Act I ~ There Was Enough

In 1642, physicist Evangelista Torricelli invented a barometer. Torricelli noticed that the weather changed as air pressure changed, a drop in pressure indicating a storm is coming and a rise in pressure predicting fair weather.

Feelings that come with the end of something, before a beginning.

Lull us into imagining
the physical world offers a stable background
against which we can run our race.
Humbly, we believe that the world is big and that we are small.

our awareness that the world will change in every aspect,
should we be so aware,
is muted by the future tense, even though that future isn't far away…

snows of Kilimanjaro
rocks of Kimilanjaro by 2015
Montana's Glacier National Park
predicted to lose its last glacier by 2030.
Permafrost is melting. Get it?

humanity has intruded into
and altered every part of the earth
with our habits and economies.

Paradoxically, the world seems more lonely.
Everything else exists at our sufferance.
the greatest wave of extinction since the last asteroid crashed into the earth.
Now we are the asteroid.

A premonition of calamity deepened.
Consigned to outer darkness where the worn shall not die,
neither shall the fire be quenched.

'The world's deserts are spreading,'
'effect: fewer forests to produce oxygen
fertile topsoil is exposed to erosion,
soil washes away,
nothing grows there any more,
and then…
no more oxygen gets produced by plants.'

(less oxygen)
'How much oxygen is in the algae, you mean?
'Yes.'
'Less than forty per cent, for the first time since we started.'
'So the situation is hopeless now?'
'I think so.'
'How much time before…?'
'I have no idea, but it won't be very long.'
'And then what?'
'I'm afraid we'll suffocate.'

'But humans…'

'After the calamity has finally come to an end maybe new forms of life will emerge from those bacteria, and evolution can begin anew. But, it is to be hoped that no other species like the human race emerges. It's a good thing, the extinction of a species that has so shamelessly destroyed other animals and plants, and that has plundered the earth with such complete lack of care or scruple. Maybe that extinction balances out against the fact that all other forms of life requiring oxygen will also meet their end.'

Then there won't be anybody left to listen to Mozart.

an atmosphere almost entirely without humidity,
leaving the sky so blue if you fired an arrow into it,
you get the sense it just might stick there.

Harsh continental winds
race across the treeless steppes like an invading horde,
cruel and sudden and full of face-lashing grit.
They are either very cold or very hot or very dry.

misfortune arises from imbalance--
rains lighter. permafrost melting. spring capricious.

No single statistic dominates the picture
each detail contributes to an alarming overall impression.

It is because of a big hole in the sky.
Kokh tenger,
the sky itself a great tent
stars, light-holes in the canopy.
Where will we find the ability to live without superfluous possessions?

Three years ago you could not see that rock.
Then we saw it through binoculars.
Now the ice is down even more.
This summer we can see it with our eyes.

This type of land is not pleasant.
That winter they lost everything:
every horse, every sheep, every cow,
all of their camels.
Of course it was bad—but you cannot control nature.

rain came down so thickly
water-pregnant clouds
camouflaged
hidden high above.
bare, breast-shaped hills
pockmarked,
tree stumps muddy and slick
miserable greyness,
suffocating optimism.

Two powerful natures resigned to stalemate.
You could see it was the same artist,
the familiarity unmistakable,
as if one had been painted with the left hand, the other with the right.
Splashing rainbows in the air.

Spray surged upwards spreading like a glass curtain.
a sudden, unreasonable pride,
and then anxiety, and still later, a deep nostalgic sadness.

translucent crustaceans,
smaller than a grain of rice,
long graceful paddles
propel through water
copepods
drift in the current, diapause.
the supply of zooplankton;
population collapsed by half.

Phytoplankton,
plant-matter of the sea.
Thermohaline,
driven by temperature and salinity--

Ocean composed,
distinguished.
Masses amazingly discrete,
slide over and beneath and between
without yielding characteristics,
like the blobs of a giant lava lamp.

a system of some grandeur.
finds its way into an abyssal drift
will channel it here and there in the deep ocean.
By the time it surfaces,
its journey will have taken a thousand years.

This exchange of warm for cold--
the meridional overturning circulation,
and if it stops-

a narrow gap
a line of sills
a key part of the scheme

The Greenland Pump is failing.
the ocean printing news about our future,

the least and the greatest of creation
inextricably whirled together by the engine of fate.
everything needed to record the end of the world.

an image begging a moral--

In the scale of planetary time, events are moving at a blur.
I said, everything's NOT going to be okay.

Its landscapes existed without the permission of humanity.
all distance foreshortened
by the clarity of air.

Rivers have stopped flowing.
are not what they were.
Land turns to desert,
providing grit.
Dust storms roar down off the plains
killers;
one black wind left eighty-five dead,
stripped the tops off tarred roads.

Sea level rise disregards
a crisis of national survival;
atoll nations
poor Tuvalu
uninhabitable within two decades,
disappearing altogether by the end of the century.

Tuvaluans will have to move.

How do you put a price on a whole nation being relocated?
How do you value a culture that is being wiped out?
It was the whole character of the place.

Highs and lows.
Narrow rivers of strong horizontal winds.

If crows fly low, wind's going to blow; If crows fly high, wind's going to die.

Clear sky, okta
mirror the ground
sky obstructed by buildings and trees.

Red sky at night, sheperd's delight.

The most notorious regions for large hailstones is northern India and Bangladesh, where more hail-related deaths are recorded than anywhere else in the world.

Reports began to emerge from Spain of large blocks of ice, about the size of basketballs, dropping from clear skies. Aircraft waste has been eliminated as an explanation as the ice was clear and consisted of pure water.

Monitor Change.
Understand the implications.
CCI4, CH4, CO2, HCFC, HFC, N2O, PFCs, SF6.
(suffer the consequences)

fugitive emissions
breaking away
calving
unintentional releases
a mass floating
from anthropogenic activities
transmission or transportation
produced by human beings

Flies will swarm before a storm.
Hindsight is an amazing thing.

dire warnings collapse,
the burden of impact
on the poorer, more marginalized people.

Send out distress signals.
At first subtle,
like thin shells of bald-eagle eggs
cracked,
laced with DDT.
Signs unmistakable,
like the pall of smoke over the Amazon rain forest,
Earth's pain has become humanity's pain.

look at the natural world:
a beautiful place that should be preserved
a friendly oasis
in a lonely universe.

many no longer hear.
so filled with artificial nonsense,
distraction-
we cannot hear the earth's voice.

homesick for places,
reminded of the sounds and smells and sights.
They haunt us.

in human-centered ignorance
we create a different world,
an existence separate,
confining other species to smaller and smaller compartments
while we command more and more
for our burgeoning numbers and desires.
a monstrous slave ship sailing.
To support our continually expanding population
we systematically destroy other life.

Bombarded with messages
that proclaim how to be loved
instead of how to be loving.
We learned to love objects.

The ecological demands of average citizens in wealthy countries exceed global per capita supply by a factor of three. Someone, lots of someones, somewhere are going without.

Limit the number of poor people in distant countries
popular policy that does little about the root cause.
two ounces of rice = what a billion of our poorest neighbors call their
"daily bread"
one billion could "go away" tomorrow,
our ecological unraveling would go on unabated.

"I'm not 99 percent sure, but I am 90 percent sure [that the climate is changing]. Why do we need 99 percent certainty when nothing else is that certain? If there were only a 5 percent chance the chef slipped some poison in your dessert, would you eat it?"

Uncertainty does not mean the world community cannot position itself to cope with the range of climate changes or protect against future outcomes.

Why be wary?
eco-activists, "looking for ways to persuade people to live leaner lifestyles."
announce a series of terrifying claims:
triple the cost of coal,
double the cost of oil,
ban nuclear power,
tear out hydroelectric dams.
Humanity would essentially be left without energy.

"But what if we're right?" the activists respond.
History says they're not.
Who's defining "History?"

The difference between the spread of dengue in Tamaulipas and its absence in Texas is living standards. Where people enjoy good sanitation and public education, have the knowledge and willingness to manage standing water around households, implement programs to control mosquitoes, and employ screens and air-conditioning, mosquito-borne diseases cannot spread. If the climate does warm, those factors will remain. In short, Americans need not fear an epidemic of tropical diseases.

What a relief for Americans.
Because everyone in America has screens,
air-conditioning and good sanitation.
Don't forget public education.

"global warming" a joke in America,
Americans wonder what's so bad about warmer weather.
They wonder even more when one of the coldest winters on record descended on the Northeast, piling up five-foot snow banks.

Pay no heed to the phrase "extreme weather events."

"Little piece of land."
no permanent streams or rivers.
Mata-ki-Te-rangi,
of famines, epidemics, slave raids and colonialism,

the crash of an ecosystem
No two seem to agree.

pulled to their final destinations.
the disappearance of trees coincides with the decline of civilization.

the third epoch in history,
figures on bent knees, hands over stomach.
buried up to their necks by shifting soils.

What do we know?
Nature continues whether we pay attention or not.
Nature is not reliable.
We take advantage of Nature.

There is no flashing red light in the sky telling us to stop.
Some will last longer than others.

Wealthy nations will sink money into "fixing" its problems, allowing us to "maintain" our current lifestyle without acknowledgement that our current lifestyle is consumptive, selfish, and based on a throw-away mentality.

Worried? Us?
"We can never have enough of nature."

What happens when man has finished with something,
then walks away?
a melancholic disintegration,
as Nature begins its work,
pulling that thing back into the ground.

~

On occasion the sun will shine
warmth will lift the wetness in a vapour,
light refracting from the dampness
and the world will begin to sparkle,
completely married to the surrounding wilderness.

"I am in love with this world."
A pearl in a blue-and-green shell.