the United States Army Air Force equivalents (USAAF) dropped nearly 4,000 tons of bombs on Dresden, resulting in a raging firestorm that destroyed over 1,600 acres. In just over 24 hours, 25,000 people were killed. Vonnegut and the other POWs escaped the firestorm and death in an underground meat locker. Afterward, they were forced to recover bodies and collect corpses for burial or funeral pyres as surviving residents threw rocks and cursed them.
Dresden, famed for its intellectual culture and architectural beauty, was reduced to rubble and cinders. Close to the end of the war, and of no military significance, it’s argued if this was a war crime. To my mind, all war is crime, as is the assault by corporations on our inherent human right to an inhabitable planet.
Why do I write of Dresden, an event that happened nearly 75 years ago? Because I believe the true solutions to our problems are behavioral and social, not technical. Technology will not save us from our pathetic, self-destructive behavior. At best, technology and our way too late move to wind turbines and solar can buy us some time to transition down to what life looked like in mid 1700s Dresden. Oil is running out, I hope in time because that which begat eight billion people is now killing us. We are heading for a world with less energy, not more, because oil defines our ability to mine and manufacture the “green” economy falsely promised as life without change. It’s bullshit.
Writers, thinkers, and artists are the ones who hold and impart wisdom and true answers. Not the arrogant technologists and lying politicians.
Stupidity
In one of Vonnegut's later novels, Galápagos, a tribute to Charles Darwin, he portrays a society is that has evolved backwards to have small brains. Sound familiar? How many names do I need to rattle off? How many small brains do we have running the system now?
Here are some examples. I would upload more pictures, but I’m pretty sure I would crash the Substack servers.
Anyhow, enough on stupidity. No worries, it’s a subject I am sure to return to.
Climate change
I spend every day appalled at the lack of deep coverage and emphasis on climate change, now not just change, but a four alarm fire underplayed by our mainstream media. Little wonder, since it’s all owned by the deluded people who wish to keep destroying our planet for insatiable power and profit.
This article was intended to address permafrost thaw in the Arctic, which is estimated to contain twice the carbon that the atmosphere currently harbors, already bringing destruction, and that’s not accounting for methane. Temperature in the Arctic is rising at three to four times the average rate as the planet as a whole, shocking computer modeled predictions. This is a profound tipping point, a planetary climate system that has stored carbon and methane in the form of the dead organic material of plants and animals for eons. Portions of it — Siberia, Canada and Alaska — are now emitting GHGs, not holding them securely away from us. The thawing, the melt, also feeds warm water into the Atlantic Meridional Ocean Current, slowing it, critical to convecting and balancing temperature across the hemispheres.
I will be getting back to this topic, permafrost, but my research turned up conflicting information, not in kind, but in the details. Much of it was shockingly old as well, dating back five years or more. I will be consulting a climate scientist expert in that region, and hope to pull that article together in the next week or two.
Fight people. First and foremost, defeat the Orange Fucker in November. In his agenda to become a fascist dictator is dismantling all environmental regulations, and unleashing Big Oil to finish the job. He even extended a one billion dollar bribe if the oil psychos help him get back into office. All the other protections and rights we have fought for so hard in this wildly imperfect democracy are at stake as well, and none of those will be retained on a planet that increasingly burns, floods, destroys individual and collective lives, and demands all our energy for mere survival.
I recently re-read Slaughterhouse-Five, and it had an even greater impact on me than it did when I was younger. After many years, I have come to the conlusion that insanity and stupidity are not a recent problem, or even a symptom of our modern civilization. They are an integral part of the human race, and there is no way to fix them. The idea that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, is still true today and always will be.
All you and I can do is try to make our voices heard. But we must also remember to create a life for ourselves where we can find some happiness and hold on to our own sanity!
Things are unraveling much faster than predicted. Antarctic ice shelves with twice the ice estimated, permafrost melting (and releasing viruses and bacteria which potentially humans no longer have immunity to, heat waves, wildfires and this is just the beginning.
Then we have a president raving about our having the "best military in the world, the best training, the best equipped....." but the US Navy can't build a temporary pier for food delivery in Gaza in one of the calmist water in the world. Something to be proud of? What would have happened on D Day with this level of competence? 20 partial shipments many of which never made it to the palestinian people for 230 million dollars. Has to be the most expensive rice in the world. That must be why we haven't won a war since WW2. Could we adapt surface to surface missiles maybe? With the supposed accuracy the MREs could be delivered to individual families. Call in your order.
https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/pentagon-shut-troubled-gaza-pier-aid-operation-rcna161646
With sea level rise coastal towns and piers are going to disappear and for shipping purposes will have to be rebuilt. But how? Ses level rise will be relatively slow so they well have to be rebuilt continuously for years as well as access to them and support structure like cranes, refrigeration and storage warehouses etc.
We're just getting started! Woo hoo!