A Grim Warning from Science

by Bill McKibben            Pub. by The New York Review of Books             Nov. 1, 2012

One of the things that makes Sandy different from Katrina is that it’s a relatively clean story. The lessons of Katrina were numerous and painful—they had to do with race, with class, with the willful incompetence of a government that had put a professional Arabian horse fancier in charge of its rescue efforts. Sandy, by contrast, has been pretty straightforward. It’s hit rich, poor, and middle class Americans with nearly equal power, though of course the affluent always have it easier in the aftermath of tragedy. Government officials prepared forthrightly for its arrival, and have refrained from paralysis and bickering in its wake. Which allows us to concentrate on the only really useful message it might deliver: that we live in a changed world, where we need both to adapt to the changes, and to prevent further changes so great that adaptation will be impossible.

Science and its practical consort Engineering mostly come out of this week with enhanced reputations. For some years now, various researchers have been predicting that such a trauma was not just possible but almost certain, as we raised the temperature and with it the level of the sea—just this past summer, for instance, scientists demonstrated that seas were rising faster near the northeast United States (for reasons having to do with alterations to the Gulf Stream) than almost anyplace on the planet. They had described, in the long run, the loaded gun, right down to a set of documents describing the precise risk to the New York subway system.

As nature pulled the trigger in mid-October, when a tropical wave left Africa and moved into the Atlantic and began to spin, scientists were able to do the short-term work of hurricane forecasting with almost eerie precision. Days before Sandy came ashore we not only knew approximately where it would go, but that its barometric pressure would drop below previous records and hence that its gushing surge would set new marks. The computer models dealt with the weird hybrid nature of the storm—a tropical cyclone hitting a blocking front—with real aplomb; it was a bravura performance.

In so doing, it should shame at least a little those people who argue against the computer modeling of climate change on the grounds that “they can’t even tell the weather three days ahead of time—how can they predict the climate?” But in fact “they” can tell the weather, and in the process they saved thousands upon thousands of lives. They can tell the future too. No serious climate scientist believes that the sea will rise less than a meter this century, unless we get off fossil fuel with great speed; many anticipate it will rise far more. Think about what that means—as one researcher put it this week, it means that any average storm will become an insidious threat.

It’s possible that we can spend enough money to somehow protect Manhattan—and it’s possible that we can’t. It’s impossible to imagine that we will be able to protect, say, the Asian subcontinent, or the Pearl River delta of China, or any of the other crowded places imperiled by rising seas. In fact, the last year has seen even more serious flooding in Bangkok and Manila, and a recent study found that New York was only seventeenth on the list of cities at risk of such flooding, with Mumbai and Calcutta leading the league.

Having great scientists, and taking those scientists seriously, are two different things, of course. Our climate scientists—led by James Hansen, who lives in New Jersey and does his work from a NASA lab on the Upper West Side—have trotted patiently up to Capitol Hill every year for the last two decades to present their latest findings, and been entirely ignored, the fossil fuel industry having purchased one of our political parties and cowed the other. But it may be that firsthand experience will accomplish what academic studies have not—Governor Andrew Cuomo, for instance, was forthright in his declarations this week that climate change was a “reality,” that we were “vulnerable” as a result, and that we would need to adjust to deal with it.

But that adjustment can’t just be building new seawalls, because we’ll never catch up. The same researchers who predicted events like this week’s horror have warned that unless we cease burning coal and gas and oil the planet’s temperature—already elevated by a degree—will climb another four or five. At which point “civilization” will be another word for “ongoing emergency response.”

Building new defenses will be expensive but relatively popular; cracking down on the fossil fuel industry will be a great trial, and indeed Cuomo has an important test approaching. He must decide at some point in the coming years whether to allow fracking within the borders of the Empire State. A lead author of a very weak report from his Department of Environmental Conservation is a climate denier; after Sandy it will be interesting to see if the governor asks for a new study from people in touch with actual science. I think he might; as powerful as the fracking lobby is, the sight of a hundred apartment and office lobbies filled with seawater is more visceral. We’ve been given a warning by science, and a wake-up call by nature; it is up to us now to heed them. © 2012 The New York Review of Books

Bill McKibben is Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and co-founder of 350.org.

Child abuse: committees, culture - and cruelty

Ordinary words struggle to convey the human consequences of child abuse, and committee-speak is even less likely to do justice to its victims

Editorial                              Guardian/UK                          November 2012

Ordinary words struggle to convey the human consequences of child abuse, and committee-speak is even less likely to do justice to its victims. The home secretary headed for the Commons to announce the seventh and eighth institutional inquiries launched since the Jimmy Savile paedophilia allegations came to light – these concerned abuse in care homes in north Wales, and the possible inadequacy of an earlier report into this. Listening to the bickering about the scope, powers and terms of reference, it was hard to recall that the issue here was real individual men violating individual children for their own ends.

Counterintuitive as it may be, however, this is a problem that can only be tackled by addressing institutions and culture. After all, witch-hunts against individual paedophiles have been tried in the past. The News of the World's name and shame campaign came and went in 2000, causing chaos without preventing or even exposing the sort of abuse that is currently coming to light. For the reality is that a great deal of the damage is and always has been done behind institutional walls. Eileen Fairweather explains on our comment pages how in care homes these walls are built up out of deference to abusers and disbelief of their wards. From boarding schools to the Catholic church and now the BBC, there are signs of the same story playing out – the powerful closing ranks, and the powerless keeping quiet or speaking out without being heard.

The institutional questions that demand a response range from the specific – who on Earth handed Jimmy Savile Broadmoor's keys? – to more diffuse concerns. The weekend remarks by the retired head of the Duncroft approved school for troubled girls, in which she dismissed former pupils' claims about Savile as "wild allegations by well-known delinquents", tell you everything you need to know about the culture of contempt towards vulnerable youngsters among certain professionals who were supposedly looking after them. Another problem is the traditional presumption, rooted in two centuries of English common law, that child witnesses could not be trusted. This was overturned by statute in 1988, but perhaps it took longer for the culture of the courtroom to change.

The reported dismissal of abuse claims now back in the spotlight by Sir Ronald Waterhouse, the judge who led the original north Wales inquiry, as "embarking on the realm of fantasy" could become a totem of that traditional disbelief. That, however, very much depends on the facts that get upturned – facts that Twittering accusers will not be patient for. That is a pity. Truth will not be advanced, nor children protected, by jettisoning the old presumption against the accuser with a new presumption of guilt for the accused.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/06/child-abuse-committees-cruelty-editorial

 PERSONAL NOTE:  This widespread  evil of child abuse, hidden or suppressed for so long, has now become impossible to ignore.  One who has done much to expose it, and to rally national leaders around the world to act against it, is Ron O’Grady, whose book “The Ultimate Challenge” has just been published. I recommend it highly.  It gives us a picture of an interesting and productive life as a Church of Christ minister. And it is also the record of what can be achieved when committed human resources, energised by strong Christian convictions, are mobilised to expose and attack, non-violently by word and action, injustice and huge evils.

This book of 91 pages is obtainable from ECPAT, PO Box 41-264, St Lukes,  Auckland, for $20 plus post costs.  All profits from book sales go to help fund ECPAT’s work. “Today, ECPAT is actively operating in about 80 countries….  It is respected for its work in the specific areas of child prostitution, child trafficking and child pornography.”   P 83
A.P.

Sandy Forces Climate Change on US Election Agenda

Neither Obama nor Romney talk about climate change. But Americans are joining the dots

by Bill McKibben                         Guardian/UK                        October 31, 2012

Here's a sentence I wish I hadn't written: "Say something so big finally happens (a giant hurricane swamps Manhattan, a megadrought wipes out Midwest agriculture) that even the political power of the industry is inadequate to restrain legislators, who manage to regulate carbon." I wish I hadn't written it because the first half gives me entirely undeserved credit for prescience: I had no idea both would, in fact, happen in the next six months. And I wish I hadn't written it because now that my bluff's been called, I'm doubting that even Sandy, the largest storm ever, will be enough to make our political class serious about climate change.

Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe – just maybe – the arrival of a giant wall of water in the exact middle of the financial and media capital of our home planet will be enough to get this conversation unstuck. Maybe that obscene slick of ocean spreading unnaturally into the tubes and tunnels of the greatest city on earth will shock enough people to change the debate. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, at a press conference Tuesday afternoon, allowed as how: "There has been a series of extreme weather incidents. That is not a political statement, that is a factual statement … Anyone who says there's not a dramatic change in weather patterns, I think, is denying reality."

Truthfully, I think I'd just as soon see statements like that as carefully thought-out endorsements of climate science. It's experience that changes people: the summer's drought left more than half of American counties as federal disaster areas, and meteorologist Jeff Masters estimates Sandy hit 100 million Americans with "extreme weather". Add in the largest forest fires in Colorado and New Mexico, the hottest month in US history, and the completely absurd summer-in-March heatwave that kicked off our year of living sweatily, and you can begin to understand why the percentage of Americans worrying about global warming has spiked sharply this year. Spiked high enough that even a few politicians are willing to speak out.

Not many. The presidential candidates avoided the topic at all their big public forums – except for Romney's Republican national convention joke about how silly it was to try and slow the rise of the oceans. Obama did talk climate with MTV last week, but that venue almost defines the issue's fringe status. They barnstormed through the hottest summer on record, and they didn't seem to notice.

We've got to get some action from these guys. And that, I think, requires a truly crucial set of changes. We need to neutralize the force that's kept them quiet. It's not that our politicians didn't know about climate change: I've watched, for two decades, as the world's best scientists make the annual trek to Capitol Hill to lay out the latest data. It's that, as scary as those charts and graphs were, the fossil fuel industry was scarier still.

As the richest industry on earth, and the biggest political player, the boys from coal and oil and gas have bought one party and terrified the other. Last week – in the very final days of the US election – Chevron smacked down the single largest corporate donation in the Citizens United era, $2.5m to a GOP Super Pac. There's not a congressman who didn't notice, and who didn't think: what if they came after me with ten days to go?

If we're going to change the political equation, we're going to do it by going after the fossil fuel industry. They deserve it. As that Rolling Stone article of mine laid out, they're planning to burn literally five times more carbon than the most conservative government on earth thinks is safe. They've turned into a rogue force.

Which is why 350.org sent out an email blast today, raising money for the Red Cross and raising signatures for a petition to oil execs asking that they stop their campaign donations and spend the money repairing New York instead. And it's why we launch a road show next week. We'll go to 20 cities in 20 nights, trying to spark a movement for divestment from fossil fuel stocks, and a new willingness to stand up to the industry. It starts next Wednesday in Seattle, and we'll do it no matter who wins the White House next Tuesday night.

Because as important as elections are, they're not the biggest battle.                           [Abbrev.]

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited              http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/31-2

Al-Zarqawi's Death is No Cause for Rejoicing

Soledad O’Brian                 the Minneapolis Star Tribune                     June 9, 2006

CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien spoke Thursday with Michael Berg, whose son, Nicholas Berg, was beheaded two years ago in Iraq, likely at the hands of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. This is adapted from their conversation.

Q Mr. Berg, thank you for talking with us again. It's nice to have an opportunity to talk to you. Of course, I'm curious to know your reaction, as it is now confirmed that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man who is widely credited and blamed for killing your son, Nicholas, is dead.

A Well, my reaction is I'm sorry whenever any human being dies. Zarqawi is a human being. He has a family who are reacting just as my family reacted when Nick was killed, and I feel bad for that. I feel doubly bad, though, because Zarqawi is also a political figure, and his death will reignite yet another wave of revenge, and revenge is something that I do not follow, that I do not ask for, that I do not wish for against anybody. And it can't end the cycle. As long as people use violence to combat violence, we will always have violence.

Q I have to say, sir, I'm surprised. I know how devastated you and your family were, frankly, when Nick was killed in such a horrible, and brutal and public way.

A Well, you shouldn't be surprised, because I have never indicated anything but forgiveness and peace in any interview on the air.

Q No, no. And we have spoken before, and I'm well aware of that. But at some point, one would think, is there a moment when you say, 'I'm glad he's dead, the man who killed my son'?

A No. How can a human being be glad that another human being is dead?

Q You know, you talked about the fact that he's become a political figure. Are you concerned that he becomes a martyr and a hero and, in fact, invigorates the insurgency in Iraq?

A Of course. When Nick was killed, I felt that I had nothing left to lose. I'm a pacifist, so I wasn't going out murdering people. But I am -- was not a risk-taking person, and yet now I've done things that have endangered me tremendously. ...

Now, take someone who in 1991, who maybe had their family killed by an American bomb, their support system whisked away from them, someone who, instead of being 59, as I was when Nick died, was 5 years old or 10 years old. And then if I were that person, might I not learn how to fly a plane into a building or strap a bag of bombs to my back?

That's what is happening every time we kill an Iraqi, every time we kill anyone, we are creating a large number of people who are going to want vengeance. And, you know, when are we ever going to learn that that doesn't work?


©2006 Star Tribune

US Election Reflection

by Ian Harris        Otago Daily Times    Oct. 26, 2012

To non-Americans, it seems odd that in a country which built the separation of church and state so firmly into its constitution, religion is deep-grained in every presidential election. This does not, of course, take the form of any church or religious organisation bidding for political power, though like many secular interests they would like to influence certain decisions if they could. But the religious affiliation and views of candidates have long mattered to voters to a degree that does not apply here.

Even that is now changing as the United States remakes itself through immigration from countries beyond Europe and a birth rate which last year, for the first time, added more children of minorities – Hispanics, blacks, Asians, mixed-race – than whites.  And this year, for the first time, there is no white Anglo-Saxon Protestant candidate standing for president or vice-president. Instead the US has a Mormon pitched against an African-American Protestant for president, and two Catholics challenging for the vice-presidency.

In a matching development, the Supreme Court bench has nary a Wasp in sight. It currently comprises six Catholics and three Jews. The Founding Fathers, deist and Protestant almost to a man, would be astounded.

Whether those trends are seen as good, bad, or indifferent will depend on each person’s religious and political perspective, though they hardly reflect the make-up of the electorate at large. Whether that matters, given the separation of church and state, is another issue.

Religion, however, is still highly relevant. According to surveys, most Americans say it is important for a president to have strong religious beliefs. And despite the institutional separation, the understandings, values and world-views of candidates, inevitably influenced by the kind of faith they profess, must colour their approach to the issues.

Among Christians, the key differences used to be defined largely by denomination. A Protestant would oppose a Catholic almost on principle, a hurdle which Catholic John F Kennedy only just surmounted in 1960. And where Mitt Romney would once have been a non-starter because of his Mormon faith, a survey last August showed 60 per cent of voters to be comfortable with that, with only 19 per cent finding it a problem.

Since the 1980s a new mosaic has taken shape in which denomination matters less than moral values. People of every religion and none find they share conservative values centred on personal morality, or liberal values focused on broader social and environmental issues. One fascinating consequence of this divide is that in a nation that exalts freedom above all else, the word “liberal”, which means free, has become for conservatives a term of abuse in both politics and theology.

Politics imbued with religion has deep roots in American history. For many Americans it shows in a sense of destiny as a people uniquely favoured by God, a nation set above all others, “the hope of the earth,” Romney said this week. Such divine blessing must then be repaid with moral earnestness – and if need be, moralistic repression.

The Puritan colonists laid the foundations for these attitudes nearly 400 years ago. They have resurfaced periodically in spiritual awakenings, religious fundamentalism, and then the emergence of the Religious Right as a potent political force. Its leaders want to “take back America”, meaning bring it under their moral control.

This evangelical Protestant movement has found common cause with conservative Catholics, otherwise hardly their bedfellows. Both are profoundly disquieted by the erosion of traditional moral values, which they blame on secular liberalism. Instead they promote a “culture of life”, and organise like any other lobby to advance it.

That means opposing abortion, a role for women beyond family life, equal rights for homosexuals, same-sex marriage, embryonic stem-cell research, “big government” encroaching on their freedoms (including the regulation of schooling), health and welfare programmes, and outsiders such as the United Nations and an assertive Islam. Insecurity in a changing world breeds fear and hate. These are powerful motivators in getting people out to vote.

Of course moral earnestness is not necessarily a bad thing – it got rid of slavery – but as a church billboard once said: “Morality without love is a source of evil in the world.” You know it’s love when it enlarges another’s freedom, maturity and responsibility. However, political campaigns have never been love-fests, and the current one looks especially visceral. The pity of it is that the Religious Right has helped make it so. Barack Obama could win without them. Romney could only win with them. “Taking back America” could end up taking America backward.