Pondering the imponderable

Tonight’s frost advisories end one county north of us. Yesterday, I turned the furnace on for the first time this season. The outside temperatures had dropped below 50℉ when I did it. Soon it will be time to break out the fleece-lined winter pjs. Autumn is settling in.

frost: it’s coming

Photo by J. Harrington

A year from now we’ll be approaching election 2024. Do you suppose the question of whether The Former Guy is eligible to be listed on a ballot will be resolved by then? I’m annoyed that Minnesota’s SOS, Steve Simon, has deferred to the courts the decision on ballot eligibility. (I’m not suggesting he’s incorrect, given the state law, just that I find it annoying that a SOS doesn’t have to first make a determination that can then be reviewed by the court system.) The presidential election section of the office’s web site avoids mention of Sec. 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution as an eligibility requirement. At least some Minnesotans have now petitioned the Minnesota Supreme Court for a ruling. Will all or any of the individual state cases get to SCOTUS before the election? Will it make any difference? Stay turned! Isn’t it fun to live in unprecedented presidential times?

Meanwhile, our federal Secretary of Energy is doing a great job of demonstrating why it is that we can’t just rapidly “phase out” fossil fuels, as an author of a recent report suggests. I haven’t read even the summaries of the IPCC reports, so I may have missed it but I don’t recall ever seeing a summary of the staging and development of alternative energy systems needed to enable the phase out of fossil fuels without crippling the world economy and bringing any transition to a premature halt. The lack of systems planning and the failure to create alternate scenarios as education and communication strategies seems to be a significant oversight. Al Gore was absolutely correct about the fact that effectively responding to climate breakdown and its effects means we have to deal with a lot of inconvenient truths. Instead, the Republicans are beginning a fool’s exercise in opening impeachment proceedings against President Biden. Do you know the title of the movie about our two political parties? How about “Dumb and Dumber?” 

Statement on Energy Policy

By Carter Revard

It’s true we have invented quark-extraction,

and this allows our aiming gravity at will;

it’s true also that time

can now be made to flow

backward or forward by

the same process. It may be true as well that

what is happening at the focal point,

the meristem of this process,

creates a future kind of space,

a tiny universe that has

quite different rules. In this, it seems,

whatever one may choose to do or be becomes

at once the case. In short,

we have discovered heaven and

it’s in our grasp. However,

the Patent Office has not yet approved and cites

less positive aspects of this invention. First, it

does not generate profit, and

it does make obsolete all present

delivery systems for our nukes. Then,

it will let private citizens do things that only

a chosen few, that is, OUR sort, should be allowed—

fly freely from one country

to any other, spreading diseases

and bankrupting transportation.

Home-heating, auto-making industries will be trashed,

employment shelled, depressions spread worldwide,

sheer anarchy descend.

For these and other reasons,

no one must know of this. . . .

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