Michael C. Goodwin's Blog, page 15

Big Oil

One of the biggest surprises for me during this pandemic is the collapse of the oil industry. In retrospect, it should have been easy to see it coming. If you make everyone stay home to avoid contact with other people and close business, then no one will be driving cars, the source of most oil and gas consumption and pollution. And speaking of the same, when we stopped driving, the air in almost all major cities cleared up very nicely and it did that, not in weeks or months, but in mere days. However this fact will be lost in the mad scramble to get back to normal, driving all we can and using up oil and gas so that the oil companies can get back to making ridiculous profits and no one will care about the pollution again. Twelve years ago crude oil was at $165 per barrel and last month is was down to $18 dollars a barrel, which kind of makes you wonder about the artificial value of things.

It is very sad, we have been granted a rare glimpse into the future, one in which we manage to slow down pollution and spewing more CO2 into the atmosphere. If you will remember, it is that little problem which is making the world warmer and is leading to an eventual global weather disaster. It hasn’t gone away just because of the coronavirus and it will still be there, waiting, when this is all eventually done, (if ever). And if our present behavior is anything like it will be in the future, then we will deny that there is a problem and then ignore it completely no matter the casualties, (and threaten others about having our rights being taken away again). The desperate measures that have been taken to push up the price of oil and the stock market easily show us what is really important these days, and it is not about people.

In 2019 there were 330,000 electric cars sold in the U.S. and about 17 million gasoline car and light truck sales, and that takes a lot of gas and oil to move them around. The sad fact of the matter is that oil will be the prime mover of vehicles and of course, pollution and CO2 emissions for the foreseeable future. And I can readily see how there will be millions of armed Americans threatening everyone who dares suggest that they might give up their right to drive a gasoline powered car or truck. Big oil and big money will always win and when the climate collapses they will cry loudly that they are not the ones to blame. And they will be partially right, we could use mass transportation or work from home or not drive gas powered cars. But willingly changing our lives in any way does not seem to be an option in this day and age.

(As of May 1 there were 21 oil tankers sitting off the coast of Southern California, some with a million barrels of crude oil waiting for someplace to unload their cargo. Just don’t crash into each other and dump it in the ocean.)

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Surrender

In December of 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a very deranged 20-year-old man shot and killed 26 people, including 20 young children who were between six and seven years old. In the aftermath of the shooting, repeated calls for better gun control were mostly ignored and laws that were proposed to limit the sale and ownership of semi-automatic weapons were blocked by the NRA and members of congress, and 10 states actually passed laws that relaxed weapons restrictions. In essence, a small minority of people in this country decided that killing little children was okay, according to their constitutional right to bear arms.

Fast-forward to the beginning of May, 2020, small groups of gun-toting terrorists demonstrating in various states and even invading state capitols demand the end of a serious pandemic quarantine and social-distancing practices in order for people to get haircuts, manicures and go to the gym. Government studies indicate that the spread of the Coronavirus will increase and deaths could double from current levels in a matter of months due to an early lifting of these practices. Again a small group of people and politicians have been convinced that it does not matter how many people die a terrible death, but that it is much more important for 1% of the population to make as much money as they can. (My sincere apologies for those who have lost their jobs and their livelihood. We have been severely impacted and it may change our lives and not for the good by the end of the year, even with our health intact.) Most of the states here in the U.S. have started opening back up for business, the pandemic is no longer a problem in their eyes. Even if more people die then already have, I firmly believe that there will not be another quarantine, no matter what. The deaths will have become acceptable.

As a young child, I was raised Catholic, and along with all the rules and morals therein, I was instilled with a very healthy respect for the sanctity of life. And there is that pesky Commandment that says, thou shall not kill. Apparently all of these good Christian people missed out on the details of that one. It didn’t say thou shall not kill some of the people some of the time, but that you shouldn’t kill anyone in any possible way, all of the time. But hey, who’s counting, they didn’t directly kill anyone and probably some of them didn’t really spread the disease around, but you can see in their eyes that the desire to kill something is very much on their minds. Otherwise why arm yourself to the teeth and threaten others, are they hoping for a big shoot-out with the virus? Or perhaps to get rid of their elected representatives with whom they don’t agree? And why are so many of them wearing masks if there is no such thing as the Coronavirus? Oh well, not my circus and most certainly, not my monkeys.

(In full disclosure, I do own a small rifle, I have had it out twice in the last 30 years to look at it, trying to figure out how it works. It is, after all, my second amendment right. And if the Coronavirus shows up on my doorstep, I will be ready to take it down, if I can find that box of ammunition.)

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Herd Stupidity

After six weeks, the country has had enough of this silly quarantine stuff. Everyone is ready to get out and do something, who wants to stay home now that spring has arrived? The only problem is that health officials and scientists are saying that we have not spent enough time staying away from each other and in almost all cases throughout the states, the number of infections has not declined enough to declare victory and open everything back up. But that doesn’t matter, we all know better then those stupid scientists.

If you doubt me, just look at the incredibly ridiculous situation in hoarding toilet paper. I would guess that panic buying is an attempt to feel something of a little control in an otherwise uncontrollable situation. Preparing for a crisis is a common reaction and once someone starts doing it the rest of us naturally follow suit and if it is something like buying enough toilet paper to last 10 months, then why not? And those photos of empty store shelves just push us into buying more things that we strictly don’t need. Got to follow that herd, we don’t want to be left behind.

The news is that older people are the ones getting sick, younger people are not in any danger, so why stay home? However, I looked up the statistics for our state, (something I did all the time working at the newspaper and preparing graphics to illustrate stories). Age 1 to 24, 16% of cases, age 25 to 44, 40% of cases, age 45 to 64, 32% of cases, age 65 and up, 12% of cases. So why are younger people acting like this is not a problem for them? Because the rest of young people are saying so, follow that herd. National statistics are a little different, which, of course, confuses the situation further.

The problem is that not enough people think about what they are doing. The rules don’t apply to me, and I am not causing any problems with my actions, except that once someone starts doing anything different, other people will follow. Just watch a flock of sheep eating in a pasture, the moment one sheep finds a tasty spot, the rest will trample that spot into the ground. Also, we are being told that everything is okay and to get back to work and shop and eat out. The trick is to see why we are being told that by those people, are they concerned for our safety? Or do they just want to see their profits increase once again? Perhaps they need to buy a second vacation home so they can be safe from the rest of us diseased sheep.

(We have surrendered the ability to think for ourselves, we rely on authorities to tell us what to do, even if it is not in our best interests. And that fashionable person on the internet with a million followers who certainly knows best.)

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Nostalgia

Since I have been self-quarantined at my home and unable to go out anywhere, I have spend a lot of nights watching TV, mostly British murder mysteries, there are many good series and they are very entertaining. Classic movies from the thirties are also a favorite along with movies and TV series from the sixties. You might say that I have been in a state of nostalgia for periods of life long past.

I have quickly become used to the new normal, which has been imposed on us by the coronavirus, (Covid-19). That is, practicing social distancing of staying away from people at least 6 feet. Ten feet in restaurants when, (and if), they open again and wearing masks in public. No handshaking, no hugging and definitely no kissing of strangers, (or friends). No groups of 10 or even 3 people, depending what your party affiliation is. No movies, theaters, sporting events, parties, weddings, funerals, churches, museums, conventions, in short, everything. The awful nature of the virus is that it does not show symptoms in most people who contract it, therefore many continue to circulate, infecting others without knowing it. The virus itself now exists in many mutated forms, some being more deadly then others. And like flu viruses, which it is related to, it may come back every year in a different form. And we may need to develop a different vaccine every year as we do with the flu. So what is the worry about the coronavirus? On average 0.1% of people who get flu die while the global average coronavirus death rate is 4.7%, a small but significant difference. In my age group the number is a 0.83% chance of dying from the flu to a 2.7% chance of dying from Covid-19, again small differences, but who wants to take the chance. The flu and the coronavirus spread in the same way, viral particles that travel between people in tiny droplets of saliva or mucus. If a sick person sneezes, coughs, or eats within 3 to 5 feet of someone healthy, the particles could land on a healthy person, if the particles enter that person’s eyes, nose, or mouth, they could become infected.

The thing about these old movies is, that everyone is shaking hands, hugging, eating, breathing, coughing, sneezing and kissing everyone. They are in large groups on the streets, in stadiums, theaters, movies, parties and everywhere. I have become judgmental overnight, why are these people behaving like that? It is a completely insane attitude, after only a little more then a month I have changed my view of social interaction. My age and pre-existing health conditions have driven my fear of infection to a great extent. Just going to a drive-up window at the local pharmacy is fraught with danger. I already miss the old days of going out whenever and wherever I wanted to. Nostalgia for a simpler and less complicated time is infecting my mind. Will I ever be able to watch any TV or movies from the past again without cringing?

(The Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night, 1964. Concerts filled with thousands of screaming fans, breathing on each other, packed shoulder to shoulder, we never had to worry about it before.)

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If Wishes Were Fishes

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

I think it has been a difficult time for all of us, as the pandemic stretches out before us for the foreseeable future. Here it is, still less then a month since we realized that we were in the midst of something exceptionally different, and it has been very hard to comprehend. I think I can finally say that I feel some of what my parents must have felt after the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese which suddenly thrust the U.S. into World War Two. One day everything is pretty normal, the next day a world changing event. I wish my father were still alive so I could ask him what he felt. I had talked to him quite a bit about the times and what he did, including his naval service during the war. But I never asked him about the sudden change in his life and everyone else around him. Another thing is the feeling of powerlessness, I feel that quite strongly, and I laugh at those in the government and elsewhere that think they can affect the course of events. We are all just leaves before the wind and we will all end up somewhere, but who knows where.

I think that the best thing is to take Gandalf’s advice, what to do with the time given. I can only stay home for now. But not going out, staying away and staying well and not adding to the medical emergency is a somewhat useful thing. Not hoarding necessary supplies, not taking up the time of those who are actually doing something useful, and, like all those internet memes, sitting on the couch to save civilization. It still feels like I am doing nothing, because I am doing nothing, just doing some freelance art, taking care of the springtime yard work, fixing nutritious meals for the family, doing house work, laundry and simple maintenance here at home. I have to work at keeping my spirits up and those around me as their life’s work is on hold and has a chance of never being recovered or realized. But at this point doing my nothing is still the best thing that I can do. I will keep hoping and thinking good thoughts, it will end at some point and a lot will be changed. And that will be a good thing in itself.

(Gandalf could only advise Frodo, and in the end, Frodo had to do many things that he didn’t want to do, but he succeeded eventually.)

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Technology Rescue?

In my family we have always invested heavily in technology to help do our work and communicate, so it was really no big hardship when everything closed down around us a few weeks ago. Most of my personal art and graphics work has been done here at home on computer for the last 6 years since I lost my full-time job, (killed off by technology actually), though I will miss hand painting new exhibits at the museum. My wife Lynne has reluctantly closed the museum indefinitely and has become quite concerned that it may not open again for quite some time. She has taken up the slack by moving as much as she can online with songs, stories and activities for the younger ones to do. She holds her staff meetings by video and conducts everything else by email and web calls. My son Rob is a graphic artist and continues to do his wonderful art work at home and my daughter-in-law Courtnee does all of her college work and student teaching and tutoring on line now.

Twenty years ago at the turn of the century, this would have been almost impossible, the internet was still gaining traction and the first smart phones were quite a few years away. Earlier, Star Trek, (1966), and Star Wars, (1977), had given us some interesting glimpses into the future of communication and computing but we were still working things out, wondering what actually was to come. The landmark movie, 2001, A Space Odyssey (1968), showed us a lot of technology and computer AI but the reality has still not caught up with the vision. And also, it showed an AI that became murderous, killing off the astronauts on board the ship. In fact most Science Fiction movies of that time showed that artificial intelligence or robots were always the villains. Even episodes of Star Trek, the more positive view of our future, showed us an occasional out of control killer robot or AI.

AI and robots are still in their infancy but are rapidly being pushed into everyday use to help with the current pandemic requirements of not getting together in any kind of group. In fact we may have to rely on things like that more and more in the near future. Pandemics have a habit of hanging around for a year or two and in the future of our warming planet, there may be more outbreaks of similar and deadlier viruses. Humans are a social species and having to separate ourselves will be difficult, and having to rely on machines like AI and robots will take a while to get used to. We already have primed ourselves to having them around in both good and bad ways. (Think C3PO and R2D2 and their opposite, HAL 9000). The reality of it is already here in our internet programs and apps and how we rely on our electronic devices to a huge extent now. The transition to AI and robots may be forced on us sooner then we anticipated by outside pressures. To paraphrase Star Wars, ‘May the Internet be with You, Always.’

(HAL 9000, the AI interface in 2001, A Space Odyssey, sits in the background watching two astronauts discuss turning him off. He wasn’t going to put up with that and decided to run the mission without the carbon-based lifeforms cluttering up the ship. Has Mother Nature decided that she could do better without us cluttering up the planet?)

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Back to Normal

I get the biggest laugh from all of these people who keep saying that when the Coronavirus, (Covid-19) is over, then everything will get back to normal. We even have someone, no less then the President of the United States, proclaiming that first of all, there was no problem, then that everything will be back to normal in two weeks, then one month, and now perhaps two. Little does he know that if we are back to something resembling the skeleton of normality in six months, then I will be very much surprised. I have greatly enjoyed watching his hangdog look when he has to restate his previous proclamations, he will never understand that this virus does not react to bluster and threats, he can’t bully it or shame it into submission and you can’t ever lie about it, because it will just continue to do its thing and to hell with you. His complete lack of any kind of practical sense and understanding of the scientific process is more then astonishing, and extremely dangerous to the rest of us. It all comes down to the notion that the rich people and businesses (including the President), are not making any money during this close-down of the economy, so we should do everything possible to get back to making money, and if a few hundred thousand people die, so what, they are mostly old folks. The sheer and utter disregard for human life is completely mind boggling and I will not get into the daily waves of total disbelief I suffer at the lack of humanity from people who really should know better.

Things are not going to get back to normal, ever again, or at least what we have come to expect as normal. The nature of the virus is that we will need to be on guard about it for some time to come, perhaps several years, whether or not we actually get a good vaccine for it. At last check it was said that there are at least two different versions of the current virus and perhaps as many as eight. Will we need a separate vaccine for each of these? It is also related to the MERS and SARS family of viruses which continue to raise up in different forms every couple of years and actually the Covid-19 virus is a SARS type virus. There are indications that you can get infected twice and some rather obscure reports of the virus in cats and dogs, so the possibility that you can get it from a pet might be a future concern. If we have a larger die-off from the disease, (and early trends indicate that it may well happen here), will people want to get back together in groups, will they want to go back to restaurants, movies, live theater, concerts, sports events, schools and the workplace? How long will the fear last and how long before many places of business will have to close for good and will there be any places left to go back to? The medical profession and all of the hospitals which operate on a profit basis many have a difficult time getting back to anything resembling normal. They have had to practically shut down everything else they normally do to confront the virus. What about all the cancer, heart disease, accident patients, and all of the other illnesses they help treat, there is no close-down for them, they still need treatment.

The travel industry is completely knocked for a loop, no flights, no trains, and most cruise lines may never recover. National parks are shut, Disneyland and all of the other amusement parks are closed for the duration. Are people ever going to want to go back there in large numbers? Who is going to have money for that anyway, many businesses have gotten rid of all of their employees, where is all of the money going to come from in the future to support grocery and department stores, malls and other places? The government cannot keep handing out cash forever, the national debt will eventually become too great to continue to support operating the country. I am not trying to be a downer here, believe it or not. The future will be altered in ways we cannot imagine now, and we need to think about what we should do to adapt to the changed conditions of how we live our lives, the new normal will be nothing like we used to have.

(Here we are waiting to get into Disneyworld in October, 2016. Will we ever be confident enough to travel in large groups again. I have many conditions that make me very liable to becoming ill or dying if I am exposed to the virus, the fear of it is very real to me.)

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April Fools’

April Fools’ Day or April Fool’s Day (sometimes called All Fools’ Day) is an annual custom on April 1 consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting “April fools” at the recipient. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which may be revealed as such the following day. The day is not a public holiday in any country except Odessa in Ukraine, where the first of April is an official city holiday. The custom of setting aside a day for playing harmless pranks upon one’s neighbor has been relatively common in the world historically. (Wikipedia)

The biggest April Fool’s prank ever is being played on us all, and by a tiny virus, so small that you need a powerful microscope to see it. It’s really almost like a joke, the entire world grinding to a halt out of fear of catching a dangerous disease with a little higher percentage of the possibility of death or extreme illness then normal flu, (not to minimize the grave danger one little bit). When I say the world is grinding to a halt, I don’t mean the parts of the U.S. that are predominately Republican, they still think it is all a hoax. But eventually the odds will catch up with them and they will also start dying and be forced to adhere to stricter quarantine rules. I suppose it is Darwinism in action, survival of the smartest, much better to overreact then to not act at all. I do not wish anyone ill, but being forced out into the wider world yesterday to pick up a much needed prescription, (at a drive up window), I noticed, that while traffic and people at stores was noticeably a little lesser, there were still an awful lot of people out and about.

We have gone from it being called a hoax, a non-threat to, we will be doing a great job holding deaths in the U.S. to 200,000. Good God! what kind of people say things like that? You have failed to protect a large number of the population and now a lot of them are going to die. So declare victory and get back to bragging about the ratings. This is all a monstrous April Fool’s joke and I keep waiting for the traditional shout out declaring it was all in fun. But I am seeing hardly anyone out there on the streets of New York and most other large cities, and in my little corner of the world, hopefully we will eventually catch on to the danger.

(I will keep washing my hands and staying home, far away from crowds of people. Good luck all.) (Photo of New York courtesy REUTERS/Mike Segar)

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I Did Not Expect This

It is one thing to rant and rave about the future when you expect the worst of things to happen when you are gone and safely dead. But it is quite another thing for it to happen when you are still alive, so I will say it out loud, I did not expect the future to happen so soon.

Could it be a lack of imagination? I don’t really think so, I have pontificated at length about the coming calamity of climate change and all of it’s attendant dangers, with the rise of new diseases being one of those. I have mentioned it in several blogs in the past couple of years, but I didn’t really think about how it would manifest itself. All of the other things like Ebola, Zika and minor pulses of dangerous flu-like viruses have been mild and often far away and happening to someone else. And now the Coronavirus, (Covid-19), is literally knocking at our door. I am older and have diabetes, along with a long history of lung infections, making me a prime candidate for getting gravely ill or dying from this. I have been in self-quarantine for two weeks now and I do not see an end to it for at least several months more, if that. Then, of course, there will be other outbreaks since the nature of the disease is that the symptoms do not appear for some time after people get infected so it is very easily spread around. The final conclusion of it will be when there is a good vaccine for everyone, which could be another year or more away.

This has caused me to stop and think about the next big thing that could occur. We have completely forgotten about climate change in the face of this more immediate threat. But it is still out there, moving along perhaps at a more leisurely pace to be sure, but still progressing none-the-less. What little, or big, surprises will it throw at us next. This past December, January and February were the second warmest ever for the U.S. with records going back to 1895. Less snowpack means less water for crops and less predictable times for planting and harvesting. Earlier springs are occurring with plants blooming and pollinators not ready for them. Less snow means less water for mountainous areas that are becoming more prone to forest fires. So a little nudge here and a little push there can add up to bigger things, and I am not ready for them. It was supposed to happen in 10 or 20 more years or longer. I am still here, and not ready for the future that I have been long predicting. If I have been that wrong, what about all of those other people who firmly deny that anything bad is going to happen at all? I’m sure they will be still in denial even when their older family members start dying. Viruses and climate change simply doesn’t care if we believe in them or not. You cannot wish this stuff away and it is time we learned that.

(Karma’s a bitch, and if it gets around to killing me off, then I should have had a better imagination, or more money to protect me and my family.)

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Defining Moments

There are those historical moments in your life that you will always remember. For my parents it was the announcement that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, igniting the U.S. entry into World War II, I don’t know if they really thought then about how much their lives would change forever. My first personal remembrance was the assassination of then President John F. Kennedy in November of 1963, I was in junior high and the announcement came over the loudspeaker while we were in class. It thrust me into the greater world of politics and oddly enough, the Cold War. In July 1969 the U.S. landed a man on the moon, I had just graduated from high school and was going to collage in the next couple of months. For me and the rest of the country, we had done the big thing, beaten the Russians to the moon and won a tremendous propaganda victory. The rest of moon landings were seen as wasteful and interest in space died almost as quickly as our interest in it began. The next big thing was the oil embargo by OPEC, (Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries), in October 1973, I had just bought my first car and was almost immediately confronted with the rapidly increasing costs of gasoline to fuel it. It was a lesson in geopolitics and in resources that the rest of the world needed to function. The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded during takeoff in January 1986. I was an applicant to the journalist in space candidate program which was quickly canceled. The explosion killed all of the crew and the teacher in space program candidate and so NASA decided that having civilians on a potentially dangerous spaceship was not a good idea.

In December of 1991, the Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen different countries, the fall of our 35-year Cold War adversary was a great relief and a triumph of democracy and capitalism. But without our constant enemy we began to loose our sense of purpose and our political mind began to wander to engineer our society in ways that were not at all constructive. Certainly the September 2001 terrorist attacks on our country were another defining moment for our society and to myself. It was my 50th birthday and I saw it as a personal milestone, I was looking forward to the rest of my life living in a peaceful and prosperous time to come. The reality of the event was rather shattering and after growing up during the stress of the Cold War, we had now entered the equally stressful period of an ongoing War on Terrorism. The 2008 great recession was another blow to my inner peace, fortunately I kept my job, but my retirement 401K, like almost everyone else’s, was tied to the stock market which took a considerable hit and lost a lot of money. It also contributed to the economic tightening of many workplaces and would directly lead to the loss of my employment at the beginning of 2014 and another severe change of direction in my personal journey.

Having lived so long now, I have experienced many defining historical moments both big and small, but none of them have prepared me for the sudden and completely life altering effects of the Coronavirus pandemic of March 2020. It is a world crisis that we are utterly unable to see what the outcome will be. All I know is that I do not have the imagination to envision what the world will be like when it is all done with us. And perhaps that is a good thing right now, I still have hope that we will return to a semblance of normalcy. But my gut feeling is that everything in our lives that we have known up to now, will never, ever, be the same.

(I was on my way to work when I heard the news on the radio of the terrorist attacks on the twin towers in New York, many things changed after than and I have never felt quite the same since.)

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