Late-K Lunacy

by Ted Bernard

  “I hope that’s not the case,” Burt said. “But I’m not confident that any of this posturing will deter Morse. Probably he’s already out there firing up his rig. And besides, isn’t this idea of a teach-in rather passé?”

  “Yeah, in these days of instant digital gratification and terse communication maybe the teach-in was not such a good idea.”

  “Well, if this audience is any indication, I’d say the movement is in trouble.”

  “It’s early in the day and they reportedly have thousands who follow them on Facebook and other social media. See that guy over there in the blue blazer?” Stefan pointed at Weston. “He’s shooting video of each talk. A video collage will be sent out to all those followers.”

  “Still not impressed,” Burt crinkled his eyebrows and shook his head in doubt. He told Stefan he could not understand what social media could possibly have to do with forcing the shutdown of drilling at Blackwood Forest and demanding the university to go green. What he knew of Facebook consisted of pictures of his grandchildren and incessant drivel from his sister in Florida.

  Classes were changing as Burt’s talk on climate change concluded:

  “Our climate, which has served humanity’s evolution so comfortably, is about to get ugly. But far worse than that, climate change will present your generation with widespread famine, unprecedented heat, catastrophic human pandemics, swamped coastal cities, colossal storms like Katrina and Sandy, and massive streams of refugees. If we don’t greatly reduce the emissions from dirty fossil fuels, if we don’t reverse our spewing of greenhouse gases, we are headed for disaster. Since I myself will not likely have to suffer through any of this, I wish you and your generation the best of luck. And I pray that my grandchildren will live on high ground and will have learned how to feed themselves.”

  The crowd of some three-dozen clapped, at first an underwhelming response, then at Zachary’s hooping insistence, we all rose for a prolonged standing ovation. Hundreds of students meanwhile scurried across Centennial Quad as classes changed. Some stopped to converse with occupiers who handed out programs and copies of our press release. By the time Stefan spoke, the audience had increased to about fifty. When he stepped down, the Stefan-heads, including me, flocked to him. “Awesome talk,” Nick complimented him. Em gushed, “Prof Stefan, I liked it when you compared today’s times to the Roman Empire when it was being stretched toward its own disparition. Oui, collapse!”

  Katherine cast a sidelong glance toward Stefan. “Hit it out of the park”, she said, winking. He returned a giddy smile. How shall I name that scene? Delirium?

  “Thanks guys. Nothing new for you but I hope it fires up your troops.” Our group was joined by still more groupies. Greg asked, “Hey Stefan, do you think this protest has any chance of shutting down the drilling at Blackwood?”

  “It’s too early to say. Its success will depend on engaging a larger portion of the Gilligan student body than these few here.”

  “The crowd here’s not the point, Stefan,” José insisted. “Our video blasts on YouTube and Instagram and to our Facebook and Twitter followers will inspire everybody for the next round.”

  “And what would that be?” Stefan asked

  “Well, it all depends on what Morse and President Redlaw and company do next. We’re nimble. We’re reflexive, you know. We’re ready to respond to the emergent properties of this complex system. Yo' hear what I’m sayin'?”

  “I certainly do,” Stefan replied grinning.

  By mid-afternoon the teach-in was winding down. The sixty or so hangers-on who sprawled across the grass in various languid and occasionally libidinous poses were either half asleep or in various states of hormonal distraction. We gradually came to life with music that echoed across the quad — a beguiling set of seventies folk-rock tunes delivered by Jude Hawkins, a long-ago Gilligan student who never graduated because he had abandoned Argolis for Nashville during a few brief months of fame. Now on stage with his little band — a base guitar, drums, and a keyboard — the gravelly-voiced Hawkins sang and strummed and played his harmonica through a dozen tunes from those good old days. Between tunes, he entertained us with banter about what it was like to be protesting the American war in Vietnam and the plight of the Earth “right here, my friends, right on this same shady lawn, right here in this bubble called Argolis.”

  I gazed up at Jude Hawkins. He seemed a fugitive from another planet: this rail-thin man the age of my late grandfather with his Willy Nelson ponytail and scraggly facial hair, wrinkled brow and crow’s feet looking more like ostrich feet, his flushed complexion that of a man, like my dad, who loves his bourbon. Yet, while typically dismissing our parents’ generation of music, I and my fellow students had the opposite response to Jude Hawkins performing our grandparents’ kind of music. We grooved on his Bob Dylanesque rasp, his harmonica and guitar riffs, his political lyrics. We began to gather closer to the stage and clap and swing to his music. When it concluded, we hooted and cheered for more. That’s when Jude Hawkins sang about a protest in Argolis, a song that put him on the cover of Billboard and sent his single into the top twenty on the pop charts for those few magical weeks of 1971. And after three verses, we millennials joined him on the chorus:

  There’s blood on the bricks in Argolis Town.

  There’s blood on the bricks where people stood fast,

  An' their blood sears our memory of those so beat down,

  Those heroes begging for peace at long last.

  There’s blood on the bricks in Argolis Town.

  Stefan arrived just in time to witness this unlikely scene. He squatted next to me. “Isn’t this amazing how the scene bridges four decades of Gilligan dissent? But I don’t know whether I should I feel possibility or futility here.” I had no time to fashion a response beyond a lame, “Yeah,” because we both were immediately drawn to the last speaker of the afternoon.

  Melissa Caldwell, the self-proclaimed battle-axe single mom in our class, had the honor of introducing Rutherford Bosworth Hays. She began by reciting Boss’ history as a Vietnam-era Army veteran and peace activist. She said that for decades he had been a Grieg County farmer and environmentalist. “Like me, this man is native to this land. And like this land, he has been battered by life’s struggles and the suffering brought on him and this planet by evil-hearted people. He has chosen to put aside that baggage to dedicate his life to making this green Earth — this place that he and I love beyond loving — to making our home a haven of peace and of ecological wholeness. With me, please welcome Rutherford Bosworth Hays.”

  Led by students in our class, people stood and applauded, long and loud.

  Boss hobbled up the steps of the platform, hugged Melissa, and shouted out “Now you all cease that noise. Settle down.” After he had thanked Melissa for “that overly kind description of me”, looking down at his boots, and shaking his head, he confided, “There are many more people 'round here who would sooner label me an ornery varmint and, to tell you the truth, they wouldn’t be far off. Hell, I ain’t no rock star or even a folk singer like my friend Jude over there.”

  Jude Hawkins, lounging on the grass to the left of the stage, called back, “That ain’t what I heard.”

  Boss began his talk by saying, “My friends, you know, I could talk a long time about the evils of fracking and what havoc it’s gonna bring to these hills. But I suspect you’ve had more than enough of that today. Instead I want to tell you about the native beauty of my farm. Well, as some of you know, I got one hun'red acres of some of the richest biodiversity on this planet — these Appalachian Ohio forests — these sacred forests blessed with ample moisture and good soil and a legacy that goes way back before the glaciers. The plants and animals and trees simply astonish me in their variety, beauty, and healing power, every day. Now, I never got me a college degree, but I want to tell you that, after more'n thirty years down here, my farm has conferred on me a degree better'n any I might've earned in a classroom. Yep, my degree is in lovin' nature with a
minor in Earth mystery, which is to say I am lucky to have gained awareness of how all beings are linked together in whirling circles of life and death and rebirth. Life, 'n death, 'n rebirth. Keep in mind that last part: rebirth: that’s the hopeful part. Well, them're my credentials, folks.” He paused to wipe his brow with a bandana.

  We applauded. Boss hushed us again and went on to explain the rhythms of his life: daily, seasonally, and through the years. He said, the rhythms are simply circles, “just like one o' them carousels.” Then, to everybody’s surprise, from his shirt pocket, he drew out a harmonica and unleashed a solo that soared across the quad, reaching perhaps to the second-floor office of Provost Helen Flintwinch. Drawing more and more students toward the stage as he, with knees flexed, his head bobbing, his foot stomping to the beat, Rutherford Bosworth Hays wailed and wailed. Several of us, including Stefan who I boldly tugged into the line, locked arms in a swinging tribute that linked our generations. Then Boss ceased in mid-bar. In the unforeseen stillness, with a subtle twitch of his beard, he gestured toward Jude Hawkins.

  “Come on up here,” Boss called out. Hawkins shouted back, “Okay, man!” He grabbed his guitar and hopped up onto the stage with the verve of the twenty-one-year-old he used to be. No words passed between them. As if they’d done this a hundred times, standing on either side of the microphone — two harmonicas and Jude’s acoustic guitar, they jumped right back into the familiar riff Boss had been playing, the Joni Mitchell composition, “Circle Game”, a tune that had been covered so many times, including recently by rappers and the likes of Prince, that some of us knew it and began singing along. On the chorus, Boss and Jude encouraged everybody to join in, walking the crowd through its poignant lyrics, then repeating the chorus three times before closing:

  And the seasons they go round and round

  And the painted ponies go up and down

  We’re captive on the carousel of time

  We can’t return, we can only look

  Behind from where we came

  And go round and round and round

  In the circle game.

  Jude Hawkins and Rutherford Bosworth Hayes bowed to the crowd and embraced one another tenderly. As Jude hopped off the stage, Boss hammered home his final point. “Now, you young bucks and beauties, here is what that song’s tellin' you and what Jude Hawkins and Boss Hays are trying to get across. You may think you got all kinds of time to accomplish your goals in life. Right? Wrong! When Joni Mitchell wrote that song, she knew and what Jude and I finally understand — but did not back then — is that the carousel of time spins so fast you can hardly keep your balance. So, what I say to you is that if saving Blackwood Forest and resisting fracking under that beautiful tract are goals for you, then GET THE HELL ON IT. RIGHT NOW. GET THE HELL ON IT! With all your young energy, with all your wonderful intelligence, and with all your guts and intestinal fortitude. Because if you don’t do it now, if you decide to sit this one out, I warn you: the carousel of time will spin right on without you. Meanwhile, those frackers will steal the day. And you will regret that decision the rest o' your life. SO, GET THE HELL ON THAT CAROUSEL AND MAKE A FUCKIN' DIFFERENCE!”

  That brought the house down, such as it was. Sixty-thousand people would see Weston’s video before nightfall.

  Melissa urgently gathered me and some of the other women. We followed Rutherford Bosworth Hays as he made tracks toward his pickup. Melissa called out, “Boss, wait. We have something …”

  He turned round to realize he was being hotly pursued by several young “beauties” and Melissa, who herself, twenty years their senior, was also pleasing to Boss’ eye. There was a time, he told me, when such pursuit would have launched the fantasies of Rutherford Bosworth Hays, a self-described sexist pig, into orbit and would have engendered an arousal approaching seven on the Richter Scale. But not now. Drained by his tirade on stage and hankering for a beer on his porch swing, his woman and hound dog at his side, Boss could only marvel at the event. “Though my imagination is keen, the rest of me yearns for respite,” he said.

  We gently coaxed him to sit beneath one of the ancient sycamores at the front of Weary Hall. He acquiesced, shaking his head and clucking. We encircled him, our “pulchritudinous vapors” (his words, honestly) impairing his resolve. In the next half-hour, an animated, though hushed, conversation surged this way and that toward an eventful finale. Boss later would remember how he relented to our bidding and concluded that this was one gol-durned, hair-brained project. But shit, he also recalled: “I jes told you guys to get the hell on the carousel.”

  Beyond Boss, those present at that clandestine gathering — Melissa, Astrid, Abby, Em, and me — would long ponder the portent of our endeavor. And we were bound never to mention it to anyone else. Ever.

  OVER THE CLIFF

  Katja Nickleby

  Chapter Five

  Omega

  IMAGINE THAT THE DANGEROUS ROAD we now travel takes us right to the edge of the Late-K cliff. Nothing we do as individuals or as a country is working to reverse our path. United Nations treaties and conventions are of no help. A world we have long believed to be hospitable and predictable comes unhinged. Modern humanity tumbles into an abyss it has never experienced, worse by far than the bubonic plague of the fourteenth century, two world wars and the great depression of the twentieth century, or the recent recession of this century. C.S. Holling’s most profound fear — deep collapse — has happened. The global climate, the world’s oceans and biological diversity, its systems of nation states and international order, public health, finance and communications, energy, food supply, and transportation — all systems we take for granted and depend upon — concurrently break down. Collapse cascades across a myriad of boundaries. What we know as modern civilization crumples, as does its ability to recover, at least in human terms. We hit bottom with a resounding thud. Omega, both the final letter of the Greek alphabet and a symbol for the end of everything, is upon us.

  How could this have happened? Broadly speaking, all the facets of Late-K lunacy described in the previous chapter have conspired to push the globalized system, with its seven-plus billion people, beyond critical thresholds. Tightly bound resources — the system’s wealth — disaggregate and are released, connections between subsystems decouple, regulatory controls dissipate, components are dispersed, and resilience disappears. The scene is chaotic. There remains no stable equilibrium and it may well be centuries or millennia for Earth as a system to regroup and begin to renew itself. If there is enough genetic material and if the climate, the oceans, and critical ecosystems (such as coral reefs, estuaries, inland watersheds, and rainforests) can begin to recover, the system ought to eventually sort out components that thrive from those that fall by the wayside. Evolution might then take its course and the thriving components can become building blocks for a progression toward α — alpha. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

  If progress toward α does not occur, the impoverished planet could be caught in a trap from which it can never escape. Almost two generations ago, the late English astronomer Fred Hoyle foresaw such a trap:

  We have, or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned … No species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. Civilization is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned.21

  With humanity gone, imagine then a diminished Earth, its surfaces and oceans so degraded and biologically depleted that evolution has little to work with. Millennia onward, visitors from another solar system might be startled by a desiccated third planet from a still pulsing star, a planet that seemed to have been ideally positioned for life. But from a distance, it appears to be as dormant as its moon. “What kind of catastrophe could have caused this?” they might wonder as they survey the vast scale of desolation and observe indications that prosperous civilizations must have once thrived.

  To answer
their question, we must examine planetary-scale hazards that now loom. They are multiple — a rampant technology, our teeming and densely-packed numbers, our vulnerable biology, and our incessant compulsion to command and control. The hazards are also born of the perpetual stream of toxins we have released over the past two centuries to the lands, waters, and atmosphere. Toxins that, in Rachel Carson’s words, have been “acting upon us directly and indirectly, separately and collectively.” These toxins are especially frightening because exposure to them has neither been part of our own biological experience nor of that of our non-human relatives. But before we could have adapted and built immunity to these toxins, collapse would have sealed our destiny.

  Without resorting to a maudlin catalogue of all the hazards twenty-first century humans face, let me single out four “drivers” that are matters of record and seem most likely to work synergistically in this cliffhanger. Of these drivers, none is more threatening than climate change. As science comes to understand climate dynamics, it seems more and more likely that climate itself, which has changed sometimes slowly, sometimes in sudden leaps over the millennia, could precipitously flip from one state to another. If that is so, it would mean that our climate could rapidly be approaching tipping points, ready to shift into a run-away mode that humans have never seen, with surely catastrophic consequences — rising sea levels, punishing storms, blistering summers, growing masses of environmental refugees, new and virulent human diseases.22 Need I say more?

  Regional climate systems are linked interdependently like socio-ecological systems. One regional climate, say, arid and semi-arid zones, could conceivably cross a critical threshold and flip to a new regime. This would then topple other interdependent regional climates, mountain climates and Mediterranean climates for example, in a cascade effect much like the omega progression described above. Worse still, it might be impossible, particularly in a human timescale, to flip regional climates back to their original behavior. As Scientific American editor, Fred Guterl, recently wrote: