№ 655. Climate Status

The Week

 

You can never really see the future, only imagine it, then try to make sense of the new world when it arrives.

 

Just a few years ago, climate projections for this century looked quite apocalyptic, with most scientists warning that continuing “business as usual” would bring the world four or even five degrees Celsius of warming — a change disruptive enough to call forth not only predictions of food crises and heat stress, state conflict and economic strife, but, from some corners, warnings of civilizational collapse and even a sort of human endgame. (Perhaps you’ve had nightmares about each of these and seen premonitions of them in your newsfeed.)

 

Now, with the world already 1.2 degrees hotter, scientists believe that warming this century will most likely fall between two or three degrees. (A United Nations report released this week ahead of the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, confirmed that range.) A little lower is possible, with much more concerted action; a little higher, too, with slower action and bad climate luck. Those numbers may sound abstract, but what they suggest is this: Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years.

 

№ 314. Mulanay Sunsets Too

№ 179. Lifesavers

Red chairs at the workshop lounge, Pompidou Center, Paris, May 2014

Dear Helena, wherever you may be,
Let me unfurl you like dawn on my sheets,
When dreams blur into wakefulness.

№ 142. My Tartan Backpack: Yolanda (Ondoy Part 2)

Sanity Break: 

This is a visual checklist for water... 

(a) Disaster Preparedness; or 

(b) Vacation. Praying for the sun and a drier week ahead.

Flickr photo and my checklist below.

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Ever wonder why Sunday sits like a sentinel on the cusp of a new week? I think it's because she is a stern gatekeeper between the week past and the new one about to be born. She remembers while she looks onward. Sentiments and anticipation keep her company. She dutifully heralds the new king as he is about to ascend the throne--Monday.

Monday can be cruel because he reminds us, almost indifferently, of our practical cares, without missing his headlong rush and rhythm into the weekdays. He descends like a rush hour traffic with a caffeine fix. He announces his coming with grating alarms and sirens. He allows but, at most, three snoozes on his rare generous moods.

Monday loves the office cafeteria food---clean, nutritious, nothing spicy, business appropriate and reasonably priced. He adores his coffee black and, without sugar and cream, thank you, served on a humdrum mug. White noise relaxes him.

Monday, thorough and imperious. Inevitable, even as we contemplate a weekend up ahead. He is coming--- he scrawls a faint note in your mind. Just a reminder. No biggie---lest we forget in the company of the hip twins Friday and Saturday.

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Checklist: Light Jacket, against the unwanted elements, Waterproof Documents Case: TCT, StockCerts, Passports, Etc., Floatation Device / Tire Interior, Water, unsalted and clean, Flippers, in case swimming or wading is inevitable, Mac with environmental seals, just in case you get marooned on the roof or in a beach and Banana, the ideal portable food, lasts for 3 days and comes in its natural packaging.

№ 85.Habits of the Mind (2)

Anxious. Here's a balm: "Making Paper Boats with Papa".

Open publication - Free publishing

№ 84. Habits of the Mind

It's the climate change on a planetary scale, for starters. Then there are the rabid monsoons. Did we mention the floods thick with our sewage and rich with our possessions? How about the waste segregation floating on our dead rivers?

It's all the irresponsibility and ineptness in this vast urban sinkhole.

"Anxiety: a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease
about something with an uncertain outcome."---David Mansaray

And talk about another habit of the mind---anxiety. Anxiety because of and amidst all of these.

Thankfully, it's one that can be cured by a simple smack or noogie. Thankfully, the cure is mainly mental not planetary. But if you wish, it could also be physical, a break from an unproductive helplessness that's fast becoming a pattern, or worse, a cycle. It's this loopy possibility that can be self-defeating.

Daniel Smith says, "Anxious thoughts — the what-if’s, the should-have-been’s, the never-will-be’s — are dramatic thoughts. They are compelling thoughts. They are thoughts that have no compunction about seizing you by your lapels and shouting, “Listen to me! Believe me!” So we listen, and believe, without realizing that by doing so we are stepping onto a closed loop, a set of mental tracks that circle endlessly and get us nowhere. This makes the anxious habit very hard to break. Over time those mental tracks deepen and become hardened ruts. Our thoughts slip into grooves of illogic, hypervigilance and catastrophe."

So here's a smack! Figurative, for now.

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"One day last year, I called my brother Scott in a state of agitation, self-hatred and incipient despair. Scott was at work and short on time. I got straight to the point. 'I’m in a state of agitation, self-hatred and incipient despair!' I cried.

'Tell me more,' Scott said. 'What is it?'

'I'm anxious — again! I’m anxious day and night. I wake up anxious and I go to bed anxious. I’m a total wreck. And I’m not doing anything to help myself! I know what helps and I’m not doing it! What’s wrong with me? Why am I not doing the things I know full well will make me feel better?'

Vice Grips and Some Such

'Oh,' Scott said. 'That’s an easy one. It’s because you’re an idiot.' Then he said he’d call me after work. (NYT Opinionator)

№ 29. My Life in REM Sleep

Today is May 4, 2010, Tuesday. We're in the middle of Manila's concrete bake off. It’s only 11:10 AM and I’m already melting from the heat. 

I’m writing this confession on a black Mac, which has the color of my id.

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Like the rings of a redwood, sweat is etched in my indexes. They yield tales of the fat years as well as the lean ones. 

I have recently been self-employed---unplugged from the matrix of production.  Technically though, I am just a capitalist in hibernation.

I also just switched from Windows to Mac last year. 


Yes, I’m aware that Mac is a Q Continuum compared to that unenlightened majority of the technological divide. Those protozoans and their clones. Still, my Mac hums on XP. Defilement, you say. Well, my system can’t be purged of all eighteen years of assimilation. Redmond is still fused with my flesh.

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№ 28. Manila Extract (after Ondoy)

Design Anthology

You are dense.
An equation of salty noodles 
steaming in my cup.


You are stained.
A peppered whisper
left by the ketchup on my lips.


You are Manila.
A name seasoned by monsoons
stirring needles in my gut.

№ 9. At the Post Office

On the last day of our trip last year, I bought these postcards from the stamps museum in Singapore. They arrived quite late---3 weeks after I mailed them in the museum. Airmail, although considered snail-paced now, still works! Real postcards look and feel better, too.

Maybe the post office is still relevant in the age of gmail.

№ 6. All Soul’s Day at S.21 (II)

“Better that one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling… if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all.”

--- Robert McAfee Brown, Preface for the 25^th Anniversary Edition of Elie Wiesel’s NIGHT

№ 3. Backpacking in IndoChina: All Soul’s Day at S.21

A room on the third floor

The sign at the entry mandated propriety: no laughter. But noises no longer have to be contained. Or drowned with music. Only the enlarged pictures in each quarter have remained stoic sentinels of the violence inside.