Hello {{first_name | Reader}},
I’ve just posted a new Low Visibility Ahead entry, “Extinction vs. Costco.”
The Hindustan Times recently reported on a new study by Indian government scientists, who stated, “We estimate that a single day of extreme heat causes approximately 3,400 excess deaths nationally; a five-day heatwave causes nearly 30,000.”
India’s heatwave has lasted a lot longer than five days this summer. Indian Prime Minister Modi is on record as a climate-change skeptic, so it’s possible that government statistics do not reflect anything near the actual number of heat deaths. Certainly they don’t reflect the life-shortening effects of extreme heat.
One report out of New Delhi suggests that 34,000 people died in that city because of a recent hot day.
Here in the mountainous Pacific Northwest, we’re still seeing frost in the mornings. India seems a long way away this year. But in the summer of 2021, over 1,400 people perished in the heatwave that stretched from Oregon to British Columbia. It was hotter in Portland than in New Delhi.
The difference between 34,000 deaths and 1,400 is air conditioning, but air-conditioning only works when the electricity is functioning.
I’ve been thinking about climate denial, and I’m more or less certain that Americans will continue to say there’s nothing wrong with the climate as long as the air-con works. But if present economic and climatic trends continue, we will one day reach a point where even the most hardened climate denier will have to say, “I was wrong. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said all those ignorant things that caused the deaths of so many innocent people.”
There is one way to get out of that embarrassing admission, and that’s to die first. It will probably be the most popular choice.
This summer would be a good time to admit the heat is rising fast and will rise higher, but that won’t gain you much. Too many feedback loops are in play, and right now we’re living on a planet hotter than it’s been for 125,000 years. We’re within sight of the atmospheric conditions of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when the Earth’s temperature was nine to fourteen degrees hotter than now, and the oceans died periodically.
Things do not look good for humans if present climate trends continue.
I’ve tried to tackle some of these issues in my writing over the last few years, and I’m still trying. But obviously, hitting people with dry statistics doesn’t change any minds. Deaths of children in far countries doesn’t change minds, either. Over the years, I’ve tried to use dark humor and grotesque exaggeration to get through to my readers, but the humor has been getting darker and darker and it’s impossible to be more grotesque than reality these days.
So this latest journal entry might not change your mind about the climate, but it might send you off on an emergency trip to Costco. You can find out what it will do on my website at johnrember.com/blog/extinction-vs-costco.
Reading in Stanley
If you’re in the Stanley area, I’d love to see you at my reading at the Stanley Library Tuesday, July 7 (tomorrow) at 5:00 p.m. Mountain. I’m planning to read some entries from Journal of the Plague Years that describe my apparently never-ending education. Copies of the Journal volumes and my other books will be available for purchase and signing.
Oral History Unveiling
A few months ago, I sat down for an interview with Susan Kim, who’s on the board of the Sawtooth Interpretive and Historical Association. For decades now, SIHA has been recording oral histories of folks who live in and love the Sawtooth Valley. My parents were recorded in 1988. It’s a bit of a shock to realize I qualify as an old-timer now, with stories people might want to hear. In my interview, I shared memories of my family's history in the Wood River and Sawtooth Valleys, my experiences as a Wilderness Ranger in the 1970s, and the changes I’ve seen during my 70-plus years in the area.
The recording will be shown for the first time at the Stanley Library on Wednesday, July 29, at 5:30 p.m. Mountain. Julie and I will be there. The program will also be livestreamed, and the oral history will be available later on SIHA’s YouTube channel.
Checking a registration box as a Wilderness Ranger, c. 1971 (Photo by US Forest Service; appeared in Naturalist Magazine, 1971)
Recommended Reading
The next book in the Changed-My-Life series is a tome. It’s long and difficult and I don’t understand all of it, but every time I’ve read it I’ve gotten something powerful and cheerful from it. It’s The Denial of Death, by Ernest Becker, and it was written while he was dying of cancer.
I know that doesn’t sound cheerful at all, but it confronts the human condition as directly as any book I’ve ever read, and it offers a kind of secular grace to people willing to contemplate their own mortality.
Becker was a cultural anthropologist, and he gives a man-from-Mars perspective to the human approach to death, which is to say he looks at humanity as an alien species with an amazing-if-psychotic ability to deny its own mortality. He finds the true source of evil in our insistence that we’re not going to ever die (as long as we can find people to die for us). He finds an escape from the anxiety of death in our ability—should we choose to develop it—to consider our lives as art projects.
Becker is a secular writer, but he does not assume anything about what happens after death. He leaves those beliefs intact in his readers, choosing to focus on the here and now of living. I find his discussions of how to live a better and more honest life to be infinitely cheerful. Death and the afterlife can take care of themselves, and no doubt will.
It’s a good book. I try to read it every three or four years. It improves my attitude about insolvable problems, and keeps me from the folly of attempting to become a billionaire so I can live forever. It also suggests that in becoming an artist, you are engaging with creation—God’s and your own—in such a way that you are occupying your own bit of eternity. Make it last as long as you want.
Climate report: The valley is warming up. I’ve gotten behind on the meadow of timothy in the back yard, and it’s been growing like crazy. I’ve been mowing it, tiny bit by tiny bit, sneezing all the way, killing the mower when it gets clogged, pulling again and again on the starter cord until it starts. Last month’s beautiful, pastoral world is looking like a lot of sweaty work. It’s not looking like an art project at the moment.
