We think everyone has a single birth mother, but, in truth, everyone has many. Those other, surrogate mothers give birth to attitudes and ideas—and often to behaviors. All have one name: Necessity. All those mothers, and yet we are like orphans, moved from one foster home to another, cared for briefly and then abandoned and left on the side of the road to whatever comes next, the next disease, company shutdown, political turmoil, war, or natural disaster. The next foster mother picks us up for a while, carries us into the new orphanage of concern and then she fades away as the intensity of her necessity gets pushed either into the background by another necessity or into the next generation. Or, we discover that she was not as necessary as we originally thought. We move from the home of one to the home of another always unexpectedly and always with a sense of urgency at first. Today, for many of us the current Mother of Necessity is also called Climate Change, and she is much like Cinderella’s evil stepmom. She gets us to do the work without rewards and plays favorites. Nevertheless, she holds us for a time by saying something like “We’re all in this together.”
The “we’re-all-in-this-together” concept is good for peace and environmental stewardship, but arguably bad for personal freedom. No more telling example of this presently fosters the youngest generations than the fear that some climate catastrophe approaches like some dark figure cruising through the world’s neighborhoods in a white van. For the climate fearful, there’s an imminent threat that requires immediate action. But what action? Turn off the Sun? Vacuum carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases from the sky? Shut down all industry and all the machinery that makes modern life modern? And is it enough for some of us to take some action while privileged others take no action? To give up some freedoms while others roam free?
Take advocates of carbon taxes and limited carbon footprints as an example of those who would “save us all” at the expense of individuals. We’re all in this together, aren’t we? Aren’t we all going to suffer the consequences of a warmer world? Dire consequences of our cushy life await us just around the bend of time. Shouldn’t we make the changes we need to make before everyone dies in droughts, or super storms, or floods, or ice, or topical diseases, or whatever climate change advocates say will wreak havoc? Climate change is the current Cultural Mother of Necessity for many. But that’s not new. Surely, those who suffered the consequences of the Little Ice Age were driven by the physical necessity of their long “winter” that imposed cultural necessities different from those imposed by the Medieval Warming Period. Surely, also, during that long cold spell when traditional crops, such as grapes, declined in abundance, people had to learn out of necessity to live on other crops and, for example, drink more beer than wine.
The current Mother of Necessity brought together under UK government auspices some 100 Brits to discuss climate-related issues, including carbon footprints.* The “citizens’ assembly” was supposed to provide “ideas going forward” for the MPs to consider. And, of course, the recurring themes all of us have heard over the last twenty years arose in the various subgroups of the assembly. According to a February 10, 2020, report by BBC News Online, one participant expressed the “equality” that carbon taxes would impose on everyone: “It’s going to create more equality for everyone, so if you have lots of money, people are going to take lots of flights because you can afford it. But you’ll probably end up paying extra for that.” Now there’s a Harrison Bergeron solution that any Handicapper General would be happy to impose! The “imposed equality” thought seemed indicative of the assembly’s attitudes that overlaid much of the map of human activity loosely—and at times tightly—centered on restrictions that governments “should” impose on citizens.
When I said “much of the map of human activity,” I wasn’t exaggerating. One participant suggested shipping bananas to the UK instead of flying them into the country. Shipping supposedly has a smaller carbon footprint; and, in truth, when bulk cargo is shipped, it does have a smaller footprint. But it still has a footprint. Refrigerated cargo vessels running from banana-producing countries to banana-consuming countries burn relatively “dirty” bunker fuel, with each ship doing about the “same environmental damage” (i.e., emissions) as a thousand diesel trucks. I have no figures on the tonnage of bananas flown into the UK as opposed to the tonnage shipped into the country. Perishable as they are, bananas can still be shipped efficiently in refrigerated vessels that, though taking longer to traverse an ocean, can transport fresh fruit from the tropics to the higher latitudes. But those ships, as you just read, do emit greenhouse gases. Maybe the assembly’s participant so concerned about transporting bananas to the British isles was thinking of eighteenth-century frigates driven by the wind possibly with new versions carrying fruit in units refrigerated by solar power. That climate talk is often “all over the map of human activity” is indicative of the nebulous nature of this “Mother of Necessity.” She keeps telling her children, “Clean your room,” but the children see toys, clothes, books, electronic devices, and sports equipment and think, “Which should I clean? This is a lot of work, and I want to play.” So, they hide laundry and toys under the bed, thinking as children are wont to do, “out of sight, out of mind. Mom will never look there.” Putting bananas on ships to England is one way to keep emitting carbon dioxide invisible since the maritime shipping industry isn’t a country governed by climate change agreements. Ships can have an owner but a different operator. They carry the products of many businesses. So, who signs an agreement? Who cleans “the room,” especially when there are no consequences and as globalization increases, there will be the necessity of using more ships? The International Maritime Organization says it’s working on reducing carbon emissions by 2050. Is that urgent enough? But if individual new ships are more efficient, will the necessity of having more ships to handle increased global trade result in no net reduction of emissions? Sure, we can design a bedroom that has drawer and closet space for everything, but there will of necessity be more rooms and more stuff to store.
Let’s say that the “dire” predictions made by some and assumed to be true by members of that UK assembly soon manifest themselves in actual weather changes. Then what? Obviously, the status quo for any society will change primarily because regions once known for certain crops will either become unsuitable for agriculture altogether or suitable for other kinds of crops. So, the wheat and corn belts of North America might shift into Canada. Bad for wheat and corn farmers in the USA; good for those in Canada. Even northern Europeans and Russians might find themselves building large grain elevators like those in the United States that might, with climate change, fall into disuse. But if temperate zone conditions migrate to higher latitudes, won’t tropical zone conditions migrate, also?
Let’s accept that southern USA might become more tropical. Could Florida, the land of oranges, become the banana capital of the world, replacing the role now served by tropical lands? Now, there’s a thought. Homegrown Cavendish bananas for Americans. The already cheap fruit, thanks to controls by monopolies like Chiquita, will become cheaper. Americans might adopt the practice of St. Lucians and begin flavoring with banana, instead of tomato, ketchup. No need for transporting bananas by planes and ships. Trains and trucks will do. Then, as tropical temperatures climb the latitudinal ladder, will Georgia become the land of oranges? And will the Carolinas assume out of necessity Georgia’s role as a land of peaches? Will the apple orchards of Winchester, Virginia then move to Erie Pennsylvania while those Erie and southern New York vineyards move to Barre, Vermont?
Climate has always been the Mother of Necessary Adaptation. Climate changes, even small ones like the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age, force the children to adapt. Maybe our own adaptations of bipedalism and opposing thumbs were related to ancient necessities brought on by climate change as forests in Africa became savannas. We’re always in the business of adapting because of environmental and societal changes. Manhattan, once a wooded area like some untamed Central Park, is now a vertical environment of concrete and steel. But long before it was a wooded area, it was covered by a thick Laurentide sheet of ice. The earliest inhabitants of North America, probably traipsing those woods shortly after the ice melted, adapted to their new environment and climate. Not far to the southwest of New York, the inhabitants of the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter adapted some 16,000 years ago as the great glaciers began to retreat from North America. Imagine the Mothers of Necessity that have fostered human life over those many millennia.
As there have always been biological mothers, so there have always been mothers of necessity. They keep advising us on how to survive, mostly by telling us how to take care of our own rooms. With the rise of modern worldwide and nearly instantaneous communications, the current Mother of Necessity rules over a large foster home. As she puts us to bed in this newest of foster homes, she is a bit cruel, telling all her children nighttime horror stories of impending doom. The children, gathered in government-sponsored assemblies like that of the UK, know only the stories Mother has told. They offer in their simple naïve ways the solutions we’ve all heard, most of them giving more power to the powers in control. But children have short attention spans. So, the Mother of Necessity, or her surrogates will continue to remind us that each of us needs to clean up the room. In contrast, she’ll demand nothing from those surrogates who will continue to eat bananas imported from afar or, having the means to travel regardless of cost, and they will go to the tropical climes of today, traveling in greenhouse gas spewing planes and arriving to eat bananas fresh in situ. Apparently, like some evil stepmother in a fairy tale, the Climate Change Mother plays favorites.
So, if as children we sometimes don’t listen to our real birth mothers when they tell us to clean our rooms, why is it that we seem so obedient to our mothers of cultural necessity? If we’re all in “this” together, in this foster home, shouldn’t we all be treated equally, Cinderella on a par with her stepsisters? And shouldn’t we all be expected “to clean our rooms”? After all, we’re all in this together. Aren’t we?
*https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51438317
The “we’re-all-in-this-together” concept is good for peace and environmental stewardship, but arguably bad for personal freedom. No more telling example of this presently fosters the youngest generations than the fear that some climate catastrophe approaches like some dark figure cruising through the world’s neighborhoods in a white van. For the climate fearful, there’s an imminent threat that requires immediate action. But what action? Turn off the Sun? Vacuum carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases from the sky? Shut down all industry and all the machinery that makes modern life modern? And is it enough for some of us to take some action while privileged others take no action? To give up some freedoms while others roam free?
Take advocates of carbon taxes and limited carbon footprints as an example of those who would “save us all” at the expense of individuals. We’re all in this together, aren’t we? Aren’t we all going to suffer the consequences of a warmer world? Dire consequences of our cushy life await us just around the bend of time. Shouldn’t we make the changes we need to make before everyone dies in droughts, or super storms, or floods, or ice, or topical diseases, or whatever climate change advocates say will wreak havoc? Climate change is the current Cultural Mother of Necessity for many. But that’s not new. Surely, those who suffered the consequences of the Little Ice Age were driven by the physical necessity of their long “winter” that imposed cultural necessities different from those imposed by the Medieval Warming Period. Surely, also, during that long cold spell when traditional crops, such as grapes, declined in abundance, people had to learn out of necessity to live on other crops and, for example, drink more beer than wine.
The current Mother of Necessity brought together under UK government auspices some 100 Brits to discuss climate-related issues, including carbon footprints.* The “citizens’ assembly” was supposed to provide “ideas going forward” for the MPs to consider. And, of course, the recurring themes all of us have heard over the last twenty years arose in the various subgroups of the assembly. According to a February 10, 2020, report by BBC News Online, one participant expressed the “equality” that carbon taxes would impose on everyone: “It’s going to create more equality for everyone, so if you have lots of money, people are going to take lots of flights because you can afford it. But you’ll probably end up paying extra for that.” Now there’s a Harrison Bergeron solution that any Handicapper General would be happy to impose! The “imposed equality” thought seemed indicative of the assembly’s attitudes that overlaid much of the map of human activity loosely—and at times tightly—centered on restrictions that governments “should” impose on citizens.
When I said “much of the map of human activity,” I wasn’t exaggerating. One participant suggested shipping bananas to the UK instead of flying them into the country. Shipping supposedly has a smaller carbon footprint; and, in truth, when bulk cargo is shipped, it does have a smaller footprint. But it still has a footprint. Refrigerated cargo vessels running from banana-producing countries to banana-consuming countries burn relatively “dirty” bunker fuel, with each ship doing about the “same environmental damage” (i.e., emissions) as a thousand diesel trucks. I have no figures on the tonnage of bananas flown into the UK as opposed to the tonnage shipped into the country. Perishable as they are, bananas can still be shipped efficiently in refrigerated vessels that, though taking longer to traverse an ocean, can transport fresh fruit from the tropics to the higher latitudes. But those ships, as you just read, do emit greenhouse gases. Maybe the assembly’s participant so concerned about transporting bananas to the British isles was thinking of eighteenth-century frigates driven by the wind possibly with new versions carrying fruit in units refrigerated by solar power. That climate talk is often “all over the map of human activity” is indicative of the nebulous nature of this “Mother of Necessity.” She keeps telling her children, “Clean your room,” but the children see toys, clothes, books, electronic devices, and sports equipment and think, “Which should I clean? This is a lot of work, and I want to play.” So, they hide laundry and toys under the bed, thinking as children are wont to do, “out of sight, out of mind. Mom will never look there.” Putting bananas on ships to England is one way to keep emitting carbon dioxide invisible since the maritime shipping industry isn’t a country governed by climate change agreements. Ships can have an owner but a different operator. They carry the products of many businesses. So, who signs an agreement? Who cleans “the room,” especially when there are no consequences and as globalization increases, there will be the necessity of using more ships? The International Maritime Organization says it’s working on reducing carbon emissions by 2050. Is that urgent enough? But if individual new ships are more efficient, will the necessity of having more ships to handle increased global trade result in no net reduction of emissions? Sure, we can design a bedroom that has drawer and closet space for everything, but there will of necessity be more rooms and more stuff to store.
Let’s say that the “dire” predictions made by some and assumed to be true by members of that UK assembly soon manifest themselves in actual weather changes. Then what? Obviously, the status quo for any society will change primarily because regions once known for certain crops will either become unsuitable for agriculture altogether or suitable for other kinds of crops. So, the wheat and corn belts of North America might shift into Canada. Bad for wheat and corn farmers in the USA; good for those in Canada. Even northern Europeans and Russians might find themselves building large grain elevators like those in the United States that might, with climate change, fall into disuse. But if temperate zone conditions migrate to higher latitudes, won’t tropical zone conditions migrate, also?
Let’s accept that southern USA might become more tropical. Could Florida, the land of oranges, become the banana capital of the world, replacing the role now served by tropical lands? Now, there’s a thought. Homegrown Cavendish bananas for Americans. The already cheap fruit, thanks to controls by monopolies like Chiquita, will become cheaper. Americans might adopt the practice of St. Lucians and begin flavoring with banana, instead of tomato, ketchup. No need for transporting bananas by planes and ships. Trains and trucks will do. Then, as tropical temperatures climb the latitudinal ladder, will Georgia become the land of oranges? And will the Carolinas assume out of necessity Georgia’s role as a land of peaches? Will the apple orchards of Winchester, Virginia then move to Erie Pennsylvania while those Erie and southern New York vineyards move to Barre, Vermont?
Climate has always been the Mother of Necessary Adaptation. Climate changes, even small ones like the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age, force the children to adapt. Maybe our own adaptations of bipedalism and opposing thumbs were related to ancient necessities brought on by climate change as forests in Africa became savannas. We’re always in the business of adapting because of environmental and societal changes. Manhattan, once a wooded area like some untamed Central Park, is now a vertical environment of concrete and steel. But long before it was a wooded area, it was covered by a thick Laurentide sheet of ice. The earliest inhabitants of North America, probably traipsing those woods shortly after the ice melted, adapted to their new environment and climate. Not far to the southwest of New York, the inhabitants of the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter adapted some 16,000 years ago as the great glaciers began to retreat from North America. Imagine the Mothers of Necessity that have fostered human life over those many millennia.
As there have always been biological mothers, so there have always been mothers of necessity. They keep advising us on how to survive, mostly by telling us how to take care of our own rooms. With the rise of modern worldwide and nearly instantaneous communications, the current Mother of Necessity rules over a large foster home. As she puts us to bed in this newest of foster homes, she is a bit cruel, telling all her children nighttime horror stories of impending doom. The children, gathered in government-sponsored assemblies like that of the UK, know only the stories Mother has told. They offer in their simple naïve ways the solutions we’ve all heard, most of them giving more power to the powers in control. But children have short attention spans. So, the Mother of Necessity, or her surrogates will continue to remind us that each of us needs to clean up the room. In contrast, she’ll demand nothing from those surrogates who will continue to eat bananas imported from afar or, having the means to travel regardless of cost, and they will go to the tropical climes of today, traveling in greenhouse gas spewing planes and arriving to eat bananas fresh in situ. Apparently, like some evil stepmother in a fairy tale, the Climate Change Mother plays favorites.
So, if as children we sometimes don’t listen to our real birth mothers when they tell us to clean our rooms, why is it that we seem so obedient to our mothers of cultural necessity? If we’re all in “this” together, in this foster home, shouldn’t we all be treated equally, Cinderella on a par with her stepsisters? And shouldn’t we all be expected “to clean our rooms”? After all, we’re all in this together. Aren’t we?
*https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51438317
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