Sunday, June 11, 2023

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

“The grass is infused with bound clover and vetch, and each bale gives off the scent of early summer and sparks a memory of those summers long ago….”

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— From the June 14 entry of Cycle of the Seasons: A New England Year, by Eric M. Howe (born 1967), of Paxton, Mass. He’s a professor of science education at Assumption College in Worcester.

“Today on the NATO line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. On the other side of the line, the Soviet forces also face east, to prevent their people from leaving.’’

— Ronald Reagan, in a speech to the British Parliament on June 8, 1982

“Just go out for a breath of air
And you’ll be ready for Medicare.
The city streets are really quite a thrill –
If the hoods don’t get you, the monoxide will.

Pollution, pollution!
Wear a gas mask and a veil.
Then you can breathe,
Long as you don’t inhale!’’

— From the song “Pollution,’’ by songwriter, singer, piano player and math professor Tom Lehrer (born 1928)

Last week’s very unhealthy smoke pollution in the Northeast, from hundreds of forest fires in eastern Canada – reportedly an unprecedented situation —  brought back memories of the smog in America’s big cities before the creation of the federal Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency. Both were started in 1970 under the Nixon administration.  They led to comprehensive federal and state regulations to limit emissions from both stationary (mostly industrial) and mobile (cars, etc.) sources. Of course, many big polluting companies, aided by Republican politicians, fought, and some still fight, these environmental and public health protections.

Those 1970 initiatives helped a lot, as you can see in old before-and-after photos of, say, Los Angeles and New York.

But now high temperatures and drought (interrupted by floods) associated with global warming caused by our fossil-fuel burning are igniting massive forest fires that upper winds spread widely to threaten our health, not to mention the lives of billions of animals. (We had our air conditioners going last week, even though it was far from hot, in order to filter out the worst of the bad air. Of course, in  so doing we were indirectly burning fossil fuel in the form of the natural gas that New England utilities  use   to generate electricity.)

Temperatures have been above “normal,” and rainfall below,  in much of Canada during the last few weeks – perfect conditions for lightning, pyromaniacs and careless campfire builders and smokers to start blazes.  It’s increasingly difficult to say what’s “normal” these days. Rapid warming in the Arctic, in particular, is screwing up the jet stream.

The anti-air-pollution efforts since 1970 will be overwhelmed by the effects of forest fires unless and until mankind develops the will to cut back and then end fossil-fuel burning over the next couple of decades. Obviously.

How strange that Canada, which we’ve generally seen as a source of clean air, is now spewing atmospheric poison. Keep those COVID face masks handy!

These links may interest you:

BBC

NYTIMES

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In happier environmental news, 175 nations are negotiating to enact a treaty by next year to address the ongoing environmental disaster – on land and sea — of plastic pollution. This would include measures to reduce plastic production and, I would hope, to encourage biodegradable replacements for fossil-fuel-based plastics.

As for plastic-product recycling,  it’s mostly a joke.

Only about 15 percent of plastic waste is collected for recycling worldwide, with about half of that thrown out. I wonder how much water and fossil fuel (to heat the cleansing water) is wasted to wash the plastic (mostly containers) before and after it’s tossed in recycling bins. Cleaning out peanut-butter containers is particularly challenging!

Most plastic trash ends up thrown into the open environment or in landfills and incinerators. Its compounds imperil wildlife and, more and more, human health.

Hit this link:

Reuters

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As attempts to address the housing challenge proceed,  consider what ought to happen in some localities, especially in the suburbs: Allowing taller buildings  (and so more housing units) where housing has traditionally been very horizontal.  (Our neighborhood has a mix of two- and three-story single-family houses and taller apartment and/or condo buildings. This seems to please residents, aesthetically and otherwise. Some older people have moved down the street  from their houses to nearby apartments or condos.)

Another strategy to boost supply (which tends to slow housing-cost inflation) would be to make much more use of prefabricated homes, which are generally much cheaper than standard homes. These dwellings are made off-site in standard sections that can be easily shipped and then assembled where people will live in them.

Study Political Newcomers

I hope that voters looking at the very crowded race for the Democratic nomination for Rhode Island’s First Congressional District will consider clearly qualified candidates entering the political arena for the first time, and not just the usual political suspects.

Take, for instance, the impressive Walter Berbrick, whom I met the other week. A resident of Middletown, he’s a former Navy intelligence officer, an ex-professor and researcher at the U.S. Naval War College, in Newport, a policymaker at the State Department and Pentagon and a Red Cross community leader. He is very well versed, as you would think, in maritime and military matters – both very useful to Rhode Island — but also has broad knowledge of social, environmental, and economic issues, and has an inspiring family background.

He doesn’t seem to have any “identity politics’’ to lean on. Will that hurt him?

Hit this link:

Stuck to the Screen

Not necessarily a happy statistic….

A Verizon study found that Rhode Islanders spend, on average, 3.5 hours a day watching TV, making it third in TV time after the dirt-poor, low-education states of West Virginia and Alabama! Does Ocean State have particularly alluring programs? Or is there something sociological or psychological at work? Too tired to read?

Occasionally I channel surf to try to find something interesting —  and free! —  on the tube but usually find a desert, though some of the PBS and C-Span stuff is good. Rhode Island PBS, to its great credit, is doing considerably more original producing on regional stories these days.

In any case, might there be better, or at least more enjoyable, things to do in some of that 3.5 hours than watch television?

I wonder if the Ocean State’s education challenges have anything to do with this. Massachusetts, by the way, is ranked as having the ninth-least TV watching.
 

Hit this link:

Reveling in the Ruins?

The state-owned, graffiti-rich carriage house and stables of a once stately Newport mansion, which was built in 1876 and called “The Bells’’ and torn down in the ‘60s, will finally be demolished. That’s after four young people who were playing there were injured when part of the roof collapsed. The structures probably should have been demolished years ago.

Newport has its fair share of residential monuments from the first Gilded Age (semi-officially roughly 1870-1900, though some extend it through The Twenties), but I’d guess that few if any, others are in such a mess as “The Bells.’’ The current Gilded Age, still going strong, began in the 1980s, when, under the Reagan administration, taxes were slashed for the very rich.

Places like “The Bells’’ lure young “explorers,” especially boys, intent on mischief or innocent fun. I well remember as a kid entering (i.e., trespassing) such decayed mansions along the Massachusetts Bay shoreline near our house. Most were, or had been, summer places.  Perhaps some were abandoned, or just started to be neglected, when the owners ran out of money in The Depression. Most were gray-shingle houses that started to be put up after the Civil War. But some of the newer ones had Spanish Mission-style stucco walls, fountains and statuary, which were popular in The Roaring Twenties. Newly (if only briefly) rich people liked what they saw of these houses on Florida’s Gold Coast and in Los Angeles.

Kids would smoke in them (raising the danger of fire) or engage in such idiotic behavior as BB gun fights.

In the 18th Century in Europe,  especially in England, there was a mania for building fake ruins; some draw tourists to this day. Maybe some falling-down  Newport mansions can someday serve a similar purpose. Crumbling old houses covered with vines can look romantic, and are spawning grounds for entertaining ghost stories. Just kidding. The building inspectors probably would’t allow it.

Living Long

Nathan Cheng leads the Longevity Biotech Fellowship, an online community for people working in the longevity field.  He suggests setting up Rhode Island as a “longevity state’’ because, among other advantages, it’s next to Greater Boston, one of the world’s biotech and healthcare centers.

Presumably, the minuscule size of the state would also make it a good laboratory for longevity efforts, assuming that enough of the population – and state government? —  were cooperative.  Only a relatively small number of longevity enthusiasts would have to move to the state to be able to elect public servants willing to support a longevity agenda.

Pull in the Brown Medical School?

Hit this link:

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When people try to blame Ukraine for some action against Putin’s marauders, it’s always good to respond with “Who invaded whom? Who targets civilians above all?”

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I’d guess that reducing our economic sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba, both run by nasty anti-American dictatorships, would tend to reduce the flow of desperate migrants from those unhappy nations to our southern border by reducing poverty in their home countries. But Republican politics would make that hard to do.

The GOP’s Bircher Cancer

Readers who want to better understand the slide of much of the Republican Party into the GOP/QAnon/nihilist swamp would well to read Matthew Dallek’s new book, Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right. This grimly entertaining work tells how a bunch of rich and bigoted white guys created a movement in 1958 based heavily on verified-evidence-free conspiracy theories.

The movement helped yank much of the Republican Party far to the right of where it was in the heyday of President Eisenhower’s usually responsible center-right organization. Many traditional conservatives who should have rejected the lies and craziness of the Birchers made their cynical and cowardly peace with them in order to capitalize on their ruthless energy, organizational skills and money.

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Pat Robertson has died at 93.  Like some other TV evangelists, the far-right GOP politician and Southern Baptist preacher was brilliant at separating his many ingenuous followers from their money, making him a very rich man who lived in palatial style.

Major business schools should start offering courses titled “Maximizing Cash From Christianity’’ or “Reaping Revenue From Religion’’ or “Entrepreneurial Evangelism’’.
 

Robert Whitcomb is a veteran editor and writer. Among his jobs, he has served as the finance editor of the International Herald Tribune, in Paris; as a vice president and the editorial-page editor of The Providence Journal; as an editor and writer in New York for The Wall Street Journal,  and as a writer for the Boston Herald Traveler (RIP). He has written newspaper and magazine essays and news stories for many years on a very wide range of topics for numerous publications, has edited several books and movie scripts and is the co-author of among other things, Cape Wind.

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