Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

The hope is our prayers will make Him nicer, but
It don’t look likely, and to make it worse
An Act of God is anything at all
That lets the insurance people off the hook.

— Howard Nemerov / “Acts of God”

Logging and mining are destroying swathes of the Congo rainforest, with the result that African forests went from being a carbon sink to a carbon source in 2010 to 2017

— Alec Luhn / “Africa’s forests are now emitting more CO2 than they absorb” / New Scientist

in 1948 the UN general assembly passes a resolution they say any palestinian refugees who

want to return to their homes should be permitted to do so. they also mention money they

say that compensation must be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for

the loss of or damage to property. my great grandmother zahra owns one hundred dunams

of land in jish in palestine and on it: groves of olive trees. her sons flee but she stays with the

beauty and waits for her sons to come back.

— Hasib Hourani / “1. what warrants a war? (compilation)”

The worst climate disruptions will happen beyond U.S. borders, but they will put pressure on American society nonetheless. Migration to the southern border, perhaps the most powerful current in American politics today, is already being driven partly by ecological collapses in Central American farm economies. International monitors expect these pressures to grow over the next several years. If the country’s policy today is at all indicative, detention camps for immigrants will proliferate, often in climate dead zones, and the southern border will become even more militarized.

This would not be an America where the founding ideals hold much sway. The movement of people might even set states against one another. Tensions in receiving zones will—without strong, growing economies—create more opportunities for demagoguery. In dead zones, the dearth of public services and the fading imprimatur of the state will naturally erode local participatory democracy.

All of this could create even better conditions than those today for the kind of transactional authoritarian government that Trump is trying to establish. Xenophobia and racism are already pillars of this movement, and they would be strengthened by mass migration. State and local leaders affected by disasters might supplicate themselves to the president in order to receive the patronage of disaster aid. A hurricane or megafire during election season might be a convenient excuse for federal intervention.

The emerging Trump doctrine views empathy as a weakness and public welfare as a usurpation of the natural hierarchy. His authoritarianism is perfectly suited to an era of climate strife.

— Vann R. Newkirk II / “What Climate Change Will Do To America By Mid-Century” / The Atlantic

All is omen. The light is marrow of shadow: the insects will die in the dawn
tapers.

— Antonio Gamoneda / “Burn the Losses”

You make us fear each other, fear you, and so we send our own people out, and the world gets poisoned by our hate and our fear.

—Hugh Howey / Dust

Who can survive an apocalypse
And live? I made the roadkill a god
But I’m not allowed to speak for god
So I wait.

— Brian Gyamfi / “The Thing Dead on the Road”

What I’m Listening To:

it’s cold outside and my hands are dry
skin is cracked and i realize
that i hate the sound of guitars
a thousand grudging young millionaires
forcing silence sucking sound
forced into this conversation

— Fugazi / “Target”