Bucking up on climate

This is supposed to be a post about rational responses to the climate crisis, but I have to detour en route...

It was so good to see the Hall of Fame induction broadcast from Cooperstown yesterday, returning to July and a packed crowd. Another "return to life," another recovery of something special the pandemic's made us stop (at least for awhile) taking for granted. Big Papi is in, and so at last are octogenarians Tony Oliva and Jim Kaat. Bud Fowler, Gil Hodges, Minnie Minoso, and Buck O'Neil were admirably represented by Dave Winfield, their spouses, and his niece, respectively.

"Baseball immortality" is pretty special, and all those guys deserve it. Especially Buck, with as great a claim to the "soul of baseball" moniker (and "character, integrity, and dignity") as any. His friends and greatest advocates Bob Kendrick, Joe Posnanski, and Ken Burns deserve to bask in Buck's sunshine too. 

Not many of us deserve immortality, but this guy... @nlbmprez @JPosnanski https://t.co/ZWQr7D0tg1

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) July 24, 2022

The thing so many love most about Buck, who I'm pretty sure I met briefly at the original Negro Leagues Museum in KC back in '92 before Ken Burns made him famous, was his inextinguishable beneficence of spirit and joie de vivre. Just a few years older than his negro leagues peer Jackie Robinson, he was never bitter about missing a shot at the show. He implicitly understood that Deweyan wisdom I like to cite, that we must live our lives in precisely the time we're allotted. Buck took pride in helping pave Jackie's way. "I got here just in time."

And isn't that a good model for how we, at this precarious time, should be thinking about the role we have an opportunity to play in paving the way for the generations just at our heels? We have an opportunity to acknowledge the pivotal hinge of history this moment embodies, to seize the moment, to reject short-sighted self-destructive policies with regard to the environment, politics, social diversity, international comity, and so much more. We have before us the possibility of acting with character, integrity, and dignity before our brief turn on the stage of existence is through. And we have Buck O'Neil's example of how to personify those ideals with grace, hope, charm, and cheer.

And so, the climate crisis...

Not many of us are feeling much hope or cheer about that lately. Yesterday's Times ran an editorial that begins,

The American West has gone bone dry, the Great Salt Lake is vanishing and water levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two great life-giving reservoirs on the Colorado River basin, are declining with alarming speed. Wildfires are incinerating crops in France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, while parts of Britain suffocated last week in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Yet the news from Washington was all about the ability of a single United States senator, Joe Manchin, to destroy the centerpiece of President Biden's plans to confront these very problems... nyt

This informed observer, speaking for many, is ready to toss in the towel:

Where, then, are we left with American climate policy? Not anyplace good. Joe Manchin has squandered his party’s best opportunity to mitigate catastrophe, and Joe Biden has few options for what to do next. I hate to sound defeatist, but I don’t see an alternative. If you aren’t despairing about the climate, you aren’t paying attention. 

So it's a  breath of fresh air, this morning (as on most Monday mornings lately), to turn to Margaret Renkl:

In a democracy as polarized as ours, trying to move the needle on climate is a conundrum: We can’t just bully people into demanding dramatic action, and our elected officials won’t take dramatic action until Americans, including those who vote Republican, demand it. If Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, couldn’t move Senator Joe Manchin to vote for his party’s signature climate legislation, what hope do the rest of us have of convincing our own obstinate Uncle Joes?

But reading Katharine Hayhoe’s new book, “Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World,” has made me reconsider my silence. [This reminds me as well, btw, of E.O. Wilson's The Creation: an appeal to save life on Earth...] What if the average Uncle Joe, one who hasn’t made himself a millionaire by way of the coal industry, isn’t as hard to talk to as I imagine? More to the point, what if the skeptics actually aren’t everywhere? What if everybody else is just as terrified to talk as I am?

...You’d never know it from listening to red-state politicians or right-wing “news,” but only 14 percent of Americans are outright climate deniers.

Nevertheless, says Dr. Hayhoe, “a lot of the news outlets are doubling-, tripling-, quadrupling-down on fear-based messages because they think more fear is going to make more people pay attention. What they don’t realize is this: Most people are already worried. And if you’re already worried but you’re not activated, more fear is not going to activate you.”

And here's where I catch an echo of old Buck, whose repudiation of fear and bitterness, whose  positive and hopeful attitude, whose joyful embrace of the opportunity to pave the way for his successors, could "activate" us. "The solution," Renkl writes, "is to offer a vision of a better future. People are willing to make all sorts of changes if they’re convinced it will make a difference."

In fact, people are generally willing to change on the chance of making a difference. No guarantees required. Nothing is more characteristic of human nature, as WJ put it, than that willingness to live for a chance.

This is why it’s so important to learn how to talk about climate change with others. Convincing people on both sides of the aisle that they are not alone in their fears, that there are solutions to the challenges we face, and that their own actions can make a difference is the first step toward holding politicians to account. MR

Buck up, in other words. Let's talk climate. Let's give ourselves and the next generations a chance.