“We’re All to Blame”

How many times have you heard the pious intonation, “we’re all to blame”? If you’ve thought about the matter at all, the answer is obvious: too damn many. (Frankly, one time is too damn many.)

At best, this assertion — “argument” is too kind a term — is a malign form of virtue signalling indicating that the speaker has wisely and selflessly “accepted responsibility,” while you, you poor benighted sod, haven’t.

Beyond the unseemly self-congratulation, the humble-bragging inherent in the phrase, why is it malign? Why is it worse than useless?

Because it short circuits critical analysis. Because it let’s those entities and (to a lesser extent) individuals responsible for the world’s problems off the hook.

Let’s see how this works in regard to the most pressing issue of our times: climate change and resultant global ecological catastrophe. (Here, a popular variation on the “we’re all to blame” trope is that old people, as a class, are to blame.)

What kind of actions does assigning blame to everyone point to? With responsibility that diluted, assigned to an undifferentiated mass, with every individual treated as equally responsible, the “we’re all to blame” assertion points to nothing beyond what everyone can do: lowest-common-denominator individual actions such as recycling, reducing energy consumption, tending a vegetable garden, repairing rather than replacing, bicycling and using public transit, eating a vegan diet, etc., etc.

While these actions are all worthwhile, even if they were very widely adopted they would be grossly inadequate as an answer to ecological collapse. They would provide some amelioration, but they would do nothing to address the underlying structural reasons for impending and ongoing environmental cataclysm.

To find ways to address that collection of catastrophes, you need to go beyond pious platitudes, you need to look at the economic, social, and political structures that have produced the ecological crisis, and those sociopathic entities that benefit from the crisis. The vast majority of people are largely along for the ride, propelled by forces they neither understand nor control. (This isn’t to say that they can’t understand or control those forces, just that at present they don’t.)

So, let’s do a brief, necessarily very incomplete analysis of how global warming and its attendant ecological problems were created, and what can be done to address them. Let’s consider rising sea levels (inundating island nations and low-lying coastal areas, and already producing climate refugees), and ever-increasing extreme weather, with its droughts, floods, and hurricanes.

There are reasons for all this. The following list of factors is very obviously far from complete. But it points in the direction where research and consequent action is needed. Please note that this is not intended as a blueprint or detailed analysis, and is simply intended to show the direction we need to take to actually deal with the environmental crisis. How we need to start thinking about things. Given these provisos, here are a few of the most important factors producing global warming — there are many others:

• Fossil-fuel burning. At present, the cost of renewables (solar, wind, etc.) is falling like a rock, and in many cases is already below the cost of fossil-fuel power generation. But the government continues to provide massive subsidies to the fossil fuels (and nuclear) industries, and to starve renewables of development funds. Why? That brings us to the next factors:
• The profit motive. Many of the world’s biggest companies are fossil-fuels corporations, and make tens of billions annually (sometimes per quarter) from sales of compounds that are destroying the environment and the lives of future generations. Why are they doing this? Why this horrendous irresponsibility? It’s simple. Money, lots of it. Lots of it in the short term. Corporations are sociopathic by nature and have essentially a single duty: to maximize returns to investors, no matter the cost to others or the environment.
• Our bought and paid for politicians and political system. Why do our “public servants” put up with, indeed support, this grossly antisocial behavior? Because it’s in their interests to do so. A great many of them receive campaign contributions from the fossil fuels industries, sometimes enticements beyond that, and many often go to work as well-paid lobbyists for those industries immediately after retiring from “public service.”

What does all this point to in the here and now (neglecting radical social-political-economic transformation, which will be necessary at some point soon)? Here are but a few possible steps:

• Removal of fossil fuel subsidies.
• Drastic increase of funding for renewables research and deployment.
• Greatly increased taxation of fossil-fuels companies.
• A ban on corporate political contributions; an upper limit on all political contributions; and a mandate that all political campaigns be funded by small donors.
• A ban on lobbying by former “public servants.”

As noted above, this does not even begin to approach a comprehensive analysis nor a comprehensive list of recommendations. It’s merely an example of how we need to start thinking about these matters and start thinking about ways to deal with them, how we need to get away from the simplistic “we’re all to blame” assertion and look at actual causes and solutions.

(For more on all of the above, see John Grant’s excellent Corrupted Science (revised & expanded).

Health permitting, I’ll try to have a related post on habitat loss and resource depletion up shortly.

4th of July Report: Trump’s America and Hitler’s Germany

(We ran two earlier, considerably shorter versions of this post in years past under the title “Nazi Germany and the U.S.A.” As you might have noticed, things have changed a bit lately, hence this update.)

* * *

REFERENCES TO FASCISM abound in American political discourse. Unfortunately, most of those using the term wouldn’t recognize fascism if it bit ’em on the butt, and use it as a catch-all pejorative for anything or anyone they dislike. But the term does have a specific meaning.

Very briefly, as exemplified in Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, fascism is an extreme right-wing, phony-populist ideology and political-economic system (which Mussolini dubbed “the corporate state”), the key features of which are strident nationalism, militarism and military worship, a one-party state, a dictatorial leader with a personality cult, a capitalist economic system integrated with state institutions (to the mutual benefit of capitalists and fascist politicians), suppression of independent unions, government use of media as a propaganda instrument, suppression of civil liberties and all forms of political opposition, and an aggressive, expansionist foreign policy.

The racism, racial scapegoating, and racial persecution that permeated German fascism are not part of fascism per se, unless one wants to classify extreme nationalism as racism. There’s a case to be made for that, but for now let’s consider them as separate maladies. But since the topic of this post is the comparison of Nazi Germany to the U.S.A., we will consider racism as well as fascism in the following comparisons.

Getting to the headline topic, just how similar is the present-day U.S. to Nazi Germany? Let’s look at specifics:

 

Nationalism

• Nazi Germany: See Deutschland Uber Alles, Triumph of the Will, Lebensraum, etc., etc.
• US.: “American exceptionalism,” “God Bless America,” “Manifest Destiny,” “Make America Great Again,” etc., etc. From ideological justification for invasions, territorial annexations, and military interventions to everyday trivialities (Nazi armbands in Deutschland, flag worship in “the land of the free”), America gives Nazi Germany a run for its money as regards nationalism.

Corporate Capitalist Domination

• Nazi Germany: The German industrialists (notably the Krup armaments company) were key Hitler backers, and benefited handsomely from his rule.
• U.S.: Trump has filled his cabinet with people from the fossil fuels industry (e.g., Rex Tillerson, former head of ExxonMobil) and big banks, notably Goldman Sachs (Steven Mnuchin, et al.); Obama’s primary 2008 backers were Wall Street firms and the pharmaceutical companies; Bush/Cheney’s were the energy companies.

Of late, Trump’s slavishness to the interests of the big corporations has become blindingly obvious with his dismantling of clean air and water regulations (which safeguard public health while impeding corporate profits), his attempts to open millions of acres of federal lands (including national monuments) to desecration by mining and fossil fuels corporations, his (and other Republicans’) attempts to restrict access to Medicaid, to allow the insurance industry to discriminate against those with pre-existing conditions, and his refusal to do anything about the obscene price of prescription drugs and the obscene profits of the drug companies. (Trump’s “plan” to reduce drug costs was complete bullshit designed only to string along the gullible while providing cover for the continued gouging of the public by big pharma. The fact that pharma stocks spiked immediately after Trump released the details of his “plan” tells you all you need to know about it.)

Militarism

• Nazi Germany: The Nazis constructed the world’s most powerful military in six years (1933-1939).
• U.S.: Last year, U.S. military spending accounted for approximately 43% of the world’s military spending, and the U.S. has hundreds of military bases overseas. With the aid of his accomplices in Congress, Trump just boosted the “defense” budget to approximately $700 billion, not including the tens of billions in the “black budget.” The figures aren’t final yet, but it’s a good bet that current U.S. military spending not only considerably outstrips any other nation’s (China’s is hard to judge because of secrecy, but may be as high as $250 billion), but could quite possibly now account for a full half of the world’s military spending.

Military Worship

• Nazi Germany: Do I really need to cite examples?
• U.S.: “Support our troops!” “Our heroes!” “Thank you for your service!”

Military worship is almost a state religion in the United States. Tune in to almost any baseball broadcast for abundant examples; this worship even extends to those on what passes for the left in the United States: Michael Moore, Stephen Colbert, Rachel Maddow.

Military Aggression

• Nazi Germany: “Lebensraum” — you know the rest.
• U.S.: To cite only examples from the last half-century where there were significant numbers of “boots on the ground,” Vietnam (1959-1973), the Dominican Republic (1965), Cambodia (1970), Grenada (1983), Panama (1988-1990), Kuwait/Iraq (1991), Afghanistan (2001-present), Iraq (2003-2011). And this doesn’t even include bombing campaigns and drone warfare. Then there’s the matter of proxy aggression enabled via logistical and intelligence support by the U.S. The most horrific current example is the brutal Saudi intervention in the Yemeni civil war.

Misuse and Misrepresentation of Science

• The Nazis suppressed “Jewish science,” financially supported and sponsored fringe pseudoscience (into the supposed superiority of Aryans, among other things), and based government policy (including the Holocaust)  on that fringe pseudoscience. They mutilated science to force it to fit into the procrustean bed of their ideology, and millions died as a result.
• U.S.: Here, the misleading “science” is supplied by the major corporations and their bought-and-paid-for “scientists,” who denigrate real science while promoting corporate-sponsored studies that promote corporate interests. Prominent examples include the efforts of the tobacco, pesticide, and sugar industries to present their deadly products as safe while vilifying scientists whose research demonstrated the actual effects of their products. Tens of millions have almost certainly died as a result.

Currently, the most serious such assault on science is corporate-funded climate change denial. It’s been obvious for decades that climate change is real and a deadly threat, and over 95% of climate scientists agree — and have agreed for decades — that it is. Yet the fossil fuels corporations have funded and promoted the work of a very few contrarians (whose work doesn’t, upon examination, hold up) to cast doubt on climate change science so that they can wring every last dollar from coal, oil, and natural gas.

Now, official U.S. policy is based on climate change denial pseudoscience. Trump has filled his administration with science deniers, especially climate change deniers, notably Scott Pruitt at the EPA, who are busy undoing clean air and water regulations, are doing their best to promote use of dirty fossil fuels, and are discouraging the use of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. Trump has even proposed public subsidies for money-losing coal-fired power plants that utilities are planning to close.

As in Nazi Germany, government policy is based on willful ignorance of science. Millions upon millions will almost certainly die as a result, unless the government drastically reverses its course and implements evidence-based policies based on the work of climate scientists.

(For more on all this, see Corrupted Science: Fraud, Ideology, and Politics in Science [revised & expanded], by John Grant. Full disclosure: See Sharp Press published Corrupted Science.)

Incarceration and Slave Labor

• Nazi Germany: The Nazis built concentration camps holding (and exterminating) millions, and employing slave labor.
• U.S.: In comparison, the U.S. has by far the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world, far outstripping China, with only Russia’s incarceration rate being anywhere near that of the U.S. Slave labor is routine in America’s prisons.

Justice System

• Nazi Germany: The Nazis had a three-tiered “justice” system: one for the rich and powerful (who could get away with virtually anything); a second for the average citizen; a third for despised minorities and political foes.
• U.S.: There’s also three-tiered “justice” system here: one for the rich and powerful (who can get away with virtually anything); a second for middle-class white people; and a third for almost everyone else.

Obama’s “Justice” Department never even investigated the largest financial fraud in world history that led to the 2008 crash, let alone charged those responsible. Prosecutors routinely pile on charges against average citizens to blackmail them into plea bargaining and pleading guilty to charges of which they’re not guilty; it’s no accident that America’s prisons are filled with poor people, especially blacks and hispanics who can’t afford bail and good legal representation; at the same time cops routinely get away with murder of blacks, hispanics, and poor whites.

Suppression of Unions

• Nazi Germany: In Nazi Germany, the government tightly controlled the unions, and used them as arms of the state.
• U.S.: In the U.S., the government merely suppresses strikes when “in the national interest” and allows corporations to crush union organizing drives through intimidation and by firing anyone who dares to attempt to organize.  Of late, the Supremes have further crippled the unions by outlawing the collection of fees from nonmembers who the unions represent in collective bargaining. (Admittedly, the sell-out, hierarchical, visionless AFL-CIO unions bear considerable responsibility for this sad state of affairs.)

Free Speech

• Nazi Germany: Total suppression of free speech; direct government control of the media.
• U.S.: There’s near total corporate control of the media, and suppression of free speech when it shows the faintest sign of threatening, or even embarrassing, the government or the corporations that control the government. The Obama and Trump administrations have viciously gone after whistleblowers and reporters who have exposed their wrongdoing — Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, James Risen, Reality Winner, et al.

Trump routinely attacks journalists who report anything even slightly embarrassing to him, or who point out any of his almost innumerable lies. Of late, he’s upped the ante by attacking the press as the “enemy of the American people” in a transparent attempt to intimidate the press and provoke the anger of his worshippers.

As well, Trump routinely lies about damn near everything, great and small — Politifact clasifies 69% of his statements as being “mostly false” or worse — counting on the fact that the press (e.g., New York Times) is reluctant to label his lies as lies, allowing Trump to muddy the waters and mislead the public.

Fortunately, Trump doesn’t have complete control of the media. But he does have the sycophantic tools at Fox “News,” Breitbart, InfoWars, and the rest of the right-wing echo chamber. Almost worse, 67% of Americans get at least some of their news from social media sites such as Facebook, with an unknown percentage getting all of their news from these platforms (predominantly Facebook). What makes this dangerous is that Facebook feeds them news reports that, based on their previous “likes” and other use, reinforces their existing beliefs and prejudices.

Add that to Trump’s denigration of the free press and you end up with a significant part of the population that’s woefully misinformed.

Other Civil Liberties

• Nazi Germany: Total suppression.
• U.S.: Suppression when individuals exercising those liberties show the faintest sign of threatening the government or the corporations that control the government. The coordinated suppression (by the FBI, local governments, and corporate security agencies) of the Occupy Wall Street Movement nationwide in 2011/2012 is the latest large-scale example.

Spying Upon Citizens

• Nazi Germany: The government had a massive eavesdropping operation. No citizen was safe from government scrutiny.
• U.S.: The FBI, DHS, and NSA — and let’s not forget Facebook — make the Nazis look like amateurs.

Free Elections

• Nazi Germany: Total suppression
• U.S.: U.S. citizens have the opportunity to vote for the millionaire and billionaire representatives (over half of Congress at last count, plus the president) of the two wings of the property party: one wing being authoritarian, corporate-servant, science-denying theofascists, the other wing being merely authoritarian corporate servants who routinely betray those who elect them. As well, the Republicans are doing their best to destroy what passes for American electoral democracy through egregious gerrymandering and voter suppression on an industrial scale.

Racism

• Nazi Germany: Do I even need to cite details?
• U.S.: (We’ll restrict ourselves here to the present.) The “justice” system imprisons blacks at a rate over five times that of whites, and hispanics at a rate about 30% higher than whites. Cops routinely get away with murdering poor people, a disproportionate number of them blacks and hispanics. Median household wealth for whites is 13 times that of blacks. And median household income for whites is 60% higher than that of blacks and hispanics.

As well, the Republican Party’s longtime “southern strategy” — and its largely successful attempts to disenfranchise black voters — was and still is designed to appeal to racists.

Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric and racial scapegoating of Mexicans and other hispanics is merely the cherry atop this merde sundae.

Victimhood

• Nazi Germany: Hitler and the Nazis whined constantly about the German people being victims of the Jews (under 1% of the population at the time) and the supposedly vast Jewish conspiracy permeating all facets of social and economic life, even depicting Jewish people in propaganda films as vermin: rats. In short, Hitler stirred up hatred of a powerless minority by presenting them as victimizers rather than victims.
• U.S.: Trump whines constantly about an “invasion” of Latin American immigrants — fleeing horrific violence and political and social repression — who he portrays as rapists, murderers, drug dealers, and gang members endangering the nation through a supposed crime wave. (In reality, per capita criminal activity by Latin American immigrants is lower than that of Americans as a whole.)  In short, Trump stirs up hatred of a powerless minority by presenting them as victimizers rather than victims.

Personality Cult

• Nazi Germany: Again, do I even need to cite details?
• U.S.A.: Trump worship is rampant on the evangelical right, who see this steaming pile of viciousness, hypocrisy, and narcissism as the means to their theofascist ends. And Trump encourages such sycophancy. The cringe-inducing filmed cabinet meeting last year in which cabinet secretaries heaped fulsome (in both senses of the word) praise and thanks on the dear leader is but one example. Another example: Last July presidential aide and Trump toady Steven Miller said on Fox “News” that Trump — who would likely flunk a fourth-grade English test — was the “best orator to hold that office [president] in generations.” All hail the Glorious Leader.

 

Yes, there still are significant differences between Nazi Germany and the U.S.A.  But they grow smaller with every passing day.

Review: Bandwidth, by Eliot Peper

(Bandwidth, by Eliot Peper. 47 North, 2018, 252 pp., $24.95)

reviewed by Zeke Teflon

(Warning: This review contains mild spoilers concerning the first two dozen or so pages of the book.)

In recent years, the beer mega corporations have been buying up independent small breweries. They’re continuing to use the small breweries’ names as marketing tools while avoiding disclosure of the relationship of the formerly independent breweries with the conglomerates. The list of fake craft brands includes Ballast Point, Breckenridge, Kona, Pyramid, Redhook. . . . . The list goes on.

Now this trend has reached the publishing industry in perhaps even worse form. Meet 47 North.

When I picked up Bandwidth and saw the 47 North logo and name, I said “Ah! another small press publishing science fiction! Haven’t seen this before!” Then, after I finished the book and was preparing to write this review, I looked at the fine print on the copyright page. It read in part, “Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47 North are trademarks of Amazon.com Inc. or its affiliates.”

So, we’ve now reached the point where we not only have fake craft breweries, but also fake small presses. (Yes, I know, traditional large publishing houses — almost all bought up in recent years by media conglomerates — have imprints, but Amazon is not a traditional publisher: it’s now vertically integrated in its bookselling/publishing arm, and seems to be attempting to achieve a monopoly in the bookselling trade. It’s already close, selling approximately 50% of all print books in the U.S. and 70% of e-books.)

As well, Amazon (following in the steps of the chain bookstores) has been largely responsible for the decimation of American independent bookstores over the last two decades, and has also been an absolute disaster for small presses. (The reasons for this are too complicated to go into in this review, however you can read more about the damage Amazon does to small publishers here and here.)

So, what to do about a book published by one of the tentacles of this octopus? To review or not to review? (Not coincidentally, U.S. independent bookstores almost across the board refuse to carry books published by Amazon.)

Unfortunately, I liked Bandwidth and don’t want to hold the publisher against the author, so . . . . .

Bandwidth is a near-future techno-thriller whose primary character, Dag Calhoun, is a highly placed lobbyist for sale to anyone with the money to buy. Those with the cash include fossil-fuels corporations engaged in climate-change denial, and The Feed, a world-spanning company that has subsumed Facebook, Google, and to a large extent the Internet itself, and to which almost all people are connected 24 hours a day.

While on a lobbying assignment in Mexico City, Dag meets a mysterious woman, and shortly after is shocked to find that someone has total access to his Feed and its archives, including information that could send him and his clients to prison.

From there, he goes on a quest to find the woman who he suspects is the one responsible for the data breach.

The remainder of the book revolves around Dag’s search, how Facebook-like entities can be used to shape perceptions and even personalities, the character transformation Dag undergoes — he’s initially very unlikable — while on his quest, climate change, climate-change denial, and especially whether the ends, no matter how high minded, ever justify the means.

Peper comes down on the right side of this question in Bandwidth, which makes his choice of a publisher highly ironic. It would have been hard for him to find a more evil means of conveying his message that the ends never justify the means. If he was conscious of the damage Amazon has done, and is continuing to do, to independent bookstores and small presses, his choice of Amazon as a publisher was quite hypocritical.

Authors, however, are often amazingly oblivious to the workings of the bookselling and book publishing industries, so it’s entirely possible that Peper wasn’t aware of how toxic Amazon is to the book trade, small publishers, and ultimately the authors those small presses publish.

Despite the clear contradiction between Bandwidth‘s noble message and its odious means of delivery, I do recommend the book.

* * *

Zeke Teflon is the author of Free Radicals: A Novel of Utopia and Dystopia (pdf sample here). He’s currently working on the sequel, two translations, a nonfiction book, two compilations, and an unrelated sci-fi novel in his copious free time.

 

 

 

 

New Article by John Grant, author of Corrupted Science

John Grant, author of Corrupted Science: Fraud, Ideology, and Politics in Science (revised & expanded), has a nice piece on why the Republicans and especially the Bush and Trump administrations have been so eager to ignore and misrepresent science, and at the same time pursue environmental policies that couldn’t be more obviously harmful to the public and to future generations.

John’s essay, “Donald Trump, Corporate Profits and the Cult of Tomorrow Morning,” appears in The Revelator (“An initiative of the Center for Biological Diversity“).

Review: The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World, by Jeff Goodell

(The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World, by Jeff Goodell. Little Brown, 2018, 340 pp., $28.00)

 

It’s easy, even if you accept the science, to think of global warming as an abstraction, because, as regards the human perception of time, it’s a long term trend. That’s true even in many places which are already being affected, such as Southern Arizona, which is projected to suffer the highest temperature increases of anywhere in the lower 48.

We’re already experiencing drastic warming. Last year was the warmest ever here, we had our hottest June ever, with three days at 115F or above (46C), and we had almost no winter (well, what passes for winter down here: It’s below 70? Break out the parkas!).

The change in the weather is already affecting vegetable and fruit tree planting seasons here: What I and other gardeners used to plant in October, we now tend to put off until November (hottest ever last year). Or December. (It was so warm this winter that I’ve put off buying and planting a peach tree until this fall, hoping for cooler weather then.)

So, I’m already affected by long-term temperature increases, if only as a minor annoyance. But most people here don’t garden, are caught up in daily life, and find it easy enough to ignore gradually warming temperatures — at least until the next 116 or 117F day, which they’ll promptly forget once it cools down even slightly.

But it’s not so easy to ignore global warming in other places, specifically low-lying coastal areas and islands.

Hence the value of Jeff Goodell’s latest book, The Water Will Come. It serves as a timely reminder to those of us who live inland, those who are climate-change deniers, and those with head-in-the-sand attitudes living in low-lying coastal areas, that climate change (with a focus on ocean warming and sea level rise) is all too real, is already having drastic, destructive effects in some areas, and that the destructive effects will get worse, especially if we don’t do anything to mitigate them, while we still can.

Goodell, in plain, “just the facts, ma’am” prose, explores what’s already happening in places as diverse as Alaska (Inuit villages falling into the rising sea), Miami (ever-worse flooding), and the very low-lying Marshall Islands (which will disappear). Goodell does this through not only presenting the scientific facts, and through descriptive passages, but also through interviews with many local people who provide graphic illustrations of the effects of sea level rise on daily life.

While that’s valuable, I wish Goodell would have spent more time on mitigation efforts and ways of reducing CO2 emissions in the short term. But that’s not the point of The Water Will Come — those are topics for other books. Goodell’s point is that we have a real problem, and we need to start addressing it now.

If there’s one real fault with The Water Will Come, it’s that Goodell gives the Obama Administration, and Barack Obama himself, a complete pass in regard to dealing with climate change (and everything else). There are several passages in the book dealing with Goodell’s interviews with Obama Administration officials, and one with Obama himself, and the tone in those passages borders on worshipful.

Given how awful Donald Trump is, there’s a tendency on the part of liberals to venerate Obama while ignoring the fact that he was a lousy president who betrayed those who voted for him.

When he had real power, with big majorities in both houses of Congress during his first two years, what did Obama do? He produced a grossly inadequate stimulus package that was just large enough to save the big banks, but not the millions upon millions who’d lost their jobs and homes — for them, he did next to nothing; he pushed through a grossly inadequate healthcare measure (Michael Moore called it a “quarter of a loaf” measure) that was designed to preserve the parasitic healthcare insurance industry and big pharma; and beyond that, he didn’t even try to accomplish anything significant regarding climate change or much of anything else. (For more on Obama’s betrayal of the people who voted for him, see “Obama and His Base: An Abusive Relationship, part 3.“)

(I mention all this for two reasons: 1) one always suspects, generally correctly, that when writers treat politicians reverentially, it’s because they’re not fully doing their jobs — as Frank Kent famously said, “The only way a reporter should look on a politician is down”; and more importantly 2) because, if we elect another business-as-usual, corporate Democrat in 2020, it’s a good bet that his or her response to the climate crisis will be, as usual, very inadequate.)

But aside from the Obama worship, there’s little to dislike in The Water Will Come. The book is a useful reminder and illustration of the seriousness of the global warming problem, how bad its effects already are in some places, and how much worse those effects are likely to get — especially if we don’t start making real changes now.

Recommended.

Solstice Greetings from the Inferno

Howdy from Tucson, where the final day of Spring came in at (depending  on which forecast you believe) somewhere between 112 and 114 degrees F (45 degrees C for you furriners). (Update: it was actually 115 F.)

It’s supposed to be even warmer tomorrow (make that in a few hours). (Update: It was warmer: 116 (47 C) ; in Phoenix it was 119. As I write, the high today was a mere 115, and we’re in for a major cooling spell this weekend, where the highs won’t get much above 110.)

About three weeks ago, after our first string of 100+ degree days, one of the local weathermen (Kevin Jeanes on KOLD — and sorry for the political incorrectness, that should be “weatherperson” or “person of weather”) with, shall we say a dry sense of humor, commented that the temperature was “all the way down to 99, and it’ll be even cooler tomorrow at 97.” (Again, for those of you who use a rational temperature scale, that translates to 37 C and 36 C.)

For those who haven’t been paying attention to U.S. climate models, they predict that this region, the desert Southwest, will be the hardest hit of the “lower 48.” And indeed it has been. We’ve been in a prolonged drought for nearly 20 years (broken last year by “normal” rainfall), and two of the last three years, 2014 and 2016, were the hottest on record. We just experienced the second warmest Spring ever, with the hottest March (high and mid 90s temperatures starting around March 1).

So, yeah, global warming is a “hoax.” We need to burn more coal. Donald Trump is an intelligent, honest, compassionate human being. And the unfettered greed inherent in capitalism isn’t a death sentence for the planet.

Things seem bleak, but we’re not totally screwed. There are things we can do individually and collectively to adapt and to counter global warming.

One thing damn near everyone can do is to plant trees. If done on a mass scale, this can reverse desertification. Even on an individual scale, it’s one of the best things we can do.

Gardening is another individual approach that makes sense. It involves far less expense than transporting food for thousands of miles, and involves far less waste. It also yields health benefits via relaxation, if nothing else.

Another individual approach, in arid regions, is to use xeriscaping, using native plants and a carpeting of rocks in place of lawns and non-native plants. This saves water — a lot of it, and it looks better than lawns.

Then there’s water harvesting — again, something damn near everyone (at least every property owner) can do at reasonable cost that will be amortized in a relatively few years. Even if you’re just channeling rain water from your roof and patio into wells for your fruit trees (as I am), it helps.

And then there’s passive solar heating (just think big picture windows facing south with an overhang that cuts off the sun in the summer months) and solar hot water heating (ultra easy — I built a solar hot water heater out of two old hot water heaters painted flat black [stripped of their external metal jacket and insulation], plumbing fittings, an old window, and scrap plywood and 2X4s about 20 years ago — a friend is still using it).

Then there’s ultra-insulation. Think straw bale and rammed earth construction. These energy-saving approaches can be used almost anywhere, and will often result in extremely energy-efficient dwellings.

To go even further on the individual scale, basements make a hell of a lot of sense in desert areas. Temperatures in them are a good 25 degrees F below surface temperatures, and there aren’t even seepage problems in deserts. The only reason they haven’t been adopted on a mass scale in the sprawlopalises  of the Southwest is that land, historically, has been so damn cheap that builders have foregone them in place of slab construction, which yields better short-term profits. If you’re having a place built in this area, think about adding a basement.

As for societal approaches, they’re so obvious that I’ll mention them only in passing. First and foremost, a direct tax on carbon emissions — screw carbon “offsets”: they’re a recipe for fraud; massive public investment in clean energy; energy-efficient transport and appliances; mass investment in public transit, including bicycle projects; tree planting on a mass scale; and subsidies for individual clean energy projects, passive-solar retrofits, water harvesting,  and energy-efficient construction.

Why do I think all of this is important? There are a couple of reasons.

One is that if adopted widely all of this would help save the planet (or at least make the lives of our children and their children better). The other is that it would keep people involved, and at least marginally hopeful. People without hope are easy to control and manipulate. Real, positive change is possible only when people have hope.

If you haven’t already done so — even on the smallest individual scale — please join those of us trying to create real change, please join those of us creating hope.

 

 

 

Review: American War, by Omar El Akkad

(American War, by Omar El Akkad. Knopf, 2017, $26.95, 333 pp.)

reviewed by Zeke Teflon

 

In recent decades, dystopian novels have become nearly synonymous with science fiction. It´s easy enough to see why: climate change seems to be accelerating, some areas (e.g., the American Southwest, where I live) are already feeling severe effects from it, and the results worldwide in coming years promise to be catastrophic; we’re on the brink of a new dark age under the iron fist of religious totalitarians and their political co-conspirators; we’re well into a period of mass extinction; there’s runaway population growth actively encouraged by some of the “great” religions; modern weapons of mass destruction are far beyond “nightmarish”; technological advances are far outstripping social advances; and sadism and stupidity are running neck and neck as national hallmarks.

Given such conditions and such bleak prospects, it’s easy to see why dystopianism is the far-from-new normal in science fiction.

So, having heard next to nothing about American War, I was expecting a fairly standard take on the horrors to come, especially the ecological horrors. But  American War, which describes the “second civil war” (2074 – 2095), is a far from standard tale.

El Akkad deliberately (I’d bet the farm on this) sabotages the plausibility of his dystopia.

The first hint is the map in the front of the book showing the breakaway “Free Southern States” (FSS) of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi as opposed to the rest of the U.S., with the Southwest mostly part of the “Mexican Protectorate.”

My reaction to the map was, “What the hell? Three poor, backwards states standing against the rest of the country? Holding on for 21 years?”

Very shortly into the text, El Akkad makes it very plain that he’s not projecting possible future developments in the United States, but is up to something quite different.

The reason for the FSS rebellion is the prohibition of use of petroleum products as fuels. Again, what the hell? None of the three states are significant oil producers; we’re rapidly approaching peak oil production; most new production in North America (shale, tar sands) is much more expensive than pumping from the old, rapidly depleting oil fields; and the cost of renewables is falling like a rock. This almost certainly means that oil will go up in price and will be rapidly displaced by cheaper renewables. The underlying premise is barely plausible now and will become increasingly implausible as time passes; it will make no sense at all six decades from now. So, El Akkad deliberately chose an extremely improbable background premise.

Then there’s a glaring–and I mean glaring–absence in the social structure of the FSS: racism. Racism disappearing from the American South in a mere sixty years, and during a time of upheaval and economic desperation? What the hell?! Who, if they thought about it, could possibly buy this?

So, just what is Akkad up to?

The first clue is the title of the book, “American War.” That seems a bit ambiguous, and why isn’t there even a vague reference to the “second civil war”? (It would be quite easy to add such a reference in a subtitle.)

The second clue is provided by the book description on the inside of the dust jacket:

Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the war breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, her home state is half underwater, and the unmanned drones that fill the sky are not there to protect her. A stubborn, undaunted and thick-skinned tomboy, she is soon pulled into the heart of secessionist country when the war reaches Louisiana and her family is forced into Camp Patience, a sprawling tent city for refugees. There she is befriended by a mysterious man who opens her eyes to the injustices around her and under whose tutelage she is transformed into a deadly instrument of revenge.

Fair enough, but the final sentence of the second paragraph on the inside flap reads, “It’s a novel that considers what might happen if the United States were to turn its devastating weapons upon itself.”

Close, but not right.

Above all, American War is about the present. (Tellingly, there’s no mention of any technology whatsoever beyond what’s currently available.)

American War is not about the effects of developing technologies; it’s not about an even remotely plausible future in the U.S.

It’s about the psychological effects of the type of war the United States has been waging sporadically for decades, and nonstop for the last 15 years, in the Near East, Middle East and Northern and Eastern Africa. It’s about what happens to people who are torn from their homes, are forced into miserable refugee camps, are under constant deadly and random threat from above, and are kidnapped, imprisoned without charge, and brutally tortured.

Shortly into the narrative, El Akkad reveals that the U.S. unmanned drones are solar powered, can stay aloft indefinitely, rained down destruction during the entire two-decades-plus of the war, and are uncontrolled, because Southern “terrorists” destroyed the “server farms” controlling the drones. This is beyond ridiculous on several counts, and again points to the very high likelihood that El Akkad deliberately made his background — in this particular, the drones — implausible.

Why would he do that? (Such apparent sloppiness is in stark contrast with Akkad’s adroitly drawn and developed characters and his skillful rendering of both action sequences and physical background.)

The point is that the drones are simply there as a constant threat, maiming and killing the innocent, seemingly at random. The point is the constant, year-in-year-out state of fear and anger suffered by those under threat.

The same holds for all of the other horrors El Akkad describes, and their woeful, ever worsening effects on the personalities, outlooks, and consequent actions of his characters, especially Sarat.

This story could be set in virtually any combat zone in any Muslim country. El Akkad set it in the U.S., using American characters, disguising it as a run-of-the-mill sci-fi dystopian tale, simply so that American readers will be able to relate to it on an emotional level.

There’s little point in saying more, except that if you want to understand the psychological roots of the hate and terrorism engendered by America’s foreign wars, American War is a good place to start.

This book is a masterpiece.

Very highly recommended.

* * *

(Reviewer Zeke Teflon is the author of Free Radicals: A Novel of Utopia and Dystopia. He’s currently working on its sequel and an unrelated sci-fi novel. A large sample from Free Radicals, in pdf form, is available here.)

 

 

 

 

Record Heat — Record Denial

Last weekend it was 115 here in Tucson (or 114, depending on which weather service you want to believe — 45C for you furriners).  We’re well on the way to the hottest June ever, with temperatures averaging maybe seven degrees F above the normal 101 or 102.

What brings this to mind is that is’s 2:00 a.m, still 90 degrees outside, and (after escaping the hotter office), I’ll sitting in the coolest room in the house (practice room on the north side), playing guitar because it’s too hot to sleep, too hot to work in the office, and it’s way too hot to play guitar in the living room.

The climate models indicate that southern Arizona will be the most affected (no, I won’t say “impacted”–too ugly a term) area in the U.S. by global warming, and our temperatures are certainly bearing this out.

The shills for the fossil fuel companies, their propaganda “Faux News” network, and the “low information voters” they dupe attempt to dismiss this. They call themselves “conservatives,” but’s what “conservative” about playing Russian roulette with a loaded pistol? Realistically, it’s more like playing Russian roulette with a semi-automatic. (There are no  peer-reviewed articles on the topic, out of more than a thousand,  in scientific journals that deny that man-made global warming is real.) Think about it — what is “conservative” about ignoring a dire threat? Even if you give it only a 10% chance of being right (rather than the almost certain 100%) , what’s conservative about gambling with your kids’ lives and well-being?

The temperatures keep going up, the energy companies and their dupes/paid whores keep denying there’s a problem, and I truly wish they were bringing the apocalypse only on themselves. (They’d richly deserve it.)

But they’re bringing it on all of us.

If you ever wanted evidence that capitalism is pathological, this is it: These immoral profiteers have been trying to  hide evidence and delay action for decades on an existential threat to all of us that will bring about, at minimum, hundreds of millions of deaths and untold misery for billions of others. Including our kids.

But they’ve been profiting by it to the tunes of billions upon billions of dollars.

So, climate change deniers, go for it, be “conservative.” Ignore the scientific evidence, and pull the Russian roulette trigger on your — and your kids’ — heads.

The oil companies will thank you for it. (Actually, they won’t — they utilize, but have no respect for, stupidity.)

 

 

 

Who Would Be Worse, Trump or Clinton? (updated)

by Chaz Bufe, publisher See Sharp Press

(All of the things I refer to in the following post are matters of abundant public record. Doubt anything here?  — look it up.)

Let’s consider who would be worse in the following areas:

Civil Liberties & Open Government — Clinton has a decades-long penchant for secrecy (see the e-mail scandal and her botched early ’90s attempt at healthcare reform) and has called hero-whistleblower Edward Snowden a “traitor.” Trump wants to make it far easier to sue people for their comments, and has called for the murder of Snowden. Who’s probably worse? — Tossup

Supreme Court — Who would appoint the most anti-civil-liberties, pro-corporate nominees? Clinton would probably appoint middle-of-the-road types, and Trump would likely play to his base and appoint rightist authoritarians. Who’s probably worse? — Trump

Wall Street Reform —  Despite his common-man pretensions, Trump, who inherited at least tens of millions, is one of the insiders, and Clinton is seriously beholden to Wall Street. Would she do anything to financially threaten her backers? Highly doubtful. Who’s probably worse? — Tossup

Job Creation — A certain level of unemployment is helpful to employers in keeping wages down, so it’s virtually certain neither of these corporate tools would do anything meaningful in this area. Who’s probably worse? — Tossup

Cost of Education — Fewer and fewer American families can afford to send their children to college, and millions of those who do go come out of college burdened with crushing debt. Trump, who never had to worry about such things, would very likely do nothing about this. Clinton would likely initiate a few token reforms, in effect applying a band-aid to a gushing hemorrhage. Who’s probably worse? — Trump (barely)

Universal Healthcare  — Both Clinton and Trump oppose it. Clinton has taken tens of millions from the private healthcare industry, and has promised to “build on” Obamacare rather than expand Medicare or initiate some other single-payer program. Instead, she’ll propose incremental changes to Obamacare that will allow big pharma and the insurance industry to continue to gouge the public. Trump will likely leave Obamacare alone for the most part, as the idea of depriving millions of voters of health insurance is politically radioactive. Neither Trump nor Clinton will do anything to advance universal healthcare. Who’s probably worse? — Tossup

Income Inequality — Trump is spewing the standard GOP Horatio Alger b.s. about “opportunity,” utterly ignoring the fact that the economic system is rigged in favor of the rich, and Clinton is running a “no we can’t” campaign, saying in veiled words that there’s nothing to be done about the theft of massive amounts of wealth from poor and working people and its transfer to the top 1%. Who’s probably worse? — Tossup

Foreign Policy — Clinton likes to kill people. She likes drones. She likes military intervention. She likes coups (e.g., the U.S.-approved coup in Honduras while she was Secretary of State). Trump, judging from his rhetoric, probably does too. But he hasn’t had the chance to fully demonstrate it. They’d both probably continue to support brutal, authoritarian regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, and elsewhere. But it’s certain that Clinton would do so; with Trump — given the incoherence of his statements and positions — it’s hard to tell.  They both want to prove how “tough” they are — in other words, how callous, brutal, and bloodthirsty they are. Mayhem will result no matter which of them is elected. Who’s probably worse? — Clinton

Israel/Palestine — Clinton is in the pocket of AIPAC and the Israeli extreme right, and her superpac has taken money from at least one extreme-right, extremely wealthy pro-Israel businessmen. She has pledged “unconditional support” for Israel, which if she actually means it (always an iffy proposition), means that she’ll place the welfare of the Israeli state above that of the United States. (The interests of the U.S. and Israel aren’t identical, and cannot be identical.) Trump probably is just as much a stooge for the Israeli extreme right, but he hasn’t  as abjectly demonstrated it. Who’s probably worse? — Clinton

Military Spending — Thanks to easily frightened idiot voters and vested corporate interests, the U.S. currently accounts for 43% of total worldwide military spending–more than the next eight nations combined.  Both Trump and Clinton worship at the altar of the military, and will almost certainly continue to do so. Who’s probably worse? — Tossup

Climate Change — Trump is (at least for primary-voter purposes) a climate change denier. Clinton seems to accept the science, but it’s doubtful how vigorously she’d address the problem. She opposes one of the most effective measures to reduce CO2 emissions, a carbon tax, and when Secretary of State she tried to push other countries into fracking. Who’s probably worse? — Trump

Immigration — Both Clinton and Trump would continue to back authoritarian governments and austerity programs overseas, governments and programs that drive people from their homes in droves creating the “immigration crisis.” However, Trump is overtly racist and has proposed horrendous measures at home. In contrast, Clinton would in all probability merely step into Obama’s shoes as “deporter in chief.” Who’s probably worse? — Trump

TTP and other Trade Deals — Hillary Clinton was in favor of TTP until she flip flopped on it last year. Previously, she spoke in favor of it more than 30 times and called it the “gold standard” of trade agreements. Make your own judgments about her sincerity. Trump is so incoherent on trade that it’s impossible to say what he’d do. Who’s probably worse? — Tossup

Reproductive Rights — Trump is openly pandering to his racist/misogynist/authoritarian base. Clinton, in turn, is pandering to those who are voting for her simply because she’s a woman (and who were presumably thrilled by the election of Margaret Thatcher 37 years ago). Nonetheless, one suspects that in this area Clinton actually has some principles and will act on them. In contrast, Trump, who previously publicly favored reproductive rights,  is now pandering to the religious right. Who’s probably worse? — Trump

LGBT Rights — Trump, who probably doesn’t care about this issue at all, is currently pandering to the religious right, endorsing its anti-transgender sideshow.  Clinton in contrast might actually care about this issue, and would likely deliver on LGBT rights should she be elected, because that would cost her corporate backers nothing. Who’s probably worse? — Trump

“War on Drugs” — Back in 1990, Trump said he was in favor of legalizing drugs to “win” the “war on drugs.” More recently, he’s flip flopped back and forth on the issue. Clinton, characteristically, has repeatedly refused to take a stand even on pot legalization. Given her “no we can’t” incrementalism, it’s highly unlikely she’d initiate any major reforms to scale back or eliminate the “war on drugs.” And she’d be wedged in by the authoritarian “drug warriors” in her own party and by the Republicans, who would very probably go nuts if she’d try to initiate any real reforms. Trump, in contrast, would be much freer to initiate real reforms. Who’s probably worse? — Clinton

 

Final Thoughts

One other consideration is that if Clinton is elected, and predictably does  nothing about economic inequality, there will very probably be an even more extreme far-right backlash than there is now,  as Fox “News” and the rest of the right-wing echo chamber present the authoritarian right-centrist Clinton as a “leftist” or even a “socialist.”  She’ll also almost certainly continue Obama’s war on whistleblowers and, under the guise of national security, will whittle away at what remains of our freedoms. And the Democrats will do nothing to oppose her. If Trump is elected, the Democrats will probably show what passes for spine, stand up to some extent to his authoritarianism (which they haven’t done against Obama), and there would likely be a relatively large leftist backlash against Trump and his inevitable failures.

In other words, Clinton’s election would likely lead to the growth of an outright fascist movement, while proto-fascist Trump’s election might lead to a significant antiauthoritarian leftist backlash. At the same time, Trump’s election might embolden his supporters and lead to an outright fascist movement that would attempt to crush leftist opposition. It’s an ugly, all-too-possible scenario.

The upside to all this? If Clinton wins, the look on Trump’s, Mike Pence’s, Jabba the Ailes’,  and Trump’s smug, entitled kids’ faces. If Trump wins, the looks on Bill and Hillary Clinton’s, Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s, Diane Feinstein’s, and Rahm Emanuel’s faces. And, if Trump wins, the iron hold of the authoritarian neo-liberal corporatists on the Democratic Party might be broken, or at least loosened.

It’s cold comfort.

Clinton vs. Trump? It’s a nauseating choice. That one or the other of these deeply dishonest, opportunistic, power-mad authoritarians will take control of the vast American surveillance/coercive state is horrifying.

Conservatives? I don’t think so (Part I)

The meaning of the term “conservative” has shifted over the years. Half a century ago, it meant (at least in theory, if not in practice) someone who was careful, cautious, responsible, studious, honest, resistant to the expansion of government powers, and intent on preserving the best of what currently exists, especially constitutionally protected freedoms.

Now, the term means nearly the exact opposite. As for “careful, cautious, responsible” one need only look at the very wide swath of “conservatives” who are climate change deniers. The science is in. Over 97% of peer-reviewed studies in scientific journals have concluded that human-caused climate change exists. Almost exactly the same percentage of climate scientists agree. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting. Sea levels are rising. Portions of the U.S. Southwest and plains states are already in severe, prolonged drought. Last year was, globally, the hottest year ever recorded. Nine of the last ten years were the hottest on record. And the increase in global temperature correlates almost exactly with the amount of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the air. (Yes, correlation is not causation. And, yes, the causes of climate change are complex, but they’re fairly well understood; and an increase in temperature resulting from an increase in carbon dioxide emissions is exactly what one would expect.)

As for “studious, honest,” so-called conservatives routinely denigrate science, scientific theories and scientists themselves. Some go so far as to make the ludicrous claim that there’s a conspiracy on the part of scientists to promote a global warming “hoax.” This indicates that these “conservatives” have no idea of how science works. Two of the most outstanding features of science are how open and how self-correcting it is. Scientists publish their findings and theories in journals, and other scientists read and dissect those theories and findings, searching for flaws. This is how science works. It’s also how scientists advance their careers–if they can publicly show fault with the findings and theories of others, it’s a step up the career ladder. This is hardly the stuff of conspiracy.

In the face of overwhelming evidence pointing to human-produced (by burning fossil fuels) climate change, a great many “conservatives” claim that there’s still a “debate” over the matter. Some admit that climate change exists, but deny that it’s man made, even as they’re entirely unable to point to any other even remotely plausible cause. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, many “conservatives” still insist that there’s no “proof” (as if there’s 100% proof for anything), and gleefully promote measures (“drill baby, drill”)  that will almost certainly aggravate the problem.

Some “conservative” politicians and pundits even pretend that scientific theories and findings are “unscientific,” as if they were the ultimate authorities on the matter, when it’s a safe bet that almost all of them have no more understanding of science and the scientific method than your neighbor’s pitbull.

This brings us back to “cautious, responsible.” The “conservative” approach to climate change is about as cautious as playing Russian roulette–with a pistol with five chambered rounds. More accurately, it’s like playing Russian roulette with a loaded semi-automatic, with the gun pointed at our children’s heads. Even if you buy the extraction-industry line that it’s not proven that fossil fuel consumption is the cause of global warming, is it in any way cautious or conservative to risk inflicting global devastation on our children and grandchildren? What on earth is “conservative” about recklessness and irresponsibility?

* * *

Later this week we’ll look at the “conservative” approach to governmental power and individual rights.

 

 

 

Climate Change Denial and Jihad

by Chaz Bufe, publisher See Sharp Press

It’s escaped general notice, but climate change deniers are helping to ensure the financing of present and future  jihadi movements, and the emergence of new ones. How? When you think about it, it’s pretty damn obvious.

The climate-change-denial industry is a bought-and-paid-for creature of the fossil fuels corporations (notably Exxon) and right-wing billionaires (notably the Koch brothers) who derive much of their income from oil, coal, and natural gas.  Its sole purpose is to sow disinformation and confusion about climate change; its pundits and spokesmen claim that there’s a “controversy” about climate change, when the overwhelming majority (95%+)  of climate scientists and scientific studies of climate have concluded that climate change is real and is a major threat to the planet.

To that end, sowing confusion and disinformation, the oil industry and right-wing billionaires finance “think tanks” (e.g., The Heartland Institute and The Heritage Foundation) that provide “experts” to deny scientific fact in the media, and an organization (ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council–a group of lobbyists, corporate executives and subservient legislators) designed to enshrine the corporate agenda in state law.

In one particularly revealing and egregious example of its priorities, ALEC is attempting to have states roll back or abandon their renewable energy mandates, and it has attempted, notably here in Arizona, to have the corporation commission discourage individuals from installing photovoltaic systems on their homes.

But why would the oil industry and its lackeys do such things? The answer is obvious: to keep the U.S. (and the rest of the world) dependent on fossil fuels so that the energy companies can wring every last dollar from the sale of oil, coal, and gas, as sea levels rise and the world slowly roasts.

Well, guess what. Guess who else profits massively from oil sales: Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

As has been widely reported, the primary bankrollers of Al Qaeda, ISIS (now mostly self-financing), and Al Nusra were/are the rich oil families from those countries. As long as the world remains dependent on oil, and oil prices remain high, the members of those oil-profiteer families will have plenty of money to continue financing murderous, medieval, anti-Western, anti-American jihadis.

In the end, it’s pretty damn simple:  supposedly patriotic climate change deniers are engaging in what is in effect a treasonous activity–in their reckless pursuit of private profit, they’re helping to ensure the funding of  present and future jihadi movements.

Related articles

• ISIS Pays Its Fighters Double What The Iraqi Army, Hezbollah, Other Sunni Jihadists Groups Pay Their Men…
• Legislators, Corporations Gather For Secret Meeting Against Clean Energy And You’re Not Invited
• Protests Greet Lawmakers, Corporate Officials Gathering in Dallas as New Arm of ALEC Is Announced

Australian Science Fiction Great George Turner (Part I)

 

by Zeke Teflon

George Turner (1916-1997) was already in his 60s, a well established, award-winning Australian novelist, when he wrote his first science fiction novel, Beloved Son (1978). He wrote seven other science fiction novels prior to his death. All deal with ecological (especially climate-change) disasters, ill-advised attempts to deal with them, and the results of both the disasters and the attempts to cope. Most of the novels are set in Melbourne and its surrounding area. Almost all of them have deeply flawed protagonists (“heroes,” would be overstating it) who are often members of the police or military. And all the novels are decidedly downbeat, leavened by very occasional, always mordant humor.

George Turner’s Science Fiction Novels

Turner’s first three science fiction novels, Beloved Son (1978), Vaneglory (1981), and Yesterday’s Men (1983), are all set in the same “universe,” but are a trilogy only in the loose sense of the word. The background for all of them is “The Collapse of 2012,” which “The Background” section of Yesterday’s Men describes as being caused by “genetic tampering with staple crops, followed by a wave of mutated-disease epidemics and the Five Days of hysterical, random nuclear bombing. [This] left the world reduced by starvation and disease to a tenth of its former population.”

The first book set in this “universe,” Beloved Son, describes the social breakdown that follows the catastrophes, the rebuilding over the next four decades under the guidance of the World Council, “a super-UN, but with teeth,” and the rise of cult religions.

The second book, Vaneglory, revolves around the discovery of “mutant humans … with lifespans of thousands of years,” the secret attempts to discover their genetic secrets, and the corrupting influence on the power structure of the lure of immortality. One noteworthy aspect of Vaneglory is that it first reveals Turner’s terror of, and absolute rejection of, the scientific pursuit of immortality, which he considered a road to disaster.

The third book, Yesterday’s Men, has to do with socially rigid, caste-based orbital colonies and the tension between them and the decaying “Ethical Culture” that produced the “super-UN” World Council. The book is primarily notable for its extensive, gut-wrenching passages describing combat in the jungles of New Guinea, where Turner served during World War II.

These first three novels are all fairly short and are worth reading for their entertainment value alone. They’re also noteworthy for introducing several recurring features in Turner’s later novels: preoccupation with ecological catastrophe and its consequences; horror at the prospect of immortality; policemen or military men as protagonists or strong secondary characters; clear portrayal of the corrupting influence of power and secrecy, and clear portrayals of corrupted officials; and lack of constructive, practical solutions for any of the problems Turner so vividly outlines

Turner’s fourth science fiction novel, Drowning Towers (1987–published outside the U.S. as The Sea and Summer), is his most famous. It’s the first, or at least the first major, novel to deal head on with climate change. Previous sci-fi novels, notably John Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up (1972), had tackled ecological catastrophe, but none had dealt with climate change as the primary ecological problem. Drowning Towers also introduced three of Turner’s other preoccupations: massive unemployment resulting from automation; overpopulation; and a possible “cull” of excess population.

Drowning Towers is remarkable for its complex structure. It’s a story within a story, with the “frame” set approximately a thousand years in the future. (Joseph Conrad provided what are probably the most familiar examples of this device in his “Marlow” stories, such as Heart of Darkness.) The “frame” is written in a mix of close third-person and first-person points of view alternating between two p.o.v. characters, while the story that constitutes the body of the book is a first-person narrative by five secondary characters–but not the primary character!–with the various narratives divided into chapters. Structurally, Drowning Towers is a tour de force.

The main story is set in the Melbourne of the 2040s-2060s, already severely afflicted by climate-change-caused flooding, with the social backdrop of massive unemployment and a class system divided into the “sweet” (the rich and the small middle class who have jobs) and the “swill” (the uneducated, unemployed masses living in nightmare, overcrowded public-housing skyscrapers holding 70,000 people each–hence the title of the novel).

The story’s primary character is a “tower boss,” Billy Kovacs, and the story revolves around the conflicting desires and efforts to survive (not “get ahead”) of Kovacs and five major secondary characters (two of them policemen) in the brutal world Turner describes. It’s a mark of Turner’s writing skill that only one of the very well drawn secondary characters (Nick, one of the policemen) is especially admirable, but they’re all sympathetic–struggling against almost hopeless odds.

Perhaps because he realized the bleakness of Drowning Towers, at its end (right before the closing of the frame) Turner tried to introduce a ray of hope through what is essentially an epilogue describing a few mild reformist measures that would surely have been tried–and would have failed–well before their place in Drowning Towers‘ chronology. This is the most obvious flaw in the book, though it’s minor. There are other more serious flaws, but they have to do with Turner’s underlying political, social, and economic assumptions (more on that tomorrow in Part II).

Turner’s next novel, Brain Child (1991), is a very tightly plotted thriller. It’s structurally simpler than Drowning Towers, but it’s nearly flawless. The closest it comes to having a real flaw is that it’s written from a first-person p.o.v., with the bulk of the narration provided by David Chance, the protagonist, with the rest supplied by the primary secondary character, Jonesy, a high-ranking police official. What makes this a flaw is that Jonesy’s narrative comprises only two of the book’s thirteen chapters. There’s no structural reason for this; Turner did it simply because it was convenient. In less skilled hands, this could have been a major problem. But here, it’s almost unnoticeable.

Brain Child is set in 2047 in an impoverished and severely overpopulated world, with the novel’s events taking place in and around Melbourne. It’s primarily concerned with the results of genetic experiments which produced three distinct groups of superior children, one reclusive, coldly logical and analytical (A group), one artistically gifted and supremely arrogant (B group), and one ultra intelligent and unfathomable–and hence very frightening–(C group), who committed collective suicide 25 years prior to the events of the narrative.

The novel’s protagonist, 25-year-old, naive, and rather full-of-himself David, grew up in an orphanage. At the beginning of the book, much to his surprise, he’s contacted by his father, Arthur Hazard, a member of A group, who quickly recruits him to uncover “Young Feller’s legacy,” “Young Feller” being a member of the mysterious, super-intelligent C group. It soon develops that David’s task is much more dangerous than he imagined, and he quickly finds himself playing a double game with a powerful politician, Samuel (“Piggy”) Armstrong, who is desperate to find the “legacy.”

Armstrong is one of the most loathsome characters ever portrayed in science fiction, and one of the best portrayals of a bullying, selfish, power-grubbing politician in, probably, all of fiction. The other standout characters are David’s father, Arthur, the ultimate cold fish who still comes off as sympathetic because of his faithfulness to his own, strange moral code, and David himself, who throughout the novel is on a voyage of very unpleasant self-discovery. (With Turner, there’s no other kind.)

Turner’s next sci-fi novel, The Destiny Makers (1993), is a thriller that’s set in the same universe as the two novels which follow it, Genetic Soldier (1994) and Turner’s final novel, Down There in Darkness (1999). It’s concerned almost entirely with the problem of overpopulation, and a possible draconian solution to it. The plot revolves around the question of a “cull” by the anglophone nations, and the resistance against it by Australia’s weak but relatively moral premier, Beltane.

As is Brain Child, The Destiny Makers is written from a first-person point of view, and there’s one primary narrator (Harry Ostrov, a policeman); there are also three chapters (out of twelve) narrated in first person by secondary characters. Again, there’s no structural reason for this; Turner did it only because it was convenient. Here, however, the seams show because the plot is less gripping and the characters less compelling than those in Brain Child. (This is not to say that The Destiny Makers is a bad book. It isn’t. It’s a good one. But Brain Child is a masterpiece, and The Destiny Makers isn’t.)

The Destiny Makers sets up Turner’s next book, Genetic Soldier, by having two sub-light-speed interstellar survey/colonization ships leave Earth during the book’s course. At the beginning of Genetic Soldier, one of these ships returns to Earth to find a primitive planet depopulated because of a religious cult’s cull/hare-brained genetic experiment seven centuries earlier. The book centers on the determination of the returnees to remain on Earth, and the determination of the primitives to drive them off it.

In Genetic Soldier, Turner returns for the most part to close third-person narration (as in Yesterday’s Men) with occasional snatches of first-person narration thrown in. It works–it’s almost unnoticeable.

The strength of Genetic Soldier is in its characters, Thomas, the duty-bound primitive “genetic solider,” and two women from the starship, middle-aged Nugan and her 18-year-old daughter, Anne. It’s a testament to Turner’s characterization abilities that all three are equally plausible.

Unfortunately, Genetic Soldier is as much fantasy as it is science fiction. The reason is that the central underlying “scientific” conjecture, Rupert Sheldrake’s “morphogenetic fields,” is pseudo-science, and that “theory” was already busted when Turner wrote Genetic Soldier (more on this tomorrow in Part II). It’s one thing to base science fiction on scientific conjecture, no matter how speculative. It’s entirely another to base it on already debunked pseudo-science. Turner is well over this line in this book, and it robs Genetic Soldier of much of its enjoyment for readers who want even remotely plausible science in their science fiction.

Another problem is that Genetic Soldier‘s plot is as straight as Highway 95 through Nevada. Once Turner hammers home, about a quarter of the way in, that the book’s central underlying concept  is “morphogenetic fields” (which he shortens to “morphic fields”), it’s all too easy  to guess, if you understand that “theory,”  how the book will unfold. (When Turner telegraphed that fact, my  reaction was, “Oh no! You’re not going there?!”–and sure enough he did.) That predictability robs the reader of much enjoyment, for it’s much more pleasurable to be surprised occasionally, to sometimes not know what’s coming next, than to see a book unfold in almost exactly the way you’d guessed it would. In other words, Genetic Soldier‘s predictability robs it of drama.

Turner’s final book, Down There in Darkness, which was published posthumously, is a sequel to The Destiny Makers.  Its two primary characters are from that book, and it fills in some of the gaps between The Destiny Makers and Genetic Soldier. Unfortunately, Down There In Darkness simply doesn’t satisfy. It’s disjointed, the central characters have no real goals in the latter half of the book, and as a result there’s almost no dramatic tension.  (While plowing through it, my reaction at one point was, “Oh lord! Not another hundred pages before this thing ends!”)

All this leads one to suspect that Turner’s publisher, Tor, took an unfinished manuscript badly in need of revision, edited it to the point where they thought it could pass, and published it–either that or they slapped the book together from fragments. It’s quality is so inferior to that of Turner’s other novels that one or the other of these possibilities seems quite likely. Turner’s publisher did neither him nor his readers a favor by publishing this shoddy piece of work.

But the best of Turner’s novels, Drowning Towers and Brain Child, are enough to establish him as one of the great science fiction writers of the twentieth century, and three others are lesser books but still much better than average sci-fi novels: Beloved Son, Yesterday’s Men, and The Destiny Makers.

* * *

Zeke Teflon is the author of  Free Radicals: A Novel of Utopia and Dystopia. He’s currently working on the sequel.

Related articles

• The Sea and Summer by George Turner (ausenvironmentlit.wordpress.com)
• Climate change: The hottest thing in science fiction (grist.org)
• OP-ED: “Cli-Fi” May Be No Stranger Than Reality (ipsnews.net)
• Science fiction and fantasy: the wonderful wizards of Oz (guardian.co.uk)