You can’t hide as much on an island.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Vignette Study of a Ship in a Storm via Rabih Alameddine
From Sunday all the way into Tuesday, Hurricane Dorian pummeled the Bahamas, leaving behind mass destruction and flooding and a death toll of at least 23. Two entire neighborhoods home to many Haitian immigrants were pretty much leveled. One meteorologist wrote for the Washington Post:
“Grand Bahama Island may have just endured the longest siege of violent, destructive weather ever observed.”
Hurricanes don’t generate their own forward momentum, rather they float along at the desire of global wind currents. Dorian is part of trend known as “stalling,” where instead of plowing through communities, a hurricane moves in and then just sort of sits there for a long stretch of time, dumping water and tearing apart everything it can with winds in this case up to 185 mph. Dorian moved slower than a person walks and at times didn’t move at all, leisurely hammering Grand Bahama Island for over 40 hours. Imagine being in a hurricane for 40 hours.
As you probably guessed, there is a compelling case that stalling is connected to climate change—models show global winds generally slowing down, in part because the Arctic is warming rapidly and there’s less temperature contrast to stir them up. We also know that warmer waters are creating stronger hurricanes, rising sea levels are creating bigger storm surges, and more moisture in the air is producing more rain during these storms. There was a lot of lame storm coverage that didn’t mention these facts, and lamer coverage that merely quoted Democrats pointing them out. But there was also a ton of good analysis pieces, including this one from Michael Mann and Andrew Dessler.
Sort of coincidentally this week I have been talking to people at community foundations in places like Puerto Rico and Hawaii about their climate work. I keep asking them some version of the question, do you get any pushback from people in the community who don’t want to act on or even acknowledge climate change? One person in Hawaii I spoke with today sort of politely laughed and said:
You know, you can’t hide as much on an island. If things happen, they happen pretty quickly and it’s pretty obvious. So I think people are very aware, and in our lifetimes we have seen drastic changes. … It’s just obvious to everyone, so it’s really not an issue here. You can talk about it openly and actually if you don’t mention it, someone’s probably gonna call you on it.
Speaking of Long Sieges
Meanwhile on the mainland, CNN punished us for demanding more climate coverage by making us watch presidential candidates talk about it for 7 hours straight until we got sick and swore we would never ask about climate change again.
The result was riveting television for those of us who watched the entire thing—just kidding I did not watch any of it! I had things to do and didn’t want to sit around and watch CNN for 7 hours I don’t know what to tell you guys. I opted to wait until morning for the clips and recaps, like this one and this one and this one. I also checked in on Twitter where I learned that apparently Joe Biden’s eye filled up with blood.
Joking aside I am actually really glad that the town hall happened and it should be considered a major victory for activist groups like Sunrise who have been campaigning for months for a climate debate (the reason it had to be town hall style and for so long is that the DNC unforgivably rejected a true debate). The town hall was also a victory for Jay Inslee rip and Warren is even absorbing some of his climate plan. So even if it was pretty inaccessible, the town hall sends a signal and hopefully marks a step toward us being better at talking seriously about this stuff in the public sphere. And there was a lot of substantive discussion, including several questions from the audience holding the candidates accountable for their policies and campaigns. Some clear differences are emerging on nuclear, natural gas, and carbon taxes. And some dumb CNN stuff like Wolf Blitzer asking if he has to drive an electric car like come on Wolf.
CNN, which most days is like a Labrador trying to explain the state of the world, deserves some credit for doing it. Hopefully we will continue to see more coverage, outside the context of Democratic politics, woven into more daily news stories, and connecting the issue to people and their lives. If you want to see a non-7-hour summary of the candidates’ climate plans, this one isn’t bad.
“The Daemon Lover” by Maggie Umber in Now 5
More Links
- A Globe writer outlines the living hell that is finding an apartment in Boston.
- Massachusetts’ equity goals for its legal weed industry are going pretty much horribly. “Our ancestors, as black and brown people, would laugh at the fact that we put trust and faith in the government to want to help us.”
- Around 30% to 40% of the U.S. food supply goes uneaten, but 1 in 8 Americans is food insecure, and food waste contributes 8% of global warming emissions.
- A new sort of anti-prison opened up in Oakland, a center to focus on restorative justice and combat mass incarceration. “Too often, when people think of the term ‘public safety,’ they’re thinking of punishment and prisons. We felt a need for something equally tangible, equally visible, in concrete, brick, and mortar form.”
What I Wrote
A post I wrote called Epstein, Science, and the Power of Saying No to Money ran this week, building on a lot of the stuff I’ve been talking about here lately. It points out that scientists often think they are immune from matters of politics and power (and often they are just complete bastards). But accepting money holds meaning and consequences, and it’s how the scientific enterprise connects with society.
In the aftermath of toxic donor scandals, some beneficiaries are responding by giving back or donating the money, a respectable move. An even better one would be declining it in the first place. After all, philanthropy is an exercise of power, and one way that our institutions, thinkers, artists and, indeed, all of us can use our own power is via the underrated act of saying “no.”
Podcasts
I’m listening to an Ezra Klein Show with British writer Joe Higgs, who writes about chaos magic and Alan Moore and Timothy Leary kind of stuff. He wrote a book about this electronic music duo that took a million pounds to an island and just lit it on fire. He’s also talking about how because Gen Z is always networked via smartphone they are less fixated on individuality, more empathic, and more anxious, which is why when they watch The Breakfast Club they hate Judd Nelson and love Anthony Michael Hall and also they do things like fight climate change and gun violence.
Music
I guess I’m a little late in promoting this band, since Wikipedia tells me they broke up approximately one month ago. But Philadelphia’s own, or I guess formerly own, Cayetana still has two excellent studio releases you can enjoy and that I highly recommend. I kind of hate to link to a cover because they have so many great songs of their own, including this one, but I do love their version of Age of Consent.
This issue comes to you from my bedroom, where I am hiding with our two tiny dogs because a perfectly nice man is repairing our kitchen ceiling and otherwise the dogs will bark at him and possibly bite him. Even from in here, the oldest dog who only has one eye is still barking at him. Despite these challenging constraints, Crisis Palace carries on. Sorry this one was a little dark.
Though it may be annoying, be like my one-eyed dog this week. Keep barking if you think something is wrong, and then later on you can take a very long nap.
Tate