Monthly Archives: June 2015

Just Some Odds and Ends

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A social earthquake occurred in the United States beginning last Thursday and aftershocks continued until today. It was caused by the Supreme Court’s rulings in favor of homosexual marriages, reinforcing the permanence of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), blocking Texas legislation that will close abortion clinics, indirectly making it simpler in the future to declare the death penalty cruel and unusual punishment regardless of the manner by which States choose to execute felons, and last but not least, voting against an appeal by the Arizona republican party to allow more party input into the State’s redistricting process. It turns out Arizona is one of only three states where redistricting is defined by an independent commission – not by party politicians.

The extreme right has been pressing for a one-religion nation since 2009 when the tea party was created. It was an opportune time for the tea party to press its political/religious mores because republicans had gerrymandered state districts to guarantee republican legislatures no matter how the popular vote turned out. The conservative legislatures were permissive to tea party requests. The homosexual marriage ruling, in particular, which requires all fifty states to allow, perform and recognize such marriages, was a heavy blow to the extreme right. From Alabama to Texas, state court systems are trying hard to fight off the Supreme Court’s ruling but the die has been cast. In short order, every state will have to conform.

Senator Bernie Sanders, running for President against Hillary Clinton, shows poorly in national polls. However, it turns out he is drawing the largest crowds to his events – larger than everyone else running for President!

Pope Francis has invited Naomi Klein to sit on a panel about global warming. The Vatican is putting on a panel Wednesday to draw attention to a conference in Rome later in the week being organized by the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace and by Catholic groups that work on development issues.

You may remember that the mariner has cited her works on several occasions. Klein’s latest book, This Changes Everything, Capitalism versus the Climate, takes the position that capitalism is the cause of climate change and further, capitalism cannot solve the climate issue.

Australia has raised concern about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The nation is one of the participants and the public has had more access to the agreement than we in the US. Australia is concerned about the same things Americans suspect about the agreement: it is heavily cast in favor of corporations, allows corporations to disregard labor and civil rights legislation, and does not, in fact, create more jobs because corporations are not bound by location and can relocate at any time to the least expensive labor market. Obama slipped us a mickey on this one.

Happy Independence Day!

Ancient Mariner

Yesterday Morning

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Yesterday morning, it rained again in Iowa. All the puddles, all the standing water reservoirs on people’s lawns are refreshed and full. Being Sunday, the morning put a damper on religious services and many of the “day-off” activities that could use a break from June’s continuous rainfall.

By afternoon, the Sun broke through and the tone of the day shifted. In the mariner’s backyard, weeding the gardens is put off again – a thorough weeding hasn’t been performed since the end of May. The vegetable gardens are growing as if they received a miracle drug. Anyone who grows Zucchini knows how fast it balloons in size. This year, a gardener had best check the zucchini every few hours! The compost hasn’t been disturbed for a couple of weeks; there’s a fine set of cucumber plants growing.

This is the kind of day when one’s brain is slowed like a computer on a busy network. A lot has happened in just a few days: the Charleston murders, two unbelievable decisions by the Supreme Court about LGBT and the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s Eulogy at the funeral of Clementa Pinckney, the Netherlands required to reduce carbon emissions by 25% in 5 years, James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate’s Environmental Protection and Public Works Committee denying that global warming exists, and having the local family over for the mariner’s specially made pizza. The Wimbledon Grand Slam is in action, too. It’s a day just to let life happen.

To demonstrate the lack of focus on a day like today, the mariner and his son are exchanging emails about how thick the bark was on plant life during the Carboniferous Period (began 350 million years ago and lasted for 68 million years). This is the period from which we mine coal today. The subject draws the mariner’s mind back to the earliest Hominids (the split from the ape family that occurred 8 million years ago). Humans and their ancestral Homo family have been around for a very short time. How much longer will the Holocene Period (right now) and its Hominid family last?

These subjects seem irrelevant and too erudite to be worth conversation or even casual thought. What’s more important is our financial status, our zucchini, and fixing that stuck basement door; the church’s pancake breakfast is a few days away. That’s probably as it should be. There is a lot of living to be done today – too much to worry about events that did not and will not occur in our lifetime. Yet, these seemingly unimportant subjects are emerging in the news, the strategies of corporations, and how the US government and every other government are operated.

The mind drifts to computerization, robots, and the fears of artificial intelligence, when computers will be smarter and more aware than we are. The mariner likes the response of Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple. He said, “Don’t worry about the robots eliminating humans. We make good pets.”

Time to make pizza.

Ancient Mariner

Jim Inhofe

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In fairness, the mariner stayed awake until 3:00AM to listen to Jim Inhofe (R) Oklahoma Senator on CSPAN1. His presentation was difficult to follow because he spoke in half-sentences. His major defense against climate change, and the impact of the fossil fuel industry on that climate change, boiled down to bits and pieces of hearings in his Committee on Environment and Public Works that provided loopholes in defense of non-action on the part of his committee – even when the testimony was taken out of context as given by those testifying against conservative government policy.

Inhofe’s basic premise is that unless one stops all countries simultaneously from contributing carbon dioxide to the atmosphere , it is useless to pass US legislation because CO2 will not be diminished.

This policy flies in the face of so many international and national legislation and court decisions that the mariner cannot list them all. To name a few countries that are pursuing less CO2 carbon emission, one could name all European countries, all Nordic countries, and many others scattered throughout the world – even Mexico and South Korea. The United Nations, whatever the reader may think of the organization politically, does a good job of monitoring energy production around the world. It is unanimously opposed to current CO2 output and has proposed significant decreases in CO2 by 2020.

It is impossible for every country instantaneously to change its carbon policy. Inhofe knows this is impossible and stands behind the principle that every nation must agree to significant reduction before the US need lift a finger in Congress.

In addition, he stands behind the scientifically unsupported concept that there is no global warming and further, that it is not related to human activity.

Oklahomans not related to fossil fuels, be proud.

Ancient Mariner

A Moment to Remember

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The Reverend Clementa Pinckney eulogy by the President was one of those moments that will hang around like FDR’s “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” FDR’s first inaugural address to a nation struggling with a collapsed economy. The speech rallied enough confidence that FDR was able to implement his aggressive recovery program.

It will hang around like John Kennedy’s inaugural “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”; and his speech in Berlin in the midst of a turbulent period of the cold war: “Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was “civis Romanus sum”. Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is “Ich bin ein Berliner”.

No list of timeless speeches is complete without Martin Luther King’s words, “I have a dream…” Another that has become forgotten – except that it is played once each year for West Point cadets, is General MacArthur’s speech about Duty – Honor – Country – a farewell to West Point shortly before he died. He was a magnificent public speaker and his entire speech is worth a listen. He ended:

“Today marks my final roll call with you, but I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be – of The Corps, and The Corps, and The Corps.”
 I bid you farewell.

We can find many momentous speeches – speeches that are more than words, more than inspiration – they are speeches that brought to one point in time great emotion, powerful leadership, and a unique quality to create new history.

As the eulogist at Reverend Pinckney’s funeral, only Barack Obama could have delivered a speech that will have a place in the annals of US history:

He is African American – any other race could not authentically share the gravity felt by the congregation.

He is familiar with the manner and practice of African American worship services – his delivery was absorbed by the congregation as if in a spell.

He is an African American President of the United States; what he said could not be refuted by any lesser political group – and he was one of them.

He is a liberal. His political profile against segregation, guns, and political abuse rang true to the congregation.

He wrote this speech himself. It was from his heart, from his life experience as a person of color. His words were words that nuanced the long suffering history of African Americans.

And quite beyond normal expectations, he sang Amazing Grace in the gospel style of African Americans. That clinched the speech as personal, standing in the light of God’s Grace, and although the song is a tribute to God’s Grace, it is also a unifying and strengthening song that unified the congregation in common cause.

The words above constitute the mariner’s perception of the chemistry of the event – certainly potent. Intellectually, he was pleased that the President understood how God’s Grace works and how the individual should respond. Quite often, the most learned pastor will interpret Grace backwards, treating Grace as a reward after the fact. The President had it right: Grace is God’s “pass it forward,” not a self-serving gratification.

Ancient Mariner

 

Pough Paree

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AvengersPatrick MacNee died today at the age of 93. A moment’s silence by fans who remember The Avengers from the 1960’s. His best known partner, Diana Rigg, a fine looking actress, is still with us. The two of them were the best of British tongue-in-cheek humor. MacNee played John Steed, an understated, imperturbable fighter of crime – some of his antagonists were strange. His partner played Emma Peel, an ever ready to assist martial arts expert who always dressed in a tight jumpsuit. Videos are available on the Internet and DVDs for those who want to travel through time.

Those were the days.

The Pope issued a statement that the world must heed the dangers of global warming, which he laid at the feet of humanity as the cause. Jim Inhofe (R) Oklahoma, had snide remarks. The republican candidate herd (is there another term we could use to specify 23 republicans running for President of the US? Suggestions welcome) to the last man and woman denounced Pope Frank’s statement for the most part saying (a) the Pope is not a scientist (b) the Pope should stick to religion and leave science to us!! (c) the Roman Catholic Church does not represent world opinion.

The trashing of the Pope – indeed that was what it was; none of the candidates were nice or polite and in a few cases could not rise above character assassination – shows the power of politics when it is comprised of large amounts of money, lack of statesmanship, and counting on gerrymandered voters in the primaries.

As if to deliberately counter this silliness, the Netherlands was ordered by a court in Hague to reduce carbon output by 25% of 1990 levels within five years – more than the Dutch government intention to reduce the amount by 14 to17 percent.

A UN climate secretariat article obliging states to do whatever is necessary to prevent dangerous climate change was also cited. So was the UN climate science panel’s 2007 assessment of the reductions in carbon dioxide needed to have a 50% chance of containing global warming to 2°C.

In local news, the mariner’s town has been subject to strategically timed thunderstorms and torrential rains (rain falls in inch increments). An earlier post referenced that he lost three old and stately trees during a bad storm. When the damaged trunks were dropped to the ground, the ground was so saturated the trunks left 6-8 inch trenches across the yard. Needless to say, these are full of water. In fact, half the backyard is underwater. Mosquitoes, gnats and pond bugs abound. If it ever stops raining, insecticide must be placed on the water’s surface to kill the bothersome insects. The lawn must be rebuilt from scratch.

The experience raised a conundrum for the mariner: How do pond-dependent insects and plants travel to his standing water? The closest open water is at the golf course about a mile away. In some manner, he has received a complete, ready-to-go swamp as if it were a kit from a swamp store. If the mariner had any trees left, he would hang some Spanish Moss on them and turn loose a few muskrats. To add insult to injury, just days before the trees were damaged, the mariner downloaded plans for a barred owl nest. The owls are plentiful in town and young rabbits are a treat. The nest would have overlooked the lawn in front of the flower garden. So much for that idea. Instead, the mariner may add a couple of caimans and a Cottonmouth water snake.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

How US Political Concepts will Change Society

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The mariner has put aside mass extinction for the time being. He and the reader will have to watch related news for the next 3 or 4 years to see if humanity is responding to this important issue.

In a search for insight into the extinction issue, among other things the mariner researched is how large groups of people, nations’ economies, religions, and political advocates behave and how they have an effect on larger groups.

As an over-simplified example, the extreme right in the US pushes for a Christian theocracy. Other religions or social positions will be suppressed and the line between church and state will be smudged until it is useless. Israel is a good example of this approach.

Again oversimplified, libertarians press for freedom from everything. Regulations are an unnatural imposition on free market economics, which means all entitlements will disappear, business loopholes in tax law and favored status, economic regulations, including those for banks, will disappear, and individual states will be left to their own devices. The Federal government will back the currency, fight wars, deal with foreign governments but with a libertarian posture, and make it illegal for any special interest group (like the theocratic right) to impose on the national citizenry.

The mariner will assume that by now readers know these examples are oversimplified.

Capitalists, regardless of political party, are similar to libertarians except each capitalist wants to leverage profit and market expansion at any cost; loopholes and favored status will stay – including treaties, trade arrangements and control over all costs including labor, for which a minimum cost is the best cost. In short, the only notable difference between capitalists and libertarians is capitalists are less ethical and play a rougher game while libertarians adhere to the ethic of a level playing field and carry guns to assure levelness.

Switching from the conservative side to the liberal side (in the US), socialists press for an enforced level playing field. Unlike the libertarians, the ethic is one that incrementally protects the citizen first, providing for “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.” The success of the private sector primarily will be for the benefit of the citizenry. Entitlement programs will multiply considerably. Agencies overseeing environment, health, military, science, and other issues that affect the citizen will multiply as well.

Democratic socialists, often called populists, believe in the absolute authority and right of the citizenry. Democratic socialists are susceptible to current hot button issues and governance by referendum and recall voting will be common. A democratic socialist government will be more under the control of bureaucrats because elected officials, unlike today, will come and go more frequently. A common plea by democratic socialists is the right to vote on budgets and military proposals. Jane Fonda is a well known democratic socialist for obvious reasons. Still, we must consider the likes of Hugo Chavez, Eugene V. Debs, John Dewey, Albert Einstein, Erich Fromm and Bernie Sanders.

Liberals are all about fairness in society. Fairness does not have a specific definition. Liberals believe the primary goal of government is to protect all citizens from abuse, especially from the wealthy and from corporate shenanigans; they also believe that there is a minimum financial status for the proletariat. Liberals expect the government to behave like a giant cultural scale, protecting both supply-siders and demand-siders. Corporations likely will require unions and a COLA compliant with Federal law.

The silent majority is ill-defined – even among themselves. On the one hand, the silent majority is created by pernicious gerrymandering and licentious political campaigning. On the other hand, the silent majority has a low advocacy factor. In great part, the silent majority is comprised of individuals who don’t vote. Their interests are a conglomeration of all the other groups: leave me alone, I have a little league game tonight; leave me alone, the Lakers are playing; just keep my paycheck coming; no new taxes; whatever it takes to have cheap gasoline, kill those bastards in the Middle East or, conversely, let them fight it out – what are we doing over there anyway, etc.

Finally, there is, for want of a TV political pundit’s imagination, the center right. The media often claims that the US is a center right nation. This is a phenomenon rather than a legitimate political position. The center right is comprised of the silent majority when they decide to vote. Insecure about change of any kind, whether out of ignorance or fear of losing the toehold they have on personal security, the center right voter will vote for the conservative candidate and support conservative referendums. However, they are not an accountable, unified group. The left also has its centrists who decide to vote occasionally. It takes a great deal of energy to stir these mostly young nonvoters to become voters. Kudos to Obama for that achievement.

So how does the reader want to improve the US? The mariner has written about political groups but he has not introduced the groups’ reactions to immigration, taxing the wealthy, bank domination of the economy, military philosophy, government funding for infrastructure – including new technological solutions that will help the environment, and, for that matter, avoid extinction. How will each political group address these issues? Answering that question certainly is more entertaining than jigsaw puzzles….

Ancient Mariner

Is Extinction True?

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The word about the Holocene Extinction, AKA the Sixth Mass Extinction, is beginning to spread. Lowbrow naysayers have linked together unrelated studies with the attitude, “Here we go again…” Others dismiss the work of the research team by casting aspersions on Paul Ehlrich, who has produced fatalistic studies in the past (which still hold relevant truths). A fair and informative interview with head researcher Gerardo Ceballos can be found at this link:

http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/we-are-100-for-sure-in-the-middle-of-a-major-extinction-event

Given the naysayers are pooh-poohing the extinction for self gratification, the mariner feels certain that industries and reactionaries who have vested interests in keeping culture and economy the way it is, prefer nothing should change and will take delaying actions beyond the naysayers skepticism.

No one can predict with certainty how long the extinction process will take. This makes it easy for many to sit by the side of the road and wait to see what happens. “Waiting” is self destructive. No one wants to give up automobiles for enforced mass transit; utilities don’t want to shut down electrical plants in favor of distributed non-fossil fuel electricity; the coal industry doesn’t want to be banished; the magic of fracking, which isn’t magic and is a dirty industrial process, doesn’t want tightly controlled regulations that will cut into profits; households still want strawberries in grocery stores in January; travel destinations don’t want transportation restricted; households and industries don’t want to be relocated to restore an endangered habitat….ad infinitum.

The only point that no one except politicians seems to challenge is that global warming is happening increasingly fast. There is too much data to refute that. How fast is a matter of conjecture but it is easy to get into a conversation like, “I remember crabbing for Maryland crabs; I took home a bushel in one day!” The mariner knows firsthand that doesn’t happen anymore. He’s sure the reader can think of a personal comparison where wildlife was more plentiful, beaches were pristine, and water birds, seals and otters weren’t covered in crude oil.

Remember the Passenger Pigeon? It was by far the most numerous bird species in North America at the turn of the 1900’s. There were billions of them across all of North America. Deforestation and commercial hunting wiped out the Passenger Pigeon. The last one died in a zoo in 1914. The Passenger Pigeon is an example of how Homo sapiens expedites mass extinction. In the post, Advocacy at Home – Specie Ecology, posted earlier this month, the mariner provided a list of endangered animals that went on for pages. The mariner provides again a short quote from the Cree Indians:

“Only when the last tree has died, the last river been poisoned, and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.”

As Naomi Klein says in her book, This Changes Everything, the Earth’s biosphere is not a for-profit issue. The world’s cultures and priorities must turn away from capitalistic solutions and reinvest – at cost – in the biosphere for our own survival.

The mariner leaves this issue for awhile. Like yeast in bread, the idea of mass extinction needs time to rise. He asks only that the reader pay attention to the news and magazine articles that discuss global warming, water shortage, weather energy and changes to the oceans, polar ice, and disappearing creatures because humans have destroyed their habitat.

Ancient Mariner

Shifting Gears for the Future

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Should the reader look forward to see future progress that will knock out extinction – do not look backward for a measure of speed. The reader will be disappointed.

Media news filled additional air time in Charlotte by going down the street to the State Capitol where the Confederate war flag is displayed. Now, all the republican candidates for President can say, “Not my problem,” save two: one who ran last time, Romney, and Jeb somebody. The mariner will not join the fray; it is covered nonstop on 24-hour news stations. There must be some usable information once in a while.

What the mariner finds important is the fact that racism is still a large and unresolved stigma in the American culture and what that means about the speed with which we will take steps to avoid extinction. Consider the following speed:

  • Twenty slaves were the first to arrive on US soil at Jamestown, Virginia on August 20, 1619.
  • In 1641, Massachusetts was the first state to legalize slavery.
  • In 1705, Virginia passes legislation that slaves are real estate.
  • In 1787, it was a better than usual year, relatively speaking. The Northwest Ordinance forbids slavery, except as criminal punishment, in the Northwest Territory (later Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin). Residents of the territory are required to return fugitive slaves. Also in 1787, states (including South Carolina) began putting tariffs on interstate and international slave trade; a few ban trading slaves altogether.
  • In 1788, the newly ratified US Constitution claims that each slave is 3/5 of a person – but only for tax purposes.
  • In 1819, Virginia outlaws the education of slaves and, with North Carolina, removes restraints on interstate trading of slaves.
  • The decade of the 1850’s was not good for slaves. Many states rescinded earlier trade limitations, new laws providing the right to be a free African American were rescinded, and finally, in 1857, The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott case by denying citizenship to all slaves, ex-slaves, and descendants of slaves and denies Congress the right to prohibit slavery in the territories.
  • In 1861, South Carolina secedes from the Union, followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina also secede. It is the beginning of the Civil War.
  • In 1862, Lincoln signs several acts that, more or less, allow slaves and free African Americans to participate in the Civil War and, indirectly, though no one said so, the 3/5 person law became dysfunctional even if it was still is a part of the Constitution.
  • In 1863, Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation.
  • In 1869, Tennessee passes legislation to create an all white government that opposes racial equality. Many states follow.
  • In 2015, the Confederate War Flag still flies at the Capitol of South Carolina and requires the heinous murder of nine religious African Americans in a hallmark African American church to request that the flag be removed. There is reticence by republicans across the board.
    • The mariner interjects for a moment to point out that it has been 244 years since the first slave arrived, a terrible civil war has transpired, the economic culture of slavery still persisted not through ownership but through outright abuse and tyranny. Any freed slave is fortunate to receive a salary other than a shack without utilities. In 244 years, how has the US culture changed? Virtually not at all; Tennessee’s idea in 1869 for all white government persists to this day. African American voting in government is gerrymandered against quite intensely. While legislation may have shifted a little, the American culture still does not include the African American as an equal citizen with equal rights.
    • In the future, even greater incursions into corporate American power and the consumer culture will be necessary to slow the clock of the sixth extinction. Beyond that, not only is extinction civil war, it is global war. Extinction includes Putin, ISIL, China and its allies, suppressed Africa. Even more troublesome, the United States itself, long a leader in creating the sixth extinction.

The mariner pursued the history of the African American experience as a model that depicts how difficult it is to alter large social, economic and political behavior that has been deeply ingrained for hundreds of years. The African American’s historical plight has become the plight of all mankind. The US has not made much progress with racism. Regarding extinction, is this to be expected for the next 244 years?

Ancient Mariner

Where is Amos, Where is Chicken Little, and Where is John Malthus?

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The mariner is Amos. The mariner is Chicken Little. The mariner is John Malthus. Woe will be cast upon us! The Lord shall end the days of Israel! The sky is falling! There will be no food!

It seems no one cares that the Holocene extinction will end the existence of humans within the lifetime of three or four generations. As spoken before, the mariner is befuddled. Perhaps Stanford University, world class environmental scientists, Food and Water Watch, World Wide Fund for Nature and dozens of similar organizations around the world are wrong. Perhaps 90% of the world’s scientists are wrong. Perhaps 400 ppm of carbon in the atmosphere is nothing more than an empty fact. Perhaps the warmest decade since records began is good fortune. Perhaps the rising seas, rising at Fibonacci speeds every decade, are good for sea life. Perhaps depleted aquifers will be good for life in general. Perhaps longer droughts, especially in the US, will provide more sunny days for picnics.

The mariner suspects imminent extinction is too big a pill for mankind to swallow. The event is beyond imagination. It is more surreal than the silliest science fiction movie. Extinction is a confrontation that has no answer except to wait and see. And so we shall wait and see. And it will be too late.

Ancient Mariner

 

Civilization’s Link to Global Climate

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In his effort to imagine what the experience of approaching extinction would be, that is, how and why seemingly stable cultures collapse; the mariner began looking for reasons why significant societies had failed in the past. Quickly, after reading studies from climatologists, anthropologists and language historians, he first had to learn what permitted societies to emerge.

The common opinion from many experts in many disciplines, is that modern humans (Homo sapiens) were stuck in Africa because of the ice age. Paleoclimatologist J.P. Steffensen in the January 7, 2002 issue of The New Yorker Magazine commented: “You can ask, why didn’t human beings make civilization fifty thousand years ago? You know that they had just as big brains as we have today.

When you put it in a climatic framework, you can say, “Well, it was the ice age. And also, this ice age was so climatically unstable that each time you had the beginning of a culture they had to move. Then came the present interglacial– ten thousand years of very stable climate. The perfect conditions for agriculture. If you look at it, it’s amazing. Civilizations in Persia, in China, and in India start at the same time, maybe six thousand years ago. They all developed writing and they all developed religion and they all built cities, all at the same time, because the climate was stable. I think that if the climate would have been stable fifty thousand years ago it would have started then. But they had no chance.”

The nuance of Steffensen’s comment is that, all along, humans were as dependent on global climate as any other creature. The advancement of human society through nomadic, agricultural, industrial, and modern periods has always been taught with the nuance that humans grew in sophistication and it was their independent intelligence that lifted them from the past ages. Steffensen implies that it was simply a stable global climate in which to have the human experience.

One would think that our brains should not have taken 10,000 years to move from grubbing for roots to growing roots, to canning roots, to making altered roots. However, there were those distractions:  war, predation, unlimited population growth, not replacing parts of the Earth we borrowed like water, dysfunctional environments left behind, lust, and unbeknown, thereby disrupting the global climate – the real reason our species is in trouble. 10,000 years was long enough to forget our place in the Earth’s command of life.

Heavy stuff. The mariner will continue another time.

Ancient Mariner