Chris Powell: ‘Affirmative action’ didn’t do much for Connecticut

The triumph of talent: Jackie Robinson

MANCHESTER, Conn. 

Despite the hysteria about the U.S. Supreme Court's decision prohibiting racial preferences in college admissions -- a policy long euphemized as "affirmative action" -- as a practical matter the country no longer needs the practice if it ever did. For government agencies and larger businesses long have been striving to hire and promote members of minority groups and women, either from the belief that such integration is a moral necessity or from a desire to be considered politically correct.

As public education eliminated its standards and declined steadily in recent decades, even smaller businesses whose managers were not especially enlightened began to discover that their prejudices could be expensive -- that they were often fortunate to find a qualified applicant of any background. Thus they realized what Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo Durocher impressed on his reflexively racist players when they threatened to revolt if a Black man, Jackie Robinson, was to join the team, in 1947:

“I don't care if the guy is yellow or black or has stripes like a #@%&# zebra. I'm the manager of this team and I say he plays. What's more, I say he can make us all a lot of money. And if any of you #@%&# don't want it, I'll see that you're traded.”

The American creed was never better expressed, nor better vindicated. That is, merit will win in the end. Money doesn't care who spends it. Show that you can do the job if given a chance.

Members of minority groups applying for white-collar jobs began figuring this out 40 years ago when they inserted into their resumes markers of their minority status -- sometimes subtly, sometimes not. Far from handicapping their applications, minority status was conveying advantage. It still does -- if  the applicant is reasonably competent.

The country's integration problem is not so much on the employers’ end anymore but on the qualifications end -- and it may be worse than it was prior to enactment of civil rights legislation.

This is easily seen in Connecticut, where Gov. Ned Lamont often acknowledges that the state's manufacturers are unable to fill about 100,000 well-paying jobs with excellent benefits. Meanwhile every year the state's high schools, especially those in the cities, graduate thousands of students, nearly all of them members of minority groups, who have never mastered basic subjects and so face lives of menial work, inadequate insurance, extra physical and mental health risks, housing insecurity, and propensity to crime.

These young people haven't needed help getting into college. They have needed help getting into life  but have gotten it neither at home nor in lower education.

Indeed, Connecticut long has been notorious for its racial-performance gap in lower education. State government lately has decided that the solution is a little more tutoring for failing students -- many of whom often are not showing up at school in the first place, being chronically absent, perhaps in the confidence they well may share with whatever parents they have that they will be promoted and given diplomas no matter what -- confidence that, indifferent as Connecticut is to results in lower education, the state might as well award high school diplomas with birth certificates.

In any case a high-school diploma no longer automatically construes any sort of education and does not impress admissions officers at serious colleges nor personnel officers at advanced manufacturing companies that need skilled employees. A high school diploma is often an empty credential, as many college diplomas are.

"Affirmative action" never did much for Connecticut or the country. It didn't educate many young people. Mainly it advanced the less qualified and penalized those who took their studies seriously, especially students of Asian descent. It provided camouflage for the underlying problem, the welfare-induced collapse of the Black family famously noted in a research paper almost 60 years ago by the sociologist and future politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan, among the last of the true liberals.

Action in that  respect is needed more urgently than ever, but in Connecticut it can't even be discussed.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

This old house

“Inward” (oil on linen), by Philip Frey, in his show “Rejoicing in Color,’’ at Edgewater Gallery at the Falls, Middlebury, Vt., through Sept. 5. He lives and works in Downeast Maine.

Bloody class issues in Boston

The thing about The Departed, the x-factor that people can't quite put their finger on, is that it deals clearly with class and accent all these things that are fundamental to Boston, but previously anomalous or even prohibited in demotic American films.

—- William Monahan, screenwriter for The 2006 film The Departed

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The movie is loosely based on the real-life Boston Winter Hill Gang; the character Colin Sullivan is based on the corrupt FBI agent John Connolly, while the character Frank Costello is based on Irish-American gangster and crime boss Whitey Bulger.

Lit-up in Maine

Ernst Haas (1921–1986), “Reflection, Revolving Door, New York City, 1975” ( dye transfer print,), by Ernst Haas, in the group show “Drawn to the Light,’’ at the Portland Museum of Art, Sept. 10.

The museum says the show features about 100 works of photography and "demonstrates the incredible vitality of the artists that passed through Maine and the wide influence of the workshops throughout the photographic realm."

Economics lessons for kids in waiting rooms

UMass Memorial Medical Center at dawn

— Photo by Cxw1044

Edited from a New England Council report

“UMass Memorial Health‘s Child Health Equity Center, in Worcester, has partnered with the financial literacy nonprofit FitMoney to teach children about economic stability while in waiting rooms.  

“Using the interactive game $uperSquad, children learn financial decision-making skills related to saving, budgeting, taxes, and careers. The program aims to address health inequities by promoting economic stability in marginalized communities. The initiative, available on tablets in UMass Memorial Children’s Medical Center waiting rooms, engages families and continues financial literacy education beyond the clinic environment. FitMoney hopes to learn more about the program’s impact through the partnership. 

“‘We believe that all children should have this basic financial literacy in the exact same way that we believe that all children should have literacy,’ said Alison LeBlanc, executive director of the Child Health Equity Center at UMass Memorial.’’  

‘Me myself in the summer heaven’

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs

Always wrong to the light, so never seeing

Deeper down in the well than where the water

Gives me back in a shining surface picture

Me myself in the summer heaven godlike

Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.

Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,

I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,

Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,

Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.

Water came to rebuke the too clear water.

One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple

Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,

Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?

Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

— “For Once, Then Something,’’ by Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Lapham's Quarterly can be 'transformative' in the classroom

 Lapham’s Quarterly | Education Program 

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––Michael Fitts, Social Studies, Grades 6-8  

Homestead Middle School, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, FL 

Public school (K-12) with 75-100% of students living at or below the federal poverty level 

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History can rhyme.

Fruits de mer

“Common periwinkle (Littorina littorea) and Acorn Barnacle (Semibalanus balanoides)” (acrylic on Arches paper), by Julie Baer, in the group show “20 Years on the Edge,’ at the Atlantic Works Gallery, Boston, through Aug. 26

—- Photo courtesy: Atlantic Works Gallery

Map by MrJARichard

The gallery says the show features the work of “Atlantic Works Gallery members both new and old, from the past 20 years of the gallery's existence. The opening also celebrates the relationship between the gallery and the East Boston community.”

Llewellyn King: U.S. politicians are so bad because the campaign process has become so ghastly

“The Demagogue,’’ by Jose Orozco

WEST WARWICK, R.I.

I am often asked why in a country of such talent and imagination the U.S. political class is so feeble. Why are our politicians so uninspiring, to say nothing of ignorant and oafish.

The short answer is because political life is awful and potential candidates have to weigh the impact on their families, plus the wear and tear of becoming a candidate, let alone winning.

I would name three barriers that keep good people out of politics: the money, the primary system and the media scrutiny.

Taking these in order, you must have access to enormous funding to be a candidate. Jefferson Smith, the character in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the 1939 movie starring James Stewart, was appointed to a Senate seat. He didn’t have to subject his rectitude to the electoral process.

A candidate for Congress must get substantial funding from the outset and be prepared to spend much of his or her career raising money, which frequently means bending your judgment to the will of donors. Yes, Mr. Smith, to some extent the system is inherently corrupt.

I asked a major political consultant what he asks a candidate before going to work for him or her. First is money: Do you have your own or can you raise it? Second is skeletons in the closet: Have you been arrested for indecent exposure, drunk-driving or other offenses?

Finally, the consultant told me, he asks a candidate: What do you stand for. In short, the mechanisms of politics trump principle. A member of the House once told me that he spent much of his time meeting with donors and attending fundraisers. “You’ve got to do it,” he said.

In the days of the smoke-filled rooms – there really was a lot of smoke -- the party, the professionals, prevailed. In the primary-based system, the odds are on those who are extreme and appeal to the fringes of their party ideology. The party doesn’t shape today’s candidates, they shape the party.

Massachusetts Gov. and then U.S. Sen. Leverett Saltonstall (1892-1979), a classic moderate New England Republican, nicknamed “Salty.’’

Look at the Republicans, little recognizable from the party of old; the party which was held in check by moderate New England stalwarts. Or look at the way the Democrats fight to avoid falling into the chasm of the far left. Once the Democrats were held in check by labor, which gave the party an institutional center.

On the face of it, the primary system favors grassroots democracy and the individual. In fact, it favors those with rich friends, who will cough up.

Finally, there is the media scrutiny. If you want to run for office, you become a public plaything. Everything you ever wrote or said can and will be dredged up. Opposition-research operatives will interview old lovers; check on what you wrote in the school yearbook; rake through your social-media posts, and look for that unfortunate slip of the tongue in a local television interview years ago will be reprised on the evening news. You have a target on your back, and it will be there every day you are in office.

This delving into every corner of a life is a huge barrier that keeps a lot of talent out of politics. Anyone who has ever had a disputed business dealing, a DUI arrest (not even a conviction) or a messy divorce is advised to forego a political career, no matter how talented and how much real expertise Mr. Smith might bring to the state house or Congress.

Run for political office and you put your family at risk, your private life on display and, having been hung out to dry, you may not even win.

These are some of the factors that might explain why the Congress is so risible and why such outrageously fringy people now occupy high office.

Having observed politics on three continents, I firmly believe that it needs strong institutions in the form of local political associations and party structure, and that candidates should be judged on the body of their work, not on a slip of the tongue or an indiscretion.

However, the selection of candidates is always a hard call. If parties have too much control over the system, party hacks are favored and new, quality candidates are shut out.

If primaries continue as they have, the fringes triumph. Just look at the Congress — a smorgasbord of wackiness.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com, and he’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.

whchronicle.com

‘Pure purple’

Asters

“Wild aster, bee balm, phlox, chrysanthemum

Proclaim pure purple in the pallid dawn,

Asserting there’s more blossoming to come….’’

— From “Late Summer Purple,’’ by Robert Pack (born 1929), American poet and teacher who taught at Middlebury College, in Vermont, from 1973 to 1995

Llewellyn King: We get bad politicians because running for office has become so ghastly

“The Demagogue,’’ by Jose Clemente Orozco

WEST WARWICK, R.I.

I am often asked why in a country of such talent and imagination the U.S. political class is so feeble. Why are our politicians so uninspiring, to say nothing of ignorant and oafish.

The short answer is because political life is awful and potential candidates have to weigh the impact on their families, plus the wear and tear of becoming a candidate, let alone winning.

I would name three barriers that keep good people out of politics: the money, the primary system and the media scrutiny.

Taking these in order, you must have access to enormous funding to be a candidate. Jefferson Smith, the character in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the 1939 movie starring James Stewart, was appointed to a Senate seat. He didn’t have to subject his rectitude to the electoral process.

A candidate for Congress must get substantial funding from the outset and be prepared to spend much of his or her career raising money, which frequently means bending your judgment to the will of donors. Yes, Mr. Smith, to some extent the system is inherently corrupt.

I asked a major political consultant what he asks a candidate before going to work for him or her. First is money: Do you have your own or can you raise it? Second is skeletons in the closet: Have you been arrested for indecent exposure, drunk-driving or other offenses?

Finally, the consultant told me, he asks a candidate: What do you stand for. In short, the mechanisms of politics trump principle. A member of the House once told me that he spent much of his time meeting with donors and attending fundraisers. “You’ve got to do it,” he said.

In the days of the smoke-filled rooms – there really was a lot of smoke -- the party, the professionals, prevailed. In the primary-based system, the odds are on those who are extreme and appeal to the fringes of their party ideology. The party doesn’t shape today’s candidates, they shape the party.

Look at the Republicans, little recognizable from the party of old; the party which was held in check by moderate New England stalwarts. Or look at the way the Democrats fight to avoid falling into the chasm of the far left. Once the Democrats were held in check by labor, which gave the party an institutional center.

On the face of it, the primary system favors grassroots democracy and the individual. In fact, it favors those with rich friends, who will cough up.

Finally, there is the media scrutiny. If you want to run for office, you become a public plaything. Everything you ever wrote or said can and will be dredged up. Opposition-research operatives will interview old lovers; check on what you wrote in the school yearbook; rake through your social-media posts, and look for that unfortunate slip of the tongue in a local television interview years ago will be reprised on the evening news. You have a target on your back, and it will be there every day you are in office.

This delving into every corner of a life is a huge barrier that keeps a lot of talent out of politics. Anyone who has ever had a disputed business dealing, a DUI arrest (not even a conviction) or a messy divorce is advised to forego a political career, no matter how talented and how much real expertise Mr. Smith might bring to the state house or Congress.

Run for political office and you put your family at risk, your private life on display and, having been hung out to dry, you may not even win.

These are some of the factors that might explain why the Congress is so risible and why such outrageously fringy people now occupy high office.

Having observed politics on three continents, I firmly believe that it needs strong institutions in the form of local political associations and party structure, and that candidates should be judged on the body of their work, not on a slip of the tongue or an indiscretion.

However, the selection of candidates is always a hard call. If parties have too much control over the system, party hacks are favored and new, quality candidates are shut out.

If primaries continue as they have, the fringes triumph. Just look at the Congress — a smorgasbord of wackiness.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com, and he’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.

whchronicle.com

‘Into yellow froth’

The Jenckes Spinning Company textile-factory complex in Pawtucket, R.I., one of many old factories along the Blackstone River.

— Photo by Kenneth C. Zirkel

— Photo by Rosser1954

“Overhead the sea blows upside down across Rhode Island.

slub clump slub clump

Charlie drops out. Carl steps in

sllub clump

No hitch in the sequence….

They lay the bricks that build the mills

that shock the Blackstone River into yellow froth.’’

— From “The Tragedy of Bricks,’’ by Galway Kinnell (19270-2014), Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. He was a native of Rhode Island who became a Vermont resident.

Delirious duo

"The Two of Them" (mixed media sculpture), by Livia Linden, in the Greater Than the Sum of Parts group show at Galatea Fine Art, Boston, Aug. 4-27.

The gallery says:

“Fabric, thread, wool, reeds, paper, wire and even plastic are magical through the eyes and in the hands of a fiber artist. As they reinterpret old designs and reinvent old techniques, fiber artists create new visions.

Beauty and bathos in The Berkshires

Mt. Greylock State Reservation (Greylock summit on the far right), in The Berkshires. At 3,491 feet, Mt. Greylock is the tallest point in Massachusetts. The shape of the mountain reminded Herman Melville of a whale as he was writing Moby Dick.

— Photo by Protophobic

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

I drove out to The Berkshires last week for a couple of meetings. It brought back memories. In the late ‘50s’ I traveled there (by train from Boston!) to see relatives outside of Pittsfield in the little town of Richmond, and in the ‘70s I spent quite a few weekends staying with friends in a couple of towns along the Connecticut-Massachusetts line as an escape from New York City, where I was living and working.

One of my strongest recollections of the region is the election of 1970, when the Boston Herald Traveler (RIP) sent me to cover the vote in Berkshire County. I had little idea of how to go about that.  So I first went to Pittsfield, the county seat and biggest town, and started walking around its then-busy downtown – lots of industry still around --  came across a radio station and went in to introduce myself. Unlike now, when most radio stations are owned by chains, many stations were locally owned and provided hefty doses of local news and other stuff from Berkshire communities.

I explained my plight to the station manager –  ignorance – and he told me:  “Don’t worry about it. We’ll bring you the vote tallies tonight. Would you like a donut and a cup of coffee? Take a look at The Berkshire Eagle’’  (a great local paper that still lives). He then gave me an overview of the county, including its reliance on General Electric and other big manufacturers that employed thousands of people,  paid well and offered attractive fringe benefits. They also dumped large quantities of dangerous,  cancer-causing chemicals into the region’s many rivers. The cleanups continue to this day.

My bosses in Boston were surprised that I was able to so quickly send them so much information that night….

Anyway, my recent trip reminded me that most of the county’s industrial base is gone.\

And so, increasingly the area has depended on tourism as well as on affluent people (most, apparently, from the New York City area) who have second homes there amidst the lovely hills and the region’s astonishingly large collection of cultural organizations. Here’s a few: Tanglewood (music), Jacob’s Pillow (dance), Shakespeare & Company (theater), the Clark, Berkshire, Williams College, and Norman Rockwell museums and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Route 7, in particular, is Culture Gulch.

Not surprisingly, the region has long drawn famous painters and writers. After all, much of it is beautiful, and it’s close to New York and Boston. (I love that Herman Melville saw the shape of a whale while gazing at Mt. Greylock from his house in Pittsfield, as he worked on Moby Dick.)

People are drawn from far and wide to such lovely towns -- if maybe a tad too precious/quaint to some people -- as Stockbridge, Lenox, Williamstown, and Great Barrington, with their fine 19th Century houses, fancy restaurants, art galleries, bookstores,  weavers, health spas and big country estates.  Private equity,  hedge fund, and tech moguls have taken over some of the last, many built by “Robber Barons’’ from after the Civil War through the Roaring Twenties.

All these attractions, however, have helped raise housing costs by drawing rich people who have bid up property prices and made a living in the region unaffordable for many people who, decades ago, might have had good jobs in a local factory. But God bless a lot of the newcomers. Most aren’t showy -- they don’t want to be in the Hamptons or on Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard --- and some give big bucks to charities in The Berkshires, a couple of civic leaders explained to me.

In any event, away from the spiffy towns are gritty and depressed ones, with closed stores and ramshackle housing. But Pittsfield, anyway, seems to be coming back from its long economic depression.

How to make the Berkshires prosperous for more people? The tourism/ hospitality businesses don’t pay well and are quite seasonal. The state is pushing for more pharmaceuticals-manufacturing plants, and state officials have said that they want to make Berkshire County a biotech hub. Really? And perhaps the region could ramp up its farming sector to take advantage of the public’s growing desire for more locally-grown food and for less reliance on huge agribusinesses far away. The Berkshires’ proximity to the huge Greater New York market is a plus. But the hilly terrain puts a limit on the  size and number of farms, even as human-caused global warming extends the Berkshires’ growing season.

Global warming is also producing more flooding and other extreme weather events,  as I was reminded early last week when I came upon some roads washed out by the same system that did such damage in Vermont. Torrential rain in hilly areas can be devastating, and such downpours are becoming more frequent.  Local and state officials must push for new rules to discourage building in such potentially dangerous places as right along rivers. Reading about the disastrous flooding in such communities as Montpelier, Vt., last week reminded me of how strange it is that so much building has long taken place on riverbanks. Of course, people love being along water,  and some of the original construction there were mills using waterpower, but at what cost now? Presumably, more and more insurers will stop writing property insurance in such vulnerable places, which will block a lot of waterfront buildings. That’s happening in many places along the coast as sea levels rise.

The Berkshires used to be a pretty important ski region, but not so much any more;  the weather’s too unreliable and there are more environmental concerns about ski areas’ massive use of energy and water (for snowmaking) and erosion off the hills.

Much of Berkshire County, despite its bucolic reputation, is more exurban than rural. There are ugly malls with windswept parking lots in strips along roads without sidewalks and other depressing scenes of sprawl, some of which threaten water pollution. But local officials and the general population are more aware than they were just a few years ago of the need to control sprawl, by, among other ways, boosting public transportation and encouraging more housing density near the old downtowns, whose businesses would be helped by having more customers within walking distance.

Let’s hope that in the next few years, Berkshire County offers some edifying new examples of how to protect the scenic and cultural attractions of an area that’s so  close to big cities, while also creating better jobs for year-round residents so that they aren’t compelled to leave.

Meanwhile, enjoy the glories of the Berkshires, where summer road traffic can be bad, but not nearly as bad as traffic along the coast, as I saw last Wednesday, when it took me almost an hour and a half to drive to Narragansett from Providence in bumper-to-bumper traffic there. Head for the hills, not the coast, in high summer, when millions want to visit New England all at once.

View from Main Street in Great Barrington (obviously) in the spring

—Photo by Anc516

Boston-based Verve Therapeutics partners with Lilly to target cholesterol

Edited from a New England Council report:

“Eli Lilly is collaborating with Boston-based Verve Therapeutics on a gene-editing program with a total value of $525 million. Eli Lilly will pay $60 million to use Verve’s gene-editing technology to target a cholesterol-carrying protein. The agreement also includes potential milestone payments of up to $465 million, as well as royalties for Verve. Verve plans to test Phase 1 clinical trials, with Eli Lilly handling clinical development, manufacturing, and commercialization.   

“Verve Therapeutics, which focuses on eliminating cardiovascular disease associated with high cholesterol, emerged in 2019 with technology developed by Harvard scientists. The company went public in 2021 and has received investments from GV, Wellington Management Company, and Casdin Capital, as well as collaboration deals with Beam Therapeutics and Verily. Following the announcement of the collaboration, Verve’s shares rose more than 12 percent.’’

‘Sinister phoenixes’

From Chilean-born American artist Rodrigo Valenzuela’s show “Weapons,’’ at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, through Sept. 10.

The gallery says:

“Rodrigo Valenzuela’s exhibition incorporates works from two connected and ongoing photographic series, ‘Weapons’ and “Afterwork,’ that are integrated into floor-to-ceiling wood frame structures installed along with ceramic pieces by the artist.

“Through a patina of nostalgic fantasy, Valenzuela’s ‘Weapons’ series offers views of imaginative performances that might take place on a job site once workers depart. Knives, screws, rope, and chains—the tools of many trades—appear reconfigured as sinister phoenixes, ramshackle sculptures, and animistic creatures of dreams. ‘Afterwork’’ presents pictures of somber, silvery rooms filled with mechanical contraptions and fog, possibly from the sweat left hanging in the air after a long day’s work. Valenzuela’s works are animated by a dream-like quality and driven by an urgent human and political exploration: that of global economics and the human dimensions of labor, considered in the wake of neoliberalism.’’

Heading toward Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse

— Photo by Needsmoreritalin

Video: The newsprint capital

One of Berlin’s paper mills, in 1912. While the industry brought many jobs, it also polluted the Androscoggin River, as well as the air in Berlin.

From Historic New England:

“Berlin, New Hampshire, in the heart of the Northern Forest, is a small city of approximately 10,000 people, best known for its paper mills and being the largest producer of newsprint in the world during the mid-twentieth century. The city's history is as deep as the woods that surround it. Our dynamic partnership brings together Timberlane Regional High School, in Plaistow, New Hampshire, and the Berlin and Coos County Historical Society in an oral history project, resulting in a ninety-minute documentary on Berlin in the 20th Century. Part of Historic New England's ‘Everyone's History’ series.’’

Hit this link for video

Restorative Granite State

The Hopkinton (N.H.) State Fair, held every year in early September

“The restoration comes not only from the landscape and air, though they play their significant part, but from the people. I feel a strong need to be in New Hampshire for as much of the summer as I can manage it.’’

— Retired U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice David Souter (born 1939). He served on the high court from 1990 to 2009, when he moved back to his native New Hampshire, where he lives in the small town of Hopkinton.

Llewellyn King: Yes. climate change is upon us, but panic isn’t a tool against it

The Kendall Cogeneration Station, in Cambridge, Mass., is a natural-gas- powered station owned by Vicinity Energy that produces both steam and electricity for Boston and Cambridge. We’ll be hooked on natural gas for a long time to come.

WEST WARWICK, R.I.

One of the luxuries of democracy is that we don’t have to listen. Or we can listen and hear what we want to hear. We can find resonance in dissonance, or we can hear flat notes.

That is the story of the climate crisis, which is here.

We have been warned over and over, sometimes as gently as a summer zephyr, and sometimes gustily, as with Al Gore’s tireless campaigning and his seminal 1992 book, and later movie, Earth in the Balance.

Now high summer is upon us — with its intimations of worse to come.  And this message rings in our ears: The climate is changing — polar ice caps are melting; the sea level is rising; the oceans are heating up; natural patterns are changing, whether it be for sharks or butterflies; and we are going to have to live with a world that we, in some measure, have thrown out of kilter.

Around the beginning of the 20th Century, we began an attack on the environment, the likes of which all of history hadn’t seen, including two centuries of industrial revolution. Sadly, it was when invention began improving the lives of millions of people.

Two big forces were unleashed in the early 20th Century: the harnessing of electricity and the perfection of the internal-combustion engine. These improved life immensely, but there was a downside: They brought with them air pollution and, at the time unknown, started the greenhouse effect.

In the same wave of inventions, we pushed back the ravages of infectious diseases, boosted irrigated farming and enabled huge growth in the world population — all of whom aspired to a better life with electricity and cars.

In 1900, the world population was 1.6 billion. Now it is 8 billion. The population of India alone has increased by about a billion since the British withdrawal, in 1947. Most Indians don’t have cars, jet off for their vacations or have enough, or any, electricity, and very few have air conditioning. Obviously, they are aspirational, as are the 1.4 billion people of Africa, most of whom have nothing. But the population of Africa is set to double in 25 years.

The greenhouse effect has been known and argued about for a long time. Starting in 1970, I became aware of it as I started covering energy intensively. I have sat through climate sessions at places like the Aspen Institute, Harvard and MIT, where it was a topic and where the sources of the numbers were discussed, debated, questioned and analyzed.

Oddly, the environmental movement didn’t take up the cause then. It was engaged in a battle to the death with nuclear power. To prosecute its war on nuclear, it had to advocate something else, and that something else was coal: coal in a form of advanced boilers, but nonetheless coal.

The Arab oil embargo of 1973 added to the move to coal. At that point, there was little else, and coal was held out as our almost inexhaustible energy source: coal to liquid, coal to gas, coal in direct combustion. Very quiet voices on the effects of burning so much coal had no hearing. It was a desperate time needing desperate measures.

Natural gas was assumed to be a depleted resource (fracking wasn’t perfected); wind was a scheme, as today’s turbines, relying heavily on rare earths, hadn’t been created, nor had the solar electric cell. So, the air took a shellacking.

To its credit, the Biden administration has been cognizant of the building crisis. With three acts of Congress, it is trying to tackle the problem — albeit in a somewhat incoherent way.

Some of its plans just aren’t going to work. It is pushing so hard against the least troublesome fossil fuel, natural gas, that it might destabilize the whole electric system. The administration has set a goal that by 2050 — just 27 years from now — power production should produce no greenhouse gases whatsoever, known as net-zero.

To reach this goal, the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing strict new standards. However, these call for the deployment of carbon capture technology which, as Jim Matheson, CEO of the Rural Electric Cooperative Association, told a United States Energy Association press briefing, doesn’t exist.

The crisis needs addressing, but panic isn’t a tool. A mad attack on electric utilities, the demonizing of cars or air carriers, or less environmentally aware countries won’t carry us forward.

Awareness and technology are the tools that will turn the tide of climate change and its threat to everything. It took a century to get here, and it may take that long to get back.
 

On Twitter: @llewellynking2
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, and is based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.
White House Chronicle

Near the Arctic Circle, year-round outdoor swimming

“The Blue Lagoon, Svartsengi Geothermal Pumping Station, Iceland” (1988, chromogenic print), by Laura McPhee at the Fitchburg (Mass.) Art Museum.

Downtown Fitchburg seen from the south, looking toward New Hampshire mountains. From the 19th to the first half of the 20th Century the city was an industrial center, especially for paper making.

— Photo by Nick Allen