Tag Archives: Kathy Byrnes

Here come the migrants

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How soon will the exodus from the West begin? Next year. Yup, 2022. That’s my prediction. The situation is that bad.

Is the Midwest ready to receive a vast wave of parched climate refugees? Not even close. All of us should be talking with local, state, and federal officials about how we’ll manage an influx of millions of displaced fellow Americans. Food, water, energy, housing, health care, transportation, employment. All these and more need to be considered as the population of Midwestern communities braces for an increase like never before. Continue Reading →

Bizarre Buck Moon story starts, ends with a rose

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Des Moines, Iowa, has its weirdness (read “cool factor”) as well, as evidenced by Kathy Byrnes’s experience last Friday. Check out Kathy’s account (at the 2:26-minute mark) of her bizarre stroll through downtown Des Moines on the eve of the Buck Moon. It’s a journey that starts and ends with a red rose — with a whole bunch of weirdness transpiring in between. Continue Reading →

Billionaires head to space as Earth burns

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Meanwhile back on Earth, life goes on for those of us working to clean up the mess created by crony capitalism (to borrow a phrase from Mitt Romney) and rampant industrialization. One important thing you can do to make a difference is talk with your local elected officials about the climate emergency.

While it’s never a bad time to talk with politicians, you’re most likely to have their full attention leading up to an election. Continue Reading →

The deadly myth of net zero

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“Rather than acknowledge the seriousness of our situation, we instead continue to participate in the fantasy of net zero. What will we do when reality bites? What will we say to our friends and loved ones about our failure to speak out now?

“The time has come to voice our fears and be honest with wider society. Current net zero policies will not keep warming to within 1.5°C because they were never intended to. They were and still are driven by a need to protect business as usual, not the climate. If we want to keep people safe then large and sustained cuts to carbon emissions need to happen now. That is the very simple acid test that must be applied to all climate policies. The time for wishful thinking is over.” Continue Reading →

Who’s really trying to steal elections?

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It’s encouraging that so many key Republicans have spoken out strongly against this sham. Yet, here’s the problem, and why this is not petty or small-scale theft: If other states controlled by Republican legislators pick up on the idea, as seems entirely possible, this insanity could snowball to the point of truly threatening a key pillar of American democracy.

And if Trump’s minions succeed in stealing the public’s confidence in our electoral system, there’s not much left to democracy. See the disenfranchised people of Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea for details. Continue Reading →

Dialogue on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict

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Many people claim that the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is complicated. I don’t buy that. It boils down to the blatant denial of human rights to the Palestinian people. If the US would stop funding the Israeli war machine and join other nations in denouncing Israel’s injustices toward Palestinians, I believe we would have peace in relatively short order.

To those detractors who claim the Arab world wants to drive Israel into the sea, that sounds much like the false argument some people used years ago to defend a divided Ireland. “Home rule is Rome rule,” they said, stoking fears that an independent and united Ireland would be governed by the Pope.

Similarly, Israel needs to be one country where Jews, Muslims, Christians, and others not only respect but learn to appreciate each other’s differences. Just as Ireland is not officially a Catholic country, although 75% of the population is Catholic, Israel shouldn’t declare Judaism its official religion either. Continue Reading →

Questioning Biden’s commitment to climate action

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Sometimes you get to see the big picture by studying little things. Not that the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is small potatoes, but Biden clearly, repeatedly, and emphatically stated his opposition to DAPL during the campaign in 2019.

Yet Biden refuses to stop the proposed expansion of DAPL. Work on DAPL’s pumping station near Cambridge, Iowa, is happening NOW. Once that work is finished, DAPL can double the flow of oil — doubling the damage to our climate and increasing the risk to our land and water.

So, yeah, I’m nervous — and skeptical, because if President Biden was telling the truth in 2019, he should have stepped in by now to stop this expansion. It can still be stopped, but time is running out, and Biden shows no sign of weighing in. Continue Reading →

We ate the butter cow

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I have a confession to make: I ate the Iowa State Fair Butter Cow. Then a second butter cow came along, and Kathy ate that one. Ok, I’m being a little silly. While neither Kathy nor I would ever devour or desecrate our State Fair’s most iconic feature, we calculate that, during our combined 122 years on this fine planet, we’ve each consumed the equivalent of a butter cow. That’s 600 pounds of butter. Each. Continue Reading →

“What you guys are doing is inspiring.” — Danny Lyon

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Danny’s a distinguished photographer, journalist, and film maker with award-winning work dating back to the 1960s civil rights struggle. He picks me up at camp in a battered old Volvo and we drive to the adobe house where he and his wife, Nancy, have lived for 38 years. “Most of this house was built by a single illegal Mexican worker named Eddie,” Danny says proudly. “And I like that it’s biodegradable. Someday, it’ll just be a big heap of mud.” Continue Reading →

The power of nonviolent action

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The Race to Save the World challenges us to get involved with our whole person — our bodies and our minds — through creative actions, risking arrest, crazy-long marches, and disrupting business-as-usual for oil companies, banks, and lackluster politicians.

Ultimately, ending the climate crisis will involve major legislative initiatives. Perhaps we’re seeing the front edge of that with the Biden administration’s climate-action proposals. Even so, it’s time for a global mobilization on an unprecedented scale. Perhaps The Race to Save the World can inspire that. Continue Reading →