This week the issue of global warming caused embarrassing problems for Marco Rubio as the Republican Senator from Miami rolled out his unofficial entry into the 2016 presidential race. Sorry, but I couldn’t help noticing. Although I am not a Republican and no longer live in Florida, I once owned a home on the Intracoastal Waterway near Palm Beach. During hurricanes, our little beach disappeared along with half of our yard. A two-foot sea rise will leave storm water at the new owner’s front door. Another two feet will make the house, along with thousands of other coastal homes, uninhabitable. So I’ve been scratching my head over the confused case Marco Rubio tried to articulate for doing nothing to mitigate global warming—an odd position for any elected official from South Florida to take. Oops! There goes Miami Beach!
I’ve been scratching my head over the confused case Marco Rubio tried to articulate for doing nothing to mitigate global warming. Oops! There goes Miami Beach!
As usual, John Steinbeck helped me think. Because his science book Sea of Cortez is also political and philosophical, I turned to the writer’s “Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research” in the Gulf of California to help me understand politicians like Marco Rubio who (1) deride global warming data, (2) deny that fossil-fuel use is a factor, or (3) insist that it’s too late to turn back, so what the hell! During the course of speeches and interviews in New Hampshire and elsewhere, Marco Rubio denied global warming so often and so recklessly that he became the butt of a Wednesday night Stephen Colbert Show “F*ck It!” segment. What part of Rubio’s brain shut down when he opened his campaign for president? Three observations made by John Steinbeck on the biology of belief and behavior in Chapter 14 of Sea of Cortez provided clarity, but little comfort, about Marco Rubio’s recent statements regarding global warming. Hold the applause. They are nothing to laugh about.
1. Forget simplistic causation. Find provable relationships and prepare for complexity.
Sea of Cortez starts with first principles. From microbes to mankind, variation in nature is a universal principle; causative relationships are complex and outcomes aren’t always predictable. But worldwide climate disruption is a particularly violent variation with measurable relationships and very clear consequences. Denying the significance of man-made carbon emissions in accelerating global warming by implying, as Marco Rubio and others do, that . . . well, shit happens . . . is like letting a drunk drive on the theory that other things can go wrong too, so what’s the big deal? Ignition failure, bad brakes, lousy weather, all contribute to accidents on the road. But driving while drunk, like loading the atmosphere with pollutants, foolishly increases the severity and consequences of co-contributing factors.
Driving while drunk, like loading the atmosphere with pollutants, foolishly increases the severity and consequences of co-contributing factors.
“Sometimes,” John Steinbeck would have agreed, “shit just happens.” But try taking that excuse to court and see what happens there—if you survive the wreck you caused. Steinbeck was a Darwinian who tried not to judge, but deadly driving while drunk has been described by those who are less forgiving as a form of natural self-selection for stupid individuals. Unlike solitary drinking, however, global warming denial is a social disease. Following the dimwitted herd of reality-deniers, like lemmings, over the looming climate cliff? That takes systematic self-delusion and self-styled leaders like Marco Rubio. How do they operate? John Steinbeck had a theory.
2. Reality-denial is a form of adolescent wish-fulfillment. It’s most dangerous in a mob motivated by a self-appointed leader.
Sea of Cortez—co-authored with Steinbeck’s friend and collaborator, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts—develops many of the ideas Steinbeck expressed in the fiction he wrote before 1940. His 1936 novel In Dubious Battle, for example, dramatized the murderous behavior of opposing mobs, behavior worse than anything within the capacity of their individual constituents. Steinbeck’s characterization of politically-driven leaders like Mac, the novel’s Communist labor-organizer, is particularly disturbing, even today. Sea of Cortez develops both of these core ideas—the behavior of mob members and the psychology of mob leaders—using biological terms that help explain Marco Rubio and his position on global warming.
Sea of Cortez develops both of these core ideas—the behavior of mob members and the psychology of mob leaders—using biological terms that help explain Marco Rubio and his position on global warming.
Like Steinbeck’s metaphorical ameba in Sea of Cortez, Mac the Communist and Marco Rubio the Republican are political pseudo-pods who detect a mass-wish within their followers and press toward its fulfillment: “We are directly leading this great procession, our leadership ‘causes’ all the rest of the population to move this way, the mass follows the path we blaze.” But one difference between Mac and Marco Rubio, worth noting, was apparent in this week’s events. Steinbeck’s labor agitator was a tough guy with street smarts who stayed on-message; Marco Rubio manages to look as unfixed and immature as he sounds. In right-wing global warming politics, Rick Perry—no George Bush, and take that as a compliment—seems statesmanlike by comparison. Oops! I meant Department of Education!
3. Extinction is possible. Double extinction.
John Steinbeck read encyclopedically, and in Sea of Cortez he explains what he calls “the criterion of validity in the handling of data” by citing an example from an article on ecology in the 14th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica. It concerns the extermination of a certain species of hawk that preyed on the willow grouse, a game bird in Norway. Failing to note the presence of the parasitical disease coccidiosis in the country’s grouse population, the Norwegians systematically eradicated the predator that kept the infection under control by killing off weaker birds affected by the disease. The result was double extinction—hawk and grouse—caused by uninformed human behavior.
The Norwegians systematically eradicated the predator that kept the infection under control by killing off weaker birds affected by the disease. The result was double extinction—hawk and grouse—caused by unintelligent human behavior.
Like Steinbeck, I loved college biology, and the biology department at Wake Forest was very good. My freshman professor, a John Steinbeck-Ed Ricketts type named Ralph Amen, introduced us to an idea that makes Marco Rubio’s anti-global warming demagoguery more than a little scary 50 years later. “Imagine,” Dr. Amen suggested, “that the earth is an organism, Gaia, with a cancer—the human species, overpopulating and over-polluting its host. What is the likely outcome of this infection for Gaia and for mankind?” A question in the spirit of Sea of Cortez, which on reflection I’m certain he had read.
‘Imagine,’ Dr. Amen suggested, ‘that the earth is an organism, Gaia, with a cancer—the human species, overpopulating and over-polluting its host. What is the likely outcome of this infection for Gaia and for mankind?’
John Steinbeck, a one-world ecologist even further ahead of his time than my old teacher, would have answered, “things could go either way.” The cancer might kill the host or the host eradicate the cancer. But global warming presents a third possibility—double extinction. Now imagine that Marco Rubio is a soft, squishy symptom of global warming denial, a terminal disease. Then reread John Steinbeck’s Sea of Cortez as I just did. Reality-based thinking is our first step toward a cure, although under a president like Marco Rubio it could also be our last. Oops! There we go—along with the planet! How in the world did we let that happen?
About William Ray
Hey, Will, great blog post. But let me point out Rubio’s true motives, and those of his right-wing entourage. Just follow the money! Many of their leaders have financial ties to or direct interest in the oil companies, and these companies have more money than most governments today. I think it’s time to stop being quite so polite with these cronies and to call them out. They aren’t brain dead at all. They are extremely savvy and know exactly what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. They are denying global warming because admitting the reality of climate change is not in their financial interest. Period. Let’s face it–this is nothing less than a conspiracy. And the climate change deniers’ deceptive charade is what the Democrats should be talking about going into the election cycle.
Timothy Roberts
Rubio is awful and I’m not trying to defend him or start a global warming/climate change death match on a web site devoted to Steinbeck.
But as we know, Steinbeck was a political animal — a very partisan one, too. I wouldn’t be too sure where he’d be on the issue of man-made global warming and whether we should be so certain that Man — who is very much a part of nature, I’d say, and not a cancer on the thick skin of Gaia — is causing sufficient harm with its fossil fuel-burning to have a serious effect on life on an incredibly complex and still mostly mysterious planet that can take care of itself pretty well.
(Those evil fossil fuels, of course, make it possible for this fine web site to exist and function, not to mention making it possible for most of what else we enjoy and take for granted as lucky members of the clever human race at a time when, despite its faults, has conquered many of the the scarcities and harsh cruelties of Nature that made our ancestors’ lives so nasty, brutal and short.)
As for everyone’s concern about poor Florida, it is my understanding as a Northerner and a long-time AGW skeptic (I don’t even own stock in Exxon, so don’t go to that silly simplistic place), that the land itself may be sinking, as land and islands around the world occasionally do for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with Man.
(I suspect Florida may be sinking under the weight of either too many old people from the Northeast or of too much politics, left and/or right.)
Also, Rubio doesn’t know it, probably, but the level of the oceans has been rising about 6 inches a century ever since the ice sheets of the last Ice Age starting melting more than 10,000 years ago. We can all start riding bikes and go back to living in caves and Florida is going to get wetter — until the next Ice Age, which is inevitable, begins to store water two-miles thick in ice sheets that will cover Gaia’s pretty head like a ski cap.
And since we’re bringing up Lady Gaia, here courtesy of the Guardian is what her father James Lovelock says, now, about what he said earlier about climate change and its adherents:
James Lovelock: environmentalism has become a religion: Scientist behind the Gaia hypothesis says environment movement does not pay enough attention to facts and he was too certain in the past about rising temperatures (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/30/james-lovelock-environmentalism-religion)
Here’s the beginning.
Environmentalism has “become a religion” and does not pay enough attention to facts, according to James Lovelock.
The 94 year-old scientist, famous for his Gaia hypothesis that Earth is a self-regulating, single organism, also said that he had been too certain about the rate of global warming in his past book, that “it’s just as silly to be a [climate] denier as it is to be a believer” and that fracking and nuclear power should power the UK, not renewable sources such as windfarms.
What you say about John Steinbeck’s political and ecological views seems sound to me, and I’m glad that we agree about Marco Rubio. But a careful reading of Sea of Cortez suggests that the figure of Gaia as Mother Earth, both biologically and metaphorically, was as close to a religion in one sense as the author ever comes. In particular, note Steinbeck’s meditation on the Virgin of Loreto as only one manifestation of the Mother Goddesss archetype in the course of the narrative. It is also helpful in reading any of Steinbeck’s published nonfiction–as demonstrated in your illuminating book about Travels With Charley–to recall the very first paragraph of Sea of Cortez, where Steinbeck essentially gives the game away. We color what we perceive and we manipulate what we remember, nonfiction narratives like Sea of Cortez and Travels With Charley included. As with global warming, it’s only a question of degree.
Good reply and I’m glad to see I’m on part of your page. Your scholarship on Steinbeck matters is much deeper than mine, so I will defer, as always to you on “Sea of Cortez” et al. I think it is interesting how often Steinbeck “gives away” the subjectivity game in his nonfiction; he did it a lot in “Charley.” He tells the reader he’s writing a subjective account of his trip and the America he saw (or said he saw) several times — and did it more often in the first draft, though those hints were edited out by Viking’s editors for devious reasons I make clear in “Dogging Steinbeck.”
I recommend Bill’s book Dogging Steinbeck to anyone interested in Steinbeck’s life and work. It is both readable and revealing, a comfortably Steinbeckian combination.
Like so many of his ilk, he has repeatedly indicated that he is dumb as a bag of rocks and only wishes to get elected to sell his influence. The man is pathetic.