Vox clamantis in deserto
Getting away before the summer people arrive, if they do this year
“Leaving the Tide” (oil on canvas), by C.J. Lori, at Galatea Fine Art, Boston, via its online gallery
N.E. virus response: Beth Israel making swabs; Home Base director takes role; Dartmouth working on better test
— Photo by Raimond Spekking
From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)
As our region and our nation continue to grapple with the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic, The New England Council is using our blog as a platform to highlight some of the incredible work our members have undertaken to respond to the outbreak. Each day, we’ll post a round-up of updates on some of the initiatives underway among Council members throughout the region. We are also sharing these updates via our social media, and encourage our members to share with us any information on their efforts so that we can be sure to include them in these daily round-ups.
You can find all the Council’s information and resources related to the crisis in the special COVID-19 section of our website. This includes our COVID-19 Virtual Events Calendar, which provides information on upcoming COVID-19 Congressional town halls and webinars presented by NEC members, as well as our newly-released Federal Agency COVID-19 Guidance for Businesses page.
Here is the April 21 roundup:
Medical Response
Beth Israel Producing Testing Swabs to Combat Shortage – Faced with a dwindling supply of testing materials, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has begun producing their own testing swabs in collaboration with local academics and manufacturers. The new swabs are already being used to test potential COVID-19 patients and will begin production on a larger scale soon. Read more from WBUR.
Home Base’s Gen. Jack Hammond Tapped to Lead Boston Hope Medical Center – General Jack Hammond, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston Red Sox Home Base Program, has been chosen by Gov. Charlie Baker (R-MA) to serve as co-medical and operations director at Boston Hope Medical Center. Gen. Hammond will draw on both his personal experience serving in the military and in his role at Home Base to work with state and local officials to coordinate care for the unsheltered and those in post-acute care. Read more in The Boston Globe and the press release.
Dartmouth College Researchers Developing Improved Test – Researchers at Dartmouth College are working to create a new, improved test for COVID-19. The lab has partnered with a California biotech company to make the test more reliable and quicker to produce results. The test awaits FDA approval as it is being compared to the test currently being used in the United States. Read more from The New Hampshire Business Review
Economic/Business Continuity Response
Worcester State University Receives $484,000 Grant to Improve Remote Learning – To support its transition to remote learning, Worcester State University (WSU) has received over $484,000 in grants from a Boston venture philanthropy firm. The funds will be used to cover a variety of expenses, such as laptops and a university-wide texting system to remind students of upcoming deadlines. The measures are designed to especially help first-generation students, a demographic already more likely to drop out of school. The Worcester Business Journal has more.
Community Response
City of Providence Buys 34,000 Masks for Frontline Workers – The City of Providence has partnered with its firefighters union to purchase 34,000 N95 masks for first responders directly exposed to the virus. Masks, along with other protective equipment such as gloves, will be distributed to responders and other essential personnel who require them. Read more from WPRI.
UnitedHealth Announces $5 Million to Support Healthcare Workers – UnitedHealth Group, as part of its initial $60 million commitment to combating the coronavirus pandemic, has announced a $5 million initiative to support the healthcare workforce. Specifically, the funds will be directed toward efforts to procure more personal protective equipment (PPE) and to provide mental health support to those working directly with COVID-19 patients. Read the press release here.
Stay tuned for more updates each day, and follow us on Twitter for more frequent updates on how Council members are contributing to the response to this global health crisis.
Proudly sing of the 'Willimantick'
The Willimantic River flows past the site of the old American Thread Company mill, in Willimantic, Conn.
“We dare not be original; our American Pine must be cut to the trim pattern of the English Yew, though the Pine bleed at every clip. This poet tunes his lyre at the harp of Goethe, Milton, Pope, or Tennyson. His songs might better be sung on the Rhine than the Kennebec. They are not American in form or feeling; they have not the breath of our air; the smell of our ground is not in them. Hence our poet seems cold and poor. He loves the old mythology; talks about Pluto—the Greek devil,—— the Fates and Furies—witches of old time in Greece,—-but would blush to use our mythology, or breathe the name in verse of our Devil, or our own Witches, lest he should be thought to believe what he wrote. The mother and sisters, who with many a pinch and pain sent the hopeful boy to college, must turn over the Classical Dictionary before they can find out what the youth would be at in his rhymes. Our Poet is not deep enough to see that Aphrodite came from the ordinary waters, that Homer only hitched into rhythm and furnished the accomplishment of verse to street talk, nursery tales, and old men’s gossip, in the Ionian towns; he thinks what is common is unclean. So he sings of Corinth and Athens, which he never saw, but has not a word to say of Boston, and Fall River, and Baltimore, and New York, which are just as meet for song. He raves of Thermopylae and
Marathon, with never a word for Lexington and Bunker Hill, for Cowpens, and Lundy’s Lane, and Bemis’s Heights. He loves to tell of “smooth sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds,” yet sings not of the Petapsco, the Susquehannah, the Aroostook, and the Willimantick. He prates of the narcissus, and the daisy, never of American dandelions and bue-eyed grass; he dwells on the lark and the nightingale, but has not a thought for the brown thrasher and the bobolink, who every morning in June rain down such showers of melody on his affected head. What a lesson Burns teaches us addressing his “rough bur thistle,” his daisy, “wee crimson tippit thing,” and finding marvellous poetry in the mouse whose nest his plough turned over! Nay, how beautifully has even our sweet Poet sung of our own Green river, our waterfowl, of the blue and fringed gentian, the glory of autumnal days.”
― Massachusetts Quarterly Review, 1849
Melissa Bailey: Even in New England, global warming putting physicians in hot seat
Person being cooled with water spray, one of the treatments of heat stroke in Iraq in 1943
BOSTON
A 4-year-old girl was rushed to the emergency room three times in one week for asthma attacks.
An elderly man, who’d been holed up in a top-floor apartment with no air conditioning during a heat wave, showed up at a hospital with a temperature of 106 degrees.
A 27-year-old man arrived in the ER with trouble breathing ― and learned he had end-stage kidney disease, linked to his time as a sugar cane farmer in the sweltering fields of El Salvador.
These patients, whose cases were recounted by doctors, all arrived at Boston-area hospitals in recent years. While the coronavirus pandemic is at the forefront of doctor-patient conversations these days, there’s another factor continuing to shape patients’ health: climate change.
Global warming is often associated with dramatic effects such as hurricanes, fires and floods, but patients’ health issues represent the subtler ways that climate change is showing up in the exam room, according to the physicians who treated them.
Dr. Renee Salas, an emergency physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, said she was working a night shift when the 4-year-old arrived the third time, struggling to breathe. The girl’s mother felt helpless that she couldn’t protect her daughter, whose condition was so severe that she had to be admitted to the hospital, Salas recalled.
She found time to talk with the patient’s mother about the larger factors at play: The girl’s asthma appeared to be triggered by a high pollen count that week. And pollen levels are rising in general because of higher levels of carbon dioxide, which she explained is linked to human-caused climate change.
Salas, a national expert on climate change and health, is a driving force behind an initiative to spur clinicians and hospitals to take a more active role in responding to climate change. The effort launched in Boston in February, and organizers aim to spread it to seven U.S. cities and Australia over the next year and a half.
Although there is scientific consensus on a mounting climate crisis, some people reject the idea that rising temperatures are linked to human activity. The controversy can make doctors hesitant to bring it up.
Even at the climate change discussion in Boston, one panelist suggested the topic may be too political for the exam room. Dr. Nicholas Hill, head of the Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Division at Tufts Medical Center of Medicine, recalled treating a “cute little old lady” in her 80s who likes Fox News, a favorite of climate change doubters. With someone like her, talking about climate change may hurt the doctor-patient relationship, he suggested. “How far do you go in advocating with patients?”
Doctors and nurses are well suited to influence public opinion because the public considers them “trusted messengers,” said Dr. Aaron Bernstein, who co-organized the Boston event and co-directs the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at Harvard’s school of public health. People have confidence they will provide reliable information when they make highly personal and even life-or-death decisions.
Bernstein and others are urging clinicians to exert their influence by contacting elected officials, serving as expert witnesses, attending public protests and reducing their hospital’s carbon emissions. They’re also encouraging them to raise the topic with patients.
Dr. Mary Rice, a pulmonologist who researches air quality at Beth-Israel Deaconess Medical Center here, recognized that in a 20-minute clinic visit, doctors don’t have much time to spare.
But “I think we should be talking to our patients about this,” she said. “Just inserting that sentence, that one of the reasons your allergies are getting worse is that the allergy season is worse than it used to be, and that’s because of climate change.”
Salas, who has been a doctor for seven years, said she had little awareness of the topic until she heard climate change described as the “greatest public health emergency of our time” during a 2013 conference.
“I was dumbfounded about why I hadn’t heard of this, climate change harming health,” she said. “I clearly saw this is going to make my job harder” in emergency medicine.
Now, Salas said, she sees ample evidence of climate change in the exam room. After Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, for instance, a woman seeking refuge in Boston showed up with a bag of empty pill bottles and thrust it at Salas, asking for refills, she recalled. The patient hadn’t had her medications replenished for weeks because of the storm, whose destructive power was likely intensified by climate change, according to scientists.
Climate change presents many threats across the country, Salas noted: Heat stress can exacerbate mental illness, prompt more aggression and violence, and hurt pregnancy outcomes. Air pollution worsens respiratory problems. High temperatures can weaken the effectiveness of medications such as albuterol inhalers and EpiPens.
The delivery of health care is also being disrupted. Disasters like Hurricane Maria have caused shortages in basic medical supplies. Last November, nearly 250 California hospitals lost power in planned outages to prevent wildfires. Natural disasters can interrupt the treatment of cancer, leading to earlier death.
Even a short heat wave can upend routine care: On a hot day last summer, for instance, power failed at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and firefighters had to move patients down from the top floor because it was too hot, Salas said.
Other effects of climate change vary by region. Salas and others urged clinicians to look out for unexpected conditions, such as Lyme disease and West Nile virus, that are spreading to new territory as temperatures rise.
In California, where wildfires have become a fact of life, researchers are scrambling to document the ways smoke inhalation is affecting patients’ health, including higher rates of acute bronchitis, pneumonia, heart attacks, strokes, irregular heartbeats and premature births.
Researchers have shown that heavy exposure to wildfire smoke can change the DNA of immune cells, but they’re uncertain whether that will have a long-term impact, said Dr. Mary Prunicki, director of air pollution and health research at Stanford University’s center for allergy and asthma research.
“It causes a lot of anxiety,” Prunicki said. “Everyone feels helpless because we simply don’t know — we’re not able to give concrete facts back to the patient.”
In Denver, Dr. Jay Lemery, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said he’s seeing how people with chronic illnesses like diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease suffer more with extreme heat.
There’s no medical code for “hottest day of the year,” Lemery said, “but we see it; it’s real. Those people are struggling in a way that they wouldn’t” because of climbing temperatures, he said. “Climate change right now is a threat multiplier — it makes bad things worse.”
Lemery and Prunicki are among the doctors planning to organize events in their respective regions to educate peers about climate-related threats to patients’ health, through the Climate Crisis and Clinical Practice Initiative, the effort launched in Boston in February.
“There are so many really brilliant, smart clinicians who have no clue” about the link between climate change and human health, said Lemery, who has also written a textbook and started a fellowship on the topic.
Salas said she sometimes hears pushback that climate change is too political for the exam room. But despite misleading information from the fossil fuel industry, she said, the science is clear. Based on the evidence, 97% of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming.
Salas said that, as she sat with the distraught mother of the 4-year-old girl with asthma in Boston, her decision to broach the topic was easy.
“Of course I have to talk to her about climate change,” Salas said, “because it’s impairing her ability to care for her daughter.”
Melissa Bailey is a Kaiser Health News journalist.
Melissa Bailey: @mmbaily
Fence us in; flags like daffodils; white roofs
Fence Us In
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Some businesses plow on. Our cedar back fence blew down in Monday’s southerly gale. The fence is more important than ever because it provides us with a protected (including for our sometimes-volatile dog) outdoor green space in these claustrophobic times. Better that old barrier collapsing than the dead tree in an adjoining yard crashing down on our roof in a tropical storm (which Monday’s extratropical tempest reminded me of). When I was a kid we looked forward to tropical storms for providing us with new supplies of firewood.
Anyway, the fence guy, whose little company also deals with tree threats, showed up the next morning perhaps more eager to help than in less recessionary times. Government predictions call for a hefty hurricane season this year, and so he may have more customers than he can handle come August, September and October.
National Grid (the “nation,’’ by the way, is the United Kingdom) has planted little warning flags, looking from a distance like daffodils, all over the place in our neighborhood warning of gas lines below. Colorful warnings everywhere these days amidst the proliferating flowers.
A 35 °C (95 °F) heat reduction was observed on this modified bitumen roof with a white, reflective roof coating.
My younger daughter, who lives in, and is now trapped in, Brooklyn, sent some photos of rooftops that looked as if they’re covered with pristine snow. In fact, they’re simply painted white to reflect heat in the summer, in a reminder of a bigger problem than COVID-19 – global warming. A nice effect, as is the evening cheering of health-care workers from windows and front stoops.
Maybe it's better that we don't now
“Laptop Icon - We Used to Talk to Each Other ‘‘ (plaster), by Christine Palamidessi, at Galatea Fine Art’s (in Boston) online gallery
N.E. virus response: MIT leads smartphone tracking; Sanofi joins vaccine partnership; more
“Contact Tracing” ( encaustic monotype), by Nancy Whitcomb
From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)
BOSTON
As our region and our nation continue to grapple with the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic, The New England Council is using our blog as a platform to highlight some of the incredible work our members have undertaken to respond to the outbreak. Each day, we’ll post a round-up of updates on some of the initiatives underway among Council members throughout the region. We are also sharing these updates via our social media, and encourage our members to share with us any information on their efforts so that we can be sure to include them in these daily round-ups.
You can find all the Council’s information and resources related to the crisis in the special COVID-19 section of our Web site. This includes our COVID-19 Virtual Events Calendar, which provides information on upcoming COVID-19 Congressional town halls and webinars presented by NEC members, as well as our newly-released Federal Agency COVID-19 Guidance for Businesses page.
Here is the April 20 roundup:
Medical Response
MIT Leads Global Efforts for Smartphone Tracking – Around the world, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is supporting and leading efforts to track COVID-19 infections. Using Bluetooth signals emitted from smartphones to conduct “contact tracing” on those with access to phones could eliminate much of the work for state and local governments to identify infected individuals. Read more in The Boston Globe
Sanofi Enters Partnership to Speed Development of Vaccine Prototype – Sanofi has partnered with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to work together in developing a vaccine for the coronavirus. The two pharmaceutical companies will combine their existing supply chains and resources to expedite both clinical trials of their vaccine candidate and production should theirs prove effective. BioPharma Dive has more.
Boston University Medical School Students Graduate Early to Aid Local Hospitals – Students from Boston University’s medical school have graduated early to begin their residencies in the midst of the global pandemic. Those newly-minted doctors who choose to remain in Massachusetts will receive automatic 90-day provisional licenses to allow them to begin practicing immediately. Read more in The Boston Business Journal.
Economic/Business Continuity Response
MEMIC Releases Workforce Guidance Hub – The Maine Employers Mutual Insurance Company (MEMIC) has launched a resource center for employees to inform them of proper safety precautions and legal protections offered to them as they navigate working during the pandemic. Additionally, the site offers additional aid to policyholders, including the suspension of non-renewals and adjustments to payment plans. Read more.
UMass Memorial Launches Employee Monitoring Program – To ensure that the hospital can remain open safely, UMass Memorial Medical Center has initiated a new program requiring all staff to log if they are experiencing any symptoms of COVID-19 before starting a shift. The measures aim to protect patients and staff as they work to contain the spread of the virus. The Worcester Business Journal has more.
Verizon Continuing to Expand 5G Network – Despite suspending marketing launches, Verizon is still on-track to launch 5G internet service in 60 cities by the end of the year. The provider will be using state-of-the-art technology to expand and improve access across the country, with cities such as Providence and Chicago already seeing 5G being implemented. Read more from PC Magazine.
Community Response
Assumption College, in Worcester, Establishes $3 Million Financial Aid Fund for Students – As its families and students are affected by the pandemic, Assumption College has established a $3 million fund to help its community offset tuition and room costs. The Assumption Coronavirus Financial Aid Relief Fund provides grants for those affected by the virus through job loss, furloughs, reduced hours, or caring for someone with COVID-19. Read more from The Worcester Business Journal.
Bank of America Gives $100,000 to Nonprofits Serving Homeless Population – Bank of America has provided a grant of $100,000 to Father Bill’s and MainSpring, a nonprofit based in Brockton, MA that operates a shelter for the homeless. The funds will be used to maintain the 60 beds in heated tents for shelter clients. The Enterprise has more.
Stay tuned for more updates each day, and follow us on Twitter for more frequent updates on how Council members are contributing to the response to this global health crisis.
The Boston Guardian
Looking across the Charles River to the Back Bay neighborhood, where The Boston Guardian is based.
For exciting and thorough coverage of Boston, please hit this link to The Boston Guardian.
Robert P. Alvarez: Don't let pandemic ravage the November election, too
The Balsams, a fancy resort hotel in Dixville Notch, N.H., in the White Mountains, and the site of the "midnight vote" that makes it the first place to vote in U.S. primary and general elections in every election year.
A ballot from the 1936 elections in Nazi Germany — nice and simple!
Via OtherWords.org
First, it was a public-health crisis. Now, it’s ravaging the economy. And for it’s next trick, the coronavirus is threatening to undermine the 2020 election.
Unless, that is, Congress steps in to ensure we can vote by mail.
If you’re curious what the worst case scenario is, look no further than Wisconsin, where a gerrymandered GOP legislature forced voters to the polls over the orders of the Democratic governor — and against the advice of public-health officials.
Wisconsin Republicans not only declined to send every voter an absentee ballot. They also appealed — successfully — to the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court to prevent voters who received their ballot late (through no fault of their own) from having their votes counted.
It was a transparent ploy by Wisconsin Republicans to support a conservative incumbent on the state Supreme Court by suppressing the vote. It failed — his liberal-leaning challenger won — but they struck a huge blow to voting rights in the process.
Fallout from the coronavirus exposed structural weaknesses in everything from our health care and education systems to market supply chains and labor rights. It also made painfully obvious the fragility of our electoral process.
Unfortunately, states have received little help from Congress in shoring up their elections. Just $400 million of the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill was earmarked for helping states cover new elections-related expenses stemming from the pandemic.
When it comes to providing the financial support necessary to ensure our elections are safe, accessible, fair, and secure, the last coronavirus response bill was a dereliction of duty.
Will it be safe to gather in large numbers by November? And even if it is, will voters feel comfortable standing in line, for up to six hours in some cases (thanks to GOP poll closures, but that’s another story), next to strangers?
If not, it’s fair to assume some voters will elect not to vote due to safety concerns. And that should undermine public confidence in the outcome.
The obvious solution is expanding voting by mail.
Unfortunately, Donald Trump is fiercely opposed to this. “They had things, levels of voting, that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” he said.
Let that sink in. The president — who himself voted by mail — openly views the right to vote as a threat to his presidency and party.
Americans shouldn’t have to choose between their health and their right to vote. In the midst of this pandemic, states with overly cumbersome processes for absentee voting are complicit in voter suppression. Period.
To fix this, we need to ensure no-excuse absentee voting in the next coronavirus bill — and that’s the bare minimum. Beyond that, we also need pre-paid postage for mail-in ballots and an extended early in-person voting period.
We need accessible, in-person polling places with public safety standards that are up to snuff. That means election workers must know they’re safe, and must have access to personal protective equipment.
We also need to develop and bolster online voter registration systems, and run public information campaigns giving voters localized, up-to-date voting guidelines.
To complete this nationwide, we’re looking at a $2 billion price tag. That’s just 0.1 percent of the $2 trillion package Congress already passed — and if it ensures our democracy doesn’t die in this pandemic, it’s worth every penny.
Robert P. Alvarez is a media relations associate at the Institute for Policy Studies. He writes about criminal justice reform and voting rights.
A Hub of fanaticism
The Massachusetts State House displaying a banner in honor of the Red Sox's 2013 World Series appearance
“Boston is so laced with jerseys that you can be dressed head to toe in team apparel and no one will look twice. ‘‘
— David Walton, an actor and Boston native
Read more: https://www.wiseoldsayings.com/boston-quotes/#ixzz6KAmmfWZK
'At the feet of my hatred'
Marina in Stamford, Conn.
Buds on an oak tree. The species is one of the most common in southern New England
“Connecticut lays itself at the feet of my hatred.
The accent the Ischians use when not among themselves
does not point to but is Connecticut.
Red by oak. Blue by May.
White by sailcloth
jacketed on the booms in the marinas.
— From “One Connecticut,’’ by D.H. Tracy
Chris Powell: In the COVID-19 crisis, both sides threaten liberty; block those raises!
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Fortunately it was just another brief bout of MAGA-lomania the other day when President Trump declared that he would decide when states lift the health and safety restrictions they have imposed because of the virus epidemic. Several governors, including Connecticut's Ned Lamont, quickly protested that the Constitution reserves such power to the states. New York's Andrew Cuomo protested most colorfully, noting that the president is not a king.
But amid the epidemic constitutional rights are under assault by many elected officials throughout the country, Democratic as well as Republican. Several states are imposing or threatening to impose penalties on religious services that exceed recommended attendance levels, in spite of the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of religion and assembly.
Connecticut isn't immune to such assaults. Lamont skirted the Second Amendment's guarantee of the right to bear arms by telling gun shops they could remain open only by appointment. State Attorney General William Tong has joined other state attorneys general in a lawsuit to suppress publication of plans for guns that can be made by 3D printers, and this week Tong urged the federal government to criminalize such publication -- that is, to criminalize mere information, as if the First Amendment doesn't also guarantee speech and press rights.
The objection to making guns with 3D printers is that they can be manufactured without legally required serial numbers. But any gun can be, and the designs for many weapons have been published. If mere information can be criminalized in regard to gun designs, it can be criminalized for whatever government doesn't want people to know. Of course there would be no end to that.
Trump can't tell states when to lift their health and safety restrictions. But neither can Tong tell people what they can publish and read, no matter how politically incorrect it may be.
xxx
Yankee Institute investigative journalist Marc Fitch this week reminded Connecticut that as of July 1 state government employees are due to start receiving raises costing at least $353 million a year. Fitch noted that Democratic governors in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia are suspending state employee raises until the immense financial cost of the epidemic can be calculated.
So the Yankee Institute urged Governor Lamont to suspend the raises as well, but it's not clear that he can. For the raises are part of state government's current contract with the state employee union coalition, one of the many lamentable legacies of Connecticut's previous administration, and the federal Constitution forbids states from making any law impairing the obligation of contracts.
It's bad enough that the wages and benefits of state and municipal government employees have been completely protected even as the governor's own orders have thrown tens of thousands of people out of work in the private sector. For state government to pay raises while unemployment explodes in the private sector and state tax collections collapse would be crazy, more proof that nothing matters more to state government than the contentment of its own employees, whose unions long have controlled the majority political party.
But the governor is not helpless here. Using his emergency powers he could suspend collective bargaining for state employees and binding arbitration of their contracts for six months at a time or "modify" those laws to strengthen public administration during the emergency. He should do so, for as the treacle on television says, we're all supposed to be in this together.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.
David Warsh: Getting beyond despair: Three prongs to address climate change
— By Adam Peterson
Flooding caused by Super Storm Sandy in Marblehead, Mass., on Oct. 29, 2012
From economicprincipals.com
SOMERVILLE, Mass.
Weighed down by not knowing what to expect of the coronavirus timetable, I spent a day last week reading about climate change. Specifically, I read Three Prongs for Prudent Climate Policy, by Joseph Aldy and Richard Zeckhauser, both of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
Paradoxically I came away feeling better. Grim though the situation they describe is, theirs is anything but a counsel of despair.
For three decades, advocates for climate change policy have simultaneously emphasized the urgency of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and provided unrealistic reassurances of the feasibility of doing so. It hasn’t worked out, say Alby and Zeckhauser.
The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 imposed binding commitments on industrial nations to reduce emissions below 1990 levels in a decade. They exceeded them. Even so, global carbon dioxide emission grew 57 percent over the same ten years, because developing nations hadn’t joined the accord.
So the Paris Agreement of 2015 established “pledge and review” commitments by from virtually every nation in the world, designed to prevent warming of more than 2 degrees centigrade by 2030. But even if every country honors its pledge, the policy is unlikely to succeed in meeting the target, say Aldy and Zeckhauser,
That’s because what’s already in the atmosphere is a stock, not a flow. From the pre-industrial period to 1990, carbon dioxide concentration increased by about 75 parts per million. Since 1990, CO2 has increased by another 55 parts per million, and despite the agreements, the rate of increase is apparently accelerating.
Meanwhile, global temperature have increased around half a degree centigrade in the last 30 years. They are likely to rise faster in the years ahead. Storms, droughts, floods, fires, melting will increase. Mass migrations in response to these weather events have barely begun.
So, the authors say, after 30 years of single-minded stress on emission reductions in climate change discourse, two other policy prongs are urgently needed.
One of these headings, adaptation, is well-known and uncontroversial, except that it costs a lot in more complicate applications than in simple adjustments. Moving heating plants from basements to upper stories so that equipment is not damaged by flooding is simple and relatively cheap. Sea barriers and storm gates to protect coastal cities are another. The sea wall to protect the Venice lagoon is almost finished, but the Army Corps of Engineers plan to protect New York City would take 25 years to construct.
The other strut, amelioration, is considerably less discussed, mainly for fear of the ease with which the remedy may be embraced, once the cost differences are better understood. “Solar radiation management” means putting a sunscreen into the sky – most likely sulfur particles injected into the upper atmosphere by specially built airplanes. Major volcanic eruptions over the centuries have proven that the principle will work, though myriad details of its practical application are hazy. What’s clear is that so-called “geo-engineering” would cost considerably less than emissions reduction or adaptation, especially if time were of the essence.
The only place I see radiation management brought up regularly in the things I read is in Holman Jenkins’s twice-a-week column in the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal. The other day Jenkins noted Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’s intention to spend $10 billion to fight climate change. Don’t spend it touting nuclear power, Jenkins advised; Bill Gates is already working on that. And never mind carbon taxation; that must come, if it comes, from the Left. Instead, why not atmospheric aerosol research?
Right though Jenkins may be about the possibilities of solar-radiation mitigation, he is preaching to those ready to be converted. That’s why I was interested in the Aldy-Zeckhauser paper: they are several steps closer to the mainstream. Aldy served as the Special Assistant to the President for Energy and Environment in 2009-2010. Zeckhauser works in in the tradition of tough-minded cooperation pioneered by his mentor, the policy intellectual (and Nobel laureate) Thomas Schelling.
But if we can’t handle a virus, what hope is there of devising effective policies against climate change? That’s just the point: we can handle a virus. It just takes a year, or, probably, two. The problem of arresting global warming is much more difficult, but if you believe the science, there can be no doubt that disastrous events will sooner or later cause public opinion around the world to come around
Wisdom begins with the recognition that there are three policy prongs with which to address the problem of greenhouse gases, not just one. Slowing the effects of carbon dioxide emissions – while continuing to slow emissions themselves – turns on the next election, and the two or three elections after that.
David Warsh, an economic historian and a veteran columnist, is proprietor of economicprincipals.com, where this essay first appeared.
© 2020 DAVID WARSH, PROPRIETOR
web design by PISH P
Monumental way to start and end a train trip
Back when the public wanted grandeur in its infrastructure, Boston’s North Station in 1910. The building was opened in 1893 and was torn down in 1928.
The 'irresistibly touching' Concord River
The iteration of the Old North Bridge over the Concord River in 1900, a bit before Henry James’s visit. The original bridge (see picture below) was the site of the Battle of Concord, on April 19, 1775, at the opening of the American Revolution. The bridge was frequently replaced in Colonial times because of flooding.
“I hung over Concord River then as long as I could, and recalled how Thoreau, Hawthome, Emerson himself, have expressed with due sympathy the sense of this full, slow, sleepy, meadowy flood, which sets its pace and takes its twists like some large obese benevolent person, scarce so frankly unsociable as to pass you at all. It had watched the Fight, it even now confesses, without a quickening of its current, and it draws along the woods and the orchards and the fields with the purr of a mild domesticated cat who rubs against the family and the furniture. Not to be recorded, at best, however, I think, never to emerge from the state of the inexpressible, in respect to the spot, by the bridge, where one most lingers, is the sharpest suggestion of the whole scene—the power diffused in it which makes it, after all these years, or perhaps indeed by reason of their number, so irresistibly touching.’’
— Henry James, in The American Scene (1907)
A 1775 drawing by Amos Doolittle of the engagement at the North Bridge based on witness accounts his own inspection of the bridge
The present bridge, built in 1956, is an approximate replica of the bridge, built in 1760, that stood in the battle.
Stretches of the Concord River are gorgeous.
Drawn to power
“Power: Chatham on Cape Cod” (archival pigment print), by Bobby Baker. Copyright Bobby Baker Fine Art Photography
Lindsey Gumb: Pandemic means now is the time to widen access to learning materials
Open Access logo, originally designed by Public Library of Science
From The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)
BRISTOL, R.I.
Residential college and university campuses across New England abruptly closed their doors last month during the COVID-19 outbreak, and while some schools were in session and students were asked to vacate, many others were on spring break and students were asked not to return. In both situations, students found themselves at home or in new environments where they waited to see how their education would progress online and remotely.
Among many variables associated with the chaos and stress of the pandemic, a lack of direct access to learning materials like textbooks has arisen as one of the major roadblocks to student learning in the era of COVID-19.
As a nation, we have continued to observe a sharp rise in textbook prices since 1977, which leaves many students enrolled at postsecondary institutions, public or independent, unable to afford the required learning materials for their courses. As a Band-Aid solution, students often rely on borrowing a copy of the book or material from a classmate or the campus library—options that became obsolete overnight when campuses closed and we entered this new world of social distancing and online learning and course delivery. When access barriers to learning materials like textbooks exist, either financial or circumstantial (as in the case of COVID-19), we know that students’ grades and academic trajectory suffer, and ultimately institutional retention can take a hit. Having been laid off from part-time jobs, denied unemployment and mostly left out of the COVID-19 stimulus package, college students have enough stress and anxiety right now—the last thing they should be worrying about is not having access to their textbooks. Enter OER (Open Educational Resources).
Are those “solutions” really OER?
Textbook prices are only part of the access barrier issue. As teaching and learning shifts fully online during the COVID-19 pandemic, educators have been forced to more closely consider and analyze how copyright restrictions set by publishers may limit their students’ access to these essential learning materials. The last few weeks have shown more than ever why true OER have significant value in ensuring students have access to their learning materials, because they are free and have licenses that allow for reuse and retention without limitation. This is not the case with publisher content like textbooks or the many online learning “solutions” they offer in which access is only semester-long, not in perpetuity like OER. These materials, even if offered free of charge by the publisher right now during the pandemic, will inevitably shuffle back behind a paywall at the end of the semester, disproportionately harming students affected by conditions out of their control brought on by COVID-19 (displacement, illness, caretaking responsibilities, etc.) and who may need to retake courses and need access to the materials again.
OER providers such as Lumen Learning, Saylor Academy and the Open Course Library have full online courses ready to be adopted and easily integrated into learning management systems with very little effort needed by faculty members. The content is customizable. Students have immediate, free access, and unlike publisher content, access to the content won’t be lost when the semester ends.
OER, however, is not and cannot be the blanket solution for ensuring students have access to their learning materials during a time like this. In fact, we’ve heard stories from across the region of institutions handing out technology and hotspots to help address the digital inequities that exist for so many students. The Community College of Rhode Island awarded nearly 700 students grants to acquire computers or gain internet access with an additional 61 iPads distributed to students who requested them. OER are primarily digital resources, and students need an Internet connection to at least initially download the resource onto a device. While they are free, OER will still require other institutional support systems to make sure our students have everything they need to equitably participate in their remote learning.
Freeing information
This isn’t just about students’ access to textbooks. Also at issue is the current publishing industry’s suppression of access to information. SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Research Coalition) defines Open Access (OA) as the “free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment. OA ensures that anyone can access and use these results—to turn ideas into industries and breakthroughs into better lives.” The American Library Association and academic librarians have long been advocating for OA policies that remove barriers to scholarly, peer-reviewed research that are typically only accessible to those who have an active academic affiliation such as faculty, students, staff at colleges and universities. Institutions pay outrageous annual subscription fees on behalf of their community members to access this content, and those who have no affiliation pay a fee to access each article.
We’ve seen recently that many news organizations, such as The New York Times, Bloomberg News and The Atlantic, have removed the paywall on articles pertaining to COVID-19 so that the public has access to pertinent information that could potentially be lifesaving. OA fosters the same spirit except, instead of news, the information is peer-reviewed research, often generated by researchers through federal grant funding, aka “your tax dollars.” New research, particularly in the medical field, can have an immediate impact on public health. If that information is behind a paywall, only the privileged will have access to that potentially life-saving research. In January, a Washington Post article, Scientists are unraveling the Chinese coronavirus with unprecedented speed and openness, strongly illustrated this point. The genome sequence of the coronavirus was posted in an open access repository for genetic information and literally overnight, Andrew Mesecar, a professor of cancer structural biology at Purdue University, got a hold of it and started analyzing the DNA sequence. The immediate domino effect of having this information freely available has led to an international collaboration of scientists working together to aid in this public health crisis. Victoria Heath and Brigitte Vézina’s recent blog post for Creative Commons, Now is the time for Open Access Policies—here’s why, reminds us that “we must cooperate effectively to respond to an unprecedented global health emergency. The mantra “when we share, everyone wins” applies now more than ever.”
Robin DeRosa, director of the Open Learning & Teaching Collaborative at Plymouth (N.H.) State University, notes “there is a link between public health and Open. The open sharing of research and data can help us quickly collaborate to find medical solutions. Open pedagogy can help us involve our students in our fields’ responses to the pandemic and remind us that the digital divide can complicate remote learning. And OER can remove barriers for students and faculty who need to shift to more ubiquitously available resources. Open is about public infrastructure more than it is a set of free textbooks.”
For more on the basics and supporting research of OER, check out Open Matters: A Brief Intro and see additional resources at the Open Education and Open Educational Resources page on NEBHE’s website.
Lindsey Gumb is an assistant professor and the scholarly communications librarian at Roger Williams University, in Bristol, where she has been leading OER adoption, revision and creation since 2016, focusing heavily on OER-enabled pedagogy collaborations with faculty. She co-chairs the Rhode Island Open Textbook Initiative Steering Committee and the is Fellow for Open Education at the New England Board of Higher Education. She was awarded a 2019-20 OER Research Fellowship to conduct research on undergraduate student awareness of copyright and fair use and open licensing as it pertains to their participation in OER-enabled pedagogy projects.
(Editor’s note: New England Diary’s editor, Robert Whitcomb, is a former member of The New England Board of Higher Education’s Editorial Advisory Board.)
Clock tower at Roger Williams University, in Mount Hope Bay
— Phtoto by Notyourbroom
'Sanity of stone'
The Barre (Vt.) World War 1 Memorial, "Youth Triumphant", by sculptor C. Paul Jennewein. The Barre area is known for its granite and marble industries.
“There under elms in glacial light
Survival forced me to atone:
The heart exchanged its rich excess
For starker sanity of stone.’’
— From “Sojourn in Vermont,’’ by Israel Smith
The Rock of Ages quarry, in Barre, Vt.
— Photo by Mfwills
Hope and doubt on the beach
On Westhampton Beach, on Long Island
— Photos by Jacob Aaron Schiffman