{"id":41,"date":"2015-09-03T22:26:23","date_gmt":"2015-09-03T22:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/spring-2015-issue\/?p=41"},"modified":"2025-01-10T18:53:54","modified_gmt":"2025-01-11T02:53:54","slug":"from-the-editors-desk-the-challenge-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/spring-2015-issue\/from-the-editors-desk-the-challenge-ahead\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Editor\u2019s Desk: The Challenge Ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"

January, 2015 \u2026. El Bolson, Argentina<\/span><\/h2>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0As I write this editorial on a hot afternoon in the Andean town of El Bolson, Argentina, I am sitting in the glorious garden of Caf\u00e9 Flores. I have before me a pot of cold tea and a cup of ice: Andean \u201ciced tea\u201d. The barista has also insisted that I enjoy a slice of raspberry cheesecake: a very sweet, creamy and light concoction that bears no resemblance to anything found in N. America with that name.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Caf\u00e9\u00a0Caf\u00e9 Flores<\/i>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span><\/span>This river valley, deep in the Andes, is famous for its fertile volcanic soil and a plenitude of clean water. So clean, in fact, that travelers from afar – such as myself – may drink the water and partake of the local fruit and vegetables with impunity. All is \u201cparadiso\u201d until one looks up into the barren, rocky peaks. Last winter, no snow fell here and little rain this spring and summer. It could be a temporary \u201cblip\u201d caused by the El Nino<\/a>-like conditions in the Pacific. It could be.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0In a nutshell: that describes the problem of discussing Global Climate Change. The challenge ahead is systemic and desperately hard to pin-point one place and time when the effects of global warming are readily visible. As in: \u201cLook. There. That\u2019s it.\u201d Particularly this past winter when the eastern seaboard has been in a deep freeze for weeks. (Causing one pundit to proclaim: \u201cIf this Global Warming gets any worse, I\u2019m gonna freeze to death.\u201d Man on the Street interview, NBC NEWS, January, 2015.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I did see it the summer I visited Alaska. The glaciers of the Arctic are melting; the rivers area deep blue-green from the minerals in the melting ice flows freely into the North Pacific. One can see the barren rocks scraped clean from a thousand-thousand years of glacial ice now dry for miles inland as the Great North American Ice Shield recedes further each year.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Mendenhall<\/a>Mendenhall Glacier<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 There have been more studies than can be iterated here describing the melting ice caps at either end of the globe as well as on mountain peaks; such as the rugged teeth of Mount Pilquetron in the Cordillera de Los Andes that soar high above the river valley where I write this editorial. Peaks where one can readily see the water channels where falls and rivers would normally flow feeding the River Azul, now dry and filled with the ever-present dust.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Mt.Mt. Pilquetron<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0As artists and scholars the question we may – no, must – ask is his: How will we live? In 100 years what will the world look like? What stories will we, the human people, tell ourselves in order to survive?<\/span><\/p>\n

Or, will we?<\/span><\/p>\n

Will it all end leaving behind a world of seething acid oceans and dry rocky peaks?<\/span><\/p>\n

Imagine this world: a world of colossal storms that sweep acid seas crashing against shorelines where dead civilizations have left behind the detritus of a million years of habitation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of the highest mountain peak devoid of ice with dust blowing against a too-hot sky.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is almost\u2026 but, not quite too late.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Climate change, as the media has dubbed the global environmental challenge of the years ahead, is, briefly put, a collection of deep changes in the Earth’s eco-system on a macro scale that has been observed by a half century of record keeping by researchers across several diverse fields from the most obvious: atmospheric science and climatology to the somewhat lesser obvious oceanography, fire-abatement, botany, and animal behavior and even farther afield in agricultural finance, recreation, city planning and macro-economics.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Partially because the evidence is spread out over so many fields, and because much of the research is contained in highly technical field-specific publications, it is difficult for the layperson to obtain a clear picture of what we, as a species, are facing in the coming years. As Andrew Guzman in Overheated: The Human Cost of Climate Change<\/em> (2013) explains:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Some of the confusion surrounding climate change can be explained by the complexity of the science involved. Understanding the workings of the earth’s climate is a massive task that remains a work in progress in even the most sophisticated scientific circles (p. ix).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0While doing research for my Master’s thesis in the late 1990s I was invited to attend the annual meeting of The International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) in Asilomar, CA. While there, I encountered researchers who studied \u2013 as one researcher present put it \u2013 \u201cthe weather\u201d: representatives of NOAA and its sister organizations from many countries. I attended several sessions both during the conference and subsequent meetings of ISSS over the course of the next decade. As the papers were presented, each one addressing one small aspect of observable changes in weather patterns and sea rise resulting in an increase of severe storm activity, spreading desertification and melting glacial ice, a picture began to coalesce describing an environmental adjustment on a global scale: one with a higher global mean temperature and both a larger ocean and a dryer world. A world with seas that will drown coastal areas from Anchorage to the Horn of Africa. A world where deserts will swallow whole regions that straddle the equator and beyond. In those years, it was unclear what was causing this change, but the likely culprit appeared to be the increase of carbons (i.e.: greenhouse gases: GHS) and soot in the Earth’s atmosphere, followed by widespread deforestation in both tropical and temperate regions. This data has proven itself to be correct in the succeeding years of studies across many disciplines: from tracking the alterations in the yearly migration patterns of North American hummingbirds to the measurement of the water content of the winter snow-pack of the Andes to the water conflicts of the migratory tribal peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa to the biodiversity of the Arctic Tundra.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I live on the West Coast of the United States, with warming temperatures also comes the melting of glacial ice with rising ocean levels. A recent report by the Board on Earth Sciences and Resources: Sea-Level Rise for the Coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington: Past, Present, and Future<\/em> (2012), this rise will equate to:<\/span><\/p>\n