Keep the Whole World Singing

I went to the 69th International Convention of the Barbershop Harmony Society on Friday, held in Denver for the very first time. Denver is a great place for conventions; whether the Pepsi Center is a great place to sing, I'm unsure. The convention holds 2 major contests: chorus and quartets. My alma mater vocal group Sound of the Rockies were trying to get their first chorus medal after coming close for so many years, and I'm glad to say they made it finally- 3rd place! Congrats, fellas, you worked hard for it, so savor the moment! And work hard they do - weekly 4 hour rehearsals, weekend retreats, vocal coaches, all for a couple of 3-4 minute songs. It was too hard for me!

"international" has to be taken with something of a pinch of salt, like "World Series" or "Denver International Airport" in the days when it earned that moniker because it could boast flights to Canada and Mexico. The vast majority of the performers are home-grown, although there were groups from Britain, Australia, and I think New Zealand...oh, and Canada! The winners were a group of twenty-somethings from California, and deserve to win they did - they were slicker'n'shit, as they say. But the Brits put on a great performance too - they did a number about mother-in-law coming to stay that was brilliantly conceived and executed, both musically and choreographically; it was witty, funny, musically clever and highly entertaining. They got a standing ovation, but ended up with a low standing - 12th. They should have gotten a medal, especially after coming all that way. Come on folks, if this is truly an international organization you need to let the guys from across the water get in the action. Your slogan, after all, is "Keep the Whole World Singing"

What To Do About It - part 1

Let’s get back to the Big Issue of the moment, Global Warming (GW). Because it’s bothering me. This is an apolitical blog, so I’m not going to delve into the darkness of the politics, but try to eke out some of the logic, with a view to practical outcomes. This is part one of a two-part blog (gosh!)

We know the globe is warming, and that that will have hugely undesirable consequences – big changes in weather, flooding of coastal areas, severe damage to my front lawn, etc. So we really don’t want to have our globe warmed, thank you very much. So what’s doing the warming? If we knew that, we could have a go at stopping it. According to many, including Kevin Trenberth, head of Climate Analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, just down the road from me in Boulder Colo., who was, I should add, a coordinating lead author on the IPCC’s latest report, GW is “now known to be caused by human activities” (Scientific American, July 2007). That’s an important known – if “human activities” are the culprit, then curtailing those activities will stop the warming (if not straight away, eventually); if not, it is a much more difficult question how to stop the warming. So with “human activities” guilty as charged, we have a chance! But which human activities are to blame – presumably not all? And here I have to plead ignorance. I’m told that it’s the carbon-producing activities, like driving my car and flying. I’m also told methane from cows is a big part of the problem, which suggests activities like burger consumption are culpable. But what we really need to know is the relative contribution to the problem of any identified nefariously warming human activities. I know that a flight to New York is the equivalent of running my household appliances for a year (or something like that), but how does that compare to, say, Amazon deforestation or plastics production? If, say, the critical pie slice is manufacturing, can we de-carbonize (?) the manufacturing process, rather than persuading people not to demand manufactured products?

Focusing on the “activities” part of “human activities” leaves us pretty impotent to act effectively without lots more information. So how about looking at the “human” part. Here I think we have a simple, straightforward and foolproof approach. The human activity most responsible for human activities is procreation of humans. Let’s curtail that. If all couples capable of procreation cut their output to two max, we’d see a precipitous decline in the human population, and so in human activities. This approach really hits home at the personal level. If, in order to avoid GW, I refrain from production of a child I otherwise would have produced, I am saving the world a lifetime of plastic-consuming, beef-eating, car-driving and plane-flying. The best I could on my own is about ½ a lifetime, and that’s if I did and ate nothing here-on-out. And in order to achieve this I have to do…absolutely nothing! And affect…absolutely no one! True, I am saying “I”, whose child-producing is already complete, but the point, hopefully, is made. And it’s not a silly or cynical one. I do think the issue of population curtailment will loom large oh, let’s say within a decade. And seeing that the first words out of God’s mouth to Adam were “go forth and multiply”, it will be an interesting debate!

Part 2 to come...(golly - you can't wait, I know!).