LA FAFO OMFG – Latest “two cents on the Arrived Ecological Debacle” post

This year I am going to write something short, daily, about what is going on – “2 cents on the Arrived Ecological Debacle” (2cotAED). I have to write it; you don’t have to read it. If you DO read it, feel free to tell me how wrong I am (and hopefully why). Re: the debacle aspect: in 2004 the English writer Sara Maitland  wrote about the “pending ecological debacle.” The expression stuck with me; it’s a debacle because it was foreseen, warned about and was avoidable. Well, it’s no longer really “pending” is it?

So, Los Angeles fuelled around and now it’s finding out. LA as synecdoche for what is coming. for everywhere All that trauma. All those people (and animals) fucked for life, for the most part.

It puts me in mind of a book called “A Plague on Your Houses: How New York Was Burned Down and National Public Health Crumbled” by epidemiologists Deborah and Roderick Wallace (1). Published by Verso. Its blurb starts

A Plague on Your Houses is a scorching indictment of the decision to close fire companies in New York in the 1970s and a frightening study of the way misguided and malevolent social policy can spark a chain reaction of enormous and unforeseen urban collapse.

Well, this deliberate neglect – shutting down the fire companies at a global level (I speak in metaphor) is leading to some fires. It’s not being done “deliberately” in the way the New York situation was, as slum clearance on the sly. But the effects are turning out pretty much the same. I’m reminded of another book – Jules Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days”. From wikipedia, with emphasis added.

In New York, having missed the ship China, Fogg looks for alternative transport. He finds a steamboat, Henrietta, destined for Bordeaux, France. The captain of the boat refuses to take them to Liverpool, whereupon Fogg consents to be taken to Bordeaux for $2,000 per passenger. He then bribes the crew to mutiny and makes course for Liverpool. Against hurricane winds and going on full steam, the boat runs out of fuel after a few days. When the coal runs out, Fogg buys the boat from the captain, then has the crew burn all the wooden parts to keep up the steam.

Well, that’s us, except we’re not going to make it to Liverpool…

Footnotes

(I) I almost certainly was pointed to this by the writing of Noam Chomsky. A lot of the best stuff I read in the 1990s was from off hand remarks/footnote