#climate #change

You hear about it a lot: on the airwaves, in print, online, offline, onshore, offshore, in the fields, the streets, along the boulevards, in the boardrooms and the barns, land, sea, and air.  

Climate change.

It’s undeniable, both the talk and the reality. Indisputable. Incontrovertible.

But here on planet Harm climate change is precisely what’s needed. We need urgent, radical, sustainable climate change. We live in an atmosphere (a biosphere, if you will) of too much heat, too many decibels, and too much acid rain spewing from our mouths. They say, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” How about, “It’s not the heat, it’s the harm.” 

Things have gotten so steamy (in discourse, taste, and discord) you can hardly breathe. The harmony is killing us, quickly or slowly. Please note that on Harm the word “harmony” has an etymology that differs from the one Earthlings embrace. For us, harmony comes from “harm”; from there, we share the same etymological lineage as Earthlings: Old English hearm "hurt, pain; evil, grief; insult," from Proto-Germanic harmaz, taken from Old Saxon harm and Old Norse harmr "grief, sorrow”; hearkening back to Old Frisian herm "insult; pain," Old High German harm, German harm "grief, sorrow, harm”; and so on. You get the point.)

It will surprise no resident of this planet that we have a dangerous level of toxic constituents of concern (COCs); harmful doses of pollutants; a cornucopia of contaminants, including contaminants of emerging concern (CECs). We find these silent killers in our foodweb, our worldwide web, our breatheweb, drinkweb, and most tellingly in our speechweb.

We daily ingest a menu of verbal criteria air pollutants, degrading both our ambient air and indoor air quality (IAQ). It’s a menu we can’t select from column A and column B. No, we are forced to eat the whole smorgasbord of scathing vitriol. Harm’s measurable air emissions emanate from heat and power generation, lies, deceptions, half-truths, dissemblings, distortions, and double dealing. The particulate matter dancing in the air we breathe matters. Particulate matter matters (PMM).

We suffer suffocation by syllables; no one can get a word in edgewise here.

What to do?

It’s not too late. almost, but not yet.

Naturally, source control is the most efficient and cost-effective means of remediation.

Here are other suggested interventions for atmospheric remediation, for salutary and salubrious climate control:

• mechanical collectors: AI-powered robotic devices that capture seemingly invisible harm-packed and potent dialogue bubbles (similar to the kind seen in comic strips and graphic novels)

• dispersion scrubbers: mega-fans that scatter the syllables into micro-phonemes (Note: the harm-laden words or actions become subdetectable, which many experts assert makes them more dangerous.)

• fabric filters: masks that muffle utterances into indecipherable gibberish (The inventors apologize for not having these available while Rush Limbaugh was scorching the airwaves.)

• electrostatic precipitators: devices that generate an avalanche of static so as to negate negative discourse

• combustion systems (thermal oxidizers): harmful words and actions are blown up at the point of origin

• condensers: harmative events or words are squashed like cockroaches

• absorbers/adsorbers: AI-choreographed and orchestrated WiFi devices that suck harmifacts from the atmosphere and marry them to each other, internally or surficially, respectively

• biological degradation: bioremediation processes whereby Nature takes its toll, breaks harm down, gets its revenge, or balances its karma

• selective catalytic reduction (SCR): spiritually lowers the temperature or renders impotent  harm-drenched discourse or detrimental action

• genetic retro engineering: attempts to nullify negative impacts Harmlings are prone to; also known as Edenic edification (experimental beta version in progress; volunteers sought for clinical trials) 
  

'Eskimo Blue Day' True Day

. . . The human name
Doesn't mean shit to a tree . . .

 . . . But the human crowd
Doesn't mean shit to a tree . . .

. . . The human dream
Doesn't mean shit to a tree . . .
 
"Eskimo Blue Day," Jefferson Airplane
 Grace Slick, Paul Kantner 1969

Be careful there. What's that? Easy now. Careful. Watch out. What is that? That's sharp. Careful! You're gonna hurt someone. It's dangerous. What the hell are you doing? Stop! That hurts! Please. What did I ever do to you? Who do you think you are? Don't. I'm begging you. Stop! That's excruciating. I'm warning you. Pleading. Ouch. This is unbearable. You're killing me. Where do you get off . . . 

rewilding

He said rewylding. With a Y. I said what. New to me. Looks Olde English. Drop the Y. Rewilding. Meaning what. Back to nature. The way it was. Not exactly pristine. Less of the human stain. More of the falling rain. Riverine innocence. No, not quite. Gentle footfalls footprint. Let it be. Let them be. Let us be. Native naked nature. Reforest. Rewater. Recharge. Restore. Resilient. Re future generations. Regarding the stillness. Sacred mysteries. Back to harmony. Before Adam. Before Eve. And ever afterward. Prologue. Epilogue. Dialogue. Stillborn monologue. Sense of place. Here and now. This not that. Suchness. Mirabile dictu. Mirabile visu. 

shorn hills

At the rest stop (cleverly dubbed a text stop by New York State) in Roscoe, along Route 17, a historical and conservation marker poetically declares that "the shorn hills" have grown new timber. The shorn hills. I love it. I really cannot imagine this era producing any sign, historical or not, that employs "the shorn hills" as a phrase.

wastewater, or wastetime, or wastespace

I worked many years in the environmental field.

I still do some consulting work via @kocakwords in that area.

Questions:

If we have wastewater, can we also have wastetime? May we? Where does time go when it is wasted? Or is it metaphysically and physically impossible to waste time? Are their emissions related to wastetime? Are they harmful or beneficial? How are they measured? Do we even want to measure them?

What about space? If there is wastewater, is there wastespace? Is that what people mean when they angrily assert, "You're fired! You're just wasting space around here!"

Or is it, again, impossible to "waste space"? And if you can waste space, what are the impacts? Can they be mitigated? May they?

Just wondering.

Carry on, Jevons

"Carry on, Jevons" sounds like the beginning of a British comedy of manners. To the manor born (not "manner," as people erroneously write), that sort of bit. Square jaw. Clenched. Smoking jacket. Leather-bound volumes. A glass of sherry (but none for abstinent moi).

But Jevons here refers to the Jevons Paradox. As David Owen (if you like smart contrarians, always look for him in The New Yorker) put it in "The Efficiency Dilemma," in the December 20, 2010, issue of The New Yorker magazine:

In 1865, a twenty-nine-year-old Englishman named William Stanley Jevons published a book, “The Coal Question,” in which he argued that the bonanza couldn’t last. Britain’s affluence and global hegemony, he wrote, depended on its endowment of coal, which the country was rapidly depleting. He added that such an outcome could not be delayed through increased “economy” in the use of coal—what we refer to today as energy efficiency. He concluded, in italics, “It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth.”

Some, if not most, economists and environmentalists assert that the Jevons Paradox has little effect in the modern world. But, as Owen notes, no one has ever really studied all the variables that go into a macro-study. And it would be impossible to calculate. Owen says the Jevons effect is essentially the history of civilization. It happens all the time, in many ways.

It's only common sense, isn't it? Cheap gas? Hummers galore. Expensive gas? Less driving, smaller cars.

Let's extend the Jevons principle into more metaphorical realms, if you will:

• More talk equals less thought.
• Less thought equals more talk.
• More blogging equals less originality.
• More sex equals less pleasure.
• More channels adds up to less entertainment.
• More money results in more poverty.
• More faith means more science.
• One leap of faith begets a dance of doubt.
• Two Kierkegaards tie one Buster Posey.
• Three pas de deux surprise a guillotine of guilt.
• Seventy-seven haiku hijack a hiatus of hilarity.
  

It is possible these are skewed conclusions, not proportionally propositioned or logically legislated.

That's okay. It's my venue.

In veritas veritate.

Age quod agis.

Or something like that.

As you were, Jevons.

water(brain)washed

I went to a high school graduation today. At Bishop Ludden Junior-Senior High School. Naively, very naively, I was surprised, though shouldn't have been, to see vending machines near the entrance, in the hall. For beverages. No, no, not beer. Nothing like that. Juices and stuff. And water! Bottled water. Commercially bottled water. Can you tell me why? Nearby, in the hallways, were several water fountains. In fact, the gym was hot so I made use of those water fountains two or three times during the ceremony. The water was fine. Perfect.

I noticed how people were happy to shell out money to get bottled water from the machines. That's how brainwashed we've become. The water I drank from the clean water fountains was likely cleaner than the bottled water. Most people do not realize, or accept, that municipal water standards are typically stricter than the standards for bottled water. The water from the fountains was pure and clean and cold and tasty. And free. (Not counting taxes or fees, but I don't live in that town; maybe my county taxes figured into the equation.) We'll say virtually free. The point is, municipal water is way cheaper than commercially bottled water.

Of course, people who felt that they'd be repeatedly thirsty could've brought a container (as can school kids, presumably). Or we can -- get this -- walk (!) to a water fountain.

Syracuse-area water is among the best. Why does anyone have to buy water bottled by Pepsi or Coca-Cola?

Why?

Marketing, brainwashing.

Now, kids at Bishop Ludden, those of you who have not yet graduated, here's an Earth Day project for next year: unplug and empty those vending machines. Demonstrate. Boycott. Stop using bottled water.

Stroll to the water fountain.

Now that's environmental radicalism.

Clotheslined

I was clotheslined by an article on clotheslines (that's hard to say; it gives one a syntactical lisp; also, how do you like my use of the same word as a verb and as a noun?).

Using a clothesline saves energy, the kind of energy consumed by dryers and their high-temperature swirling and tumbling.

Using a clothesline to dry your clothes also has the potential to offend neighbors who view the airing of one's formerly dirty laundry as unsightly and unseemly (undies! bras! T-shirts! Y-fronts! seminally stained satin semantics!). There goes the formerly lily-white neighborhood, some say, fearing a splash of rainbowed raiment and a bust of their unbrassiered real-estate booty.

I am old enough to remember our backyard clothesline, one that twirled like an umbrella. It worked fine. Ironic, isn't it? The Fifties, remembered as so prim and white and monolithic and orderly and righteous, were really sloppy and multicolored and raggedy, the era's clothes flapping in the wind or in the hot summer sun for all the world to see -- unlike the decade's private lives and private thoughts.

There is a semantic delight to all this, one that The Laughorist is always wordie wordiliciously keen to share with his or her readers:

wind energy drying devices.

That's the term some local legislators are using to legislate in favor of clotheslines.

Yes, indeed. A clothesline is a wind-energy drying device [hyphen added by Mr. Redactor].

Greenwashing

I learned a new word at an environmental conference last week:

greenwashing

It's a delicious combination of green and whitewashing (and brainwashing, come to think of it).

According to Wikipedia, here are the Six Sins of Greenwashing:


In December 2007, environmental marketing company TerraChoice gained national press coverage for releasing a study called "The Six Sins of Greenwashing," which found that 99% of 1,018 common consumer products randomly surveyed for the study were guilty of greenwashing.

According to the study, the six sins of greenwashing are:

• Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off: e.g. “Energy-efficient” electronics that contain hazardous materials.
  

• Sin of No Proof: e.g. Shampoos claiming to be “certified organic,” but with no verifiable certification.
  

• Sin of Vagueness: e.g. Products claiming to be 100% natural when many naturally-occurring substances are hazardous, like arsenic and formaldehyde (see appeal to nature).
  

• Sin of Irrelevance: e.g. Products claiming to be CFC-free, even though CFCs were banned 20 years ago.
  

• Sin of Fibbing: e.g. Products falsely claiming to be certified by an internationally recognized environmental standard like EcoLogo, Energy Star or Green Seal.
  

• Sin of Lesser of Two Evils: e.g. Organic cigarettes or “environmentally friendly” pesticides.

Being a bit of a wordsmith, I ask you, what would these words mean:

yellowwashing

redwashing

purplewashing

blackwashing

graywashing

Oh, I have ideas percolating. Oh yeah.

Sometimes, though, it is best to let imaginations play, which would be spectrumwashing.

Mysteries of Fate and Transport

Fate and transport.

I love that term, even though it evokes a dreadful memory. Edit that to say, formerly dreadful.

First, the memory. Or, as Vladimir Nabokov memorably put it, in the wondrous title of a piercing and singular autobiography: Speak, Memory. (Anyone interested in writers or writing should check out the terrific essay at the link.)

It's 2002. I'm a technical editor and writer ("Project Specialist") at an environmental engineering firm. Oh. Let's speak it. (Why not? I am too old and detached from it to care or fear.) It was Blasland, Bouck & Lee, or BBL. (Today it goes by something like "BBL, an Arcadis company.") The client needs a chapter on the "fate and transport of constituents" at a contaminated site. We cannot, however, use the words "contaminated" or "contaminant" or "contaminants." In language -twisting the evil propagandist Joseph Goebbels could appreciate, we euphemistically call the pollutants or contaminants "constituents," evoking thoughts of the electorate or at worst neutral players in the drama authored by Mother Nature. I am tasked with writing Chapter 6, if I recall correctly, of a feasibility study (FS), or maybe it's a remedial investigation (RI). There's one problem: I am not in any manner an expert on the fate and transport of anything, certainly not constituents. I read up on everything I can find (articles, websites, in-house technical journals). I enlist the help a brilliant colleague, but he too is not an expert on fate and transport. But no one else wants to help; it is not corporately expedient. In fact, it is de rigueur not to help me. The real corporate expert, out in the Rocky Mountains, could conceivably help but does not, owing to schedule, distraction, indifference, malice, or, what?, his pending sex-change operation. He doesn't write one word to help me but charges 40-some hours to the project, for feck's sake. I can't sleep. My eyes are hollow. I am falling apart, ready to cry at anything or anyone. My therapist sees me in ruins. I work on drafts until 1 a.m. at home. I submit it to the clients. They hate it. My superior hangs me out to dry. That is my fate, transported there by misery and madness.

That was then.

Today, somebody at my current workplace mentioned something about aquifers, and it transported me back to those fateful days. Those former days were the beginning of the end of that toxic job.

Tonight, walking the dog, the sky bright at the horizon, a blue of Caribbean waters deepening into a nightly dark blue denim of dreams and blankets, starlit fabric heralding a creeping absence of day and light, I wondered at the fate and transport of the blossomed and billowing forsythias competing for hue and chroma with the double-yellow stripe in the middle of the park road.

I wondered at the fate and transport of emerald hills carpeted fresh and raw as any dusk in Ireland.

What is my own fate and how will I be transported there?

My mind bubbled with echoes of virility and nubility seen at the mall I just returned from (okay, I'll fess up: that's a highfalutin way to describe my ogling of scantily clad female beauty -- at least scanty compared to the coated cocoons of wintry dress sported round these parts for about nine months of the year).

Fate and transport. We see it all over.

I get home and a silverfish centipede scampers in the dark of the kitchen. I cringe at them. I fear and loathe them. I kill it by stepping on it with my shoes, slightly disappointed the dog or one of the cats didn't see it first to do my dirty work. Then it would seem more, um, natural.

Moments later, in the bathroom off the kitchen, it's a spider. I take a tissue and catch it and toss it into the toilet bowl while continuing with the fate and transport of the not-quite-forsythia-colored streaming of my personal constituents. After earlier browsing through Buddhist books and after buying A Book of Hours illustrated by my high-school teacher John Giuliani, I admit it wasn't kindly to Mr. Spider. Yes, I suppose I could've tossed him or her outside.

But I was in the middle of my own surficial water discharge/recharge cycle.

Nobody's perfect.

Such is my fate.

May this posting transport you to somewhere you have not been to before.

Tschuss.

P.S. As you know, I'm annoyed that the poster up above is missing the comma after wildlife; plus the rest of its punctuation is a dog's breakfast.

Leave It to Beaver

A live beaver has been spotted in New York City, allegedly for the first time in about 200 years.

It was seen swimming in the Bronx River last week.

Of course, Times Square is not in the Bronx and has been all Disneyed up, but I'm pretty sure Forty-second Street and Eighth Avenue featured lots of live beaver in the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties. But memory is tricky and selective. I could be wrong. Maybe it was all trick photography, and smoke and mirrors.

"Hello! Is this microphone working?"

"Thank you, thank you, ladies and gentleman. I'll be here Thursday, Friday, Saturday."

"Can you hear me back there?"

"Hey, Louie, throw those hecklers out, will you!"