I realize it's distracting from the serious subject with a funny title,
below, and I

sort of promised myself to ignore Sarah, but my inner elf takes over.  And
it's

no misprint: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS4C7bvHv2w
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS4C7bvHv2w&feature=player_embedded>
&feature=player_embedded

 

Speaking of satire, I ran into actress/producer Ellen Geer, yesterday, at
KPFK. 

I was there to record a PSA about the Juneteenth show, (composed and read by

poet/actress/film maker S. Pearl Sharp), and hustle for interviews for cast
members.

Ellen was there to be interviewed about the opening show of her own summer
series,

at her dad Will's legendary Theatricum Botanicum, in Topanga Canyon.  I love
the place, 

because of its musical history (Woody lived there in the 1950's), it's
beauty (Will Geer 

was a natural born horticulturalist and his garden of native flora is a
wonder to be part of), 

and the great theater that his daughter has developed.  The satire part
comes with today's 

opening: Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor."  Ellen directed and is
in the cast.

I asked her to send me the full and spectacular oleo she's presenting this
summer, which

I will pass on to you.  Meanwhile, visit www.
<http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=CHr3yTj3qTcLhLYH8sAPqocyABtDOuI8B2o7m7gn
v4uPjBggAEAFQ4bGh8QNgyd7ohsijkBnIAQGqBBhP0MKuLKwYdD6ouyjetZpqMVl0U6BDXla6BRM
I2-jpr7ecqQIVARdsCh3DW1HbygUA&ei=Tj3qTduJLIGusAPDt8XaDQ&sig=AGiWqtwmrP7uU1u0
9csv-dllCSbRH7WhLw&sqi=2&ved=0CAgQ0Qw&adurl=http://www.Theatricum.com>
theatricum.com  for more information. 

 

Ed

  

 

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_sky_really_is_falling_20110530/

 

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By Chris Hedges


 

 

Posted on May 30, 2011





AP / Lori Mehmen


Global climate change has made for freak storms and more intense weather.
The result is Hurricane Katrina, this month's devastating tornadoes and
floods, and routine forest fires in California. Here, a tornado touches down
in Iowa in 2008. 

The rapid and terrifying acceleration of global warming, which is
disfiguring the ecosystem at a swifter pace than even the gloomiest
scientific studies predicted a few years ago, has been confronted by the
power elite with two kinds of self-delusion. There are those, many of whom
hold elected office, who dismiss the science and empirical evidence as
false. There are others who accept the science surrounding global warming
but insist that the human species can adapt. Our only salvation-the rapid
dismantling of the fossil fuel industry-is ignored by both groups. And we
will be led, unless we build popular resistance movements and carry out
sustained acts of civil disobedience, toward collective self-annihilation by
dimwitted pied pipers and fools.

Those who concede that the planet is warming but insist we can learn to live
with it are perhaps more dangerous than the buffoons who decide to shut
their eyes. It is horrifying enough that the House of Representatives voted
240-184 this spring to defeat a resolution that said that "climate change is
occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant
risks for public health and welfare." But it is not much of an alternative
to trust those who insist we can cope with the effects while continuing to
burn fossil fuels. 

Horticulturalists are busy
<http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/illinois/article_bf5e0168-84d5-11e0-ad1e
-001a4bcf6878.html%20> planting swamp oaks and sweet gum trees all over
Chicago to prepare for weather that will soon resemble that of Baton Rouge.
That would be fine if there was a limit to global warming in sight. But
without plans to rapidly dismantle the fossil fuel industry, something no
one in our corporate state is contemplating, the heat waves of Baton Rouge
will be a starting point for a descent that will ultimately make cities like
Chicago unlivable. The false promise of human adaptability to global warming
is peddled by the polluters' major front group, the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, which informed the Environmental Protection Agency that
"populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral,
physiological, and technological adaptations." This bizarre theory of
adaptability has been embraced by the Obama administration as it prepares to
exploit the natural resources in the Arctic. Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton
<http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/24/114695/as-ice-melts-and-technology-im
proves.html%20> announced recently that melting of sea ice "will result in
more shipping, fishing and tourism, and the possibility to develop newly
accessible oil and gas reserves." Now that's something to look forward to.

"It is good that at least those guys are taking it seriously, far more
seriously than the federal government is taking it," said the author and
environmental activist  <http://www.billmckibben.com/%20> Bill McKibben of
the efforts in cities such as Chicago to begin to adapt to warmer
temperatures. "At least they understand that they have some kind of problem
coming at them. But they are working off the science of five or six years
ago, which is still kind of the official science that the International
Climate Change negotiations are working off of. They haven't begun to
internalize the idea that the science has shifted sharply. We are no longer
talking about a long, slow, gradual, linear warming, but something that is
coming much more quickly and violently. Seven or eight years ago it made
sense to talk about putting  <http://www.perviouspavement.org/%20> permeable
concrete on the streets. Now what we are coming to realize is that the most
important adaptation we can do is to stop putting carbon in the atmosphere.
If we don't, we are going to produce temperature rises so high that there is
no adapting to them."

The Earth has already begun to react to our hubris. Freak weather unleashed
deadly tornados in Joplin, Mo., and Tuscaloosa, Ala. It has triggered
wildfires that have engulfed large tracts in California, Oklahoma, New
Mexico and Texas. It has brought severe droughts to the Southwest, parts of
China and the Amazon. It has caused massive flooding along the Mississippi
as well as in Australia, New Zealand, China and Pakistan. It is killing off
the fish stocks in the oceans and obliterating the polar ice caps. Steadily
rising sea levels will eventually submerge coastal cities, islands and some
countries. These disturbing weather patterns presage a world where it will
be harder and harder to sustain human life. Massive human migrations, which
have already begun, will create chaos and violence. India is building a
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh%E2%80%93India_border%20>
4,000-kilometer fence along its border with Bangladesh to, in part, hold
back the refugees who will flee if Bangladesh is submerged. There are
mounting food shortages and sharp price increases in basic staples such as
wheat as weather patterns disrupt crop production. The failed grain harvests
in Russia, China and Australia, along with the death of the winter wheat
crop in Texas, have, as McKibben points out, been exacerbated by the
inability of Midwestern farmers to plant corn in water-logged fields. These
portents of an angry  <http://www.pantheon.org/articles/g/gaia.html%20> Gaia
are nothing compared to what will follow if we do not swiftly act.

Continued, at
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_sky_really_is_falling_20110530/, if
you can take itl

 

 



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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