Why Greenland? Why Now?

Why Greenland? Why now?

It can seem, at first glance, a strange and incongruous new obsession, akin to Lex Luthor's desire for Australia.

It's entirely reasonable to suggest that there's no reason the United States needed to stop at fifty states, or to argue that adding another territory is somehow unacceptable as a topic of discussion.   That's only true, mind you, if that's a free and uncoerced choice of the inhabitants of that region.  If America economically bullies a people into submission, or...far worse...uses military force?  Then we are tyrants and monsters and morally bankrupt.  Those things need to be off the table, period, or we are no longer a nation where republican virtue matters.

But the principle of adding to the United States is not inherently invalid.  It's just, again, why Greenland?  Why now?

The geopolitical situation has changed since the Cold War.  It's not 1975.  It's 2025.

Most of the 20th century proxy struggles between the United States and those powers occurred in the Global South, but in 2025, all eyes are on the Arctic.  In 1975, the Arctic was just a desolate, inhospitable frozen waste, one where access to mineral and fossil fuel resources was immensely challenging.  The only reason to keep an eye on it was because that's where the Soviet ICBMs might be flying over on their way to pay us a visit. 

That old geopolitical reality isn't the reason for our new interest in Greenland.  In fact, the reason we pulled back from Greenland, and have fewer troops there than we did at the height of the Cold War?  It's because we're not toe-to-toe with the Soviets there anymore.  That changed.

But other things have changed.  

It's not missiles we're expecting, but ships, because Northern shipping routes are opening up.  Resources that were formerly out of reach are suddenly potentially available, particularly to American oil companies.

Greenland and the newly open waters around it are of much more interest now, economically, than they were fifty years ago.

But...why is this an emergent reality?  I mean, there's a reason.  A single, glaring, significant, obvious reason.  There's a term for that reason, but you're increasingly unlikely to find that term in the mouths of our leaders or on the recently censored websites of our government agencies.

It's climate change.  We want Greenland because of climate change.

I mean, duh.  Less ice means more shipping.  Less ice means deep sea drilling for crude and natural gas becomes a logistical possibility.

In the context of the melting of Arctic sea ice, there's a definite logic to Greenland as a focus.  It's not nuts at all.  Selfishly grasping, crassly profiteering and catastrophically short-sighted, perhaps, but there's a definitive internal logic to it.

But this is only true if anthropogenic, fossil-fuel-driven climate change is actually happening.

Which it is.  

Meaning there's a cynical and implicit acknowledgement on the part of this administration, running all the way to the top.  America's sudden hunger for Greenland exists now only because the increasing pace of climate change makes the control of that region suddenly far, far more lucrative to the oil interests who helped bankroll the current regime.

So.  How does Trump say "climate change is real" without using those words?  

"I want Greenland."  That's how he says it.

I Feel It in The Earth

This Monday, my plan had been to begin my spring planting indoors.  I've got two grow-spaces cobbled together in my laundry room, as I took the reflective bubble-wrap from several packages and a pair of inexpensive grow-lights and created creches for my seedlings.  Basil and tomato are the plan, and all of those saved seeds from last year were to go into the soil from my compost piles.

That compost dates back from the leaf-fall the year before last, augmented with twelve months worth of coffee grounds and kitchen leavings, and then mingled up with all of the nitrogen-rich clippings from a long season of mowing.

Every year for the last decade, I've composted, and after two years of adding to it and turning it, that compost has always been...at this point in the season...a dark rich perfection.

But this year, the soil isn't soil.  It's close, but it's not completely broken down.  Large fragments of partially decomposed leaf and grass matter remained undigested by both microorganism and worm, and the resultant looser, mulchy, hay-like substrate isn't likely to work for seed starts.

It seems well enough suited to starting potatoes, and to amend some of my raised beds.  If I leave it for another four or five months, the remainder will likely have fully broken down.  But it's not there yet.

The "why" of that seems simple enough.  As I compost out in the open, rather than in a contained barrel, the historic drought that plagued this region last summer is the most likely culprit.  Though in shade and regularly pitchforked, the pile is exposed to air, and that air was devoid of moisture.  Bone-dry leaves and clippings aren't a happy home for the detritivores on whom the process relies, and so it just didn't quite happen.

I was aware of this likelihood, and probably should have soaked the pile a few times over the summer, but when a region is in drought, "I'm watering my dirt" seems an odd choice, particularly as I tend to leave my ground cover to fend for itself.

Still and all, it's yet another reminder that the systems upon which we rely for life are becoming something rather less amenable to us.  

"For the world," said Treebeard to Galadriel, "is changing."  

And though I am a short-lived human, and not a near-immortal Ent, I can feel it in the earth nonetheless.

A Measure of the Temperature

My garden is almost entirely shut down for the year.  The beds are nearly all emptied, the final straggling tomatoes and beans and okra uprooted and shredded for compost.  A layer of leaf mulch covers the soil in the beds where I'd put in two new rosemary plants, and should keep their roots cozy over the cold season.  Two beds of garlic went in back at the beginning of October, and should be on track to yield their savory harvest come May.

 But I've still got an item of unfinished business that niggles at me.  My asparagus bed just won't quite stop growing.  

Asparagus, in the event you don't know, is a fernlike plant (closer to the lily, genetically speaking), one that grows around six feet in height.  The asparagus we eat are the first tender shoots that rise in the spring, which can be harvested for six or eight weeks before ya just let the plant grow.   Asparagus rootstock, once established and well tended, can provide nutrition for a generation.  In order to harvest it, you've got to cut down the ferns in late fall, as I have the last three years.  You put a nice blanket of leafmulch atop the bed, and tuck it away for a nice winter rest.

To do that, you have to wait until the tall, delicately formed plants end their annual growth cycle.  This year, they're just not stopping.  

About a third of the ferns have browned and died off, but the majority remain green and vital.  I'm sitting there, tapping my foot, looking at my watch, but they're in no hurry. 

All it takes is one good hard frost to shut them down, but...that frost hasn't come.  Not yet.  Historically speaking, first frost in the Midatlantic comes in mid to late October, but this year, it didn't.  Instead, we got a record-breaking stretch of drought, coupled with anomalously warm weather.  That happens more and more, because of course it does.  That frost is nearly a month late is...well, it's something notable.  Something real.

The longer the asparagi pump energy back into their roots, the stronger the plants will be, so I'm not going to rush them.  That unfinished task will just nudge about in the back of my mind, reminding me of something undone.  

And something a little...wrong.

Getting Ready for the Heat

The world is getting warmer.

There's not any question of it now, really.  I mean, sure, you can argue otherwise, but only if you never go outside.  It's not a question of whether global warming will occur, but of just how hot things are going to get.

The science is out on that particular question, although most of it points to things becoming more and more unpleasant as the years progress, with "unpleasant" meaning year after year of heat records inching up, and the equatorial regions becoming functionally uninhabitable.

Here on the Eastern seaboard of the United States, things are a little different.  Forests have made a comeback, despite all of our relentless sprawl and paving, which has helped blunt the heat in the region.  Still, it's going to get hotter.  Winters have become close to snow-free here in Virginia.  Summers have sprawled out, and grown more intense.

Which means, if we are to face this future, that we need to be thinking about ways to adapt and prepare.

That's been a consideration in my own household, as we've both reduced our consumption of fossil fuels and begun the process of preparing our house for hotter days.  We put a new roof on last year, and when we did so, we selected a lighter colored shingle.  Lighter colored shingles have a higher albedo, which means they reflect away more of the sun's energy.  It's a simple thing, but it reduces cooling demand.  Our house is nestled in the shelter of dozens of shade trees to the East, which means that by the hottest part of the day, it's in shade.  Our roof overhangs the side of our house by several feet, reducing solar load to the interior, and at 1300 finished square feet, it requires less energy to cool.

Out in the yard, I've made a shift in my garden this year, as for the first time I've planted okra. My mom being from the South and all, I'm entirely aware of the challenges of cooking okra just right, and the unpleasantness if you cook it wrong.  When I tell folks I'm growing okra, many recoil.  This is unfair, because if you fry it up just so, it's really quite delicious.  It's great batter-fried, sure, but also pan-fried with masala.  Note, again, that the key word here is "fried."  

Looking ahead to our inescapably warmer world, okra makes a whole lot of sense.  Abelmoschus esculentus is grown in tropical climes throughout the world, and is both robust, nutritious, and highly heat tolerant.   It's also purportedly quite easy to seedsave, meaning it should be a stalwart contributor to any home garden in our hotter world.  Should.  I've still not seen a crop, or saved seed, so I don't want to get ahead of myself.

It's only the fool who doesn't prepare for the most likely tomorrow, after all.

China, America, and Climate

There are things about the American response to China that make little sense to me.

On the one hand, sure, they're not a republic.  I prefer the liberties of speech, movement, and action that are for now still my birthright as an American.  As frustrating as the squabulous ruckus of democratic process might be, there's still much to be said for the protection of individual liberties.  The forcible suppression of religion and ethnic minorities is morally unworthy.  The silencing of those who hold a society to account for injustices and corruption leads only to rot and failure.

Yet most of America's beef with China seems to be economic, which is simply absurd.  Sure, the Chinese are now a global manufacturing powerhouse, supplanting the vastly weakened American industrial base.  Sure, most of that capacity once belonged to us.  But why did that happen?

Remember in 1992, when the Chinese invaded America and took all of our factories by force?

Of course not.  China didn't steal our industry.  American CEOs did.  Wall Street did.  Eager to plump up profit margins and fatten their own absurd salaries, folks like Tim Cook at Apple simply shipped America's industrial might to China.  The Chinese weren't about to say no.  I mean, why would they?  Can you blame them?  For them, it was all win, because they're playing the long game.

I mean, we know they are.  Chinese leadership isn't thinking about the outrage du jour, third quarter profits, or fretting about vacillations in poll numbers.  I mean, why would they care about poll numbers?   Ahem. 

They're looking to what they feel will benefit China not just ten years from now, or twenty five years from now, but a hundred years from now.

Which is why it's instructive to look at how they're approaching the climate crisis, and engagement with renewable energy.  

We Americans are in a reactionary cycle, pushing back against electric cars and solar and wind.  I'll admit that electric cars are a silly solution.  I mean, sure, they're quiet and fast, but dude.  Efficiency, thy name ain't "car."  Buses and trains and a functioning public transportation infrastructure are exponentially more efficient and sustainable.  Back when America was rising to its mid-twentieth century economic height, that's how we got around.  It was at least a viable option, which it is not now in America.  

The opposition to solar, wind, and other renewables?  It's borderline psychotic, and an ideological dissonance.  If you can draw power from the sun that falls on your own land, why is this a bad thing?  If the wind that rustles through your trees can light your home, why would we have beef with that?  Why would we want less efficient bulbs and toilets?  And why are we so programmed to desire large, energy-hogging homes and cars?  Since when were thrift and ingenuity problems for conservatives?

Yet here we are.

The Chinese aren't on the same course.

The Chinese are building electric cars, sure.  But they're going all in on the whole thing.   Unfettered by legal constraints or...paradoxically...environmental regulations, they're building a vast high speed rail network.  They're turning their newfound industrial might to the mass production of solar panels in unprecedented quantities, so many that industrial concerns in the West are up in arms about anti-competitive practices.  It's a battle they've already won, as 80% of the world's solar is produced in China.  They're preparing for a harsher climate.  They're also preparing for the era when fossil fuel supplies are fading.

They're not competing with us.  At this point, we're not even playing the same game.  

Do certain Americans assume this is because they're "woke?"  They're Marxist, which is why I'd rather not live in China, but the CCP is Chinese first.  China is on many levels deeply conservative, which is why...after some naive initial missteps...the communist party there has survived.

They are preparing, with the vision of a culture that spans millennia, for a future that will come.

And we are not.  

Being Prepared in the Event

The recent storm flipped a switch of sorts in our household, one that we'd been slowly throwing for the last five years or so.   For the last five years, the run of major weather events has been increasing.  We had a "hundred year deluge," which caused flooding unlike anything long-term residents of this area had ever seen.  And then we had a "five-hundred year deluge," which was...well...bigger than that.  We had Snowmageddon, which buried DC once, and then again for good measure.   And then came this most recent event, which involved a violent weather phenomenon so rare that most non-meteorologists had never even heard of it.

Living in DC, we've made a point of having a week of emergency supplies on hand, particularly post-9-11/Sniper/Anthrax scare.  A several-week larder of canned food and water is supplemented by candles, crank-powered radios and lanterns, and a big ol' emergency battery brick for keeping lamps and fans running and charging devices.  But as the days dragged on without power, there was the inescapable sense that this is something we'll be seeing more of in the years to come.  Our family bit the bullet and took the next step in preparing for a more volatile climate.

We're going hybrid for our emergency power.  A small deployable solar array has arrived and is now stored in the basement, ready to keep flashlights, phones, and other household miscellany charged up.  It's also prepped to recharge our reserve 12 volt battery for lighting at night, providing a pretty much infinite source of power and insuring we're not reduced to driving around in our car to charge our phones.  Well, not technically infinite, but if the sun prematurely flames out, I think keeping our iPhones charged won't be quite the priority it is now.

A portable generator is also arriving, but not the cheap loud Pep Boys Chinese racket-box kind.  We dug a little bit into savings for an ultra-reliable, super-quiet one, something that can power our fridge, our net-based phone system, and a few odds and ends.  Like, say, a coffee maker.  Not that propane-grill made French press coffee is so bad, but there are some things worth keeping in play when the world falls apart.

It's also hyper-efficient, which...as the inability to easily find fuel this last week reminded us...gets to be kind of important when things really go south.  When every gas station around is shut down due to lack of power, it's sorta kinda good not to run out of fuel after the first seven  hours of a crisis.

Though I've considered this as an option for a while, it feels a bit odd to be doing it.  Sure, we're not going hard-core survivalist.  We're not buying biohazard suits and tactical shotguns for the whole family, much to my boys' great disappointment.

Maybe next year.

Our First Derecho

As the power returns to our Annandale home, the boys have settled in to some air-conditioned summer SpongeBob watching, and I've returned to blogging.   The past few days of sweltering through heat were made tolerable by a decent emergency plan in our household.  We had water, and a large reserve of canned food we didn't even need to touch, and a propane powered grill that's provided us with hot meals and hot water for french-press coffee.  Oh, and a handy little emergency power supply.

What was unsettling about the event was that for all of my 43 years, I did not have a frame of reference that let me grasp what was happening.  Friday night we were expecting  storm activity, but when things happened, it didn't meet any of my expectations.  It woke us, and with the waking, it was clear it was not an ordinary storm.  The house thrummed and shook as wind and rain and hail battered it.  The trees in our neighborhood rocked and shook wildly, and the sky lit with endless, constant lightning and thunder.   As the power went out, it felt for a moment like we had inadvertently wandered into some apocalyptic film, or a scene in some old Star Trek where a high-energy plasma storm was sweeping across the Enterprise.   "We've lost all power, Cap'n!  She's dead in the water!"

Then there was the sound.  The thunder was so frequent it blended into a roar, which mingled with the wind, which mingled with the rice-krispies-of-the-Titans sound of trees snapping, crackling and popping.

 It was genuinely alarming.

"What is it, dad," shouted my panicked little guy, as we hustled downstairs to the security of cinderblock with the dog and the emergency power brick in tow.   "I don't know," I said, because I didn't.   It wasn't a tornado.  The wind wasn't right for that.  It wasn't a regular storm.  I was at a loss.  I genuinely had no idea what was happening.  "I don't know" is a hard thing for a dad to say in an emergency.  For another ten minutes, the whatever-it-was raged, diminished, then raged...and then passed on.

Now, I know the name of it.  We all got to learn a new word: derecho.

There are some great sites describing the derecho, but it's basically a heat-driven atmospheric energy event.  To visualize it, think of something that's basically a tornado laid on its side, stretched out over 100 miles or more, and that just blasts its way across the landscape.   In the case of this one, a long way across the landscape.  It's not precise, but that's the net effect.

As I rode to church through thirty-five miles of nonstop devastation, I found myself thinking many things.  One was that my family is going to need to upgrade our emergency plan.  But I thought other things.   I thought that the the global-warming deniers and the party that panders to them had better hope this doesn't happen again.

When you've hitched your wagon to the monied industrial interests who are trying to shill us that climate change isn't real, and that there's nothing to see, just keep buying/burning fuel...well...a few of these events might make people realize you're the enemy of the future of human civilization.

Rhetoric and ideology mean very little in the face of a Creation that is hell-bent on setting the balance straight.