Notes on Climate Change I

The above map was developed by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the UK. Basically, it introduces us to some of the key hot spots being watched by environmental scientists as CO2 levels rise in the atmosphere and threaten to alter the ecological equilibrium that has maintained for the last 6000 years (that is, since the dawn of human civilization). Much ink and focus in America and the West has been given to the possible shutdown of the Gulf stream within the next 50-100 years, which would plunge Europe back into an Ice Age. This effect alone should give the lie to the term "global warming," as it should be made clear that climate change doesn't necessarily mean that the global temperature will run away upward until Earth becomes indistinguishable from its evil twin, Venus. Instead, some places will get colder, some places will get hotter; some places will get wetter, some will get dryer.

One consequence of the climate change phenomenon that most people are unaware of is the change that is likely to be thrust upon the Sahara Desert due to changing climate patterns. In short, over the next century, the Sahara is, in all likelihood, going to become green. In fact, the process may already be happening. For the past few years, the Sahel, or southern border region of the Sahara, which had been steadily advancing southward throughout the 70's and 80's, causing drought and misery, has been retreating back northward, and land has been becoming arable again. In 2003, Mali apparently received its greatest rainfall in 600 years. As if these anecdotal happenings were not enough, recent climate models predict just such an occurrence.

Since this climate flip is easily the least-discussed of all the consequences of global climate change, its social and economic consequences are the least explored and understood. Probably the central issue with Saharan greening is that an area the size of the United States of America will become open to human habitation over the next century. As other areas of the world freeze or dry out, this will create immense pressures on Saharan nations unlike anything the world has seen in modern times. It's very unclear that the leaders of Saharan nations are in any way thinking about the changes that may be in store for their lands. It's an issue that may be as critical for them as energy independence will become for the United States.

There is one major drawback to the likely greening of the Sahara. The dust storms that rage across the Sahara every year carry across the Atlantic and bring many nutrients and important ingredients to the Amazon rainforest. Thus, the very strange result of man-made climate change might be that the "lungs" of the planet will shift across the Atlantic, from South America to North Africa, and that the most bio-diverse area on the planet will suffer an alarming dieback. That will have a devastating impact on the indigenous cultures of the Amazon. In addition, the Amazon nations, primarily Brazil, will have to deal with a remarkable change in the way their economies work. It's possible that climate change will have a devastating effect on South American agriculture, once again a social and economic effect of climate change that few seem to be contemplating outside scientific circles.

To be sure, no one is 100% certain that climate change will proceed in any one particular way, but these are likely occurrences, and it's well past the time for dialogue to begin on how to cope with these massive changes in the way the biosphere is organized, because they will have startling impacts on the way humans live our lives.

Black Elitism, White Anti-Racism, Hip-Hop, and Three 6 Mafia.

The choruses have been loud and braying ever since Three 6 Mafia took home a golden statue last Sunday for "It's Hard Out Here for A Pimp." Middle-class black folk are angered and dismayed that yet another crass display of "coonery" enters the American lexicon as an award-worthy representation of the African-American community. Young people and liberal white folk exult in the thumb in the eye to middle-class respectability that their performance seemed to represent. Those who hate hip-hop feel vindicated as they see yet another misogynistic, ignorant display of gutter music endorsed by the Hollywood elite. NYC rap purists bemoan the decline of their artform and the ascendance of "crunk music." And other hip-hop enthusiasts keenly note that Three 6 has been in "the game" for 15 years, and that being independent and uncompromising in your work eventually does pay off -- another version of the American dream.

It's another look into the ugly cancer of race in America, and the sickness and vomiting that 40 years of chemotherapy has visited upon us.

Yes, Three 6 Mafia glorifies pimps, hoes, casual sex, smoking marijuana (in their recent, other most successful single to date, "Stay High," rendered "Stay Fly" for radio), ass-whoopings and tearing the club up, and yes, they were originally the 6*6 (you won't see that number in MY blog) Mafia, which eventually drove their female member, Gangsta Boo, out the group and into (briefly) the ministry. In short, they crystallize the excesses of 60's counterculturalism and exemplify the "bad" images respectable blacks have been combatting since the days of "Superfly." Yes, they are country "bammas" of the type widely reviled by Northern blacks who have strived so hard to excise any of that country-ness from their personas. And I don't think anyone -- not even they -- would attempt to defend their body of music as high art or something they want their children to listen to.

But all of that, in some way, misses the point. Middle-class Black Americans are widely upset because they feel that Three 6 Mafia reflects poorly on them to white people, and that their music is symptomatic of the problems in Black America. All of their criticism is ironic. On an economic and social level, the middle class has been happy to integrate into White America on White terms -- ignoring the poor, striving for wealth accumulation at all costs, and following them wherever they move.

Yet when White America informs Black America that on a cultural level, too, they will be integrated on White terms, not on Black, there's a backlash. Well, sorry, can't have it both ways. Just as Italian-Americans had to suck it up and take the Oscars for "The Godfather," wait for Al Pacino to play a blind asshole to win his trophy, and ended up with a real jerk as their guy on the Supreme Court, Black Americans had to take their turn in the way it was handed to them. It's not pretty, but it's how the process the middle class has been happy to roll with for 30 years works.

On another twisted level, it's yet another vindication of the American dream. Just as Joe Kennedy started off bootlegging during Prohibition and eventually produced a President and a Senator, just as Jews started off being clowns in vaudeville shows and ended up running Broadway, Three 6 Mafia took their dream from the ghettoes of Memphis all the way to the red carpet on March 5. Few in this great country get famous or wealthy because of their noble deeds -- most do it either on the backs of others or by exploiting their identities. Three 6 Mafia chose the latter route -- a popular one these days, if we are to judge by the excesses of reality television.

To be sure, it's jarring to see these three guys poppin' they...COLLA...one day on "106 & Park" one day, and chilling with Ellen the next, but in the narrow way ratified by modern Black leaders from Vernon Jordan to Andrew Young, it's success and progress. They've made it to the mainstream! They can get access to that white dollar now, which, in case you didn't notice, is way bigger than that black dollar. And it should be expected that racist white commentators like Bill O'Reilly would rail against their entrance into the mainstream because it insults their sensibilities. What's funny is that their commentary mirrors that of un-self-critical black commentators who call them racists in one breath and echo them in the next. What the black ones don't see is that the very values they extol are the ones that laid the groundwork for Three 6 Mafia to succeed in the first place.

Taking it as a whole, it looks like a typical day in America -- black shame and black success fighting each other, while white America looks on with scorn and admiration. Business as usual for a complex nation that's trying to heal old wounds without opening new ones.

An Open Letter to the World about the Dubai Ports Deal

Dear Citizens of the World,

You should not be dismayed that American citizens revolted against the purchase of six of our largest ports by Dubai Ports World. Contrary to what some on the left and in the Bush administration would have you believe -- contrary to what your own instincts about nationalist, isolationist Americans would have you believe -- opposition to the deal was not about anti-Arab or anti-Muslim sentiment. Instead, it was fundamentally about many of the things that people across the globe have been decrying for at least a decade -- the unfettered power of moneyed elites, free trade and globalization being held up as goods in and of themselves, and effective and transparent government. And to be quite honest, yes, it was about national security.

Let's take the last objection first. Two of the hijackers who took down the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon in 2001 came from the United Arab Emirates. As much as the world has excoriated America for attacking Iraq, when it had nothing to do with 9/11, why now does the world think that the American people wouldn't take a dim view towards a nation whose people were involved? A.Q. Khan's nuclear proliferation network ran through the UAE. To be sure, the government there has sought to crack down on that network, but given the spotty record of the Bush administration, we should be forgiven for not taking this as total assurance. There are definitely remnants of the group who aided Khan still in the UAE, and who is to say that they could not, or have not, infiltrated DPW? Furthermore, the financial network that subsidizes Osama bin Laden runs through the UAE as a financial hub. It simply doesn't fly with most people to think that a nation whose people were intimately involved with both Al Qaeda and nuclear proliferation should run operations at the ports where security is already shoddy.

But, so many argue, the UAE is America's greatest new friend in the Middle East! Well, let's be clear on something -- the emirs who run the UAE are great friends of the Bush administration. That says nothing of how the masses of people in that nation feel about America. There has been a growing sense over the last 5 years that the Bush administration governs, not in the interest of all the people, but in the interests of a moneyed elite. Halliburton and, to a lesser extent, the Carlyle Group are words that conjure up images of BushCo cozying up to dictators while their people are angered by the hegemonic power of this country. They say they are working to clean up madrassas and modernize. Yet that means that in their country there is still great dissent against such a cozy relationship with the United States. And authoritarian rulers -- emirs -- cannot exactly grant the American people tough assurances that they have their people in check. So no, the elite-to-elite contact that is the strength of the USA-UAE strategic partnership is no comfort to us.

What's worse about the worldwide reaction to the scuttling of the ports deal is that it reflects a supposed consensus about the way that free trade and globalization proceed that is never evident in any other debate. No one on the left crowed about Bolivian nationalism when they decided that their water resources would not be privatized. We don't see anyone complaining about Venezuela nationalizing its oil resources. Indeed a large portion of the criticism of free trade over the last decade, beginning with NAFTA, was that it seemed that capital was becoming predominant over any other interests. Yet when Americans decide that critical infrastructure should remain in American hands, we're branded isolationists and protectionists. It's a dangerous and insulting double standard that plays into the hands of the corporate profiteers who benefit from unrestricted globalization. Leftists and socialists should take heart at the fact that Americans seek, on a visceral level, to control critical infrastructure in our country. It could be a model for other nations to follow. Instead it's used as another tool to bludgeon the arrogant American.

Finally, dissent over the ports deal is about effective and transparent government. When our President's first line of defense about the deal is, "Well, I didn't know about it in the first place," there's a serious problem in our government. Like it or not, in a country that has been a victim of a string of terrorist attacks over the last 13 years (stretching back to the first World Trade Center bombing), it's imperative that deals such as this are seriously scrutinized. It's not a game; let's not forget that this nation was attacked on 9/11/01. So people are demanding that a somnolent government wake up and protect us like they have been claiming they would do for the past four and a half years. And as poor as this deal looked, the people had to say "NO" to it.

Many commentators would have us believe that the scuttling of the Dubai Ports deal (which, by the way, isn't over yet -- what does it mean to "transfer control to an American entity"?) could have negative effects on various international business deals that American companies are working on. It's a sad day when willful misreadings of the sentiment of the American people could be used to punish us in such a way. Don't mistake the genuine concern of the American people for our safety for something so crude as anti-Arab sentiment. Contrary to popular belief, we're more complex than that.