Kit Stolz

Billionaire vs. climate change: Thomas Steyer

Wonderful story from Juliet Eilperin in the Washington Post on a Bay Area billionaire who has put his money — many millions of dollars — where his mouth is on climate change:

Steyer is taking on a []prominent public role. On Sunday, he spoke to a crowd that organizers estimated at 35,000, gathered on the Mall to call for a stronger national climate policy.“I’m
not the first person you’d expect to be here today. I’m not a college
professor and I don’t run an environmental organization,” he said. “For
the last 30 years I’ve been a professional investor and I’ve been
looking at billion-dollar investments for decades and I’m here to tell
you one thing: The Keystone pipeline is not a good investment.”

To string another couple of good quotes together:

“I feel like the guy in the movie who goes into the diner and says,
‘There are zombies in the woods and they’re eating our children,’ ”
Steyer said.

And, in light of the fact that the climate is changing too quickly for policy-makers:

“If we can win every single battle and lose the war, then we’re doing
something wrong,” he said.

Love this guy! Embarrassed I haven't heard of him before.

The environmental regrets of James Fennimore Cooper

In the first of the famous Leatherstocking Tales, a novel called The Pioneers, in the introduction the author mentions a regret about the arrival of the white man to the Otsego region of upstate New York:

Though forests still crown the mountains of Otsego, the bear, the wolf, and the panther are nearly strangers to them. Even the innocent deer is rarely seen bounding beneath their arches; for the rifle and the activity of the settlers hare driven them to other haunts. To this change (which in some particulars is melancholy to one who knew the country in its infancy), it may be added that the Otsego is beginning to be a niggard of its treasures.

From 1823!

I guess from the start some writers noticed what we did to this land.

Dawn comes to Rae Lakes

Fin Dome over Rae Lakes:

Rae Lakes are one of the most accessible of the glacial High Sierra lake chains, so this is a sight many early rising many visitors have seen…blessedly.

[Photo via a National Park Service contest on fb, by winner Matt Cooper.]

50 Shades of love and sex/Valentine’s Day 2013

From my cover story in this week's Ventura County Reporter:

Since the genetic basis of our species, Homo Sapiens, stabilized approximately 100,000 years ago, the reproductive nature of the human
body has not substantially changed. But in the last few years, human
sexual experience has substantially changed, especially among the
adventurous.

For Valentine’s Day, and especially for
“vanilla” people interested in benefiting from the experience of those
on the edges of the spectrum, here’s a report from the front lines of
sex in Ventura County.

At California Lutheran University
(CLU), sociologist Adina Nack, who teaches courses on sexuality,
confirms the widespread reports that young people today no longer date
in the conventional sense — they “hook up.” But she adds a twist.

“The
norm has shifted from dating and relationships to the hook-up culture,”
Nack said. “But one of the things [my students] say they like about
that phrase is the ambiguity of it. As a sociologist, this is something I
have to work to wrap my head around. I am not of that millennial
generation, and to me it’s strange for friends to prefer it to be vague.
‘Hooking up’ can mean anything from kissing to going all the way.”

Nack
adds that, although both sexes will report their hook-ups on social
media, she’s not sure this represents a step forward. Her students still
describe a sexual double standard, in which women are judged more
harshly for having sex than men.

The lessons to be learned from the BDSM community

One
of the most popular of guest speakers in Nack’s sex ed class is a
positive sex advocate, Emily Prior, a doctoral student researching
sexual experience in the BDSM (Bondage/Discipline Sado/Masochism)
community. Nack said that her students were enthralled with Prior, even
though in class they laughed nervously at her presentation.

For
Prior, who has always believed in openness in sex, the necessity for
safety in sex in the BDSM community has, over time, brought a new and
admirable sexual etiquette into being.

“Imagine that you are
a single woman and you are going out with a man or a group of men,
knowing that no one is allowed to touch you without your permission,”
she said. “It seems like that should be the norm, but it really isn’t.
In local [ BDSM] dungeons, no one is allowed to touch anyone without
permission, not even to give a hug or hold a person’s hand. It’s a much
safer space for a woman than dating.”

At CLU, Nack points out
that because of the wide range of sexual possibilities in the BDSM
community, communication and negotiation between parties is expected and
understood, where it’s often difficult for heterosexual couples. Prior
puts it more bluntly.

“The
question in the BDSM community is typically: What do you do? Which
means: Do you like to be tied up? Do you like spanking? Are you a top or
a bottom? You know immediately whether or not you can be compatible
sexually,” she said. “Instead of waiting days or months or years or
decades to find out, for example, that your partner won’t actually give
you head, you talk about it up front.”

Prior also argues that
the BDSM community has a lower rate of sexually transmitted diseases
(STDs) than the heterosexual population, although she admitted that
hasn’t been proved.

“We only have anecdotal evidence for a
lower rate of STD transmission, but it makes sense,” she said. “Most
people use protection even if they know their partners, and people are
very diligent about disclosure as well as protection. It’s definitely a
point of pride in the culture.”

What is misunderstood about 50 Shades of Gray

It’s
not just the negotiation and communication that is underestimated,
according to Roylin Downs, the owner/operator of the Kama Sutra Closet
lingerie and sex shop in downtown Ventura. It’s the nature of sexual
pleasure itself.

Downs points to 50 Shades of Grey,
the book by E.L. James about a kinky relationship between an elegant
older billionaire and a beautiful young woman, as an example. Despite
being reviled by critics for its prose, 50 Shades became the
fastest-selling paperback of all time, with 65 million copies in print.
It’s still second on the national best-seller list, two years after
being published.

“Our society is suppressive about
sexuality,” she said. “My customer is a more vanilla woman, usually, and
70 percent of American women don’t have orgasms during love-making.
What 50 Shades of Grey does is show you a woman in her 20s who
has an orgasm every time she makes love. Everybody assumes this book is
fantasy. But a lot of women are looking at it and thinking: ‘Wait a
minute, if she can write about how this woman has this experience in
every encounter, why isn’t it possible for me?’ It creates an opening,
an opportunity for conversation.”

Downs explained that her
most popular single item is the “Kegel balls,” or silver balls that were
the first item used by the young woman character in James’ book.
They’re used in a playful way by the couple in the book, but have been
sold to women in Asia for generations as “ben wa” balls.

“In
terms of health benefits, after 40, or after childbirth, women often
need to tighten their pelvic floor,” Downs said. “Instead of being told
by the gynecologist to do exercises, such as sitting forward in your car
and tightening, tightening, tightening, which 98 percent of women don’t
do because it’s too challenging, you insert these metals balls, and the
weight naturally pulls them down, and the muscles naturally tighten. So
the Kegel balls have a health benefit, but they also tighten the
vagina, so you can have more control during love-making.”

Downs
stresses that her upstairs shop, which is open mostly by appointment,
is designed to be the sort of shop where a shy woman such as herself or
her mother could go without embarrassment, and that she herself doesn’t
want anything to do with heavy bondage gear or vulgar sex toys.

“You
always start at wherever the most uncomfortable person in the
relationship is,” she said. “It’s about creating intimacy. A vibrator
might not be the right tool. Maybe it’s about a tickler, or a book, or a
massage oil. It’s about creating that sense of touch.”

Sex for older women — and couples

When
Downs opened her business four years ago, she set out to distinguish
her store from other stores offering adult products, partly by stressing
the female-friendly aspects of the store, with no products that looked
like body parts, and partly by bringing in experts. Her first speaker
was Joan Price, from Northern California, who became an expert in
“senior sex,” more or less by accident.

After publishing an
exercise manual in 2003, the mature Price had a chance to publicize the
book with an appearance on a television talk show in New York. Her agent
asked her for a hook — something to make her sound interesting. Price
offered that some of her exercises were good for sex, and mentioned, by
the way, that she was having “the best sex of her life.” The agent
passed this on. Price was booked on to the show.

“I
discovered that no one cared about my exercise book,” she wrote about
the appearance. “The major question of the evening was: So, Joan, is it
true that you’re having the best sex of your life at age 59?”

She
explained that, yes, she was, in part because she was in a new
relationship with an older man, whom she later married, though he passed
away in 2008. And the sex was good. Price argues that, in fact, senior
sex can be better than youthful sex for everyone.

“At our
age, we’re not so goal-driven,” she said. “The men have slowed down and
like the extra touching, and the women have slowed down, too. If you
have a good connection, the sex can be better than ever, because we can
bring a wealth of wisdom and experience to it. We can communicate in a
way we never could before.”

As
a young woman, she said, she was never taught anything about the nature
of a woman’s sexual pleasure, and she thinks that’s still all too true.

“Too often, young women are still sort of left to the mercy
of their partner,” she said. “Sex is whatever the boy thinks it should
be.” The good news, she said, is that good information is more available
than ever, in forums such as scarletteen.com, and that solutions to
most sexual issues are readily available. Her first sex book — Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After Sixty — featured her own story, but had many chapters, written by a wide variety of experts, on psychological and sexual topics.

“I
was in an extremely satisfying and exhilarating relationship when I
wrote that book,” she said. “I was 61 and my lover was 68. People were
telling me that it’s great that you’re having great sex, but they were
asking me questions about their own issues. Is vaginal pain normal? No,
it’s not. Is there anything that can be done about erectile dysfunction?
Yes, there is — e.d. is not a diagnosis, it’s a symptom of something
else that’s going on. The problem so often, with my generation, is that
we don’t know where to go for good information.”

Price adds
that just because she found satisfaction in a committed relationship
doesn’t mean that’s best for all older people. In her new book, Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud About Senior Sex,
she said many reviewers were startled to read about the range of
unconventional relationships she found among older people, including
polyamorous couples, as well as older women who liked phone sex, casual
sex and/or rough sex.

“We see a friendly gray-haired smiling
grandmother and we think we know all about her,” she said. “Actually, we
have no idea what she’s doing in bed.”

Valentine’s Day: A gay perspective

For
John Wilner, the chairman of Ventura County’s [LGBT] Pride committee,
Valentine’s Day is less about sex and more about love and acceptance.
Although currently single, he longs for the day when he can celebrate
Valentine’s Day like any other couple.

“At the end of the day,
love is love and a couple is a couple,” he said. “Whether it’s two men,
two women, or a man and a woman. There’s even a joke in Portlandia,
about a couple made of a transgendered man and a transgendered woman.
Whatever the case, the celebration is the same. I’m really heartened
when I’m able to see that I can be open and honest with my affection. If
you can hold your wife’s hand in public, why can’t I hold my
boyfriend’s hand?”

In
recent years, the Pride coalition has staged a Valentine’s Day protest
at the county government center, with same-sex couples filing petitions
to marry, even though they knew that would be rejected. This year — with
the issue hanging in the balance at the Supreme Court — Wilner said
they called it off.

“I think people are realizing that
marriage is about love and family,” he said. “Times are changing and
younger voters are coming on line. I’m really hopeful that this session,
we’ll see a court decision restoring our right to marry, and so this
year we decided to give the clerk at the government center a break and
not put her through all that.”

Kit Stolz has been
reporting on culture and climate in Ventura County for over a decade —
for more, see http://www.achangeinthewind.com.

Contrarian environmentalist: George Monbiot on nuclear

The case for nuclear power. from Fred Pearce, following the lead of George Monbiot at The Guardian:

"The problem is the same in the energy debate. Many environmentalists who
argue, as I do, that climate change is probably the big overarching
issue facing humanity in the 21st century, nonetheless often refuse to
recognize that nuclear power could have a role in saving us from the
worst.

For environmentalists to fan the flames of fear of nuclear power seems reckless and anti-scientific.

Nuclear power is the only large-scale source of low-carbon electricity that is fully developed and ready for major expansion.

Yes, we need to expand renewables as fast as we can. Yes, we need to
reduce further the already small risks of nuclear accidents and of
leakage of fissile material into weapons manufacturing. But as George
Monbiot, Britain’s most prominent environment columnist, puts it: “To
abandon our primary current source of low carbon energy during a climate
change emergency is madness.”

[George] Monbiot attacks the gratuitous misrepresentation of the risks of
radiation from nuclear plants. It is widely suggested, on the basis of a
thoroughly discredited piece of Russian head-counting, that up to a
million people were killed by the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986. In
fact, it is far from clear that many people at all — beyond the 28
workers who received fatal doses while trying to douse the flames at the
stricken reactor — actually died from Chernobyl radiation. Certainly,
the death toll was nothing remotely on the scale claimed.

“We have a moral duty,” Monbiot says, “not to spread unnecessary and
unfounded fears. If we persuade people that they or their children are
likely to suffer from horrible and dangerous health problems, and if
these fears are baseless, we cause great distress and anxiety,
needlessly damaging the quality of people’s lives.”

One sure result of Germany deciding to abandon nuclear power
in the wake of last year’s Fukushima nuclear accident (calamitous, but
any death toll will be tiny compared to that from the tsunami that
caused it) will be rising carbon emissions from a revived coal industry.
By one estimate, the end of nuclear power in Germany will result in an
extra 300 million tons of carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere between
now and 2020 — more than the annual emissions of Italy and Spain
combined."

Yeah, but Chernobyl [here's the first picture taken after the meltdown]:

It's taken from a helicopter. The fogginess in the pic? Radiation.

President Obama talks climate: 12 hottest years, in last 15

The earth’s getting warmer: “Yes, it’s true that no
single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on
record have all come in the last 15.” President Obama, in the State of the Union Address:

You can see that in NOAA’s record of global temperatures.

From Ezra Klein's Wonkblog. Weather nerds will note how much colder La Niña years once were, compared to neutral or El Niño years — but not today.

The state of the climate 2013: Obama

President Obama's makes clear how fast things are changing in the climate in his 2013 State of the Union:

…for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change. Yes, it’s true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late.

Four years ago, other countries dominated the clean energy market and the jobs that came with it. We’ve begun to change that. Last year, wind energy added nearly half of all new power capacity in America. So let’s generate even more. Solar energy gets cheaper by the year – so let’s drive costs down even further. As long as countries like China keep going all-in on clean energy, so must we.

In the meantime, the natural gas boom has led to cleaner power and greater energy independence. That’s why my Administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits. But I also want to work with this Congress to encourage the research and technology that helps natural gas burn even cleaner and protects our air and water.

Indeed, much of our new-found energy is drawn from lands and waters that we, the public, own together. So tonight, I propose we use some of our oil and gas revenues to fund an Energy Security Trust that will drive new research and technology to shift our cars and trucks off oil for good. If a non-partisan coalition of CEOs and retired generals and admirals can get behind this idea, then so can we. Let’s take their advice and free our families and businesses from the painful spikes in gas prices we’ve put up with for far too long. I’m also issuing a new goal for America: let’s cut in half the energy wasted by our homes and businesses over the next twenty years. The states with the best ideas to create jobs and lower energy bills by constructing more efficient buildings will receive federal support to help make it happen.

"I urge this Congess to pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago. But if Congress won't act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy."

The comebacks:

Will Oremus/Slate:

OK, so what's a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change?

In a word, it's fantasy: as long as the current crop of Republicans have a say in Congress, meaningful climate-change solutions are never going to emerge from that body. The sour look at McCain's face as Obama mentioned his name shows just how far the senator's party has regressed on this issue since his failed presidential bid in 2008.

In three words, though, it's cap-and-trade.

350.org/ Bill McKibben

The first executive act Obama can take right now to stop climate change is to stop Keystone XL.

(Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday gave Congress an ultimatum on climate change: craft a plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the dangers of a warming world, or the White House will go it alone.

Yes, so the climate silence is broken for good, with a threat to the House GOP.

ADD Jonathan Chait on Obama's threat:

Obama has the power to impose powerful unilateral regulations on greenhouse-gas emissions. Whether Obama can follow through on this threat will probably amount to the defining struggle of his second term. A small passage in his speech will eventually be remembered as the opening salvo in a bloody fight of massive consequence.

Orwell on the rules of story-telling in non-fiction

A review of Zero Dark Thirty includes this gem of a quote, one writer in effect overhearing arguably the first great modern non-fiction writer, George Orwell, talking about what we today call literary non-fiction, and what fictionalization he allows in a non-fiction story. .

There were few more minute observers of fact than George Orwell. As Timothy Garton Ash has written, if Orwell had a God it was Kipling’s “God of Things as They are.” Yet, as Garton Ash says of Orwell: “One of his most powerful early essays describes witnessing a hanging in Burma. But he later told three separate people that this was ‘only a story.’ So did he ever witness a hanging? He annotates a copy of “Down and Out in Paris and London” for a girlfriend: this really happened, this happened almost like this, but “this incident is invented.”’

Orwell was a polemicist trapped in a realist's body. That's what made his fiction so striking — its consciousness of its own politics.

At the same time, note the assumption embedded in that quote or Orwell's. An essay will focus on a story. Of course! That's his attitude, and that's the forgotten Orwell — the great storyteller.

Here's an example, from the story about a hanging::

We set out for the gallows. Two warders marched on either side of the prisoner, with their rifles at the slope; two others marched close against him, gripping him by arm and shoulder, as though at once pushing and supporting him. The rest of us, magistrates and the like, followed behind. Suddenly, when we had gone ten yards, the procession stopped short without any order or warning. A dreadful thing had happened — a dog, come goodness knows whence, had appeared in the yard. It came bounding among us with a loud volley of barks, and leapt round us wagging its whole body, wild with glee at finding so many human beings together. It was a large woolly dog, half Airedale, half pariah. For a moment it pranced round us, and then, before anyone could stop it, it had made a dash for the prisoner, and jumping up tried to lick his face. Everyone stood aghast, too taken aback even to grab at the dog..

In the end, it's not Orwell's rules that make him special. It's his writing.

What would George Orwell have made of the world in 2013?

My hero: George Orwell by Margaret Atwood

The road to Nineteen Eighty-Four

A fresh view of George Orwell

A theatrical metaphor for climate change: Alcoholism

A survey of climate change in theater here and in the UK in the New York Times focuses mostly on "This Clement World," a new musical play by Cynthia Hopkins, and includes a telling quote from the writer:

“Alcoholism is an excellent metaphor for the climate change crisis,” she announces at one point onstage. “We’re addicted to behavior that is making us sick.”

Idea makes sense, if you think that denial is central to alcoholism and our culture's response to climate change.

Here's a trailer, narrated by the playwright.

I admire the thoughtfulness, but what sticks with me is the kazoo.

Avoiding over-reaction by any means necessary: NYTimes

Evidently the media adults in the room — excluding The Weather Channel – are going out of their way to underplay the big winter storm hitting the East Coast this weekend. The Times and the Post are not putting it on top of the front page and are avoiding calling it by TWC's name. Meteorological services too are emphasizing the caveats. Not to mention complaining about the The Weather Channel's exploitation.

Said the Atlantic Wire:

AccuWeather and other services don't play along with the new name game, says [senior meteorologist Tom] Kines, because the practice "confuses people." Unlike a hurricane, which affects everything in its path, a winter storm's wrath doesn't have the same certain doom. "The National Weather Service does not name winter storms because a winter storm's impact can vary from one location to another, and storms can weaken and redevelop, making it difficult to define where one ends and another begins," National Weather Service spokesperson Susan Buchanan told The Wire.

But when does avoiding panic become an over-reaction itself? Maybe when a newspaper sets out to remind us of how it compares to a blizzard from the 19th century. Even if it is the Great Blizzard of 1888.

If this is the worst winter storm in 125 years, isn't it pretty serious?

[pic from NYC, before Nemo arrives, via Stormgram at NBC]