It's Our Problem Now

Irena lived in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation, and dedicated her life to rescuing Jewish children from the Ghetto, and her story is complicated in a lot of ways but - well, this story isn’t actually about Irena, per se.

It’s about a bus driver.

It’s about a day when she’s traveling across town by bus with a very young Jewish child, and partway to their destination the child looks up and asks a question - in Yiddish. and the whole bus goes quiet, because everyone knows what that means. And Irena thinks, okay, we’re going to die here today.

And she’s running through her options - all of them bad - and suddenly the bus stops, and the bus driver announces that there’s been a mechanical failure and the bus needs to return to the depot immediately. Everyone off, please.

And she stands and goes to get off the bus and the driver says - not you two. Sit down. So she sits down as everyone else leaves, because, well, what else is she going to do? the options are all still bad, at this point.

and when the bus is empty the bus driver says,

“Where do you need to go?”

And then he drives them as close to their destination as he can, and lets them off, and drives away. And Irena lives, and the kid lives, and they never cross paths again.

So a janitor got three people killed, and a bus driver saved two lives - not to mention all the other lives indirectly saved because Irena was able to continue her work.

I think about that almost every day now, to be honest.

We can’t all be Irena. I couldn’t be Irena. She was in a unique place with very specific skills and connections that let her do what she did. I am just one mentally ill librarian. I can’t be her. But - I can be the bus driver. Or I could be the janitor. Because it doesn’t matter what your job is. It doesn’t matter who you are. In a world like this, every single one of us has the opportunity to do massive harm or massive good. We can save lives or end them.

And that’s scary. but it’s also very comforting? at least for me. Because at the end of the day it means this: no matter of how small and helpless and unimportant you feel, you’re never powerless in the face of great evil.

The models are

Viktoria Modesta with her Crystal leg

Ryan Seary with his Anatomical leg

Jo-Jo Cranfield with her Snake arm

Viktoria Modesta, again, with her Stereo leg

This isn’t adding ice just for the sake of denial, it’s adding to the Earth’s albedo. This in turn actually makes the Earth’s climate cooler, and then more ice will be produced naturally because of this.

It isn’t a process we need to continue forever, in fact it’s one that needs to be calculated so that we don’t do it TOO MUCH. The only worry would be cooling down too much.

A liberal federal district judge held on Nov. 10 that teenagers have a fundamental right to a “stable environment” and can sue for a court order to change the level of carbon emissions that humans emit into the atmosphere.

Seeking a federal court “to declare the United States’ current environmental policy infringes their fundamental rights” to a natural environment that is not impacted by man made global warming, 21 young people (ages 9 through 20) filed suit against Barack Obama, various federal agencies, and the fossil fuel industry itself.

“Federal courts too often have been cautious and overly deferential in the arena of environmental law, and the world has suffered for it,” U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken of the District of Oregon wrote in the case Juliana v. United States.

Appointed by Bill Clinton, Aiken rejected the industry’s argument that she should dismiss the case because—among other reasons—even if everyone agreed that the earth is warming and that humans are responsible, a court is still not equipped to determine what to do about it. Brushing aside those objections, the judge said that all she needed to do was “determine what emissions level would be sufficient to” end global warming, and then order everyone is this country to change their fossil fuel consumption accordingly.

The Constitution says nothing about a fundamental right to any sort of environment—“stable” or otherwise. Constitutional rights are given as a charter of “negative liberties”—a series of “thou shalt nots,” such as saying the government shall not take away free speech, or shall not infringe religious liberty, or shall not ban gun ownership.

The concept of “affirmative rights”—that the government owes a person healthcare, or housing, or here, a particular type of environment—has been a wish list for political liberals that the courts have never embraced.

I’ve recently become an ambassador for The Elephant Pants a great company for several reasons:

1) They donate 10% of profits to to the African Wildlife Foundation, which teaches people the dangers of ivory trading and trains rangers to protect the endangered elephants & stop poachers.

2) Their seamstresses in Thailand are paid double the minimum wage, provided with healthcare, and given safe working environments!

3) Their super cute pants/shirts/tapestries/jewelry/etc. are SO much cheaper than what you would find in popular stores that sell similar clothing.

Check it out!