NOTE: On 6/15/13 I found this link:  “Climate talk shifts from curbing CO2 to adapting”  from the AP. Below is a story from our 2007 archives…JS

Some things in life are bad, they can really make you mad,
Other things just make you swear and curse,
When you’re chewing life’s gristle, don’t grumble, give a whistle
And this’ll help things turn out for the best.
And…

Always look on the bright side of life.

Eric Idle

In Australia, when Life gets hard, my mates like to say, “never mind…she’ll be ‘right,” even though they often know they’re lying through their beer soaked teeth.  And so, on this occasion,  I choose to sound an optimistic, even painfully cheerful note on the coming global catastrophe, as I drain the contents of my last Foster’s.
Or…as Alfred E. Neuman has proclaimed for more than half a century: “What? Me worry?”

Everything will be fine. Not bad. Just…different.

Yes…please spare me the details. Of course, global warming will cause dramatic climate shifts and yes, it’s true, the developing nations, the poorest on the planet, will suffer far more than the rest of us. And indeed, global warming, driven by continued population growth and an ever-expanding, consumptive world economy will destroy much of what’s left of the natural world, crush the human cultures of those few civilizations not yet totally infected by the culture of Greed and Stupidity, and leave the planet stripped of its natural and human diversity, in ways we cannot even truly imagine.

Isn’t that the idea?  Already, even in the mainstream media,  voices in favor of global warming are starting to be heard.

When you’re losing the war, Benedict Arnold once said, simply switch sides. And those embracing the inevitable are even being called progressive by the likes of NEWSWEEK. That honored publication observed recently that, “with further warming seemingly inevitable, the farsighted are already thinking beyond combating climate change. By government fiat or market force, humans will adapt, and that will bring opportunities as well as challenges.” Farsighted, indeed.

It notes that, with rising temperatures, “Russia, long a half-frozen terra incognita, will find its interior frontiers thrown wide open as the Siberian tundra turns to fertile prairie.”  Of course, the lower latitudes of the planet will be scorched, “but America and other rich nations will be left relatively unscathed, because they are removed from equatorial regions that will be hardest hit, and wealthy enough to adapt.”

According to NEWSWEEK, even parts of last year’s otherwise chilling report on global warming  shined some happy light on the issue. British economist Nicholas Stern reported,  “In higher latitude regions, such as Canada, Russia and Scandinavia, climate change may lead to net benefits through higher agricultural yields, lower winter mortality, lower heating costs and a possible boost in tourism.”

So while working on our Miami tans may become a bit too uncomfortable in the future, we can look forward to beach side colonies on Hudson Bay.  Ski resorts, threatened with the loss of their livelihoods are already examining the options— one cheerful optimist sees olive groves replacing his snowy slopes. From converting ski resorts to spa resorts, the great entrepreneurs of our world will find a way to spin a silk purse from this slightly singed sow’s ear.

And what about those billions who already live on the edge of poverty in the areas to be most devastated by the effects of global warming? NEWSWEEK gets a bit vague. But certainly, when the masses move north, those spas are going to get a tad crowded.

More good news.  We’ve heard that the polar regions are melting and that the polar bears may be out of ice in a few decades. It’s a pity for the bears, to be sure. But what about the benefits to international trade?  According to
Alaska Business Magazine, “…increasingly, Alaska may find potential trade and economic benefits from global climate change. According to Mead Treadwell of the Northern Forum, sea routes across the top of Russia will soon become practical alternatives to shipping freight from the Pacific Rim to Europe…In addition, receding sea ice is slowly showing hints of a long-sought-for Northwest Passage, through the archipelago of Canada’s far north. Alaska stands at the crossroad of these new trade routes.”  Treadwell cautiously added, “However before cruise ships or freighters ply these routes regularly, strong political obstacles must be overcome.”

Those pesky political obstacles!  Now that the most imposing obstructions are about to melt away in a warm breeze, the politicians can debate trade routes and permitting fees and gross tonnage and net revenues. The shorter route will benefit us all;  imagine the shipping cost savings to be had on our Chinese-made products. All of that stuff that we want and think we need will reach us even quicker. And they’ll be able to send us even more.

But what about those rising oceans?  No worries. Most experts believe it will take a century before they seriously threaten any developed city and those low-lying areas of the Third World will just have to fend for themselves. Many environmentalists claim that warming water temperatures and an expanding human population will deplete much of the world’s fish stocks by mid-century. Does that mean we’ll have to give up Fish Fridays? Not at all.

In Japan, entrepreneur Akito Yamamoto has developed a way of growing blue fin tuna in tanks. Japan already consumes 80% of the world’s blue fin catch and as more countries develop a taste for sushi and sashimi, the sea grown tuna are in jeopardy of vanishing. But Yamamoto has developed a process that should keep the world from ever having to live without sushi. In 16 foot diameter tanks, kept at a constant 70 degrees, 15 tuna swim against an artificial current that is supposed to mimic the ocean. A tuna must keep moving to breathe and can cross the Atlantic in 50 days, so these fish just swim endlessly in tight circles, hour after hour, day after day, for about three years, until they’re big enough to eat.
The rest of the world will no doubt take note of Mr. Yamamoto’s success.

And what about the rest of the natural world? Aren’t scientists calling this the Fifth Great Extinction?  Or is it the Sixth? Who can keep track?  They claim that much of the fauna most familiar to us could be gone by the end of the century
Gone? Extinct? I don’t think so.  Human technology will find a way to maintain at least representative numbers for most of these threatened critters. Could we possibly think that rising temperatures might eliminate the natural world? Look what some sheiks in Dubai recently accomplished. Conflicted by 120 degree temperatures and the overwhelming desire to go snow skiing, they built an indoor ski resort.

You can’t argue with success. Expect indoor zoo/theme parks like this to flourish in the centuries ahead. We’ll see massive enclosed pavilions that represent all the major habitats of the world. And because they’re impervious to weather, we might be able to see the nocturnal wildlife of the canyon country in downtown Berlin. Or the great raptors of the Andes in Chicago.  It really is a brave new world.

What else…we’ll certainly find a way to replace all those honey bees that are disappearing from the planet. Perhaps they’ll develop a robotronic version of many threatened animals to maintain the “balance of nature.” That will free up the remaining real animals to kick back and enjoy life, without all those annoying worries and responsibilities about “doing the right thing.”  Guilt is a terrible thing to endure. It’s why, even now, some kindhearted enviropreneur has invented the Terra Pass. (www.terrapass.com). You can calculate your carbon dioxide contribution, whether by car or jet, and then make a payment to…well to somebody, so you won’t feel bad about it anymore.

In the end, it’s clear to see, there are no crises ahead. Everything is going to be just fine. Don’t think of the future in catastrophic terms. Just think of the money that is about to be made.  Ultimately, not only will we get what we deserve…we’ll get what we want as well.

For life is quite absurd
And death’s the final word.
You must always face the curtain with a bow.
Forget about your sin.
Give the audience a grin.
Enjoy it. It’s your last chance, anyhow.
So,…

Always look on the bright side of death,
[whistle]
Just before you draw your terminal breath.
[whistle]

(FROM THE 2006 ZEPHYR ARCHIVES)

With the summer tourist season upon us, I feel the need  to abuse my editorial right once again and make a personal plea to drivers everywhere to get the hell out of my way. Last year, about this time, I was driving my truck to Tooele to get the Zephyr printed and made the mistake of going to Salt Lake the “usual way,” via US 6 & 50 over Soldier Summit to Spanish Fork. It’s a nightmare highway, always congested, and I should have known better.

I’d just left Price and was behind a car who was dawdling along at about 35 MPH. I patiently endured him, knowing that in just a half mile or so, I’d have a passing lane and the opportunity to go around. But as soon as the passing lane appeared, he sped up. I tried to get around him, but it was uphill, my old truck doesn’t have the oomph it used to (neither do I for that matter) and this ‘dawdler’ was now going 70MPH. I gave up, but as soon as the road started to narrow again, he started slowing down again…right back down to 35.

I was already in a bad mood and I said to myself, “Screw this.” Even though I had a double-yellow line, I could see clearly ahead for half a mile and knew I could easily pass him, especially at the speed he was moving. So I did it.

Unfortunately, there was a Utah Highway Patrol trooper directly behind me who, in my zeal to pass the Dawdler, I had failed to notice. He pulled me over, gave me a lecture, and wanted to know if I thought I was “special” in some way that gave me the right to break the law.

Normally, I grovel at the threat of a ticket. But this time I was unrepentant. “I broke the law but I’d do it again,” I growled. “It’s drivers like that guy who should be pulled over. He’s the menace, not me. He was rude, not me. But to hell with it…Do your duty.”

The trooper had initially accused me of reckless driving, speeding and illegal lane change. When he handed me the citation, he said, “I’m only writing you for the lane change. You shouldn’t have done that, but I understand your frustration.”

An empathetic cop. I was almost grateful.

So…to all you dawdling drivers, listen up. If you want to dawdle, that’s fine. As long as you don’t impede the normal flow of traffic, as long as you are courteous enough to pull over and let faster traffic pass, I salute you. But if you don’t pull over and plan to lumber along while traffic backs up behind you, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, at least when you get to a passing lane, DON’T SPEED UP. Let us go around.  I IMPLORE YOU. That’s all we ask. Is that so much? I know you can see us, all stacked up and seething in your rear view mirror. You can’t be driving with your head up your ass–otherwise how could you dawdle along staring at the scenery? So acknowledge us, move over, and let the rest of the world go by you.

Meanwhile, I stay off the Soldier Summit road these days. It takes me an extra hour to make Tooele, but I have the road to myself. And does anything feel better than an open road?

(LONGING FOR ‘THE GOOD OLD DAYS?’)

From the Zephyr Archives: December 2004

Driven inside by a cold winter storm, I picked up a magazine last week and began to thumb idly through it. The stories seemed so familiar; the lead editorial tackled “The Palestine Problem” and began with this sentiment: “During last Thanksgiving week Americans felt they had something to be thankful for which now turns out to be illusory. It was the news that the U.N. had ‘solved’ the Palestinian problem.” But the editorialist warned that the solution could be costly. “Responsible enforcement takes force, and so does responsible revision. Either entails bloodshed….We have exhausted the possibilities of a policy which wills an end but not a means.”

In the letters section, a reader complained about a recent swimsuit pictorial that showed more breast than he was willing to tolerate. “It will be snow in Hades,” Eric Simpson wrote from Blacksburg, Virginia, “before any date of mine wears one of those bare-breasted affairs.”

Ah yes, those “moral issues.”

And there was more. Another story complained about the excess of explicit violence being portrayed in prime time dramas. One program, “growls with menace,” the critic explained, “as a mad doctor kills a woman, hides her corpse in a closet and then prepares to operate on a girl, just for the fun of it. He runs upstairs, tosses a man out the window, then later decides to jump himself.” The total number of dead for the evening’s programming? “At least a dozen violent deaths with the victims being stabbed, poisoned, shot, blown up and thrown out windows, plus one exceptionally messy suicide.”

Another photo spread highlighted the latest “movie lingerie,” a five page feature that more than satisfied my need to gawk at long leggy super-models with lots of cleavage.

And of course, the magazine was brimming and overflowing with advertisements for everything from the “form-fit Life Bra” to cigarettes, “good to taste, good to smoke.” To Ritz crackers, “nothing tastes like a Ritz.”

Yes, the same old news and gossip and titillating sex and violence—how we long for the ‘good old days’ when we could get away from all that bad news and shameful behavior.

Except…

Except…what I just described were the ‘Good ol’ Days.’ I had been reading from an issue of LIFE magazine….the February 16, 1948 issue.

Since that edition of LIFE went to press, more than 55 years ago, the world has changed dramatically and hasn’t moved an inch. All the themes for hate and violence and intolerance and banality were there in 1948—we’ve simply ratcheted up the level of intensity a few notches. The media “violence” was coming from radio, of course. Television was only being seen in a few hundred thousand homes on the U.S. east coast by early 1948. So the graphic violence was relayed via the images the sounds of radio could conjure in the listener’s mind. And of course, the mind is a frightening place to be at times, so who can say if today’s graphic “CSI” and “Law & Order” visual images are any worse than what one might have imagined in 1948? (Although I doubt if in ‘48, anyone could create such gruesome detail as today’s crime dramas bombard us with.)

The bare-breast complaint, in light of last year’s Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction” and all the fury that followed was particularly “revealing.” How can a woman’s breast be such an enduring point of contention in American Culture? Here is, under the right conditions, one of the loveliest forms ever to grace the planet. Artists since the beginning of Time have paid tribute to the breast. Nothing can distract most men and some women like the female breast. A woman’s breasts make us happy. For all of us, it was the first thing in the World that we saw close up. We clung to it for months before we were torn away from it and somebody stuck a rubber nipple in our mouths. Breasts are a good thing. And yet there are always people out there trying to take all the fun out of Life. May women always be proud of their breasts and may we always be allowed to appreciate and admire and adore them.

As for the ads, nothing much has changed there. You might think 21st Century marketing techniques have improved–become more sophisticated and clever–but they haven’t. Not really. They’re still mostly dull-witted and transparently solicitous, still trying to appeal to our vanity and egos. And they continue to succeed as our credit card society continues to spend money it doesn’t have on practically anything and everything it wants, whether or not it has a penny to pay for it.

And that might mark a significant change since 1948. Fifty six years ago, American Society was still trying to live within its means.

Perhaps most heartbreaking to read is the Palestinian editorial and the realization that virtually nothing has improved in the Middle East in more than half a century. The LIFE essay from February 1948 specifically outlined the merits and shortcomings of a United Nations proposal to end the violence between Israel and the Arabs. “The UN had decided,” reported LIFE, “that all Palestine should be divided into three equal parts—a Jewish state, an Arab state and an internationalized Jerusalem.”

It was called “Partition,” it was rejected by the Arab world, war ensued and the two sides have been fighting almost continuously ever since. Millions of Arabs and Jews have perished in one bloody encounter after another. The violence is so consistent that the story of another suicide car bomb or an Israeli missile strike that kills civilians rarely raises an iota of indignation among any of us. It’s just a part of the daily news now— except for the most recent victims.

I don’t know if there is any lesson in all this. At John Kennedy’s funeral, Chief Justice Earl Warren lamented, “The only thing we learn from history is that we do not learn.” And his warning continues to be borne out by the facts of each day’s events. Sometimes there doesn’t seem to be much hope for this wretched species of ours, but to give up Hope altogether is perhaps the most inhuman gesture of all.

“In Denali National Park you put down a fee to enter a lottery for the annual quota of cars allowed to drive to Wonder Lake; winners then pay another fee and take to the road, hoping to encounter grizzlys, mountain sheep, wolves. Almost any park offers an amazing array of extracurricular opportunities: video viewing of wild animals; chasing coyotes and buffalo by snowmobile; dioramas equipped with real live rangers to tell you what’s what; guided river floats; horseback riding led by a wrangler; fishing guide service; scenic turn-outs for photo ops … the original National Parks core curriculum, being on your own, is pretty much not there. The entertainment theme is appearing in other public domains too, the lands of Multiple Use and Fee-Demo. This is a huge topic, “well worth the watching,” as the turn-out signs say, in Wyoming, about Wyoming wildlife.”

To read more of Martin’s story, click the image below:

http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2013/06/02/losing-solitude-theme-parks-by-martin-murie/

Also, check out Jim Stiles’ tribute to Martin Murie in this issue’s Take it or Leave it.

Thanks to Survival International’s dazzling website, Peru’s “uncontacted tribes” are now cyber-connected to the rest of their fellow hominids. And the news coming from the dense forests of the Amazon isn’t good. Especially if you’re a member of one of those so-called uncontacted tribes. The Cacataibo, Isconahua, Mashco-Piro, and others, are facing cultural extinction thanks to our species’ lust for the grease that powers the so-called developed world. Of course, I speak of oil. Just wait until the tribes get a load of fracking!*

To read more of Ned’s story, click the image below:

http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2013/06/02/welcome-to-the-dimformation-age-from-the-desk-of-ned-mudd-reporting-from-the-crawlspace-of-history-2/

I like to think of myself as an optimist. But let’s face it, the world’s a mess. Our mess. But we can turn things around can’t we? Climate change, overpopulation, mass extinctions, you know, all that doom and gloom stuff?We can fix it, right? We can curb our epic appetites, learn to live within our means, repair the damage we have done to the one and only planet we have. After all, anything is possible. Right? There could be swine in the treetops by morning.

To see Dave’s page in the Zephyr, click the image below:

http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2013/06/02/the-wilder-west-anything-is-possible-the-art-wit-of-dave-wilder/

…Excerpts from ‘THE LAST CAMPAIGN: ROBERT KENNEDY & 82 DAYS THAT INSPIRED AMERICA’
By Thurston Clarke

Speaking over the boos, he said, “What I don’t understand is that you don’t even debate these things among yourselves. You’re the most exclusive minority in the world. Are you going to sit on your duffs and do nothing? Or just carry signs and protest? After scolding them some more, he shouted, “So there!”

To read more excerpts, click the image below:

http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2013/06/02/82-days-robert-f-kennedys-campaign-for-president/