FROGS-R-US

The latest mercury-busting high temperatures are paralleled by the rising tension in Washington over whether to raise the debt ceiling. Is there a connection between our unsustainable debt and the almost unendurable heat that grips much of the nation in its molten fist?

It is getting awfully difficult to pretend that global warming isn’t intensified, if not caused, by human activity. There are still too many who would stridently deny it, but whether the skeptics like it or not, fundamental economic assumptions may be melting away in these waves of heat.

I fail to understand the oddly pinched version of self-interest that apparently motivates some of our wealthier citizens. As they corrode the strength of the middle and working classes by exercising ever-greater lobbying power over all three branches of government to keep their own tax burden light, are they not killing the very markets that are the ultimate source of their wealth? In their rejection of public servants of integrity like Elizabeth Warren, are they not spurning the very transparency and perceived fairness which ultimately allows the system to work to their own, and everyone else’s, benefit?

Where in the heated discussion about whether or not to raise the debt ceiling is a comprehensive view of where we are headed, comprehensive enough to include our own effect on the biosphere upon which we, wealthy and poor alike, depend for life?

The Treasury may print more dollar bills, but the ceiling of the debt owed to Nature is as unyielding as the steel in our ever-higher skyscrapers.

Just as capitalism only works if it includes some kind of fairness compact between producers and consumers, there is need for a new societal compact that takes into account our radical interdependency with larger systems. Our leaders ought to be debating how to change the tax code not only to make it simpler and fairer, but also to massively incentivize energy conservation and sustainable alternative sources of power. We are presented with the opportunity to measure economic growth by quality of life over quantity of goods. But this requires the kind of far-sighted creative thinking that kills not just two but ten birds with one stone.

For example, the biggest polluter and user of fossil fuels on the planet is the U.S. military. Meanwhile the Pentagon is preparing to fight wars over scarce resources, while that very scarcity is worsened by—hello—pollution and the use of fossil fuels.

In the 1980s, to help awaken people to the danger of thermonuclear holocaust, many people used what is now a scientifically discredited metaphor: if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it would immediately leap out, but if you put the same frog in a pot of cold water and gradually heated it, it would sit passively in the pot and slowly boil to death—the point being that if citizens continued to sleep and nations to drift, we would all get overtaken by nuclear war.

Unfortunately a metaphor can remain apt even if its literal source is untrue. This comes involuntarily to mind as we sweat through the heat wave in our third floor walkup in Boston. We’re right under the roof of the building; meaningful survival is not possible without at least one room with AC into which to retreat. Yet there’s something about air conditioning that comes around to bite us in the butt.

We are cooling ourselves against the very same hot air that our ACs are expelling, while the power to run these machines is generated by climate-change inducing fossil fuels.

Taking the dogs out for their midday walk and feeling them pull toward shady spots, I put my palm on the asphalt pavement and understand their concern. It burns.

Escaping from Boston to Cape Cod to beat the heat, we found ourselves at a bazaar where native arts and crafts from around the world were being sold under the sponsorship of a worthy organization called Cultural Survival. As we all shopped blithely among brightly patterned clothing, rugs, and jewelry made by threatened indigenous peoples, I wondered if anyone there was thinking about the survival of our own culture?
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JUMPS TO MAKE NOW

Think: "These are incredibly difficult conversations to have. Yet if we do not talk about this, we relinquish all decision making to others."...Carolyn Lukensmeyer, author of the America Speaks newsletter.

“Will we humans prove to be like real frogs who jump out of the water before they are cooked, or will we prove to be the metaphoric version who remain unconscious of the onrushing cataclysm...until it is too late?” ...William Hallmark, BW representative to COP 15 Copenhagen U.N. conference on global climate change.

Explore the interactive "Global Hot Map" from Union of Concerned Scientists.
"The evidence of climate change includes heat waves, sea-level rise, flooding, melting glaciers, earlier spring arrival, coral reef bleaching, and the spread of disease.The greatest concentration of global warming indicators on the map is in North America and Europe because that is where most scientific investigation has been done to date."

Learn: "Even a small increase in ozone due to a warmer climate would have a significant impact on public health." "Washington, D.C. already is experiencing months of high temperatures that climate scientists projected would not occur until the end of the century."... Liz Perera, UCS health expert and co-author of the recent UCS report. Read more: "Climate Change and Your Health: Rising Temperatures, Worsening Ozone Pollution"

Connect online Sept 14, 7:00 PM your time zone:
24 Presenters. 24 Time Zones. 13 Languages. 1 Message. "24 Hours of Reality" is a worldwide event to broadcast the reality of the climate crisis. It will consist of a new multimedia presentation by Al Gore. People living everyday with the reality of climate change, from Tonga to Cape Verde, Mexico City to Alaska, Jakarta to London, will tell their story, connecting the dots between recent extreme weather events — including floods, droughts and storms — and the man-made pollution that is changing our climate. Learn how to help. It's time to choose Reality.

Change: "Educators and psychologists, artists and activists, elders and leaders have all asserted that at the core of our global societal and environmental crises is a need to change our fundamental personal values and what we uphold as meaningful in our lives. Personal transformation is critical to mitigating our global crises. While we teeter on a precipice without knowing the outcome, it’s encouraging to remember that unprecedented changes have occurred throughout history, positive shifts that at one time seemed impossible. Many of us have drawn upon examples of these shifts for inspiration:
• from the abolishment of slavery to women’s suffrage,
• from the end of apartheid in South Africa to the fall of the Berlin Wall,
• from unchecked industrial pollution to the restorative Clean Air and Clean Water Acts,
• from green technology moving from a fringe venture to a critical and fast-growing contribution.
And although each of these changes still faces ongoing struggles, we can see and experience the worldwide benefits of these paradigm shifts as they occur. Yet these changes came about in our human realm only because the root causes of the problem, the suffering or imbalance, was first recognized by individual people who changed their minds, thus changing the world around them."
...Osprey Orielle Lake - from her book, Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature.