The Bicyclist

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Today, on the way to campus, the long-desired finally happened.

I saw another bicyclist.

I cut across the 7-11 Citgo parking lot as usual, weaving my way through the gasoline stink of burbling behemoths, snarling SUVs, and humongous hummers. Confused carnivores yammering into cell-phones looked up to the posted prices: $ 3.71, $ 3.81, and $ 3.91, with diesel at the nearby Shell at $ 4.21. A behemoth suddenly backed away from the pump. I stared at a giant incoming bumper: support-our-troops-and-jesus-saves. Gripped the handlebar brakes.

When I looked up again, I saw him.

A slim human was bicycling. Gracefully he cut across the lot in the other direction. He had dark eyes and a black beard. He was clad in white and wore a turban. While he looked warily at gringo-machines, he maintained an air of peace.

Respectfully we greeted each other.


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Bush, Climate, and "Nargis" 2008

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Cyclone 01B was born on 4.27 in the Bay of Bengal, east of the Indian Ocean, as a depression that deepened later in the day.
On 4.28, the infant storm, named "Nargis", hovered over warm ocean waters, gained strength, opened an eye, and grew to a category 1 hurricane.
On 4.29, she moved westwards, intensified to category 2, and faced Bangladesh. Then her strength flagged, the eye blurred, and she lost direction. She curled from west to north.
On 4.30, she recuperated, turned east, and faced Burma.
On 5.1, Nargis reopened her eye and accelerated to category 3, now spinning toward the Burmese coast.
On 5.2, cyclone Nargis peaked as the equivalent of a category 4 hurricane. She made landfall in the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) delta and swept inland. Weakening, she curved north to Rangoon/Yangon.
Finally she washed out, a day later, on the mountain slopes dividing Burma/Myanmar from Thailand.

Numbers are jelling into facts that are still soft around the edges. BBC reported 5.5. that the Burmese storm toll 'tops 10,000'. On 5.6, BBC cited Burmese state media with the news that more than 20,000 had been killed, more than 40,000 were missing, and 1,000,000 are homeless. On 5.7 word had it that 100,000 may have died.

In terms of toll, Nargis was the worst storm in Asia for nearly 20 years, since a 1991 hit on Bangladesh, and the worst storm on the whole for a decade, since "Mitch" hit Central America 1998.

In terms of force, Nargis was not as bad as she could have been. This was not a category 5 storm. The category 4 peak lasted less than a day. Nargis was strong, but not exceptionally so. Nonetheless, the human toll is terribly high. Why?

I count five reasons that appear to have made things worse than they otherwise would have been.

I.

The oppressors of Burma's citizenry reacted in typical military fashion and classified the emerging information. Instead of starting a standard evacuation of exposed settlements right after the storm vector pointed to Burma, two days before landfall, as any sensible leadership would have done, the lugnuts in charge just watched the disaster unfolding and kept the state media free of news, for security reasons. And now, with corpses bobbing in the water and survivors risking death by exposure, the uniforms may take a page from Karl Rove's 2005 Louisiana manual and broadcast in Burmese, "let's not play the blame game". While the differences between Katrina and Nargis are many, the similarities are thought-provoking. Both storms were bad, not extreme, yet the toll was extreme, not bad. Both governments were caught with their pants down. Both governments ignored concrete and detailed warnings over looming threats. The Myanmar junta is the Mickey Mouse version of the Bush regime, but the one is the mirror of the other. The Myanmar junta dismissed warnings of a storm track toward the homeland, not trusting evil foreign weather stations; the Bush regime dismissed warnings of climate change making New Orleans' levees insufficient, not trusting evil rational scientists. The toll, in both cases, is extreme, in part because the leaders rejected information instead of acting on it. If you want to eliminate the first cause, lift information control. Closed societies create extreme tolls. Open societies don't.

II.

Consider the damage done to coastal ecosystems prior to the cyclone. BBC headlined this cause 5.6., citing ASEAN's secretary-general, with mangrove loss 'put Burma at risk'. Storms like Nargis arise over warm water. The ocean has no barriers to growth. Storms whip up waves and vent until they blow themselves out. But dry land is an obstacle course. Each toppled tree, each hurled object, each downed wall bleeds wind energy away and helps to exhaust the force. A hurricane at the coast is just a rainstorm farther inland. The sea-land interface is vulnerable. Yet on the latitudes relevant here (Rangoon on the 19th, New Orleans on the 29th parallel), the interface tends to have natural protection. On the seaward side are mangroves, belts of biomass, which absorb wave and wind energy. On the landward side are wetlands, bluegreen sponges, which soak up further incoming energy and cushion weather blows. Eliminate mangroves (as done in Burma) or wetlands (as done in Louisiana, by National Geographic 206.4, October 2004, p. 89, "at a rate of 33 football fields a day"), and the hammer falls on a naked beach, flooding and flattening houses, killing people. If you want to avoid the second cause, stop beach development and restore coastal ecologies to help save lives.

III.

The toll is also extreme because population density is extreme. Consider the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. There have been waves caused by seaquakes since the dawn of time. There is nothing odd about tsunamis. Yet that tsunami killed a quarter million people -- which is the worst known tsunami toll since humans evolved on Earth. Still, don't blame the tsunami, and don't blame the hurricanes, cyclones, or typhoons either. Blame the species instead: world population quadrupled in the past century and is on the verge of doubling once more, and the greatest global density happens to be along coastal regions in tropical and temperate latitudes. Hence the extreme toll of such disasters. If we want to minimize the third cause, we must do some reverse engineering. You can't tell people not to live at the coast if they make their living at the coast. But you can decrease (slowly and over time, to be sure, but still, better than nothing), coastal density by decreasing overall density. And you can decrease overall density by lowering reproduction rates. You can lower reproduction rates by empowering women -- gender equality, as UN demographers know, is the best tool for family planning -- and by evolving new sexual mores. The species is suffering from a baby glut just when we're running out of things, including real estate. We need to learn, and teach, that sex, at least in the 21st century, serves recreational purposes only, and may lead to procreation only under exceptional circumstances. If we don't want to keep seeing the huge tolls of 21st century catastrophes, then it'd be a good start to trim our fat numbers and to leave 19th century values behind.

IV.

Actually, though, we cannot quite blame all these baby-making folks. After all, as UN studies have shown, they prefer to make less babies, and they request assistance. The third reason needs to be qualified by a fourth factor: that population density in developing nations is now higher is an effect of the Mexico City Policy by US president Bush 2001. Sure, we might argue that Myanmar wouldn't have let any of the NGOs affected by Bush's Global Gag Rule in anyway. But are we certain? As a rule, extreme tolls are made possible by high population density, and preserving high population density has been possible by the unilateral global implementation of the Mexico City Policy reinstated by the US. And even if Myanmar were the exception to the rule, the rule would still hold that the US since 2001 is guilty of aiding and abetting planetary overpopulation; that due to the US president, worldwide sex has led to more babies, and that due to the US president, a greater share of the babies born are babies dying. Thus blame Bush. If you want to delete the fourth factor of the toll, at least in categorical terms, rescind the Mexico City Policy.

V.

Finally, blame Bush again. That Nargis happened is natural, and it could have been worse. But without Bush Nargis may well have been weaker. While the rest of the world is trying since Kyoto '97 to ease up on the oil addiction and to expand into carbon-neutral energies, Bush has done the opposite: he rejected Kyoto, dismissed until a few months ago the causal link of oil use and climate change, deepened American dependence on fossil fuels, ordered the resource-driven invasion of Iraq 2003, and had his minions sabotage binding emission caps at Bali 2007. Compared to the USA under Bush, there is no nation on the planet that drives as much, that farts so many greenhouse gases into the air, and that is as guilty of perpetrating planetary climate change. The measly five American percent of the total world population have created one third of global greenhouse gas emissions; the same five percent, under Bush, have prevented efficient carbon management; the same five percent, under Bush, are to be held accountable for a perfectly avoidable third of the heat our species has sunk into the seas. The same five percent, under Bush, are consequently to be blamed for a third of the climate-change-induced rise in more frequent and more intense seaborn storms. And this includes Nargis. Thus blame Bush. And while this may sound strange today, chances are it won't, in the not-too-distant future, to international tribunals and courts, when the litigation for damages starts. The right thing to do, for doing one's share towards preventing another disaster of Nargis' magnitude, is not just to donate to relief efforts, but also, and finally, to impeach the climate changer in chief.

It's never too late to do the right thing.


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