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Mother Earth

Hope is sweet earth shaped like a popcorn-bedazzled wand. Mullein boasts a bouquet of fuzzy floret leaves that dance at its roots and invite the hand to touch her. Seasons before the global pandemic, mullein called to make me her ally. She’d dazzle and entreat me from her summer station on the lawn of my neighbor, a devoted, down-to-earth Nana with a grandchild who also danced like sunshine. Nana gave me permission to harvest whatever I saw coming up. I promised to share the medicine. Mullein follows one of my favorite patterns of the sweet earth: “Everything you need is nearby.” And so she grew on the lawn of this beloved, longtime smoker to teach me about the woman who needed her. The kinds of people who would need her soon. And how to prepare me for the grief that would surely sit atop my lungs like pneumonia. The sweet earth teaches us to read her patterns. 

The sweet earth has a pattern of death. When Brazilian carpenter ants outgrow the forests’ capacity to sustain them, parasitic cordyceps fungi cull the population to maintain the dynamic equilibrium of the forest. That balance is necessary so that one species can’t become too large, as to destroy the ability of the entire system to regulate life. Indigenous people hold sacred the life-death-life cycle. This worldview understands that the death of an excess of carpenter ants will create space for new and diverse life to flourish. This worldview understands the one group of beings does not hold the right to disrupt the homeostasis of the entire ecosystem. The power of disruption is checked by death itself. 

As an ecological activist and rootworker, I dissolve the false separation between the patterns of nature and social behavior. Human beings are shaped and governed by the ecosystems they inhabit even if those ecosystems contain iPhones, concrete and subways. 

All-natural even if our diets are genetically modified. 

Even if we feel separate and enact the violence that flows from our falsehood. 

Our actions set off chains of reactions within the homeostatic ecosystem that is the earth itself. The disease that she experiences is reflected in the fractal of our bodies. Viruses and other bundles of genetic information called exosomes are exuded from bacteria, fungi and multicellular organisms, like pigs, in response to stress. Stress is a call for help, and this genetic information contains a diversity of adaptive genetic resources for the organisms to make use of. 

The coronavirus received these genetic stress signals emerging from the animals, in particular, the massive pig confinement operations and herbicide-soaked fields of Central China and adapted as all beings adapt. As all beings must. And she came to us, with her sacred communication. 

From the Chinese case studies, I learned that older folks had the highest mortality rates and I saw corona as just, especially when it displayed the same patterns in Europe. Old people destroyed the world. Ate excessively and had me inherit this shitshow. I saw the earth grieving. Eastern philosophers remember that grief lives in the lungs. The lungs are the interface between the human body and the world. And so the coronavirus became our disjointed relationship and made her home there. 

The abundance of plants in my world gives me direction as to how much medicine will be called for later. In the early days, I distributed my abundance of mullein medicine to all the elders in my life and friends who knew my game. And I waited until the virus arrived on my side of the world. 

But my side of the world is wounded and scarred. It has a body politic that is shaped by its past conditioning. In yogic philosophy,  past conditioning leaves an imprint or grooves on the subtle body which shape the response of the entire organism. These samskaras, or impressions, are in the words of yogi Dr. Kamini Desai, “Like channels that despite all the potential outcomes we have the ability to create, keep us reincarnating the same results into the reality in repetitive and predictive ways.”

The groves set forth by our racist history came alive during the pandemic and resulted in actual death. The groves of our racist history have impacted the physical redistribution of brown bodies in places where the air is sickened by the shitshow of industrial life. These folks are asked to be the buffer zone between white excess and its ecological repercussion. This grove, this samskara, is known as a zone of sacrifice. 

Seventy-one percent of Black Americans live in counties that violate EPA air quality standards. A Black family making up to $60,000 a year is more likely than a white family making $15,000 per year to live next to a toxic facility. Over 78 percent of Black people live within a 30-mile radius of a coal-fired power plant expelling toxic waste into the air. Black people are three times more likely to die from asthma than any other group. Black people are twice as likely to die from COVID-19 than a white person, and the same goes for indigenous people. COVID mortality is directly linked to the air pollution that folks of color are positionally exposed to. According to a study by biostatisticians at Harvard University, even a small increase in long-term exposure to fine particle pollution leads to a large increase in the COVID-19 death rate. Black and indigenous disposability is a part of the cultural and ecological samskaras of this country. 

But hope is sweet earth shaped like a popcorn-bedazzled wand. The institutions created in the samskaras of America’s racist history are ill-equipped to dismantle the structural racism that results in Black and indigenous disease. As our precious communities undergo the pressure of dying under the weight of this empire, our bodies exude adaptive genetic resources in the shape of exomes and viruses, genetic resources that shape-change in the soil and waters surrounding us, that shape-change in the trees and the birds and the insects. Who carry the seeds of our green allies like mullein, so that we can also adapt to live another day here, to become the virus in the chest of this empire and sit our whole weight upon it so that it can die, suffocating under the burden of our grief. 

Environment

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Zones of Sacrifice: Nature Will Defend Itself, Even Against Us

Everyone wants a better planet for their family and children. This includes conservatives who hunt, fish, camp and farm for a living. It would seem logical that they actually have the most to lose from the planet being destroyed. They also usually have the most experience with tending to nature, but that’s not what you typically hear in the media. 

The environment is not a political issue, but it’s being used as a prop.

The disagreement is not over whether liberals or conservatives want a more environmental future. This is a false premise that is used to divide American citizens, so we never debate the real issues. The lie that is sold to us is that the government can solve all of our problems, and if you don’t believe their narratives, then you must not like the earth we all live on.

There are plenty of people who actually believe this horrific lie put out by your federal government: that the government alone can "fix it." They think Greta Thunberg is a scientist. They believe that geoengineering can control major weather events. They think the Paris Climate Accord saves mankind and that ranchers don’t know how to manage their own properties without government regulation. All of this is a lie. It is used to keep us divided so we never actually take action by coming together.

Take the Keystone XL Pipeline, for example. There are narratives that this massive project would destroy entire towns, pollute waters and cause irreparable harm to the environment. This became an entire political issue for eight years with disinformation on all sides. What the pipeline actually did was create a safe transportation method of fossil fuels from Canada to America that are up to the regulations of 2021, not the 1900s.

Now that the Keystone Pipeline is gone, fossil fuels are not gone. They will still be imported from OPEC, the Middle East and places where we’re building pipelines along with other countries. Their regulations are not as strict as ours. They face many geopolitical problems like terrorism and sabotage, and we have to import that oil by ship and rail, which is inherently less environmentally friendly.

If this sounds insane, it’s because it is. 

Major donors to political PACs will receive contracts to import the oil in a much more irresponsible way. Military contractors will be used to guard the transit routes and add to the pollution. For example, the U.S. military uses around 400,000 barrels of oil per day, but you never seem to hear the outcry for their "carbon footprint." We also spend around 81 billion dollars per year to guard "fossil fuel assets," according to CNBC. However, it is easier just to blame the Texas cattle rancher or the union worker who was building a pipe, because if the violence and pollution are happening in another country, it’s out of sight and mind to the average American.

I watched destructive waste management destroy the ecosystem for fish that we needed to live. I devote my life now to helping people transition to solar panels. I don’t do it because I believe the world will end in ten years. We have already seen "climate preachers" like Al Gore get rich off of these inaccurate models and help their political pals. I simply believe that a first-world country should not have the most electrical blackouts of any developed nation. 

Solar technology is still a way from replacing anything, and there will be unintended consequences—like how to dispose of the batteries once they are spent. However, the true free market and entrepreneurship will figure these things out if the government stops advocating for its largest donors and lets innovation loose. We do not need more hyperbole and division. We need logic and solutions, and this will never happen if we continue to vilify each other and believe false narratives.

Doe Print Value - Closeness

Saving the Environment Is Not a Political Issue

I’m here to break it to you now: You are going to die. 

Yes, it’s true. One day—very likely in a moment you do not anticipate—your heart will stop beating or your brain will cease to function. It might be a long, drawn-out affair, or it might be sudden. It might happen when you are asleep. Someone might do it to you. There’s really no way to tell how we will die, and for many of us, this inevitability is like: Nope don’t wanna talk about it. No thank you!

There are many reasons to fear death. I don’t need to give you a list because you’ve already pictured at least ten reasons in your mind while reading so far. But the most succinct explanation is by Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh: annihilation. 

What a spooky word. It sounds like something out of a horror franchise. Death: The Final Annihilation. But that’s because it’s accurate. Whether you believe in God or reincarnation or karma or none of it, this body you have now isn’t going to be here forever. It’s going to grow old, wither, wrinkle, sag and slow the fuck down. It’s got a time limit. And what happens after we pass is highly debatable. Understandably, this makes quite a few humans feel like I’m gonna put that shit way out of my mind and not think about it.

Americans, I have learned, are very good at not thinking about it. 

Our cultural death avoidance has reared its head mightily during the COVID-19 pandemic, to devastating consequences. Former President Donald Trump refused to wear a mask for months, downplayed the severity of the virus and inspired countless Americans to practice their self-proclaimed “civil rights” by emulating the commander-in-chief in public spaces. The result was, not surprisingly, numerous “superspreader” events from church gatherings to election rallies to family weddings. In some sort of bizarro inversion of Buddhism’s meditation on death as a means to live fully, many Americans have instead chosen to ignore death as a means to “live fully.”

The parallels to the response to COVID-19 and the dissonance toward climate change are resounding. The coronavirus is not an isolated event born out of randomness. Experts have warned about pandemics for decades and were largely ignored. Human encroachment upon the natural world likely brought the bat that carried the virus to the Wuhan “wet market” where it was purchased, consumed and then infected a human host. 

Rather than examine our interconnectedness, our former POTUS deflected blame to China, referring to the virus as the “kung-flu,” propagating anti-Asian sentiments that have led to a rise in violent attacks against Asian-Americans in the past few weeks. 

Deflection and blame have been chosen over investigation and self-inquiry. 

I know something of death because I’ve approached it head-on before. I lost an uncle to suicide when I was 14, and only months later I came dangerously close to ending my own life as well. Ever since that first encounter with death, talking about suicide has been a means of therapy for me, exposing its root causes to the light. I learned quickly that the notion of choosing death is laced with cultural shame, even if you do not actually attempt to take your own life. 

The mere fact that I gave up on my desire to live in thought was simply too much for some of my loved ones. To this day, they cannot speak to me about it. The topic has been erased from our shared conversations. If I do attempt to bring it up—as means to create a better understanding between us—they swiftly pivot to another topic. 

The best definition I have ever read of suicide was a “misplaced desire for change.” To me, the impulse to end one’s own life—or in some cases, the intense desire to simply not exist—is a deeply human feeling. It is meant to be examined, not avoided. Many of us experience moments of profound bleakness in our lives that we fear are permanent. Many of us long to escape our suffering, to be jettisoned somewhere else, to some kind of imaginary realm that we believe to be free of pain. In the worst of moments, death can seem like the only path to this place of relief.

Speaking about my feelings saved my life. Acknowledging death as a presence in my thoughts freed me from what felt like insurmountable shame. It began a process of self-examination, and also of extricating myself from the isolation of my own experience. I recognized that my death would affect countless others, and that I was part of a greater human ecology. My life does not exist on its own. It has ripple effects far and wide, beyond what I can even see.

In February, the U.S. reached a milestone: 500,000 deaths due to COVID-19. The number was reported clinically in my newsfeed: There was no collective moment of silence, no speech from President Joe Biden about the need for a communal effort to save lives. We speak more of opening malls and restaurants before mourning the dead. We speak of death as a statistic, not as an experience that deserves attention and empathy.

When I read these numbers, I make it a point to observe the impulse to turn away. I take the time to examine the grief that arises when I consider the depth of this avoidable tragedy, and the dissonance I feel from our leaders. I look at death directly and I remind myself that I am grateful to be alive. I remind myself that I am existing in an intricate ecosystem, sensitive to the actions and movements and choices of every being. 

Rather than paralyze me with fear, these thoughts connect me to an invisible stream, a higher power that infuses me with strength to go on when my thoughts turn bleak. We are meant to acknowledge death, not so it rules us, but so we view every life around us—including our own—as precious and vital. It is up to us to make this an everyday ethic, a resistance against those in power dismissing our own humanity. To face death, I believe, is to demand our inherent right to exist, and our right to love and be loved. Always.

To Cope With Eco Anxiety, I Had to Come to Terms With Death

The first thing I noticed outside the metro station, other than the bone-chilling cold, was the ridiculous giant bunny begging me not to eat him or his friends. He was so cute, and yet so pitiful and so preposterous all at the same time. How could anyone eat anything that cute, even if it was delicious and nutritious? And why in the world were all these smelly hippies shrieking at us about “revolution”? And what in the heck did any of this freak-show outside have to do with the supposed solving of alleged man-made “climate change” going on inside, anyway?

It felt like an insane acid trip. But it was very real. And you are paying for it all.

My colleagues and I were on our way into the 25th United Nations Conference on the Parties, better known as the U.N. COP25 in Madrid. Just like the last 24 times they gathered, its members were developing a plan that would supposedly save the world from this horrible toxic pollution known as carbon dioxide—a “pollution” that is literally exhaled in large quantities by every single person on the planet, every single day, and is necessary to all plant life on earth.

It was quite an “ambitious” agenda, to use the language of the U.N.'s confab. While it sounded so noble to the uninitiated, I couldn't stop thinking about Pinky and the Brain, the infamous genetically engineered cartoon lab mice who, each episode, “try to take over the world.”

Of course, the hippies and the vegan lady in the bunny suit were at our entryway. That entrance is for the humble proletariat—all the tax-funded rent-a-mobs, the cheerleading squad (they prefer to be called journalists), and the legions of lower-level bureaucrats and servants who make the summits happen.

The VVIPs you see on the news—also known as “Very, Very Important Persons”— have their special own entrance reserved just for them, no riffraff allowed. That way, when they get off their gas-guzzling private jets and step out of their fancy limos and helicopters, they don’t have to go past the cute bunnies or the hippies shrieking at the plebs.

This was only my most recent adventure at one of these U.N. climate summits, which I've been attending since 2009 in exotic locations all over the world as a U.N.-credentialed reporter.

If the average American could see what I have seen, or experience what I have experienced, the “climate crisis” would have been solved years ago. Indeed, the scam artists behind the whole thing would have been run out of town and probably tarred and feathered. To call the U.N. summits a clown show is a terrible insult to clowns everywhere.

The U.N. climate extravaganzas are always weird and uncomfortable, especially for an American. But the one in Madrid—it moved there from Santiago at the last second after the communist revolution in Chile got too hot too quick—was especially outrageous.

If an alien had shown up from outer space to find out what world leaders were doing at this COP25 conference, they would have likely concluded that they were having a billion-dollar, two-minutes-of-hate session to rage against U.S. President Donald Trump and the horrible, fat, evil, racist, fascist, polluting basket of deplorables who elected him. 

It seemed like every speaker spent most of their time whining about how evil Trump and America were. The sideshows put on by tax-funded “non-government organizations” were doing the same thing. And the propagandists posing as journalists were, too.

Even the Americans, like current climate czar John Kerry, a man who flew in a private jet to Iceland to receive a climate leadership award and defended the PR fail by claiming that private jets were “the only choice for someone like me,” could only speak of how horrible Trump and America were.

Much of the rest of the event was babbling about how there were just too many plebs for the planet to sustain. One burned-out hippie, the producer of what he claimed was the top documentary in human history, got to speak at least a few times on key stages about how there needed to be fewer people and especially fewer Swedes.

Being married to a Swede, naturally, this anti-Swedish racism piqued my curiosity. “Don't have children—and I'm looking at you white men,” said the old white guy. Billionaire CNN founder Ted Turner told me something similar in Rio De Janeiro in Brazil at the U.N. Sustainable Development conference in 2012. He has five kids. But then, he's not a pleb.

Speaking of hypocrisy, at the Madrid summit, my team and I ran into former New York City overlord Mike Bloomberg as well. Naturally, the man was surrounded by at least three heavily armed bodyguards. And obviously, he came in one of his private jets, too—quite a sacrifice to leave behind his CO2-spewing helicopters, yachts, mansions and more to save the planet for us plebs by forcing us to use windmills and bicycles—if we're lucky! Bloomberg even agreed to take his picture with me, until his handlers growled, demanded to know who I was. They whisked him away.

Another semi-VVIP I ran into at a U.N. climate summit (this one in 2009) was Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed. He had been blabbering about how his nation was going to sink under the waves unless the world did what the U.N. was demanding right now. Apparently, “science” had spoken, and it was not for us to question, only submit.

Interestingly, one of the key sea-level scientists for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a Swedish geophysicist named Nils-Axel Mörner, had been measuring sea-levels in Nasheed's part of the world for five decades. His findings suggested that sea levels were not only not rising, but they may also even be declining. 

Obviously, I asked Nasheed about this. Boy, was he angry. With the blood vessels almost popping out of his eyes, he claimed Mörner—again, a scientist who worked on the U.N. IPCC, supposedly the top authority on The Science™—was not “worthy” of a response. Then he proceeded to claim to me, falsely, that the pope had killed Galileo.

U.S. diplomatic cables exposed by Wikileaks later proved that the U.S. government was offering big money to the regime in the Maldives to build a deeper harbor—something that made no sense if the nation was truly about to be swallowed up by the sea—if they would play along with the climate hysteria and support the U.N. deal. Nasheed was later convicted under anti-terrorism charges in his home country, though the top court finally overturned the conviction in 2018.

The silly rhetoric is typical, though. At that same U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen, I got to hear Saint Al Gore, who had just arrived on a CO2-belching private jet, lecture us about how “the entire polar ice cap…could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years.” He cited models that claimed there was a 75 percent chance of this occurring.

It sounded scary and made for terrifying click-bait headlines. But of course, five years came and went. Then seven. Then ten. And yet, the polar ice cap never became ice-free—not even close. Meanwhile, according to NASA, there is massive ice growth in the Antarctic that is causing a net decrease in global sea levels. But don't tell Nasheed.

It would be easy to fill a book with all the crazy stories I’ve heard from these clown shows. In Cancun, the clowns opened the COP with a prayer to the Mayan goddess of creativity without mentioning her association with cannibalism and human sacrifice. Yes, seriously.

After that, pranksters from an American grassroots organization managed to dupe almost every U.N. delegate that was asked into signing a petition to ban a dangerous substance known as Dihydrogen Monoxide. The chemical kills thousands each year and is a major component of acid rain, they were informed. They literally supported a petition to ban water. But you can trust them—they're the experts following The Science™.

The adventures of Lord Christopher Monckton, who I've gotten to know pretty well, have been priceless, too. In 2012, the British aristocrat impersonated a delegate from Burma and spoke to the whole U.N. plenary session about how the so-called science behind the man-made warming hypothesis needed to be investigated. The year before, he jumped out of a plane in Durban to prove the sky was not falling.

At an earlier U.N. summit, filmmaker Phelim McAleer dressed up in a polar bear suit and went hunting for the disgraced “scientist” at the center of “ClimateGate,” the scandal involving hacked emails that broke out shortly before the summit. The tax-funded legions at the summit seeking more climate loot were not amused.

And who could forget the Gore Effect—a mysterious phenomenon I have personally witnessed numerous times in my career—involving snowfall at U.N. climate summits starting as soon as Gore's private jet lands in town.

Full disclosure, in case you have not realized by now: I think the U.N.-backed hypothesis that man's emissions of CO2 are driving global warming—I mean, “climate change,” or is it “climate crisis” now?— is just as silly as the crazy man-made “global cooling” hypotheses peddled in the 1970s. Ironically, it was often the very same fanatics and propaganda organs disguised as news outlets now trumpeting the alleged man-made warming. And no matter how hard they try to deny reality on Wikipedia, the evidence is there for all to see.

Going to these U.N. climate summits for over a decade makes it clear that even our would-be overlords peddling the man-made warming hypothesis do not believe it. If they did, why would they show up in fleets of private jets? And why would they try to drastically cut American CO2 emissions while shifting all of the economic activity to China, where the regime is building coal-fired power plants faster than we can count them, and where CO2 levels per unit of output will be drastically higher than in the United States?

Something doesn't smell right. I wish you could smell it yourself.

Don't get me wrong—I love the environment, and you should, too. But nations squandering billions on this non-issue so U.N. fat cats can travel the world and party at our expense is grotesque, especially while real pollution, needing real solutions, goes unaddressed in China and other nations conducting the crazy climate clown circus.

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Inside the U.N.'s Climate Show Circus

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Extra, extra, read all about it! The news-media industry has shifted dramatically over the last decade—heck, within the last two years. Between print journalism, podcasting, social media and infotainment, The Doe turns over every rock in this evolving ecosystem.

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The ol' nine to five has changed quite a bit in the past couple of years, from working remotely to, well, not working at all. This month we take a look at how cash still does rule in our capitalist society and what the future of business and money might just look like.

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The Doe's editorial team takes a look back at the year and shares its favorite narratives.

I was about to put my hand into the waters of Anchar Lake, situated in the congested area of Soura in the capital city of Srinagar in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir. “Hey,” my friend warned me, “Don’t touch the water. It will bite you back.” The water of the lake looked dark gray and had a layer of green weed all over it. It had an unpleasant odor.

I grew up in Srinagar and, over the years, I have witnessed the bloody conflict in the region and watched the beautiful freshwater lakes shrink. 

Who knows? I may see them vanish as well. 

Indian-administered Kashmir is a Himalayan region in the north of India. Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir as their part, and the region has gone through decades of conflict since the partition of India, with three major and two minor wars fought between the two nuclear countries so far. The region is surrounded by Pakistan and China and is a Muslim-majority region where people have been demanding freedom over the years.

I used to go to this lake once a month, sometimes twice. I love to visit the lake during winter to see the migratory birds that also visit it. Recently, I planned to travel to Anchar Lake for the first time in three years. When we first got there, all I saw was a green pasture and, for a few minutes, I wondered where the lake was. When we finally got to it, the shore was full of dirt and trash. I saw a woman come out of a house and throw a dustbin filled with dirt and plastic directly into the lake. I wasn’t shocked. I have witnessed these kinds of scenes before.

My friend and I were going to take a small wooden boat across the lake. As I stepped into the boat, it was wet and had a pungent smell. The lake looked more like a cesspool. The person rowing told me that he had been clearing the grass on the lake before picking us up. As he started to row, the smell of garbage mixed with drainage started to fill the air and grew stronger as we rowed further. It began to make me nauseous. I had to cover my mouth with a scarf, even though I was already wearing a mask.

As the oar passed through the water, the scum on the water pushed back and, as I tried to see the water, it was blackish. For a moment, my thoughts paused and I hoped not to drown there. I thought the smell and color of the water might be enough to kill me.

The boatman, an elderly man in his 70s, told us stories from when the lake used to be crystal clear and a destination for tourists. “We used to drink water from this lake, and it was beautiful,” he said. “Now it smells like garbage.”

“I wish I had the opportunity to see the times when the lakes in the city were beautiful,” I replied. He continued the tales from his childhood growing up near the lake and how it was his favorite spot for swimming.

The scenes and the condition of the lake made me feel sad. 

It was a hot spot for fishing, and the lake used to be busy with wooden boats. Over the years, I have watched it turn ugly, thanks to a mixture of conflict, government negligence, pollution and illegal encroachments.

As I traveled on the lake, I met six elderly men who had stopped their small boats at different locations to cast their nets in the water for fish. I remember my parents telling me that the lake was once famous for its fish. There are just a few old men now who catch the fish here. The rest of the people have shifted to other jobs. “This lake has died,” one of the old men told me, “and fish here don't breathe anymore.”

“The fish which we catch now don’t taste as good as they did before,” another man said.

I could see that in the years since my last visit, many more small houses had been built along the shore of the lake. The lake is slowly being occupied illegally. People have been filling parts of the lake with grass and mud and claiming the spots. I saw many small kitchen gardens floating on the lake, masses of grass that the residents build and grow vegetables on. “This is a way of occupying land on water,” the person rowing the boat said.

Drainage from one of Kashmir’s biggest hospitals goes into Anchar Lake, which is a place for many fish species and lotus stems. The lotus stems are called nadru in Kashmiri, and they’re cooked into a number of Kashmiri dishes. I love eating lotus stems, cooked or raw, and most of them come from this lake. After witnessing the conditions there, I don’t know if I can eat them anymore.

Looking at the figures, I found out that Anchar Lake has shrunk from 19 square kilometers to nearly seven square kilometers over the years. I see the same tale as the famous Dal Lake. When I look at Dal Lake, which is a famous tourist destination, it looks a little bit cleaner on the outer sides. But as I travel to the interiors of Dal, the condition of the lake is worse. The inside scenes are not only a pain to the eyes but to the heart as well, with wooden houseboats draining their toilets directly into the lake while happy tourists pose for pictures. 

Both of these lakes are dying slowly. Others in the valleys of Kashmir have already vanished, but no one seems to care. People have lost their livelihoods. I wonder what we are leaving for the coming generations to see. Visiting these two formerly beautiful lakes now, all I can see are the illegal encroachments and the lakes turning into dustbins.

Gone Fish: The Beautiful Lakes of Kashmir Are Vanishing

After nearly a year of revelling in flat Earth articles, podcasts, and memes, I finally have my chance to talk to some “flatties” in the wild. The room is bunker-like; small, slightly tatty and buried beneath a London Premier Inn. There’s about fifteen people total, ready to roll.

It is about to be a very frustrating experience.

A growing number of people think the earth is flat. My curiosity was pricked by an article in The Economist. Since then, I’ve debated (or, more accurately, “debated”) many flat Earth believers. Here, I offer up some words of advice on how to steer a flat earth debate.

There’s only one other “globetard” in the room: An elderly woman who stays quiet throughout, except once to ask a question about where the edge of the earth is. I like her. During the questions, when she senses my annoyance, she’ll knowingly wink at me in solidarity. She’ll eventually walk out in apparent disgust. The debate itself is a mess. I never finish my fifteen-minute presentation. Constant interruptions are raised against points I’ve never made. No one takes the time to realize I’m fully acquainted with flat Earth literature. I try to advance a more sophisticated argument they’ve never considered before. Half the room never stops to listen to it. The other half never gets the chance to, what with the constant bickering.

Steer one: You are not going to change the mind of a convinced flat Earth believer. They’re irredeemably trapped by the assumptions they’ve made about the nature of the world. One famous flat Earther says flat Earthers have a 99 percent retention rate: Once you go flat, you don’t go back! I doubt serious statistical methods were deployed to arrive at that figure, but I’ve little doubt that the truth’s not far off. But this retention rate is only evidence of what it takes to be a flat Earther in the first place. If you are already prone to misunderstand the world to the extent required to believe the earth is flat, you won’t have the conceptual tools to ever realize your mistake. No wonder you never change your mind.

Given this, you should question whether it’s worth debating them. For any debate (whether it’s politics, religion or what to see at the cinema), you must ask, “Why bother?” Is it that the participants don’t know the truth and are trying to find it out? Are you hoping to convince the other side? Are you open to being convinced by them? Or are you just hoping to show how intelligent and bright and educated you are (i.e., show how big of a dick you can be)? Ask yourself why you’re bothering to debate given that the other side is never going to change their mind.

There’s a fiercely religious old lady: every word of the Bible is true; Lucifer is behind it all; Jesuits assassinate people. I never get a chance to tell her that her belief system has the merit of consistency. I’m no psychologist, but another is clearly on the autistic spectrum. It’s impossible to think this isn’t connected to their being flat Earthers. Somebody brought their daughter—I guess she must be fifteen or sixteen. I’m impressed as she fires pointed, direct questions at myself and the other speaker. Puns aside, she’s clearly on the ball.

Never think for a second that these people are stupid or crazy.

Steer two: You’ve probably overestimated your ability to prove the earth is round. Unless you’re unusual, your knowledge about the earth’s shape is testimonial. Lots of knowledge is testimonial: chemotherapy cures cancer; there are humans in Gambia; your taxi is outside. Unless you’ve recovered from cancer, been to Gambia and, until you step outside to get the taxi, this is all testimonial knowledge taken from some source (such as a doctor, or Wikipedia or the Uber app on your phone).

Most people seem to ignore this fact. In debates, “globies” too often conflate their conviction that the earth is round with their being able to prove it. And then they quickly run aground when they try to prove it. Delivering an incontrovertible proof of the earth being round is hard! And when you fail, this will consolidate the flat Earther’s stance—they’ll dig their heels in all the more.

Steer three: Testimonial knowledge is just fine. Flat Earthers will often demand that you prove the earth is round. When you fail, they claim victory. But that’s an odd thing to do! Imagine someone in the pub told you chemotherapy wasn’t good for curing cancer. How weird it’d be for them to start demanding that you explain the ins-and-outs of pharmacotherapy, medical oncology and biology and—when you failed to do so—that they’re right that chemotherapy is pointless. You’d be well within your rights to shrug your shoulders and tell them that, just because you didn’t know the exact specifics, what of it?

“If the earth’s round, what explains why everyone in this room has got it so wrong?” I’m asked. It’s not because you’re mad, I say. It’s not because you’re stupid, I say. It’s not because you’re irrational, I say. I suspect you have a problem with testimonies from authority figures; you deny it, because you were simply told to believe it. I can’t imagine him denying what I’ve said. Surely we both agree that he distrusts authority sources? But he’s skeptical of authority figures and I guess he thinks I’m one of those. So he says I’m wrong. I don’t think he really heard what I said. He saw the mouth move but ignored the words.

If you really must ignore the last steer and get into a protracted debate, I still have advice.

Steer four: Flat Earthers don’t trust your sources. Photos of the earth are made with Photoshop. Videos of the curve of the horizon are the product of a fisheye lens. (Warning! Most photos of the globe are composite images patched together by a computer, and most videos showing the curve showing the curve are the product of a fisheye lens!) But they have their own authorities. They have pictures alleging views of faraway objects that’d be impossible if the world were round. They have (tedious, hour-long) videos of laser experiments allegedly showing there’s no curve.

What’s sauce for the round, lump goose is sauce for the flattened gander. You both must play by the same rules. If you can’t rely on your testimonial sources, they can’t have theirs either. For each meme and video, shrug your shoulders—you’ve not witnessed these things. Just as they say we must ignore the live feed from the ISS station, we get to ignore their photos and videos. Denied access to their sources, it’ll be effectively impossible to “prove” the earth is flat.

(And having made this point once, don’t let up; all too often, we let people in debates “forget” awkward facts and move on. On this matter, though, you must give no quarter; deny them their sources—it’s only fair.)

Witches weigh the same as ducks. That’s what Sir Bedevere proves in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Listening to the flat Earthers makes me think of him. It’s all eerily similar.

Consider some flat Earth arguments. Space must be fake, they say, because rockets wouldn’t work in space as there is nothing for them to “push off of.” It’s absurd, they say, that we’re hurtling through the galaxy at 230 kilometers a second—surely we’d feel it, like we were on a galactic roller coaster? Things which are far away don’t disappear from the “bottom up” because of the curve of the earth, but because of some (usually garbled) claims about vanishing points, perspective and the resolution of our eyes.

It’s all nonsense, of course. The conservation of momentum explains how rockets move. And forces don’t act on us at high velocities, but only when our velocity alters (which is why you don’t feel any g-force whilst driving on the motorway at 60mph—but feel a lot of g-force on a roller coaster at the same speed). And, yes, the curve of the earth is what explains why things (say, the sun) disappear bottom up as they go over the horizon.

I wouldn’t bother explaining any of this.

Steer five: Don’t teach them physics; teach them the consequences of their own physics. Just imagine that their claims are correct and things will still go against them.

Accept that, unless there’s a medium for a rocket to “push off of,” rockets would go nowhere. Rockets still would move in space. The rocket blasts explosive gases out of one end. At first—for a split second—there’s nothing to push off of. But as soon as some gas comes out, that gas is now there for the rocket to “push off of.” By their own reasoning, rockets should work.

Accept that, when moving at high speeds, you must feel forces acting on you. On an airplane you don’t feel anything at high speed—what’s that about? Flat Earthers say that you don’t feel anything on an airplane because it’s a “sealed environment”; in an unsealed environment (e.g., the earth, or standing on the wing of the plane) you’d feel a lot! Accept this for purpose of argument. Now imagine you wrap someone in cling film (that’s Saran Wrap for you Americans). You’re now sealed. According to this view, you will no longer feel forces acting upon you. And that’s obviously false. If I wrap you in film, and stick you on a roller coaster, you’ll be as disorientated and stomach turned as the next man.

Accept the word salad about things vanishing “bottom up” at the horizon being merely a function of them being far away from you. Imagine I’m attached to the bottom of the basket of a hot air balloon that soars off, out of sight, into the heavens above us. Apparently, as I get far away, I should vanish “bottom up.” But how would that work? What would my bottom be in this case? My feet or my head (or my left side or my right side)? What if I am constantly spinning—which end of me would be the bottom then? Awkward questions abound.

So don’t explain actual science. Instead, indulge their physics, explaining to them the upshots of their odd claims.

Afterwards, I walk back to the train with one participant. She says she’s not convinced either way. She thought the discussion was like herding cats and that there was little debate. She’s right.

Above I told you to pause as to why you’re debating.

Steer six: Debate makes a difference. The convinced flat Earther is never going to change his/her mind but some people out there aren’t convinced yet. They’re of two minds about whether the earth is flat—they’re of two minds about testimony, authority and science. And they’re listening to what you have to say. Debate sensibly. Debate calmly. Debate respectfully. Do it, if not for those already lost to the flat Earth movement, but for those in danger of falling into its grasp.

How to Debate Flat Earth Believers

When Social Security was enacted in 1935, poverty was far more prevalent among the elderly than any other age group. That year, nearly 80 percent of Americans aged 65 or older lived in poverty. At present, fewer than 10 percent of Americans over 65 are under the poverty line. This resounding success is one of the most laudable transformations of American society since emancipation and women’s suffrage.

But our successes in alleviating the wretchedness and precarity of poverty for our elders wasn’t achieved in a vacuum. Today, people under 18 are more than three times as likely as the elderly to live in poverty, with all of its attendant illnesses, wasted potential and deaths of despair.

In a very real sense over the past century, a generational wealth transfer has been delivered to the elderly and away from the young.

I hasten to add: none of this is a call to immiserate the elderly. I have a lifelong, warm, loving relationship with my elders and consider my grandfather the lodestar for masculinity and parenthood. My grandmother was a Second Lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps and an all-around badass. Much of the benefit that accrued to these elders (through Social Security and otherwise) are outweighed by the service they gave to our country and planet, and by the love and care, they’ve demonstrated to us and our families.

But, surely, we as a society didn’t mean for elderly poverty alleviation to come at the cost of life prospects for today’s youth.

Surely, we aren’t so enamored of a comfortable old age for our elders that we’d abandon our children to a future in a disease-ridden, environmentally despoiled hellscape.

Surely, we’re not intending to create a zero-sum game between protecting the elderly and preserving a future for the young.

I have spent over two decades working in global public health aimed at decreasing child mortality, and I despair of the world that we are leaving to our children.

By some estimates, the median age of COVID-19 mortalities in the US is higher than the current life expectancy at birth for someone born in 2020. More than just signaling that we are willing to hamstring our young by not investing in their futures, it means that we are, in Modest Proposal fashion, cannibalizing one impoverished group (the young) to feed the wealthiest (the elderly) by taking years of life away from the worst off and transferring these years upwards to well-off elders who already have had more years of life (and at a higher standard) than those born today can possibly expect.

A disproportionate share of the costs for our COVID response—from short-term privation and isolation to long-term decreases in job prospects, credit ratings and earning potential—are borne by people with extremely low risk of mortality or complications from SARS-CoV-2. In essence, young people are asked to sacrifice for the good of people who’ve already gotten more out of the world than we’re ever likely to get.

We live in the first generation in human history expected to live shorter, less healthful lives than our parents, and this deprivation is accelerating. Today’s 35-year-olds now have been subjected to two “once-in-a-lifetime” recessions, while today’s 80-year-olds suffered exactly zero GDP declines greater than 5 percent in their entire working life. And these same 80-year-olds, in the wealthiest tranche of society, will likely live out their retirement with the full complement of Social Security and Medicare benefits (based on their life expectancy).

In contrast, today’s 35-year-olds will get to watch the Social Security trust fund reserves become fully exhausted in 2037, and the Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund become insolvent in 2026. (N.B. in both cases, these social safety net programs will be able to limp along at lower levels of benefits for years afterward. However, that we’re willing to give wealthy, aged people more safety net protections and resources than impoverished young people is both unjust and terrifying.)

And this debt to children born today—this intergenerational inequity—is, if anything, worse on the climate change front. In both the climate change and the coronavirus cases, a gerontocratic ruling class allocates itself the benefits from the status quo, and puts the costs on the youth’s tab. Today’s 80-year-olds have the highest carbon footprint of any generation, and have injected volumes of CO2 into the atmosphere, all of which will be around for decades for the rest of us to face. Gallingly, this age group is also the most likely to “disbelieve” the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change.

Gerontocratic systems, from the Soviet Union to modern theocratic nightmares like Iran and Saudi Arabia, to the Roman Republic, do not end well. If we are consigned to a zero-sum struggle between the old and the young, perhaps it is time for the young to stop cooperating with evil. To paraphrase and repurpose Marx: children of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Coronavirus

The Generational Divide Increases With COVID-19 and Climate Change

When I was 17 years old, I worked at a Los Angeles insurance company where I punched numbers in a calculator the size of a Fourth of July watermelon. On the day before the very first Earth Day, I went to the president of the company and asked if we could celebrate. I didn’t understand, at the time, why it was OK for me to walk into anyone’s office at any time. I was pretty, I wore miniskirts and I had world-class legs. That said, no one in the building except me knew about the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Or about Earth Day. I tried to explain to him about conservation and pollution.

I could have mentioned that four years attending high school across the street from Disney Studios was like playing miniature golf at Three Mile Island—there was more smog than air. When a wayward skunk got run over on the Ventura Freeway, the smell was refreshing. We all believed that we had to stop the Vietnam War, but there were precious few people on that first Earth Day who rallied for clean air or saving trees and streams. I cared, but I didn’t have any idea at the time that my blue-sky childhood would return thanks to regulations, new flight paths and amazing automotive engineering. 

Outside, we lived in a yellow atmosphere version of Blade Runner, while inside this downtown L.A. skyscraper, it was Mad Men on steroids. The president poured himself a Scotch and got an erection somewhere between me talking about making a poster of “the earth” for the lunchroom and how trees make oxygen. He only had one question for me.

“What are you going to wear?” he asked. “Everyone got a kick outta you in that Santa jacket without the pants. What are those tights called? Oh, yeah, fishnet. Sexy. Fun. Good for morale!”

I went back to my desk, right next to another desk where a woman named Beth, who should have been named Lois, chain-smoked and, hourly, pulled out a bottle of gin from the bottom drawer of her desk and took a couple of shots. She was training me. Lois explained that the reason there were no women executives (something I hadn’t noticed) was the same reason there were bathrooms for men and for women. I chose to believe she was being very deep.

Lois taught me how to do a job—one I would quit a couple of months later—that would one day be done exclusively by computers. She also taught me how to dodge any sticky sexual situations."Tell the rat bastard you have cramps." Men and menses—incompatible. Her take on Earth Day was simple: “Will there be free cupcakes?”

The sheer number of environmental issues in the late 1960s and early ‘70s are historically well-documented. But the love for clean water and air, not so much. I think a lot of people who worked in the same office as I just thought the environment would get better or…it wouldn’t.  

But the Cuyahoga River in Ohio repeatedly caught fire due to floating debris and oil. It blazed out of control in 1969. An oil rig leaked millions of gallons of oil off the coast of Santa Barbara. The bald eagle was dying out due to DDT poisoning. Whales were hunted nearly into extinction.

Senator Gaylord Nelson and environment advocate Denis Hayes (Mr. Earth Day) honored that research. Although college campuses were preoccupied with ending the war, the bulk of mail being sent to Washington, D.C., was from young moms, with one or two children, noting their frustration that nothing was being done to protect the environment for their children. These two wonderful men, with a nexus of American mothers behind them, organized and created Earth Day.

In 1970, the first Earth Day was observed by 20 million Americans and is now celebrated by over 200 million people in 141 countries. The concept of taking a day to honor and protect our planet not only hit a nerve, but it stuck around and has grown to include things like Fire Drill Friday. In 1970, we loved James Bond. Now we love Greta Thunberg. Jane Fonda was huge in the ’70s, and now, Jane Fonda is still huge. Fire Drill Friday is here to stay and weekly reminders from Greta and Jane help us understand that everything, even our sun, has an expiration date. So, life is more precious, even the life of a ferocious salmon fighting its way upstream to spawn. Props to salmon.

The 17-year-old in me still believes that human beings care about nature, even if they don’t understand the science. Sunsets are breathtaking; wild animals are fascinating; the ocean—don’t get me started. I love the ocean. The day I got my driver’s license, I drove to Zuma Beach to watch dolphins bodysurf. Years later, the VP of Greenpeace asked me to write a film about the remarkable journey for one of their most adventurous “Save the Whales” expeditions.

Back when San Francisco Mayor Joe Alioto proclaimed the very first Earth Day, Northern California partied in the streets for two days and nights. You’ve got to love California. I mean, even President Richard and First Lady Pat Nixon planted a tree on the South Lawn of the White House. 

And back at our generic insurance company in downtown L.A., I made a truly atrocious poster and dressed as Mother Nature in a sheer ballet tulle skirt and pink tights with flowers stapled in the right places. I didn’t make the news, but the president of the company had one classic (not classy) comment.

“Pink tights aren’t as sexy as black fishnet, but the flowers over your boobs were real fun and good for morale,” he said. 

Sometimes it is nice to take a moment to reflect and realize that we’ve come a very, very long way.

We’ve Come a Long Way Since the First Earth Day

I am on staff at a large intergovernmental organization, working on programs related to stopping the illegal wildlife trade. Right now, I am frustratingly watching the steady decline of biodiversity and the terrifying prospect of losing one million species.  

I know how lucky I am that I’ve gotten to see these animals in the flesh, in what is the closest approximation to their natural habitat that is left on the planet. I remember the shock of joy when I spied a zeal of zebras munching on leaves in the distance, or when we saw a herd of elephants following their stately matriarch—all of them deeply unimpressed by our passing caravan.

I wonder if that same privilege will be extended to my infant daughter ten or 20 years from now.

I also know that I’m lucky that I get to dedicate time to thinking about how we can save these species—and how to help improve the livelihoods of the people who surround them. I get paid to work on this. I draw solace from the fact that I can tell my daughter that I tried, that I was on the correct side of the fight.

But the future is for the bold—and right now, we are outmatched by the greed and corruption that enables and emboldens poaching.

While most countries are still experiencing some level of lockdown, and even in the absence of ways to transport and with demand on the decline, there is still poaching. Defying basic optimistic hope that wildlife must be flourishing with the absence of humans, poaching is actually on the increase.

There’s even more poaching right now because there are no tourists—the eyes and ears on the ground are absent without travel infrastructure in place. Poaching is not going to stop until we figure out how to deal with the enforcement side of things. But, in most countries, perpetrators have little to fear since there are a lack of adequate laws and sanctions to penalize them.

In Zimbabwe, rangers have marked an increase in snare hunting since the COVID-19 lockdown. Last week, there was the biggest shark fin seizure in Hong Kong history—26 tons were recovered, mostly from endangered species, in shipments from Ecuador.

In the presence of a pandemic, crime lives on. What can we learn from this?

It’s not poverty, it’s greed and neglect. It’s opportunistic criminals. The common thread is lawlessness, not desperation. Combatting crime and corruption is the antidote.

These crimes affecting wildlife and natural resources inflict damage on developing countries that are estimated “to be worth more than $70 billion a year, rob communities of long-term opportunities, fuel corruption and distrust in civil authorities and undermine legitimate natural resource-based businesses.”

The fight to protect endangered species is just that: a fight. And the fight is global, the fight is real and it is dangerous. While this is happening, I have late-night phone calls navigating time zones that scan the globe. We’re dedicating too much time talking around the problem—trying to figure out how to talk around enforcement and how to distance ourselves from the latest scandal of rangers abusing their powers as they fight poaching.

The BuzzFeed article that was posted last year, "WWF Funds Guards Who Have Tortured And Killed People," recognizes that, “Poaching is a billion-dollar industry that terrorizes animals and threatens some species’ very existence.” It also highlights: “Poachers take advantage of regions ravaged by poverty and violence. And the work of forest rangers is indeed perilous: By one 2018 estimate, poachers killed nearly 50 rangers around the world in the previous year.” As recently as late April 2020, twelve rangers were killed in a single incident in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Virunga National Park.

If we agree that biodiversity and habitat preservation are important aspects of conservation, we must recognize that there is a war for the future.

As with every war, there will be rights abuses, civilian casualties and collateral damage. If we don’t have the stomach for fortress-style conservation, new models that conserve ecosystems without destroying indigenous societies and traditional uses of land are necessary.

The “fortress model” of exclusionary conservation is not new, it dates back to America’s very first national park: Yellowstone. This exclusion-based system was initially justified by the perceived need to remove indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands to make way for the nascent National Park and its conservation and aesthetic goals.

The geologist-in-charge of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, Ferdinand Hayden, who led the first federally-funded geological survey in the Yellowstone region, wrote glowingly of the value proposition—economic, spiritual, ecological—behind conserving the area. He called for it to be set aside “for the benefit of the people,” and appended a warning about the cost of inaction. “The vandals who are now waiting to enter into this wonder-land,” he wrote. “Will in a single season despoil, beyond recovery, these remarkable curiosities, which have required all the cunning skill of nature thousands of years to prepare.”

Yellowstone’s Act of Dedication, approved in March of 1872, designated the land as “dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people; and all persons who shall locate, or settle upon, or occupy the same or any part thereof, except as hereinafter provided, shall be considered trespassers and removed there from.”

This explicit mention of traditional (i.e., indigenous) uses of the park as a form of trespassing presaged the park’s occupation by the military in 1886, and operation as a military garrison known as Fort Yellowstone for the next 32 years. The settler-colonial and militaristic origins of this specific variety of conservation efforts are still detectable in the operation of national parks elsewhere in the world, particularly in developing countries.

For many resource-constrained, formerly colonized countries in Africa, South America and Asia, it is still 1872 in terms of conservation policy: removing indigenous peoples from biodiversity hotspots, preventing all traditional uses of ecosystem services in park territories, and fiercely defending park assets from poachers and bush-meat hunters comprise core activities for conservation projects in the developing world.

These citadel-style conservation redoubts have a clearly problematic history within the U.S.; the potential for abuses is manifest when employed in countries with minimal histories of professional military and law enforcement, lesser experience with environmental conservation, greater degrees of poverty and corruption, a long history of extractive uses of park resources (e.g., the bush-meat trade, gathering firewood, hunting and foraging), and more extensive territories still held by indigenous peoples.

But if fortress conservation and enforcement aren’t optimal, neither is a lack of conservation enforcement. A recent study on the interaction between security and wildlife conservation in sub-Saharan Africa provides evidence that: wildlife trafficking triggers conflicts, fuels existing unrest or leads to scaled-up conflicts; armed conflicts trigger or fuel wildlife trafficking or hamper conservation; socio-economic security is undermined by wildlife trafficking; and more.

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