Visionary Vibes: A Blog by Aberjhani

A Literary Craftsman Re-Discovers His Inner Visual Artist

4/22/2017

Postered Chromatic Poetics art graphic by Aberjhani for new store at Fine Art America. Also available as print and in other art formats.

National Poetry Month might strike some as an odd time for an author to debut new work as a visual artist. It is in fact not so strange at all.

If you've had a chance to check out my current essay series at Charter for Compassion, then you know it deals in large part with honoring empowering traditions. But not only that. It is also about extending and tweaking them in ways that add to their value in the 21st century.

Poet-Artist Galleries at Fine Art America

What this means when it comes to my new online visual arts gallery is that I am making an attempt to participate in the tradition of literary-artists-as-visual-artists. It is a very rich legacy that includes both notable classic icons and outstanding contemporary talents. These include the following:

William Blake
Jean Cocteau
Kahlil Gibran
Matthea Harvey
Terri Windling

Before anyone feels the need to ask, I will state categorically that I do not consider myself anywhere near the level of artistic skill which these individuals commanded or command.

I am someone who once upon a time as a child enjoyed a fondness for drawing characters from the comic books I read, and, for creating abstract labyrinths with cryptic symbolism. Without means during childhood to develop any real skill as an artist, the impulse to draw gave way to the need to write.

Creative Labors Beget Creative Possibilities

"Dare to love yourself" coffee mug with quotation and artwork by Aberjhani. The coffee mug is one of many formats available for framing the art and text.

My current adventures in the world of constructed visualizations--Postered Chromatic Poetics-- have, I believe, ironically enough been stimulated mostly by my writings on and with professional award-winning contemporary artists. Some have been subjects of my journalism, inspired specific poems, provided covers for books, or been clients for whom I wrote text to accompany their splendid exhibits. Among them:

Gustave Blache III
Amiri Geuka Farris
Allen Fireall (1954-2014)
Jack Leigh (1942–2004)
Jerome Meadows
Jaanika Talts
Luther E. Vann (1937-2016)
Michele Wood

Others have simply, blessedly, been good friends who allowed me the pleasure of witnessing their creativity in progress. Or: who shared with me important moments of aesthetic or spiritual breakthroughs which led to brilliant creations.

An Enhanced Way of Seeing

Serious historians, poets, playwrights, novelists, journalists often try to present their work as useful lens through which people may view or vicariously experience an unfolding moment. One might even get lucky enough to capture a meaning in the process of taking shape.

For me, working with visual art has helped refine the focus on how that lens should be designed. It is the kind of enhanced way of seeing that teachers of the creative arts have often suggested artists cultivate in order to render their perceptions of the world in uniquely-styled colors and voices.

The Postered Chromatic Poetics format emerged as a natural one that, for now at least, accommodates the advantages of social media marketing and helps secure hard-earned intellectual property rights.

The two biggest bonuses are: 1) it has allowed me to grow as a creative being. And 2) I am able to share the adventures intrinsic to such growth. This latter is accomplished through a variety of practical products made beautiful by Fine Art America's customizable production operations: very fine prints, cups, shower curtains, hand bags, towels, t-shirts, and considerably more.

That I am far more prone to immersing myself in individual creative projects than I am to working overtime on marketing strategies is, to those who know me, not a secret. The Postered Chromatic Poetics art shop helps minimize any tension between the two equally-important labors while increasing the maximum benefits of both. To define that as a win-win situation--which any creative is always grateful to experience--would not be wrong.

Author

Aberjhani is an American poet, historian, essayist, editor, journalist, social critic, and cautious artist. His many honors include the Choice Academic Title of the Year Award, the Notable Book of the Year Award, and Poet of the Year. He is currently completing final edits on a work of creative nonfiction about the cultural arts, race relations, immigration, and human trafficking in his hometown of Savannah, Georgia.

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Poetics and Jazz of Compassion Presented with a Creatively Maladjusted Twist

4/7/2017

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Detail of "Big Band" portrait by Leroy Neiman used as part 1 of special series of posters for Jazz Appreciation Month. Among iconic talents seen here are: Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Lionel Hampton, and Louie Armstrong.

April, when both Jazz Appreciation Month and National Poetry Month are observed, is always a special time at Bright Skylark Literary Productions. This year it is doubly special because in addition to featuring several re-posts of classic articles and essays about poetry and jazz on this site, we have also teamed up with our Charter for Compassion partners to present the timely new 4-part series: Poetic Traditions of Compassion and Creative Maladjustment.

The celebration of Jazz Appreciation Month actually got underway with Jarreau Jazz-riff Earth-tunes for the Angel of Compassion, the poem and essay published in tribute to the late great Al Jarreau after his passing earlier this year. Jarreau in recent years had been among the headliners for the annual International Jazz Day concert and one of the premier talents of the modern jazz era. You can check out part 1 of the tribute by clicking here and part 2, which includes the poem, by clicking this Postered Poetics artwork:

"Jarreau Jazz-riff Earth-tunes for the Angel of Compassion" JAM 2017 tribute to Al Jarreau in conjunction with National Poetry Month and Earth Day.

A Confluence of Compassionate Sensibilities

In addition to commemorating NPM 2017, the series showcased on the Charter for Compassion website does two important things:

1) It explores the conceptual relationship between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s call for a creative-maladjustment approach to civil disobedience and author Karen Armstrong’s recommended strategy for living a compassion-empowered life.

2) It utilizes as lens through which to examine poetic traditions of compassion, short biographical profiles of the Sufi genius Jalal al-Din Rumi, the great Pulitzer Prize-winning Harlem Renaissance and Chicago Renaissance poet Gwendolyn Brooks, and the Prague, Czech Republic-born author of Duino Elegies, Rainer Maria Rilke.

You can begin enjoying the series by clicking either of the following graphics:

"Love is the bridge between you and everything." quote by Jalal al-Din Rumi. Postered Poetics by Aberjhani.

Author

Author-Poet Aberjhani is currently completing a book of nonfiction narratives addressing race relations, histories of erasure, the cultural arts, and practices of slavery in his hometown of Savannah, Georgia, USA.

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Jarreau Jazz-riff Earth-tunes for the Angel of Compassion: Essay with Poem (part 1 of 2)

2/25/2017

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"Jarreau Jazz-riff Earth-tunes for the Angel of Compassion: Essay with Poem (part 1 of 2)" Postered Poetics art graphic for essay and poem by Aberjhani.

The first time I became aware of the name Al Jarreau was when receiving a letter (of the old-school variety penned by hand) from a former college roommate exclaiming how thrilled he and his girlfriend had been to attend one of his concerts. Despite my former roommate's enthusiasm, which rarely bubbled over so heatedly for anything other than football and slightly-older women, I did not really understand all the fuss over Jarreau.

Then a couple of years later, in the early 1980s, I got to see the rhythm-bending phenomenon myself in Berkeley, California, on a bill that also featured Carlos Santana and Frankie Beverly and Maze. The world by then had come to know him as the Grammy Award-winning talent behind the albums Look to the Rainbow (1977) and All Fly Home (1978). For my part, I finally got to experience the truth of a statement Jarreau would make many years later:

“I have missed the boat over my career by not doing every second or third CD live, because things happen on stage that don't happen in the studio.” (Al Jarreau Biography.com)

By its accommodating democratic nature, live jazz is often a music of improvisation. And by his brilliant fluid aesthetics, Al Jarreau was able to adapt his vocal vibrations to whatever genre he chose. But he was also, in essence a flesh, blood, and soul embodiment of jazz. It would not be absolutely wrong to describe him as a male Ella Fitzgerald or as a contemporary Cab Calloway, both of Harlem Renaissance fame, rolled into one. It might be more accurate, however, to say he was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of talent.

Among the things to which he alluded that could "happen on stage" was for him to suddenly turn his chest and rib cage into a drum set, transform his clapping hands into tambourines, or absorb an inspiration from the improvisational moment and blast it out of his lungs like a laser cannon lighting up multiple Sonny Rollins solos.

Two phenomenal musicians: Al Jarreau and Randy Crawford. (Getty Image photograph by Sean Gallup)

What happened on the stage was the kind of inexplicable enchantment that made music journalists rush to describe the "quintessential jazz musician" who could duplicate the superlative performance of a brilliant quartet, or even an entire orchestra, with just his singular voice and body carved from music. Think of him this way--Al Jarreau did not just perform his music: right before your astonished eyes and heart he brought it to kicking, shouting, dancing, holy cosmic life that left you breathless with wonder.

Forced to Make a Difficult Decision

The horrible dilemma with which I had to deal the night I saw Jarreau at the Berkeley Coliseum was that he had already been onstage for an hour, took a very short break, then came back for an additional set that lasted even longer. Dependent as I was on the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) subway system to get me back to San Francisco, I could not ignore the fact that it was close to midnight and, according to my schedule, the last train to the city would leave at that time.

Thoroughly immersed in the essential work of channeling raw creative energy into musical genius, the singer himself clearly had no use for clocks or schedules and the band seemed happy to match him song for song. Knowing no one from whom I could beg for a ride if I chose to stay, I forced myself to leave and head for the subway.

Just as I was about to enter the station some blocks away, something incredible caught my attention. It was his voice. Whether due to the unique acoustics of the coliseum or the undiminished intensity of his performance, I could still hear him. It was if the night itself with the surrounding buildings, street lamps, trees, and sweet cool air had become his microphone and speakers. I smiled, then laughed out loud, and then laughed some more while simultaneously trying to sing along with him and hurry down the subway steps.

NEXT: Jarreau Jazz-riff Earth-tunes for the Angel of Compassion: Essay with Poem (part 2)

Aberjhani
©February 2017
Bright Skylark Literary Productions

AUTHOR

Author-Poet Aberjhani is currently completing a book of nonfiction narratives about race relations, histories of erasure, the cultural arts, and practices of slavery in his hometown of Savannah, Georgia, USA.

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Presenting a Poem for the Earth and Al Gore's Unwavering Optimism (part 2 of 2)

4/24/2016

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Founder and chairman of The Climate Reality Project discusses climate change at TED Talks. (image courtesy of TED Talks)

Welcome to part 2 of Presenting A Poem for the Earth and Al Gore’s Unwavering Optimism. To read part 1 with the accompanying poem, titled The Earth in Rapture, Our Earth, please click here. Part 2 featuring a continuation of the transcription of Al Gore’s Ted Talk video, begins now:

Speaking of the North Pole

This is also connected to the extinction crisis. We're in danger of losing 50 percent of all the living species on earth by the end of this century. And already, land-based plants and animals are now moving towards the poles at an average rate of 15 feet per day.

Speaking of the North Pole, last December 29, the same storm that caused historic flooding in the American Midwest, raised temperatures at the North Pole 50 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal, causing the thawing of the North Pole in the middle of the long, dark, winter, polar night. And when the land-based ice of the Arctic melts, it raises sea level.

Paul Nicklen's beautiful photograph from Svalbard illustrates this. It's more dangerous coming off Greenland and particularly, Antarctica. The 10 largest risk cities for sea-level rise by population are mostly in South and Southeast Asia. When you measure it by assets at risk, number one is Miami: three and a half trillion dollars at risk. Number three: New York and Newark.

I was in Miami last fall during the supermoon, one of the highest high-tide days. And there were fish from the ocean swimming in some of the streets of Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale and Del Rey. And this happens regularly during the highest-tide tides now. Not with rain -- they call it "sunny-day flooding." It comes up through the storm sewers. And the Mayor of Miami speaks for many when he says it is long past time this can be viewed through a partisan lens. This is a crisis that's getting worse day by day.

We have to move beyond partisanship. And I want to take a moment to honor these House Republicans [Applause] who had the courage last fall to step out and take a political risk, by telling the truth about the climate crisis. So the cost of the climate crisis is mounting up, there are many of these aspects I haven't even mentioned. It's an enormous burden.

The Number 1 Risk to the Global Economy

I'll mention just one more, because the World Economic Forum last month in Davos, after their annual survey of 750 economists, said the climate crisis is now the number one risk to the global economy. So you get central bankers like Mark Carney, the head of the UK Central Bank, saying the vast majority of the carbon reserves are unburnable. Subprime carbon. I'm not going to remind you what happened with subprime mortgages, but it's the same thing.

"The Earth in Rapture, Our Earth" Postered Poetics by Aberjhani. Earth Day 2016.

If you look at all of the carbon fuels that were burned since the beginning of the industrial revolution, this is the quantity burned in the last 16 years. Here are all the ones that are proven and left on the books, 28 trillion dollars. The International Energy Agency says only this amount can be burned. So the rest, 22 trillion dollars -- unburnable. Risk to the global economy. That's why divestment movement makes practical sense and is not just a moral imperative.

The Exciting News

So the answer to the first question, "Must we change?" is yes, we have to change. Second question, "Can we change?" This is the exciting news! The best projections in the world 16 years ago were that by 2010, the world would be able to install 30 gigawatts of wind capacity. We beat that mark by 14 and a half times over. We see an exponential curve for wind installations now. We see the cost coming down dramatically.

Some countries -- take Germany, an industrial powerhouse with a climate not that different from Vancouver's, by the way -- one day last December, got 81 percent of all its energy from renewable resources, mainly solar and wind. A lot of countries are getting more than half on an average basis.

More good news: energy storage, from batteries particularly, is now beginning to take off because the cost has been coming down very dramatically to solve the intermittency problem. With solar, the news is even more exciting! The best projections 14 years ago were that we would install one gigawatt per year by 2010. When 2010 came around, we beat that mark by 17 times over. Last year, we beat it by 58 times over. This year, we're on track to beat it 68 times over. We're going to win this. We are going to prevail.

The exponential curve on solar is even steeper and more dramatic. When I came to this stage 10 years ago, this is where it was. We have seen a revolutionary breakthrough in the emergence of these exponential curves. [Applause] And the cost has come down 10 percent per year for 30 years. And it's continuing to come down.

Now, the business community has certainly noticed this, because it's crossing the grid parity point. Cheaper solar penetration rates are beginning to rise. Grid parity is understood as that line, that threshold, below which renewable electricity is cheaper than electricity from burning fossil fuels. That threshold is a little bit like the difference between 32 degrees Fahrenheit and 33 degrees Fahrenheit, or zero and one Celsius. It's a difference of more than one degree; it's the difference between ice and water. And it's the difference between markets that are frozen up, and liquid flows of capital into new opportunities for investment.

This is the biggest new business opportunity in the history of the world, and two-thirds of it is in the private sector. We are seeing an explosion of new investment. Starting in 2010, investments globally in renewable electricity generation surpassed fossils. The gap has been growing ever since. The projections for the future are even more dramatic, even though fossil energy is now still subsidized at a rate 40 times larger than renewables. And by the way, if you add the projections for nuclear on here, particularly if you assume that the work many are doing to try to break through to safer and more acceptable, more affordable forms of nuclear, this could change even more dramatically.

An Answer in 3 Parts

So is there any precedent for such a rapid adoption of a new technology? Well, there are many, but let's look at cell phones. In 1980, AT&T, then Ma Bell, commissioned McKinsey to do a global market survey of those clunky new mobile phones that appeared then. "How many can we sell by the year 2000?" they asked. McKinsey came back and said, "900,000." And sure enough, when the year 2000 arrived, they did sell 900,000 -- in the first three days. And for the balance of the year, they sold 120 times more. And now there are more cell connections than there are people in the world.

So, why were they not only wrong, but way wrong? I've asked that question myself, "Why?" [Laughter] And I think the answer is in three parts. First, the cost came down much faster than anybody expected, even as the quality went up. And low-income countries, places that did not have a landline grid -- they leap-frogged to the new technology. The big expansion has been in the developing counties.

So what about the electricity grids in the developing world? Well, not so hot. And in many areas, they don't exist. There are more people without any electricity at all in India than the entire population of the United States of America. So now we're getting this: solar panels on grass huts and new business models that make it affordable. Muhammad Yunus financed this one in Bangladesh with micro-credit. This is a village market. Bangladesh is now the fastest-deploying country in the world: two systems per minute on average, night and day.

And we have all we need: enough energy from the Sun comes to the Earth every hour to supply the full world's energy needs for an entire year. It's actually a little bit less than an hour. So the answer to the second question, "Can we change?" is clearly "Yes." And it's an ever-firmer "yes."

Last Question: "Will we change?" Paris really was a breakthrough, some of the provisions are binding and the regular reviews will matter a lot. But nations aren't waiting, they're going ahead.

China has already announced that starting next year, they're adopting a nationwide cap and trade system. They will likely link up with the European Union. The United States has already been changing. All of these coal plants were proposed in the next 10 years and canceled. All of these existing coal plants were retired. All of these coal plants have had their retirement announced. All of them-- canceled. We are moving forward.

Last Year: if you look at all of the investment in new electricity generation in the United States, almost three-quarters was from renewable energy, mostly wind and solar. We are solving this crisis. The only question is: how long will it take to get there? So, it matters that a lot of people are organizing to insist on this change. Almost 400,000 people marched in New York City before the UN special session on this. Many thousands, tens of thousands, marched in cities around the world. And so, I am extremely optimistic. As I said before, we are going to win this.

To Quote Poet Wallace Stevens

I'll finish with this story. When I was 13 years old, I heard that proposal by President Kennedy to land a person on the Moon and bring him back safely in 10 years. And I heard adults of that day and time say, "That's reckless, expensive, may well fail." But eight years and two months later, in the moment that Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon, there was great cheer that went up in NASA's mission control in Houston. Here's a little-known fact about that: the average age of the systems engineers, the controllers in the room that day, was 26, which means, among other things, their age, when they heard that challenge, was 18.

We now have a moral challenge that is in the tradition of others that we have faced. One of the greatest poets of the last century in the US, Wallace Stevens, wrote a line that has stayed with me: "After the final 'no,' there comes a 'yes,' and on that 'yes', the future world depends." When the abolitionists started their movement, they met with no after no after no. And then came a yes. The Women's Suffrage and Women's Rights Movement met endless no's, until finally, there was a yes.

The Civil Rights Movement, the movement against apartheid, and more recently, the movement for gay and lesbian rights here in the United States and elsewhere. After the final "no" comes a "yes." When any great moral challenge is ultimately resolved into a binary choice between what is right and what is wrong, the outcome is fore-ordained because of who we are as human beings. Ninety-nine percent of us, that is where we are now and it is why we're going to win this. We have everything we need.

Some still doubt that we have the will to act, but I say the will to act is itself a renewable resource. Thank you very much.

––Applause for Al Gore

A Bright Skylark Literary Productions Post
Earth Day Weekend 2016

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Presenting a Poem for the Earth and Al Gore’s Unwavering Optimism (Part 1 of 2)

4/22/2016

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"The Earth in Rapture, Our Earth" special PRINCE TRIBUTE EDITION Postered Poetics by Aberjhani (featuring Hubble Spacecraft photography).

Should people refer to the increasing occurrence of extreme climate events as evidence, signs, or warnings? Whatever the chosen terminology, it has become clear enough that humanity can no longer ignore the impact human activities have on the Earth.

The heart-stopping flash flood that brought Houston, Texas, to a halt earlier this week, the increasing intensity of hurricanes and tornadoes, and the unsettling occurrence of rapid-fire earthquakes in places where few ever popped up before have made something very clear. And that is this: the warnings about climate change that began to emerge decades ago could not have come too soon.

The Earth in Rapture, Our Earth

The Earth in rapture sings a holy hurricane
of ten thousand prophet-poets
burning stones and blood to the music
of higher rainbow spheres, every leaping tree
declares itself a divine idiot dancing inside
shadows of history and flames of tomorrow.

Our Earth in rapture screams the muted glory
of a shy goddess wed to ecstasy and destiny.
Her veil of tidal waves and indigo clouds
hide scalding tears of smoke and lava.
Volcano rumblings of cosmic grief
moan soft blue thunder as she re-births
her eternal rhythms of eternal love.

Aberjhani (from Visions of Skylark Dressed in Black)

Transcript of Al Gore's Case for Maintaining Hope

In a TED Talk presented earlier this year, founder and chairman of The Climate Reality Project Al Gore shared why he believes humanity is in a good position to win the battle against self-destruction. The YouTube video below, first posted by “Climate Reality” under a standard share license, features his talk and is followed a transcript of the main address:

"I was excited to be a part of the "Dream" theme, and then I found out I'm leading off the "Nightmare?" section of it. [Laughter] And certainly there are things about the climate crisis that qualify. And I have some bad news, but I have a lot more good news.

"I'm going propose three questions and the answer to the first one necessarily involves a little bad news. But -- hang on, because the answers to the second and third questions really are very positive.

"So the first question is, "Do we really have to change?" And of course, the Apollo Mission, among other things changed the environmental movement, really launched the modern environmental movement 18 months after this Earthrise picture was first seen on earth, the first Earth Day was organized. And we learned a lot about ourselves looking back at our planet from space."

An Open Sewer

"And one of the things that we learned confirmed what the scientists have long told us. One of the most essential facts about the climate crisis has to do with the sky. As this picture illustrates, the sky is not the vast and limitless expanse that appears when we look up from the ground. It is a very thin shell of atmosphere surrounding the planet. That right now is the open sewer for our industrial civilization as it's currently organized.

"We are spewing 110 million tons of heat-trapping global warming pollution into it every 24 hours, free of charge, go ahead. And there are many sources of the greenhouse gases, I'm certainly not going to go through them all. I'm going to focus on the main one, but agriculture is involved, diet is involved, population is involved. Management of forests, transportation, the oceans, the melting of the permafrost. But I'm going to focus on the heart of the problem, which is the fact that we still rely on dirty, carbon-based fuels for 85 percent of all the energy that our world burns every year.

"And you can see from this image that after World War II, the emission rates started really accelerating. And the accumulated amount of man-made, global warming pollution that is up in the atmosphere now traps as much extra heat energy as would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every 24 hours, 365 days a year. Fact-checked over and over again, conservative, it's the truth."

Let’s Look at the Atmosphere

"Now it's a big planet, but [Explosion sound] that is a lot of energy, particularly when you multiply it 400,000 times per day. And all that extra heat energy is heating up the atmosphere, the whole earth system. Let's look at the atmosphere. This is a depiction of what we used to think of as the normal distribution of temperatures. The white represents normal temperature days; 1951-1980 are arbitrarily chosen. The blue are cooler than average days, the red are warmer than average days. But the entire curve has moved to the right in the 1980s.

"And you'll see in the lower right-hand corner the appearance of statistically significant numbers of extremely hot days. In the 90s, the curve shifted further. And in the last 10 years, you see the extremely hot days are now more numerous than the cooler than average days. In fact, they are 150 times more common on the surface of the earth than they were just 30 years ago. So we're having record-breaking temperatures.

"Fourteen of the 15 of the hottest years ever measured with instruments have been in this young century. The hottest of all was last year. Last month [January 2016] was the 371st month in a row warmer than the 20th-century average. And for the first time, not only the warmest January, but for the first time, it was more than two degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the average. These higher temperatures are having an effect on animals, plants, people, ecosystems."

This Has Consequences

"But on a global basis, 93 percent of all the extra heat energy is trapped in the oceans. And the scientists can measure the heat buildup much more precisely now at all depths: deep, mid-ocean, the first few hundred meters. And this, too, is accelerating. It goes back more than a century. And more than half of the increase has been in the last 19 years. This has consequences.

"The first order of consequence: the ocean-based storms get stronger. Super Typhoon Haiyan went over areas of the Pacific five and a half degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal before it slammed into Tacloban, as the most destructive storm ever to make landfall. Pope Francis, who has made such a difference to this whole issue, visited Tacloban right after that. Superstorm Sandy went over areas of the Atlantic nine degrees warmer than normal before slamming into New York and New Jersey.

"The second order of consequences are affecting all of us right now. The warmer oceans are evaporating much more water vapor into the skies. Average humidity worldwide has gone up four percent. And it creates these atmospheric rivers. The Brazilian scientists call them "flying rivers." And they funnel all of that extra water vapor over the land where storm conditions trigger these massive record-breaking downpours. This [picture] is from Montana. Take a look at this storm last August. As it moves over Tucson, Arizona. It literally splashes off the city. These downpours are really unusual.

"Last July in Houston, Texas, it rained for two days, 162 billion gallons. That represents more than two days of the full flow of Niagara Falls in the middle of the city, which was, of course, paralyzed. These record downpours are creating historic floods and mudslides.

"This one is from Chile last year. And you'll see that warehouse going by. There are oil tankers cars going by. This is from Spain last September, you could call this the running of the cars and trucks, I guess. Every night on the TV news now is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation. [Laughter] I mean, really."

Systemic Causation

“The insurance industry has certainly noticed, the losses have been mounting up. They're not under any illusions about what's happening. And the causality requires a moment of discussion. We're used to thinking of linear cause and linear effect -- one cause, one effect. This is systemic causation. As the great Kevin Trenberth says, ‘All storms are different now. There's so much extra energy in the atmosphere, there's so much extra water vapor. Every storm is different now.’

“So, the same extra heat pulls the soil moisture out of the ground and causes these deeper, longer, more pervasive droughts and many of them are underway right now. It dries out the vegetation and causes more fires in the western part of North America. There's certainly been evidence of that, a lot of them. More lightning, as the heat energy builds up, a considerable amount of additional lightning also.

“These climate-related disasters also have geopolitical consequences and create instability. The climate-related historic drought that started in Syria in 2006 destroyed 60 percent of the farms in Syria, killed 80 percent of the livestock, and drove 1.5 million climate refugees into the cities of Syria, where they collided with another 1.5 million refugees from the Iraq War. And along with other factors, that opened the gates of Hell that people are trying to close now.

“The US Defense Department has long warned of consequences from the climate crisis, including refugees, food and water shortages and pandemic disease. Right now we're seeing microbial diseases from the tropics spread to the higher latitudes; the transportation revolution has had a lot to do with this. But the changing conditions change the latitudes in the areas where these microbial diseases can become endemic and change the range of the vectors, like mosquitoes and ticks that carry them.

“The Zika epidemic now –– we're better positioned in North America because it's still a little too cool and we have a better public health system. But when women in some regions of South and Central America are advised not to get pregnant for two years ––that's something new–– that ought to get our attention. The Lancet, one of the two greatest medical journals in the world, last summer labeled this a medical emergency now. And there are many factors because of it.”

NEXT: Presenting a Poem for the Earth and Al Gore’s Unwavering Optimism Part 2

Aberjhani
©Earth Day 2016
Bright Skylark Literary Productions

1 Comment

A Literary Craftsman Re-Discovers His Inner Visual Artist

Creative Labors Beget Creative Possibilities

An Enhanced Way of Seeing

Author

Poetics and Jazz of Compassion Presented with a Creatively Maladjusted Twist

A Confluence of Compassionate Sensibilities

Author

Jarreau Jazz-riff Earth-tunes for the Angel of Compassion: Essay with Poem (part 1 of 2)

Forced to Make a Difficult Decision

Presenting a Poem for the Earth and Al Gore's Unwavering Optimism (part 2 of 2)

Speaking of the North Pole

The Number 1 Risk to the Global Economy

The Exciting News

An Answer in 3 Parts

To Quote Poet Wallace Stevens

Presenting a Poem for the Earth and Al Gore’s Unwavering Optimism (Part 1 of 2)

The Earth in Rapture, Our Earth

Transcript of Al Gore's Case for Maintaining Hope

An Open Sewer

Let’s Look at the Atmosphere

This Has Consequences

Systemic Causation

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

A Literary Craftsman Re-Discovers His Inner Visual Artist

Creative Labors Beget Creative Possibilities ​

An Enhanced Way of Seeing

Author

Poetics and Jazz of Compassion Presented with a Creatively Maladjusted Twist

A Confluence of Compassionate Sensibilities

Author

Jarreau Jazz-riff Earth-tunes for the Angel of Compassion: Essay with Poem (part 1 of 2)

Forced to Make a Difficult Decision

Presenting a Poem for the Earth and Al Gore's Unwavering Optimism (part 2 of 2)

Speaking of the North Pole

The Number 1 Risk to the Global Economy

The Exciting News

An Answer in 3 Parts

To Quote Poet Wallace Stevens

Presenting a Poem for the Earth and Al Gore’s Unwavering Optimism (Part 1 of 2)

The Earth in Rapture, Our Earth

​Transcript of Al Gore's Case for Maintaining Hope

An Open Sewer

Let’s Look at the Atmosphere

This Has Consequences

Systemic Causation

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Creative Labors Beget Creative Possibilities

Transcript of Al Gore's Case for Maintaining Hope