PREFACE
Thank you, reader, for picking up my book and giving it a shake. It’s a real book, I assure you, and it will entertain you, I promise, and it will be worth your while reading, you can count on that. The following is a deeply personal account, some parts of it true and some parts of it made up, so don’t go telling Oprah that it’s true and then I’m having to go on her show and tell her no it’s not and then get in trouble like that other guy did. I’m telling my story this way with the hopes that the true parts ring a bell and offer up a pearl of wisdom or two about something, and that the stretched parts add a bit of the dramatic to the telling so that you keep turning the pages all the way to the end. To be honest, it’s a literary device to keep the reader engaged in the book and make it worth her or his time. It’s also a coyote trick, something I learned from Tom Brown’s Grandfather, who said that sometimes you have to trick people into learning, something called coyote teaching, because to the Apache, the coyote is a trickster. I was never much of a magician and I’m really not trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes but sometimes a made-up example or two or a dramatic story gets the point across better than a straight telling.
While it’s a story, in the truest sense, it’s also my reflections on the subject of global warming. So you will learn something about global warming, how you (and a few billion people like you, even the ones without cars) have caused it, what it’s going to do to your weekends (hell, your entire week), and why if you don’t do something about it now, your children (or your relative’s children if you don’t have any of your own) are going to stomp on our grave. It’s a bit grim, but not without hope, and not without lots of laughs (because I seriously can’t take anything too seriously), even though we’re talking about the end of the world as we know it (but I am getting ahead of my story).
This book is something I just had to write, and I know all authors say that, but in this case, I had to write it not because I needed to unload 52 years of angst but because I truly hope that it will inspire a few people to do something positive for the planet. Maybe even write a book about something positive they did for the planet…
Before we begin our little journey together as author and reader, I have a few confessions to make so that you know who I am and where I’m coming from and why I wrote this book and to keep you from thinking that I am some loony or some tree-hugging, bunny-kissing radical, or worse, a politician or lawyer (okay, that was a joke, I love looniess, tree-hugging bunny-kissers, and politicians). I don’t have a long and colorful patriotic career like Al Gore or a sexy blue-eyed charm like Leonardo DiCaprio (though I deeply admire both men for what they are doing to fight global warming and would love to mee them some day over a cup of local grown, free-trade coffee, dark roast, of course).
First, I am, at heart, a scientist. I’ve been a scientist since, oh, say, the age of ten, when I pronounced my intentions to become an astronaut (I’m still intending…). My parents were aghast. “You can’t fly to the moon, you’ll get killed…an asteroid will hit you…you’ll run out of air…what will you eat?” So I deftly switched careers (still at the age of ten) to aquanaut, an underwater astronaut of sorts, keeping secret the fact that astronauts trained underwater anyways, so aquanauting was kind of like an apprenticeship to astronauting. I’d just take a little underwater detour on my way to space, parents be damned. That side trip consumes me still and I love it to no end, but there remains a part of me that would like to jump on a space ship and get the hell out of here before the planet blows up. (But I am getting ahead of my story again.)
Second, my decision to become a scientist was a deeply personal one, shaped by the circumstances of my upbringing, which, all in all, were pretty decent, despite the tumult of family dysfunction, fatherly alcoholism, motherly abuse, self self-loathing, and the oh-too-slow realization that I was not like the other boys. Okay, it was hell growing up, and science offered a safe, sane, and solitary haven from which I could shut out the roller coaster of emotions that gripped my early years until I was old enough to drink. I equated science with logic, with providing an explanation for everything, with mapping out a rational approach to an otherwise insane existence. Science was an intellectual sanctuary for a young boy who would have rather not thought about (or deal with) all the emotional baggage that was piling up in the “real” world. Yes, I admit it now, I was a nerd.
Third, I love to write, which is funny, because I don’t really like to talk that much. Oh, I can lecture for hours…my students will attest to that…and I think I am a fair lecturer. I like to move about the room and wave my hands and change the cadence of my voice and occasionally stand on a desk. But in the classroom, I get to control the subject of the conversation (“The Professor is King.”). Just don’t sit me on a couch in a room of well-meaning friends or relatives and expect me to carry on about the new tile in the bathroom or the marvelous stainless steel, Energy-Star, split-door, refrigerator-freezer with the external ice machine, oh hell no! I like to craft words, to make sentences, to weave a story that helps someone understand a little bit of something something about the world and, hopefully, themselves. I think that’s why I write, to help people. I sure as hell hope so…I am an idealist who would like to help make the world a better place.
Foruth, and finally, this issue of global warming really sticks in my craw. My craw of craws! I mean, really! What do we have to do to convince people that this thing is real and that it is going to knock the crap out of us if we don’t take drastic action, like now. I swear, some days I feel like I am on a giant raft on the Niagra River and we are approaching the falls and I’m yelling, “hey, we should get to shore now” but everyone on board is having too much fun and they can’t hear me anyway because the roar of the waterfalls about which we are about to plunge is deafening! Jump! Now! Ooops! Splat!
Fifth (and my confessions come in fives so this is the last one), I tend to be a bit melodramatic at times. Some of it comes from learning how to play the cello at an early age (despite my very strict German cello teacher—was his name Hans?—I learned to love the cello and it became an instrument for emotional expression despite my outwardly disdain for emotrions). And some of it comes from loving to act. I’ve played Conrad, Father Mapple, Captain Nemo, and a giant Easter Rabbit. And some of it is just genetic wiring though I swear I’ve never been fond of Barbara Streisand or Judy Garland. Captain Kirk and Lucas Wolenczak, yes, and maybe Alexis from Dynasty, and damn, Jennifer Garner (OMG!), but few of the familiar icons were part of my youth and subsequent evolution.
So, you can expect this book to be a scientifically accurate (and couched in the language of scientists, when called for), deeply personal (recovering alcoholics love to tell their story), unabashedly idealistic (blame my eco-muses, Thoreau and Whitman), passionately passionate (my craw!), and somewhat gay (yes, even gay!) account of global warming. Crikey! It’s my begging-you-please-dear-reader to take a few hours from your excruciatingly busy life (though I prefer the word “full” to busy) and consider the impact you are having on the planet so that you can adjust the topsail, stem the main, and set a new course towards a dawn that is brighter (and cooler) than the one we’re looking at today. I thank you. The world thanks you. The future beings who visit our ignoble planet thank you.