There’s a heavy mist rising from the pond this morning. A pair of geese, barely visible, send ripples across the surface. The northern hemisphere tilts toward the season of dormancy. Meteorological fall has begun.
It’s 40 degrees, and a 64 degree house feels cooler than when the outdoor temperature is, say, 60. I don’t understand why. Late in the afternoon we take a bike ride into a stiff north wind and quickly learn we are underdressed. The road exits the woods and enters a protected sunny stretch, and without thinking our pedaling slows and we take in the warmth.
Corn harvest has begun. We flush a group of five pheasants huddled roadside, the first we’ve seen here in years. Crop fields are not ideal habitat but offer some benefit, especially when no-till practices or cover crops are used. As seasonal grain harvest ramps up the effect is not unlike a forest fire— suddenly millions of acres of cover and travel corridors disappear, and wild residents are forced into new routines. Predators take note.
In the news this week the CEO of Chase Bank said the bank will continue to provide loans to the oil and gas industry because not doing so would put America “on the road to hell.” The four biggest US banks: Chase, CitiBank, Bank of America, and Wells-Fargo are the world’s largest lenders to the fossil fuel industry. According to an article by Bill McKibben from The Crucial Years, these same banks also continue to make loans to Russia and its fossil fuel efforts, effectively supporting the war against Ukraine. That means every time we swipe our CitiBank card we’re supporting Russia and Big Oil. It won’t be swiped again. We have options. We all do.
The Chase CEO said the world needs to produce 100 million barrels of oil per day over the next decade, which is an increase over current production and blows a hole in President Biden’s plan to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030. A year ago the four big banks signed onto the Global Alliance for Net Zero, an organized effort to wean lenders away from the oil industry, but now they’re threatening to back out, claiming “legal reasons.”
We subscribe to a local online meteorologist who backs up his forecasts with explanations I appreciate. In recent years he’s made several references to events that were particularly rare and unexpected, sometimes destructive.
A study published in ScienceDaily says that as the temperature difference between the North Pole and equator lessens, the ability for forecasters to accurately predict weather, particularly flooding events, becomes more challenging. The atmosphere is behaving differently, and the models used to predict weather are becoming outdated.
Meteorologists are quick to mention when they get a forecast correct but can be tight lipped when they don’t. A couple years back I sent my weatherman an email suggesting he mention climate change when, say, a “chance of rain” becomes a flooding event. It might help him save face while doing his part in keeping an existential threat in the public’s eye. He responded saying the topic was politically charged and he had inclinations to steer clear, but agreed it was something he needed to do. He hasn’t.
In a few days September will pass the reins to October. Our weatherman suggests peak leaf color and first frost dates could be delayed. The planet is getting hotter and drier and wetter all at once. Big banks, and virtually everyone alive, continue to support an industry which ensures a climatic shift back to a world where no man ever lived.
We’ve started watching the Ken Burns series on PBS: The US and the Holocaust. The longer I live the more I realize how frequently I must have dozed off in high school history. I didn’t know that Hitler drew inspiration from what he observed in the US. Our forced sterilization practices, our treatment of native Americans and slaves, the support shown for improving the gene pool, all intrigued the fledgling German leader. I didn’t know that many of his countrymen opposed their commander and assumed his aspirations would be short lived or controlled by reasonable people close to him. I didn’t realize how restrictive our borders were towards accepting Jews desperate to leave Europe. Most unsettling are the parallels that can be drawn between the rise of a crazed dictator in 1930’s Germany and the current state of affairs in the US. We can be a complicated and frustrating lot, set in our ways, easily drawn to conspiracy, blinded by deep rooted racial prejudice or religious intolerance.
I get it. A good part of my life was oriented towards career and earning a respectable living, looking no deeper into the world than required to complete the task. I didn’t think about the prejudices I might hold or the fault in my work ethic, and was the perfect candidate to be influenced by snippets of news from biased sources. I would never take the time to analyze my opinions, which I knew could be readily affirmed by friends equally consumed by ambition. It shouldn’t have taken so much time to get my head screwed on and it no doubt is not yet securely fastened. I have to admire the youth of today who are viewing the world with eyes wide open. My hat is off to them.
We live on a remarkable blue sphere. By inconceivable design or improbable chance it evolved into a beautifully functional living machine, but our sheer numbers and misuse of resources has thrown a wrench in the works. While doing great things we allowed our progress to be undermined by greed, superiority, and a warped sense of dominion. We failed to respect our role in a world where everything is connected, and crippled the bedrock systems that support life. Even as our understanding improves, we are reluctant to let go of destructive behaviors and practices.
I think about all this as we cut up our CitiBank cards and take a bike ride into the first big push of autumn air. The earth tilts on its axis and continues around the sun, just as it has for billions of years, just as it likely will for a few billion more. It has the luxury of time to heal its wounds, and a future more certain than ours.
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