Love in the Time of Climate Change (16 page)

“No doctors!” he whispered. “No doctors!”

Not daring to turn on lights, huddling in the dark, we spent a sleepless eternity as his toenail turned a dark, deep, ghostly blue.

“Bastard!” Jesse cursed.

Ghost and neighbor: 1.

The Roommate and me: o.

I
T COULD NOT HAVE BEEN A FROSTIER DAY
to protest global warming. After a series of spectacularly beautiful and balmy weeks, the third Saturday in October was cold as hell. A biting wind whistled down the Connecticut River as folks gathered at the public boat ramp in Easthampton for the march on the Mount Tom Coal Plant.

The facility sits on a beautiful stretch of the river, a designated National Fish and Wildlife Refuge, in Holyoke. An interesting juxtaposition—one of the most destructive things on the planet next to one of the most gorgeous ones. Go figure.

Every day, 1,200 tons of pulverized coal are shot into Mount Tom plant's thirteen-story boiler to heat water to make steam to turn a turbine to rotate a magnet around a coil of wire to get electrons all hot and bothered and create the magic of electricity. Granted, it's a little more complicated than that, but hey, how much do you really need to know?

The mind of the inventor is a constant source of amazement
to me. I mean, seriously—electricity? Who came up with that one? I know Ben Franklin did the kite-and-key thing but for the life of me I can't fathom how they got the skinny on the rest of it. Shocking!

I'm challenged enough figuring out which clicker actually changes the channel on the damn TV.

I used to worry about how little I knew. I used to obsess endlessly about what would go down if my students ever caught on to the profound depths of my ignorance. There are times when I'm teaching and I think to myself, Wow, what a scam! Do they actually think I have a clue as to what the hell I'm talking about?

Once, in a dismal attempt to rectify my intellectual shortcomings, I went so far as to get a CD titled
Electricity for Dummies
. I forced Jesse, my captive carpool, into listening to it on our morning commute. By the end of the second chapter he was ready to rewire the house. The only info I had amassed was an even greater fear of anything with a plug on the end.

As a way to deal with information overload, there are certain topics I've simply given myself permission not to understand. Like electricity. I just go ahead and accept it as scientific magic. It's much easier that way, much less of a brain strain. Plus, I'm thirty-two years old, for Christ sake! There's only so much the old head can handle, only so much room in the Gray Matter Inn. Additional factoids could drive out essential memorized must-knows, such as every crucial line from
The Wizard of Oz
.

After all, we have our priorities.

Magic.

It's oh so much easier to explain complex technological mysteries to my students that way.

The march on Mount Tom was organized by the “No Coal Alliance,” a local offshoot of 350.org, an activist group intent on shutting down our local carbon dioxide–spewing monstrosity.

If I had the power to “off” just one of the fossil fools, hands down it would be Big Coal. Everything about it, from the mining to the burning, drips with disaster. Oil and gas are dreadful enough; coal is beyond bad.

I get why we use it. Estimates vary, but it's good for at least a couple hundred thousand U.S. jobs. We're the Saudi Arabia of coal. We sit atop estimated reserves which, if burned (God forbid) at current rates, would get us another 200-plus years of electricity. Coal provides somewhere around a third of the electricity we use in the United States, though that figure is declining.

And, returning to Dr. Seuss's
The Lorax
, electricity, like Thneeds, is what “everyone, EVERYONE,
EVERYONE
needs!”

But boy, is it trouble.

Disregarding all the other shit that goes up the stack (sulfur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, mercury, particulate matter—Jesus, the list goes on and on), coal plants release more CO
₂
than any other fossil fuel—two thousand pounds of it per megawatt hour of energy, which is double that of natural gas.

It's awfully hard not to put coal front and center in the climate-change blame game.

I bundled up for the weather and got out of the car. Jesse was along with Sarah. I noticed immediately that she grabbed his hand for warmth. Things seemed to be progressing nicely on that front. (She had made a great fuss in the car over his blue toenail, much to his delight.)

Out in the parking lot there was a gathering crowd of a hundred or so, holding signs and carrying banners.

“EVEN ELMIRA GULCH SAYS NO TO MOUNT TOM!” one read, a wonderful picture of the Wicked Witch of the West flying on her broom stick while giving the middle finger.

Yes!

Jesse, Sarah, and I were meeting up with four of the Climate Changers, the usual dynamic duo (Hannah and Trevor) plus two wonderful young women, Meagan and Abbie. Fresh out of high school, newbies to climate-change activism, they already had full-blown OCD.

Once again, therapists throughout the Valley should thank me for my work.

The demonstration was on the young side. It was a great thing to see the college-age crowd making their voices heard. There were a few families with young kids in tow, and a good smattering of old farts with their grizzled faces and clenched fists, but the weather was turning ugly and the faint of heart were staying home.

Snow began to fall. Hard. In October for Christ sake! Another one of these weird weather wonders that was increasingly becoming the new normal.

The problem with days like today was that they gave the right-wing climate deniers an audience as they yelped, “See! Told you so! Snow before Halloween. So much for your global-warming lies!” Of course, on the twelfth consecutive day of 95 degrees in June, they were conspicuous in their silence.

The crowd was being warmed by a local bluegrass group called the Wandering Kind, a wonderful foursome playing fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and stand-up bass. Their repertoire was apropos—old-time coal-mining songs and union anthems. “Which Side Are You On?” got us stamping our feet and clapping our gloved hands. Jesse entertained everyone by screeching out his “Yeehaws” and swinging arms square-dance style with Sarah and anyone else who would join in. His “hurt foot” only seemed to ache when he wanted somebody's cute fingers fondling it.

A few songs and one short talk later, the organizers promised we'd march to the Mount Tom Plant, thankfully, because none of us seemed overly well-dressed for the
early onslaught of winter weather. My feet were already feeling the nip.

The featured speaker, an eloquent climatologist from U-Mass (they hadn't asked me! waaahhh!) presented us with an apt metaphor.

“What is your body temperature at equilibrium?” she called out to the crowd.

“Right now, thirty-four degrees and rapidly falling!” a demonstrator responded, his breath rising like smoke. Everyone laughed.

“In other words, I should be brief,” the speaker smiled. “Let's hope it's somewhere around 98 degrees. But what happens when it goes up a degree, to 99, or maybe 100? We don't feel so great, do we? But we probably still manage to go to work. We still make it to school.”

A few of the students nudged each other, shook their heads, and laughed.

“What happens when we're two degrees warmer? Anything much over a hundred and we're heading downhill fast. It's a stay-at-home day with hot soup and another layer of clothes.”

“Hot soup! Hot soup!” a few demonstrators chanted.

“Three degrees?” she went on. “Sweats, chills. You're lucky to make it out of bed out at all.

“Four degrees? Something serious is going on. It's doctor time.

“And pretty much anything above that and life hangs in the balance. When your forehead is on fire, you don't need a doctor to tell you something's seriously wrong.

“Allow me to remind you, my friends, that Mother Earth is not unlike our body. A degree rise in temperature, even two, may be tolerable. Not an ideal situation, but she's pretty adept at rolling with the punches.

“Keep cranking up that climate thermostat and things go south pretty fast.

“Well, I've got bad news for you, folks. We're not talking
one or two degrees Fahrenheit. We're not talking ‘suck it up and go to work.'

“The most recent climate projections show a distinct possibility, a real likelihood, of a 7-, 8-, or even 10-degree Fahrenheit rise in global surface temperature.”

The crowd groaned.

“Ten degrees,” she repeated. “Maybe even as soon as the end of the century.

“Think of your body at 108 degrees.

“It's called death.

“Now think of the earth 10 degrees warmer. Mother Earth's forehead is burning up.

“Tell me good people, is this what we want?” she shouted, pointing toward the power plant.

“NO!” the crowd shouted back, waving their “Shut It Down” signs.

“Is this what we are going to accept?”

“NO!”

“Then what are we going to do about it?”

“Shut it down!” the crowd roared.

“I can't hear you!” she cupped her hand over her ear.

“Shut it down!” we yelled even louder.

“One more time!”

“
SHUT IT DOWN!
”

The march began.

By now the snow had picked up in intensity. Jesse, head cocked back, was attempting to impress Sarah by catching snowflakes on his tongue. The crowd had grown to a couple hundred, maybe more, and spilled onto Route 10 for the half-mile march to the power plant, escorted by police cars. Their flashing lights, the unexpected snow, the chanting, the signs, all made for a very pleasant high.

Thankfully, minus the pot. Whenever I was stoned my body temperature felt like it plummeted 10 degrees. Not exactly what I needed right now.

“What do we want?” an organizer with a bullhorn yelled.

“NO MORE COAL!” we yelled back.

“When do we want it?”

“NOW!”

“What do we want?”

“NO MORE COAL!”

“When do we want it?”

“NOW!”

I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Unusual weather we're having, ain't it,” someone said in a Cowardly Lion kind of voice.

I jumped. It was her! Samantha!

“Hey! Wow! I didn't see you,” I said. “Wow! Great to see you. What are you doing here?”

Hmm… Such an astute question. I had talked about the demonstration in class and now here we were marching on a coal plant carrying signs saying “Coal is Stupid” while singing and chanting. And I'm wondering what she's doing here? It's times like these that my absolute brilliance around women simply bursts forth.

“Same thing as you are, I hope,” she said, smiling through the snow.

“Following the Yellow Brick Road? All right! You were the lion just then. From the
Wizard of Oz
!” I was desperately trying to regain some of my lost feng shui.

“Best movie ever!” she replied.

“Oh my god!” I agreed, perhaps a little over enthusiastically. “Absolutely. Totally. Well, maybe
An Inconvenient Truth
, but, absolutely best non-documentary.”

Jesus, how awkward can one guy sound? To make matters even worse, I attempted a spastic mimic of the Oz quartet's “We're Off to See the Wizard” dance. Minus any degree of coordination, grace, or rhythm.

Mercifully, she laughed.

Jesse joined us, putting his arm around me and shivering.

“Having fun?” he asked.

“Oh, hey, uhmm … “[long awkward pause] …” this is my roommate, Jesse, and his, ahh … friend … Sarah. This is, ahhh …”

“Samantha,” she smiled, holding out her mittenless hand.

I hadn't forgotten her name—of course I hadn't. For the love of God, how could I possibly forget her name! I just couldn't get it out. I sometimes have this paralyzing syndrome in social situations where names got lodged in my head, stuck on my tongue, unable to make it from the brain to the voice box. Yet another manifestation of my extreme social awkwardness.

Put me in front of a class of students and I have no fears, no trepidations, no hesitation, no anxiety. I am in my element.

Put me in front of a beautiful woman and all hell breaks loose.

It's like a stutterer I used to know. He would painfully struggle to get certain words out. Yet he had a beautiful, clear, stutter-free singing voice.

In class I sang.

Everywhere else I seemed to stutter.

I gave myself a swift mental kick to the voice box. Sing, damn it, sing!

“Hey,” Jesse replied. “I've heard a lot about—”

I zipped him a “Jesus, don't say it!” look.

“—your class,” he went on with barely a pause. “Casey seems to be enjoying it.”

Christ, I thought. I didn't say she was a student! I didn't say she was from my class! I didn't say anything!