Peter Scheckele, A Musicologist For All Of Us

Peter Schickele

Peter Schickele is principally a composer.  For various reasons, he invented an extra, mythical son of the composer Johann Sebastian Bach, named P. D. Q. Bach, which allowed Schickele to vent all his instincts to parody everything from Handel to Gershwin and Cole Porter through the prolific pen of P. D. Q. Bach.  In addition, as the 'discoverer' and tame musicologist whose obsession was this son of J.S.Bach, Schickele had free rein to first create numerous musical works, and then proceed to analyze them into the ground, first, of course, having performed them for everyone's coarse entertainment.

In the nineties, Schickele began a regular feature--principally on public radio--called Schickele Mix, which made musicology accessible to typical music-lovers, especially those whose tastes were on the broader side, because there were fewer opportunities for these folks to explore their instinctive feeling that phenomena that were attractive and interesting to them were to be found in most kinds of western music.  Today, popular musicologists spring up like mushrooms, and YouTube provides a ready forum for them, but Schickele was a pioneer.  The musicological connections between classical music and popular music was not the characteristic tool in Schickele's conceptual arsenal; it was rather just one approach, which was particularly powerful.  I don't remember details, but in a post (forgive me for talking about Schickele Mix as if it were a blog) about The Circle of Fifths--or rather, the sequence of fifths, since the circle was rarely completed--there were a number of references to popular songs that used the sequence.

P.D.Q. Bach

As P.D.Q. Bach, Schickele was revealed to be a parody composer second to none.  The compilation The Wurst of P.D.Q. Bach is a veritable Pandora's Box of Schickele's parody compositions, ranging from opera, to overtures, to suites, duets, and even a deplorably bad parody of a play-by-play of the Allegro of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, in the style of a football commentary.  Though that opus makes me cringe (and keep looking for a remote control which I keep forgetting I do not actually have, since it was a cheap CD player) and skip to the next track, some Schickele fans undoubtedly regard it as a classic.

The level of musical performance on Schickele's records is exceptional, featuring numerous legitimate talents, which cross over beautifully into comedy.

For anyone who has the patience and the energy, perusing the archives of Schickele Mix is going to be extremely rewarding.  If there are bootleg tapes or any sorts of recordings of these episodes--there, I used the correct word; they're not posts, they're episodes--they would make interesting listening for long, cross-country rides.

Schickele's mainstream compositions are less familiar to this writer.  He has written for movies and for the Walt Disney production of Fantasia 2000.  One of these days, I'll get around to listening carefully to some of these works, and make an addendum to this post.

Arch

My Take on the Upcoming Debate

The editor of the New York Times, who will be one of the moderators, has invited suggestions for questions, which got me thinking.  I apologize in advance for the rather discontinuous nature of these comments that follow.

What do people want from these debates?  They do not really show the candidates in any special light that will help us make a decision about which of them is best suited to lead the country.  It is an environment more like a Congressional Committee than the Oval Office; a President does not have to give brilliant On The Floor ripostes--except for press conferences, I suppose.

What people should be looking for is:

Does this candidate share my values?  That is the most important.  Most of the other criteria flow from the answer to that question.

Does this candidate have the temperament to de-escalate conflict, rather than to aggravate conflict?

Is this candidate driven by attitudes towards issues rather than party loyalty?

All of the Democratic candidates so far seem to have displayed these qualities, some more than others.  Some have a gentler approach towards the problem, others have a more combative approach, which might have to be forgiven, given the fact that the Democratic Party has been on the receiving end of so many attacks--even granted that the entertainment industry has often been ruthless in their personal attacks on Donald Trump.

Behind what conservatives see as the push towards wealth re-distribution, we see the most pressing problem that American politics faces: money in politics.  Lobbying, corruption, dark money, campaign finance, all of these things are made possible because of the enormous income and wealth inequity that the fiscal conservatives have shoved down the throats of ordinary low-income people, and there is a lot of sense in taking that approach.  So while the candidates see the issue of wealth and income redistribution as bringing out the Anti Socialist rhetoric, campaign finance reform and directly associated problems can be tackled with greater agreement.  It would be good to know which candidates can see this to be true.

The issue of Health Care Reform, and Medicare For All has been pushed in previous debates.  In my view, it does not matter if a candidate does not have his or her head completely wrapped around the details of a Health Care Plan.  What do we want:  A health care consultant or a president?  Creating a good health care plan, be it a plan with a private insurance component or without, will take a team approach, with many knowledgeable people contributing their expertise.  A public debate is not the place for deciding this.   Which candidate will be sufficiently flexible to be open to the best ideas from the other candidates?

The Gun Lobby is widely seen as an obstacle to reducing gun violence in the US.  Guns are supposed to be used for personal safety.  For hunting.  For defense of the home.  Unfortunately, when guns are in the news, these are not what the guns have been used for.  Also, unfortunately, only a bipartisan reform will be likely to survive multiple administrations.  The only way to push reform forward is to identify representatives of the people who stubbornly oppose sensible legislation, and eliminate them.  It is hard to see how to identify candidates who are in agreement with this statement, but it would make sense to ask a question about gun reform.

Much of the terrible problems with waste control and environmental pollution is because the US is marking time until recycling plastic waste becomes profitable.  If ever there was an opportunity for Federal intervention, this is it.  Which candidates are on board with government support for recycling waste, and processing waste in a non-polluting way?  There may already be such an initiative.  Why haven't I heard of it?

There seems a certain degree of agreement that part of the solution to immigration pressures at the southern border has to be a reasonable aid program for Central American countries, as well as support for Mexican efforts at law enforcement within Mexico.  It is difficult to interfere with the internal affairs of other countries (though that hasn't stopped us in the past), but there is reason to believe that in many cases where heavy US aid has been directed to Central and South America, the aid has succeeded in fueling lawlessness and corruption, instead of improving the lives of the poorest in those countries.  What can be done?  This is a problem best left to specialists, but it cannot be ignored.

We have known for a while that Climate Change has to be addressed quickly and effectively.  Part of the problem is the personal transport habit of American citizens; in short, the love affair with cars that has been going on for more than a century, and spread to other countries as well.  Addressing the environmental effects of automobiles is soon going to be a very unpopular thing which a president will have to spearhead.  How will a candidate approach this problem, given the liabilities of taking an unpopular stand against the automobile as a source of entertainment and an expression of personal power and affluence?  Much of the auto industry has moved abroad, so economically a push against the auto industry should not be as painful as it would have in the past.  But public perception of the automobile as being emblematic of American power will die hard.  It will be difficult to win an election offering only blood, tears and sweat, but it looks very much as though those are going to be the means of bringing back America from the edge of the Great Again Abyss.

Arch

My Years in College

Kids have just got settled into their dorms at college, and freshmen just about ready to think seriously about Life, College and Everything.  Some of them have begun attending small four-year schools, and others have gone right into big state universities, and a few into very prestigious schools indeed, where everyone seems to look at you as if you were their biggest obstacle to a successful college career.

It was much the same in the bad old days when I first found myself on campus.  I had barely scraped through the examinations that decided which schools I was qualified to apply to, but I was thrilled to be actually going to college.

Those were the bad old days of hazing.  I was not bullied very heavily, but I was naive, and I thought I was being seriously victimized, though I wasn't.  Anyway, in retrospect, that is a non-issue.  (If any of my readers has to deal with hazing--I'd be surprised if you are; I expect that you're a mature 60-year-old, at the very least--I would be of absolutely no help whatsoever.  I'm sorry I brought that up.

So, though I was quite a mediocre student: a sort of C level type, I had been among the better students at my high school.  All my friends, among the top 5 or so in our school, were distinguished by how interested we were in our subjects: mathematics, physics, chemistry, principally.

I absolutely loved my first semester.  The professors actually knew their material backwards and forwards (which is not uncommon, obviously), and were eager to lay their stuff on us freshmen.  Most professors are inspired to do their best for freshmen; they're unspoiled, not jaded, and willing to believe that they might not have the whole story, coming in from high school.

Of late, however, I have encountered freshmen who are jaded, and who do believe that they know all there is to know.  This is unfortunate; the student is the loser in that scenario.

As the semester went on, I began to notice that some of the other guys were picking up the material a little faster than I was.  Welcome to the real world.  One thing we all have to do is to learn to handle not being the cat's whiskers any more.  But luckily for me, there was no shortage of people willing to talk about the material we were being given, to analyze the relative strengths of the different instructors--not in a particularly critical way; actually we were quite appreciative of their strong points--and to compare the various topics that we particularly enjoyed, which were obviously very varied.

My first year ended pretty well; I did a lot better than I expected.  Unfortunately, I was not permitted to declare a major in the area I was most interested in; I had to make do with mathematics.  At that time I was more into physics.  Too bad.

Once I discovered what a mathematics major (and a physics minor) entailed, I was amazed.  It turned out that we did an enormous volume of theoretical physics as part of the mathematics major.  You see, physics provides the fodder for a great deal of the machinery that we develop in mathematics, so this situation is unavoidable.  But we were signed up for courses in awesome areas, such as Quantum Mechanics, Analytical Dynamics, Fluid Mechanics, Relativity, Electromagnetic Theory, and so forth, but also Abstract Algebra, Matrix Theory, Differential Geometry . . . now I'm babbling; none of this has anything to do with what I want to say.

As time went on, though I did terrible at exams, we became quite a closely-knit group, and there a few fellows who preferred to study on their own, but many of us found it better to figure things out as a group.

In addition, though I did not take many courses in music or literature or social sciences beyond the absolute minimum, I spent a lot of time reading, and singing in choirs, and playing pianos, etc, which detracted from schoolwork.  I sang with a semi-professional choir about two hours away, where we met on the weekends.  A friend of mine and I took a bus out there, sang, stayed with family, sang again on Saturday night, and headed back to school on Sunday.  We also sang in the choir at college, though that was not a very serious thing.  (In fact, I took charge of the choir for a couple of years.  It was--OK.)

Things only got better, in terms of how interesting the topics were.  But as far as performing on tests, I was terrible.  So I graduated with a regular degree, not the Cum Laude's that so many of my friends managed to turn in.

As luck would have it, once I clawed my way into graduate school, I found that I was in a lot better shape than many of my fellow-students.  I had dreamed that doing research would be the most fun I could ever have.  Unfortunately, I simply hated research.  How interesting research is all depends on the problem you're assigned, and there just is no guarantee that you will stumble on a problem in which you're interested, and in which there is someone on the faculty to advise you.

But I put in an enormous amount of coursework--far more than most graduate students--and also learned a fair degree of computer science and numerical analysis (which probably means less than nothing to my readers!) and presently found myself hired to teach at an excellent school, and, as they say, the rest is history.

If there is one thing I can attest to, the greatest gift of all is the gift of finding something interesting about anything you need to learn.  That is all the Law and the Prophets.  I don't think anyone taught me this skill; I think it came possible from my mother, who was a teacher herself, and who was always interested in what I was trying to explain to her, be it topology, or programming, or whatever.  Either that rubbed off, or she passed on one of her interest genes on to me.

There are always some authorities who urge you to give up everything, and focus on what you're trying to do.  That may work for some people.  But it does not work for anyone who wants to be a teacher.  An ultra-specialized teacher is a bad teacher.  Your primary task is to relate to your students.  A good teacher is Interested in their subject, and Interested in their student.  To be the latter, you simply have to give up being specialized, and learn to be interested in many things.

As a teacher, I was required to teach several subjects in which I had little or no training.  Someone had to teach them, so why not me?  All I brought to the challenge was my insane tendency to be interested in oddball subjects.

School is a place that it is a privilege to be in.  To consider school a sort of penance, a sort of punishment, where you pay your dues, and somehow blossom into a highly-paid executive, is to set yourself up for misery.  Everyone in my immediate family just enjoys what they do to the utmost, and I don't think that it is luck; they all seem to be perfectly suited to be easily engaged with tasks they're given.  Of course, we're a small family; a large family unavoidably has some duds who cannot be inspired by anything.

Part of the trick is to surround yourself with people who have a positive outlook, and it often rubs off.  Similarly, if you surround yourself with lawless types, that rubs off too; surround yourself with pessimists, and you want to shoot yourself.  (I'm sure there's something in the Bible that says exactly this, but it's almost an embarrassment to have to fall back on religious scriptures to make a perfectly valid point.)

As I have said above, without any attempt at deception, I did not sacrifice my various side-interests to focus on my schoolwork.  This means that with my college degree I am quite unable to impress anyone.  For students who are determined to create an undergraduate record that is impressive, you must either give up--at least a part of--your side interests, in order to deliver a brilliant set of grades.  Or, you have to work like ten dogs, and hopefully your side interests will make you feel better about it.  Or, you have to work like ten dogs, and give up your side interests, and your memories of college will be sheer misery.  Just don't be an alcoholic and misbehave towards members of the opposite sex.

Archimedes

Ethics in Government: a Stumbling Block to Many

I was just watching Stephen Colbert interviewing Bernie Sanders on the Late Show (? Is that what they call it?) and it started a line of thinking, which resulted in this post, if it ever gets written.

My uncle Innocent once said that the problem with business people running government is that they're not very ethical!  In other words, business men cheat whenever possible.  This may sound like a terrible smear on businessmen generally, and I suppose very religious businessmen cheat very carefully, but in general, businessmen (and businesses) cheat every chance they get.

Meanwhile, the Republicans have been frustrated for some years, because the taxes they pay--I mean, everybody pays them, but the Republicans have opposed high taxes on behalf of all of us, bless them--are, they feel, too high.  In fact, they've got their taxes lowered for forty years, but they still seem too high; the Republicans would rather not pay taxes at all.

You must realize that there are several different kinds of republicans, though they have been roughly in agreement (very roughly) for a long time.

There are the Fiscal Conservatives.  These are the ones who are hawkish on taxes, and hate government spending.  (There are some exceptions; they don't mind government spending on their pet projects.  Nobody minds the government spending each on his or her own pet projects.)  They also used to be fierce about balancing the budget, but that particular agenda item has been put on hold for the moment, since the overspending is on behalf of the Right People, namely themselves.

There are the Religious Conservatives.  Among other things, these are the ones who oppose abortion, and family planning for women.  And they often want prayer in schools, and do not want Evolution being taught in schools.

There are the Neo-Conservatives.  These want America to be the most powerful nation on earth, and they want to go fix all the international problems with a war.  They are embarrassed by having to back off confrontations.

There are the ones who Oppose Gay Rights.  I can't think of a civil word for this group, which overlaps to a certain degree with the Religious Conservatives, but that is a marriage of convenience.

There are the Racists, and the Tribalists, who view society in terms of the ethnic origins of the people.  These are the ones who want to slow down, or stop, immigration, especially from poor countries.

There are the Libertarians, who don't want any restrictions, ("Its a free country, but not free enough!")

There is the Business Lobby, which fights for loosening government regulations that prevent businesses from exploiting the land and its resources.

Then there is the Gun Hawks, who do not want any restriction of gun ownership, gun sales, or anything to do with guns.  These fellows are often identified with the NRA (the National Rifle Association), but there may be a parting of the ways pretty soon.

The biggest thing that they have in common is that they do not like the Democrats, who oppose them on all of these fronts.  A coalition of all of these groups was created in the seventies and eighties, and they have done their best to oppose the Democrats since then, and often quite successfully.

Many of these folks are businessmen, and they have deplored the way the Democrats run government, and what they perceive as the moral straight-jacket that the Democrats have succeeded in putting on conduct in government.  A businessman, they have reasoned, would be more sensible about how to deal with people and foreign governments.  A deal-maker, like Trump, they must have reasoned, would be able to handle these tricky foreign governments.

Businessmen also have their rules of thumb.

Never pay taxes, unless you have to.

Do business off the record whenever possible.

Make creative deals, especially with weaker opponents, and bullying is allowed.

Go it alone.  Too many crooks spoil the heist.

Play your cards close to the chest.  Surprise is a big weapon.

Change your mind often.  Keep them guessing.  Be capricious.  Don't keep your promises.

Ally yourself with other thugs.

Threats are no use, unless you occasionally follow through on one.  (A small nuke would be ideal.)

A major weapon of businesses is advertising.  It is best if you have an entire Network that does your publicity for you.  Also, if you can get your brand associated with a great game show, you can rake in the shekels like nobody's business!

So now we sort of see where some of this foolishness comes from.  Trump's forthright way of shaking down his opposition is perceived as insulting and rude.  His deals are disgusting: a Wall for Releasing the Budget.  Dirt on Beiden in exchange for the foreign aid that Congress had already passed.  That is no good; the USA cannot be seen to be dabbling in, essentially, blackmail.  Ronald Reagan and Ollie North and gang did some very shady stuff, and so did George W. Bush and Cheney and his Halliburton gangsters.  But Trump's clumsy blundering with international "deals" are truly an embarrassment, even if they were not horribly illegal.

This brings us to this most recent attempt to discredit Joe Biden.  (Don't forget that Trump's constant harping on Hillary Clinton's e-mails seems to have succeeded with at least some Democrats, and certainly did succeed with almost all Republicans.)  Will Democrats stoop to chanting "Lock Him Up!" every time they gather?  I really can't see it, but if impeachment happens in the House of Representatives, something on those lines could be conceivable.

One plan the Republicans might be trying to implement is to break as many rules as possible while Trump can take the blame for it.  (Actually, there are numerous elected Republicans who have been Trump's enablers, and who will go down with him, or go down before Trump does: Mitch McConnell's name comes to mind.)  Of course, we know that they're eager to pack the Supreme Court with as many conservatives as they can.  Unfortunately, except for a few die-hard political judges, such as Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, the justices are difficult to herd one way or another.

On top of being a businessman, and being very self-conscious (a narcissist), Trump also finds it difficult to express himself verbally, which is why he Twitters so much.  In a decade or two, we will expect a president to use Twitter just as much as Trump does, if we can get a Millennial to run for office.  But for the immediate future, it would be lovely if a president stays away from all social media.

Anyway, things are not so bad.  There are annoying things all around us; every prospect annoys, to parody some famous person (Reginald Heber, actually; and he wasn't that famous, IMO), but those of us who are thoughtful will recognize that we can certainly recover some of what the Republicans have destroyed, in their desperation for Making America Great Again.  In future years, we may not be able to make it as great as it was a few years ago, but we can certainly make it halfway decent again.

Kids.  My last exhortation is to be careful how you phrase your pessimism to kids.  With a constant onslaught of environmental ruination, it has been observed that young people across the globe are falling into a sort of hopelessness.  We must be happy that there are Greta Thunbergs in the world; if and when she gives up, it will be a sad day for us indeed.

Part of the problem is that many adults (including me) are a little too weak in their science to understand the details of the kinds of things that catastrophic global warming will bring.  I think it is reasonable to assure young people that, though life is going to be quite unpleasant (e.g. wetter on this side of the Rockies, and drier on the other side; violent weather being common on the East Coast), it is not going to be impossible.  Also, decent people are going to have to work very hard, once life becomes as tough as it is expected to be, to enable the marginal population to survive.  We can't just throw up our hands and give up.

Arch

Odd Things That I'm Seeing In The News

Well, of course, Trump has been trying to bully the new Ukrainian president to give a report of what Joe Biden's son Hunter was doing in the Ukraine, in case it was illegal.  This is just Trump fooling around with public opinion.  This is the sort of thing that his followers think is perfectly all right, you see, whereas it will drive the Democrats crazy, and make impeachment almost certain.  Then what happens?  Trumpees begin to scream: what? Impeaching because of a minor thing, like getting help from the president of the Ukraine?  What's the big deal, you big babies?  And they will (Trump assumes) turn up in droves for the election.

This is quite unrelated, but Trump has a sense of humor.  Not a very well-developed one, but which his followers get, but the Late-Night TV comedians pretend not to get.  We like to laugh at Trump every chance we get (well, not I, personally, but my friends, certainly) but this feeds the belief of the Alt-Right that Left-Wing comedians are a bunch of nitwits that don't have a sense of humor after all.

Now this Iowa Caucus business.  For various reasons, Iowa was allowed, by the Democrat leadership in time immemorial, to have a sort of primary very, very early, which, it turns out, influences strongly which candidate is favored in most subsequent primaries.  But, the newspapers say, Iowa is 91% white.  I'm not sure how I feel about this.  On one hand, if black and minority voters turn out strongly for many subsequent primaries, that will erode the stranglehold that the Iowa Caucus has on the candidacies for the future.  But it does leave a bad feeling in the mouth, that white voters have such a great apparent advantage in selecting the Democrat nominee for president.

A funny thing I'm seeing is that many candidates are promising the media that they will have such-and-such a number of campaign staff working in Iowa, or New Hampshire, or wherever.  What is that all about?  How are voters to respond to that?  Should voters respond to that?  Why do candidates need to boast about how many staff they're going to have?  This seems to me another instance of the US tendency to believe that more is better in almost all cases.

Regardless of Nancy Pelosi's belief that impeachment proceedings against Trump will increase Republican voter turnout next fall, I think impeachment is almost inevitable now.  Unfortunately, whether impeachment happens or not, Trump is going to be happy, because: if they do start impeachment proceedings, which of course will not succeed, Trump will go about crowing that They tried to impeach me, but of course they could not succeed!  If they do not start impeachment proceedings, he will dance about crowing about something else, equally silly.  He is a silly man, and he tries to force his opposition to play silly games, to drag the entire federal government into the clown's ring with him.  Someone has convinced Trump that discrediting government is its own reward.  Why is this?  Because unity is strength for workers and people at the bottom of the economic ladder, whereas for the 1%, they believe that they can go it alone.  (They actually can't, very easily; they need to cooperate, too.  It all depends on a certain vision of how the economic elite can operate once the federal government stops functioning well.  It is by no means clear that things are going to go well for the rich.  What is certain is that things will not go very well at all for the poor if the effectiveness of the federal government begins to decline.)

Many of the rules of thumb that the Machiavellis of the conservatives knew and understood, when they laid down the rules of how to destroy the power of workers, were laid down before our economy was so globalized.  For their plans to work, they need to have the economy less globalized.  But that's not easy; many of the richest families depend of foreign labor, and foreign buyers to maintain their relative position in the hierarchy of affluence; it won't be easy for the Walton family (of Wal-Mart fame) to replace their Chinese sources with sources from somewhere else.  (They probably meet at a Bible-Study somewhere to explain to each other how all this is going to benefit them.)

Have we anticipated all the shenanigans that the GOP and the Alt-Right has up its sleeves to perpetrate during the election, and after the election?  Perhaps the Armed Forces will have to intervene, to prevent utter foolishness following a bad result for the GOP.  This has never happened in the past, and the DOD does not know its way around a coup in the US, though we've watched coups so many times in other countries.  Nobody likes those things; they're almost an admission of the failure of free and fair elections.  But the GOP are turning out to be such a bunch of scofflaws, that anything is possible.

Finally, the reason that every candidate is desperately asking for money is that they need to run TV ads to counterattack negative messages.  (Now that PACs and other organizations can play in the political game, it becomes almost impossible for TV networks to give "Equal Time" to candidates.)  So the big winners, it seems, are TV networks.  Who'd have thunk it?  I can't stand the thought of dishing out money week after week, only to discover that I had been backing a losing candidate all along.  The way I think, though, I would indeed probably back a losing candidate .

Well, be of good cheer, as Charlie Brown would say!

Arch

Thinking Rationally About Climate: The Youth Viewpoint

Before we go into the main topic, which centers around a lawsuit brought against the administration by a group of young people, I want to speak briefly about the somewhat widespread animosity by liberals and The Left against the current president.

As I have said before, there are many reasons why liberals and progressives are furious with the president.  Some are so angry that they refuse to give him his official title, and prefer to refer to him as 45.  There are numerous offensive cartoons about him and his actions, and his choices for secretaries of the various sections within government, and millions across the country are seething.  Millions, of course, have seethed against the presidents we've supported; conservatives have hated Obamacare, and to date it is something that unites the conservatives in hatred, though a few of them recognize that it is not only a difficult law to improve upon, it is the most business-friendly Healthcare reform possible.  Millions have hated other legislation Obama supported.  They hated the fact that he appointed Hillary Clinton, and that he supported her against many accusations of misconduct by Republican party members in and out of government.  Millions hated the bailout of Wall Street banks, and Millions more--some of them Democrats--hated that Obama bailed out the car companies.

But our hate is more reasonable!  (I say that in jest.)  But when we condemn, we must not stoop to insult.  Some of the late night comedians whom I admire are quite brutal in their onslaught against 45; of course, they're comedians, and provided they stop short of sexual harassment (something that brought Al Frankel down, to our dismay,) we can tolerate their viciousness as a necessary safety-valve.  But we should stop short of all of us trying to be safety-valves by demeaning the . . . demeaning 45.  Don't demean.  Vote.  Okay?  Thanks.

What we're seeing related to Climate Change
So far, here are some of the effects that Climate Change has resulted in:
1.  Extreme weather events, such as hurricanes.  These consequences would have taken place regardless of whether the warming of the environment was caused, or even hastened, by man.  So if anyone resists talking or thinking about the connection between Climate Change and extreme weather events simply from being defensive about human culpability, they should knock it off.  The warming environment is certainly the source of these events.
2.  Temperature extremes, e.g. hotter, dryer weather in the Northwest, cooler, wetter weather in the Northeast, which encourages major wildfires in the Northwest, and flooding in the East.  The chain of causes here is more subtle, but scientists are persuaded about the cause.
3.  Ocean Temperatures rising.  This makes it impossible for certain creatures to flourish in the oceans.  These creatures feed small fish, and the smaller fish are food for certain very popular sorts of ocean fish, eaten both by Westerners, and on which smaller Third World countries also depend for food.  In addition, the Oceans are getting dirtier, because warmer water washing into rivers and oceans bring more grime.  Warm water also encourages bad sorts of algae.
4.  Ocean Levels are rising.  Typically, people who live close to the sea are financially disadvantaged, and already, when ocean levels rise for temporary reasons, such as a storm surge, it is poor people who lose their homes, and become refugees.  This is part of the reason why Climate Change is a Social Justice issue.  As ocean levels continue to rise, people will continue to be displaced.
5.  Farmland is being turned into desert.  The implications are obvious.  Of course, certain economic policies are not helping.
6.  The habitats of polar species are being destroyed.  This doesn't directly impact humans, but many of use consider the diversity of species as a part of our quality of life, at least in an intangible way.

That provides a backdrop to our discussion.  Bear in mind that, as conditions deteriorate further, more extreme and surprising consequences will impinge on us, but it is not necessary--yet--to draw attention to those more extreme results of Warming.


From The Perspective of Youth
Recently, a certain lawsuit, which is called Juliana, has drawn attention in the news.  The suit, brought by a number of young people against the Trump Administration, charges that the plaintiffs

... risk being deprived of their “rights to life, liberty, property, and public trust resources by federal government acts that knowingly destroy, endanger, and impair the unalienable climate system that nature endows."

As I understand it, they're accusing the Federal Government of putting at risk their ability to enjoy the usual pursuits of happiness, etc, enshrined in the constitution, by its careless actions.

We might agree with the point of view of the plaintiffs, even if we do not agree with the legal path they have taken.  (My own point of view is sympathetic to the young people, though I do not take it carelessly.)  By the time those who voted in the 2016 election are safely dead, the plaintiffs in this case, who are presently about the age of 20, are going to be deeply involved in the suffering that has been brought on not only generally, because of global warming, but specifically, because of the actions of the present administration.

Normally, a government cannot be hampered by the threat of lawsuits, particularly for actions conducted in good faith for the good of the populace.  But are the environmental actions of the present government in good faith?  Good faith with respect to whom?  Can we equate the benefit of various business interests with the benefit of the people at large?  Can we blame government foolishness on mere ignorance and wishful thinking, rather than malice?

From where we stand, of course, it looks malicious.  But it may, in fact, have been the Administration being kind and generous towards certain businesses, and firm and stern towards nature, and the tree-huggers that conservatives have despised for decades.

If the plaintiffs can prove that the government actions of the recent past were malicious and negligent, then at least certain parts of the demands of the plaintiffs ought to be allowed.

Environment Austerity
As I wrote in the previous post, acting in an environmentally responsible way could be considered inconvenient, and a nuisance.  You have to balance that against the hardship that being irresponsible will cause for many, mostly the poor and uneducated.  Bear in mind that some of the potential victims of our irresponsibility might themselves be far more irresponsible than we are!  (Isn't that always the way it goes ...)
* Minimize sending hot water down the sink, or into the sewer.  Minimize using water at all.  (I must confess that I use a heck of a lot of water, but I try hard to reduce it.)
* Minimize using air conditioning.  Apparently this is a huge factor in Warming.  In fact, using air conditioning makes it necessary for our neighbors to use air conditioning also.
* Spay and Neuter pets.  Pets place a burden on the environment.  Make no mistake: I love our pets, and I love everybody else's pets, too.  But some folks are irresponsible, and as soon as it becomes difficult to deal with their pets, they abandon them.  Some folks take them out to wooded areas, and throw them out; some give the pets to people who are clearly ill-equipped to take them.  Do not construe my remarks to mean that only wealthy pet-owners should be allowed.  Pet ownership involves patience and work, and yes, a degree of expense, especially since veterinary services are not free.  Much of this is avoided if pets are spayed and / or neutered, as appropriate.
* Minimize the use of grills.  Some people enjoy grilling their food more than almost anything else.  Ideally, we ought to give up grilling altogether, to make a maximum reduction on our environment impact.  But if everyone halved their use of grilling, that alone would be enormous, until the time comes, of course, when matters become desperate.
* Use Public Transport!  Greta Thunberg avoids use of motor-powered transportation almost entirely, but at the very least, we can travel by bus (or train) whenever possible.  For parents with young children, I recommend this highly; kids are far more likely to consider bus travel as adults, if they have experienced it as children, especially in the company of their parents.  In some places, bus travel is considered dangerous.  All the more reason to travel by bus.  We do not need to encourage unpleasant people and layabouts to take ownership of public transport.  Personal transport is the single biggest source of unwanted heat and Carbon Dioxide.

All environmentalists end their litanies of things to do with the exhortation: Don't go it alone!  Drag your friends with you!

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Thinking Rationally About Climate Change

The young woman from Sweden, Greta Thunberg, arrived in New York City, having been brought across the Atlantic on a racing yacht by a supporter.  I heard her speak in several clips from various websites, and the young lady is remarkably well-informed, and precise and articulate in her speech (moreover in English, which is not her native language).  I have hardly the words to describe how much I admire the young lady, her speech, and her determination.

I recently read a guest editorial in a major newspaper—to which I have lost the link, unfortunately—that asserts that the first step to realistically addressing the problem might be to admit that we may have passed the deadlines for action.

These deadlines are important, but they are not critical.  Lay people do not understand the meaning of a time deadline in a geological world; yes there are certain turning points, when irreversible change takes place, and you have to begin approaching matters using different methods.  But those different methods are useful even now, while we race ahead with high-tech solutions to try and halt temperatures from creeping up, putting numerous creatures at risk, and make their environment acutely uncomfortable, which is something that should bother us, quite apart from its impact on our food sources.

So I look on the world today in two ways.  One is: let's start working on the environment right now, whether we believe in climate change or not, and whether we believe that deadlines we're handed down from scientists are, or are not, critical.  We have been trained so hard (at least some of us) not to be easily persuaded, that making a decision takes years.

Two: doing some of this takes mental adjustment, and some of that mental adjustment has to take place in how businesses work, how laws are passed, and how we respond to various things which are seen as inconveniences.

Carbon Trapping

This phrase means that carbon in solid form is less of a problem than Carbon Dioxide, which traps heat in the atmosphere (the so-called Greenhouse Effect, where the heat is sent back down to the Earth, without being radiated away, as we want it to be).  The Greenhouse Effect is a major problem now.  Someday, it might not be, if we stop burning things for energy and for heat and comfort.

The most important way of trapping Carbon Dioxide, as far as I can tell, is to plant more trees, and slow down the cutting down of trees.  Unfortunately, cutting down trees is an easy way of tidying up the land; clear a lot, cut down trees too close to a house or building, and so on.  Utilities cheerfully cut down trees that grow too close to power lines or gas lines.  Many of our laws have been written to make things easier for utilities, but today we no longer worship utility companies as we did at one time, and the time may be right to insist that utilities conduct business that are environment-friendly, both in the short term, and the long term.

Plastics

A lot of American 'Ingenuity' has been based on plastic.  It truly is the wonder material, able to do extraordinary things, with great flexibility of use.  But unfortunately the use of plastic as a packaging material, and the problems with plastic packaging, is at the forefront of our attention today.  This sort of plastic waste used to be shipped out to Third World countries for decades, where we considered that it was now their problem.  But as political balances shift, as the bosses of those countries stop considering themselves as owing the US any favors, they simply stopped accepting plastics for recycling, and in many instances, sent the plastic bundles back to the US.

What we have to realize is that plastics are trapped carbon.  There might be a great temptation to incinerate the plastic, just to get it out from underfoot.  The landfills in many poor neighborhoods of some states are filled with plastics, and citizens must be discouraged from burning plastic with great effort, because getting rid of plastic waste by burning it must be an enormous temptation.

Not just plastic wrapping, either.  Think of the letters we get, with plastic windows.  Think of the junk mail we get.  In some businesses, their "productivity" is measured by how much junk mail they send out per week.  As far as the little plastic windowed envelopes are concerned, the technology has made it unnecessary to print the addresses on the insert itself; addresses are easily printed right on the envelope.

I am not an expert, but I think we have to look at technology that simply bundles plastic, with a view to stacking it somewhere out of the way.  Across the country, there are countless malls that are no longer used.  Could they be used as cemeteries for carefully baled plastic?  Of course businessmen want to make use of them for something that will make money for them, such as to convert them into shooting ranges, or fun fairs, or flea markets.  So there will always be business standing in the way of some environmental action.  To make business and the environment push in the same direction, it becomes necessary to make environmental action profitable, or make it legally necessary, by passing laws that require responsible disposal of plastics (or anything) a requirement.  The escalating volume of junk mail across the nation is gradually making the environments of poor citizens unbearable.  The main point is: we must treat existing plastic with some respect, because after all it is trapped carbon.

Incineration

We must strongly discourage incineration as a means of disposing of corpses.  Up until recently, I was almost determined to have my body incinerated, because I did not want it cluttering up the ground anywhere, and I did not want it placed in a coffin soaked in anti-insect poison, as coffins often are, in order to prevent it from being eaten away by natural decaying processes.  People are often unreasonably picky about what happens to their mortal remains after they're done with them.

Convenience

Convenience is an assumption in the American Way Of Life.  The Alt Right is up in arms against the California proscription against plastic drinking straws.  That strikes me as being perversely petty.  This is, at present, just a political issue; the GOP is putting forward a plastic drinking straw as the face of progressive Democrats.

Personal Transportation.  Plastic grocery bags.  Plastic bags of all sorts!  For instance, if you get medicine at the supermarket, as we do, they put the medicine in a plastic container; that container goes in a plastic bag; several of those bags go in a grocery bag.  Some of those bags are for the sake of convenience: to group all your medication in a single container.  Others of those bags are for 'privacy', so that people can't see what medication you're getting.  Yet others are to signify that you have paid for this merchandise.

The principle of keeping plastic solid does not negate the principle that the less plastic is manufactured, the better.  Plastic takes energy to manufacture, which produces heat, and which often releases Carbon Dioxide, which (at the moment) is practically Public Enemy Number One.

Keeping Oceans Clean, and Cold

As far as I remember, keeping anything clean has been a tough sell.  We like to make things as dirty as we like, and then clean them, using really strong detergents, which unfortunately screw up the rivers and the seas.  The clever young people of the future must find ways of minimizing the energy, the chemicals, and the water we use to clean up things.  Rivers and streams and oceans are already at the point of being unable to take any more crap.  Yes, water utilities everywhere clean up the effluent water.  But that itself generates heat, and indirectly releases Carbon Dioxide into the air.

Well, that's all for now, but bear in mind that anyone who cares about the environment is going to be bringing unpleasant facts to the people.  It is the easiest thing in the world to resist this push to saner lifestyles, because ordinary, unthinking, consumer-oriented conservatives hate any sort of discipline.  Having to be careful with anything rubs them the wrong way.  It is going to be an uphill battle to do things for the good of our neighbors, because they will not perceive these actions as benefiting them in the least.  Truckers on the road glare indignantly at hybrid and electric vehicles, though they make gasoline available to them at a lower price!  If all the hybrids and electric vehicles on the roads are magically replaced with gas-guzzling pickups, the price of gasoline would soon inch upwards.  Many conservatives have not been strong in quantitative reasoning.

Kids are usually on board with being careful with things.  They will throw their wrappers in the trash, they will sort the plastics according to type, they will make sure that glass goes in the glass recycling container.  It is the parents and other adults who resent the discipline imposed by the needs of the environment.

Whether or not it is too late to prevent Global Warming from getting to the runaway stage, we may as well begin to plan to minimize its impact.  The future may be horrific, but it will be less horrific if we just dig our heels in, and work to lessen the impact of Climate Change for post-critical-point civilization.

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