Blogging At The End Of Earth

Every day that I can, I intend to write a short piece about what feels to many as the UNRAVELING.

Here in Hawaii, for example, supply chains and COVID, climate crisis (rain) combine to create a huge slop of water under our home, and rain pouring in at an entirely different leak in the house.

Invasive species and unending jungle growth have destroyed our yard with pig pits.

We came home to this after a long trip out to the Pacific NW, which ironically (?) had the longest drought in living history, ignited only by bursts of a June heat dome, and many tons of burning, smoky acres.

We are trying to relocate out there, but again, 2020 and 2021 snapped the supply chains like an ancient redwood tree falling to fire after a thousand year reign.

I will continue to write on Medium, and I will continue to be utterly baffled by how all of this stuff works, especially with someone who avoids social media like the plague that it truly is.

Does the Carbon Debate Also Tax Your Relationships?

People are very polarized, as you notice each day now. The newest, widening division is about climate.

People are defensive about “man made” climate change because the implication is that we are all guilty. People can’t face the idea of being blamed, and in fact, they shouldn’t.

Certainly, some are more guilty than others, but this is victim blaming. As in the opiate crisis, the many, many dead were judged for their habits, and often, their “culture” for far too long. Let’s point the finger instead to the dealers.

It is the dealers of the world who profit most, literally, from our addiction to fossil fuels. It was recently revealed that the top twenty polluting corporations of the world not only grow rich on toxic fuel, they are the origin of fully one third of all greenhouse gases spewing into your air each and every day.

Not only that, but they actively played crucial roles in the divide you see today. By undermining the science and blowing the smoke of confusion over public understanding, they have poisoned the well of human discourse, all the while that they poison the planet.

All this denial and all this dirty stuff is the real reason you are afraid to sit down at the table with your Aunt Mary, and racist, Uncle Bob. If you don’t yet realize that racism, sexism, inequality, disproportionate wealth, and climate justice are related, then you just have to talk even more openly to those whose opinions you cannot yet understand.

The IMF is proposing a higher tax on carbon. But this does nothing to lift up the real victims and give them empowerment. It just seeks to tax those least responsible who are working people dependent on energy to buy all that plastic wrapped food.

Let’s not let them do it. It’s really, really important to our civilization that we unite against the real baddies. And, that’s why you have to keep love and conversation alive at the Thanksgiving Day Table.

Back From Canada

And wondering where to get personal involvement (not just charitable) with nature causes on Hawaii Island. Like planting trees? Call me.

We returned after a long summer in Canada and Cascades. At least this year, the whole place was not burning down.

Now back to work.

I want your stories of where you stand on climate. Think it’s crucial to address? Think that it is a leftist hoax? Think capitalism is to blame? Or kleptocracy and corruption?

A tipping point has been reached, it seems, with Greta and Extinction Rebellion and at last a focus on some kind (almost any kind) of Green New Deal.

Oh, and they are impeaching the president who found a way to make something else more important than the fate of our planet. Corruption. Kurds. Complacency. It’s all tied together, isn’t it?