An Impossibly Perfect Piece of Machinery

Intellectually, they knew a great deal. Practically, they chose to know almost nothing.

- Jaws, Peter Benchley

I have had a deep seated climate anxiety for a long time. I think these newsletters are at least a partial testament to that fact. Sometimes people compare the stress of ongoing climate collapse to something like the Cold War. To me, the comparison doesn’t quite ring true because the Cold War was a pressure, a threat, a tension, ultimately, it was something that never came to fruition. There was no nuclear winter. This comparison ignores the fact that climate breakdown is very much happening. It has been happening for decades, covered up and treated as a pressure, a threat, a tension, a possibility, so that politicians, oil tycoons and the wealthy could act like they didn’t actually have to do anything about it. You know, until it was happening, which it definitely currently isn’t. This denial has become more and more obvious over the years, to the point that even when people acknowledge that climate collapse is happening in real time, they still buy into the myth that nothing can be done, or the things that can be done can only be done so incrementally, that the path we’ve been on since Exxon started lying in the 70s is the only possible path to walk down.

Despite Exxon’s best efforts, and other companies like them, the number of average folks who listen to the alarms sounded by the scientific community has been steadily increasing. People have spent time organizing, campaigning and protesting, fighting for the chance to continue living on our planet. Wild that we have to do that in the first place. It will never cease to amaze me how shortsighted the wealthy and greedy are. I’ve mentioned the bookWarmth before, and it opens with the self immolation of David Buckel, to set the tone for the book and, I’m confident the author Daniel Sherrell knew this, the years to come. Coverage of it came and went as fast as everything does nowadays, but one thing stood out to me in Annie Correal’s piece on Buckel’s public death: her observation that Buckel was “perhaps the first [self-immolation] anywhere in the name of climate change”. The word first caught my eye, not only as an omen, but eventually as a premonition. Last year, Wynn Bruce set himself on fire in front of the United States Supreme Court. His longtime friend Dr. Kritee Kanko tweeted the following day, “This act is not suicide. This is a deeply fearless act of compassion to bring attention to climate crisis.” Less than 2 months after Bruce died, the Supreme Court severely cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate emissions from power plants. Barely a year past Bruce’s death, the Supreme Court gutted the Clean Water Act. Between these two rulings, a mass amount of documents showing Justice Thomas accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gifts from a singular donor were released. It is hard not to wonder the value of gifts received from others, on top of this unethical luxury.

The steady trend of the courts towards extreme right wing politics is an extremely well documented phenomena, and it is certainly not a new one. It takes only the smallest amount of attention to realise that this lean right is not natural, nor an inevitable outcome of things like globalism, cultural exchange or some intangible, foundational difference between groups. Rather it is a well planned, well funded and efficiently executed ruse. In the US’s current descent into fascism, if you’ve heard the words The Federalist Society, or The Heritage Foundation for that matter, or The Family Research Council, or the NRA, you’ve heard at least some of the names of the groups that elevate few while trampling many. They have access to millions upon millions of dollars, and they spend that money gaining access to those who make laws and define lives. While the happenings of the United States are often at the forefront of these conversations, the country’s long history of imperialism ensures that these laws and choices inform culture and values far beyond their boarders. Sure sounds like democracy to me.

To be very clear, this list is far from exhaustive, and both funding and membership overlap not infrequently.

“Beginning with Ronald Reagan, the Federalist Society has developed extensive connections with every Republican administration. The organisation and the GOP have created a pipeline to the judiciary, making Federalist Society membership almost a prerequisite to gaining a judicial appointment during periods of Republican control.”

- Christopher Rhodes, Al Jezeera

It is tiring to spend time thinking about these groups, these people, these choices that both inform and create the world we live in. They feel blatantly violent and corrupt. It feels like a tale as old as time, and it can often feel quite hopeless. While I never want to dismiss people’s feelings, hopelessness is politically unproductive. As a matter of fact, hopelessness is what a lot of these people want you to feel, because an exhausted and hopeless population is a lot less likely to act collectively. And the good news is, we do, increasingly, seem to be fed up and acting collectively.

What I didn’t seem coming is the animals getting completely fed up, too. There has been a slew of orca attacks on boats in the last few weeks, and I’m not going to lie, I’m projecting a little. It’s basically impossible to know why these whales are doing what they’re doing, especially given orcas are known for displaying many different traits, including learning, communication and even, sometimes, play. For the most part, coverage has fluctuated between being team orca and more mainstream coverage assuring readers that this definitely not a war on humans. Now, sure, technically this isn’t incorrect, no humans have been harmed in any of the recent attacks as the whales seem to lose interest once the boat is sufficiently damaged. Yet, there is this bumbling need to eschew human involvement that I find comical. Are boats just…naturally occurring? No. Are they perhaps made and captained by humans? Yes. There is this desperate need to remove accountability and responsibility because, well, rich people really like their boats. Look, I’m no marine biologist, obviously, but when an article assuring readers that these attacks have nothing to do with humans directly cites another article that points out the thousands of whales that die every year in collisions with boats, I cannot help but laugh. Do these journalists think these boats are just out and about, ramming into whales of their own volition? It only makes the laughter grimmer when the article in question pontificates on how we could save these whales, because the idea that we simply stop assuring ourselves that our every whim is worth the damage caused is simply too much for a lot of people to handle. I do not know what these whales are thinking, nor what the sharks are thinking for that matter, but I do have a gist of what the journalists are paid to say. Their assumptions of boats and human activity as separate are the same line of logic as corporation just doing things, as though there isn’t a room full of immensely wealthy people making decisions to line their own pockets, with no regard for the impact on anyone outside their very exclusive boardrooms. It is naive thinking at best and malicious at worst. It is the idea that climate change is just happening, that we should just throw our hands up because actually no one is making these choices! Actually, nothing can be done! It is simply the way things are, the same way that boats simply kill whales. I do not sing sweet whale songs, I do not know their lives but I find it hard to dismiss intelligent animals learning to hate the destruction we bring, like harbingers of excess and death when we so carelessly traverse the world.

Perhaps, we could learn a thing or two when it comes to the solidarity required to defend our collective home.

As always, thank you for being here friends. The summer has me feeling like a well sunned plant, because thankfully it’s not been too hot (yet) and I look forwards to spending some time on the big ol’ lake I live near, which is thankfully orca free. Not that I could afford a boat, in the first place.

Bonus: Some Other Jaws Quotes I Find Amazing

• He felt at once betrayed and betrayer, deceived and deceiver. He was a criminal forced into crime.
• Suppose you fell over with this fish. Is there anything you could do? Sure. Pray. It’d be like falling out of an airplane without a parachute and hoping you’ll land in a haystack. The only thing that’d save you would be God, and since He pushed you overboard in the first place, I wouldn’t give a nickel for your chances.
• God isn’t going to scribble across the sky. “The shark is gone.”
• Food may well kill me, but it’s also what has made life such a pleasure.

I have never read Jaws but I just might have to now.