Why subscribe?
The world is in chaos. The human species is tribal. The globe is hot and getting hotter, and we have to get that fried egg off Greenland.
Why did I decide to start this Substack? Well, every day you read or watch some climate disaster unfold, be it Hurricane Ian in Florida, floods in Kentucky or Yellowstone or Pakistan, fires in California or Siberia, nuclear waste on the beaches in California with live-fire threatening Zaporizhia in the Ukraine, but we don’t put it all together. We don’t see it as one Hot Globe™. Imagine a simple globe spinning, and the fires as little flames that glow and the floods muddy and wet and you could reach out and touch them with a child’s fingers. It would be very personal. That’s the way we should feel about it, personal. One earth, one blue marble, very little chance there’s another out in the cosmos for all the crazy, great movies telling us otherwise. It’s a beautiful planet, and we’ve made a beautiful mess of it. Let me quote an old friend of mine, Walter Monk (when I say old friend, I mean Walter hit 101!) “People should treat the oceans like anything else that we care about—with consideration, with care and affection—That’s it. For that we must educate.” Walter had a gentle and elegant way of getting to the point. “Send Lawyers, guns and money, the shit has hit the fan,” is how Warren Zevon put the same sentiment, singing, in another context.
Saving ourselves from ourselves is going to take all we got. You gotta laugh at that.
But it’s still possible.
Let me tell you a little about myself. I grew up hiking around off the trail in the Beartooth Mountains at the top of Montana and snorkeling the kelp beds of La Jolla in San Diego, (usually with a speargun, sorry fish) — two of the most beautiful places on the planet. I’ve lived on the Big Island of Hawaii, I met my wife in Rio de Janeiro, so in a way I’ve been spoiled by the beauty of it all. “Enlightenment is the beauty of all things,” Dogen said in the 13th Century. Not sure he was a scientist, but no ecologist ever said it better. So in HOT GLOBE™ I hope you’ll get a sense of what’s worth saving.
I’ve written for National Geographic, the New York Times, LA Times, the New Yorker, Rodale’s Scuba Diving (talk about fun,) Sports Afield and explored the entrepreneurial fields of Intellectual Capital.
A couple of books I’ve written appropriate to HOT GLOBE are BREAKPOINT: Reckoning with America’s Environmental Crises (co-author Jeremy B.C. Jackson, Yale Univ. Press,) LET THE MOUNTAINS TALK, LET THE RIVER RUN: A Call to Those Who Would Save the Earth (David Brower with Steve Chapple,) and KAYAKING THE FULL MOON: A Journey Down the Yellowstone River to the Soul of Montana (a NY Times Notable.) Click the links and check them out on Amazon. Thanks.
Education? I dropped out of Yale twice, putting me in the category of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (minus the money.) I’ve thrown parties and concerts with the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Dr. John, the Lovin’ Spoonful, and Allen Ginsberg, and wrote Rock ‘n Roll Is Here to Pay, to tell the tale. I’ve run the Zambezi, and it presented some whitewater challenges, sure, but none so mighty as running the mighty Los Angeles River in November rains, an historic first descent.
Enough said. Let’s keep it snappy and fresh, stick to the naked truth as much as possible, and try to figure out the way out of our beautiful planetary mess together, while not shirking to call some greedy bastards by name when necessary.
No whining, no handwringing.
If you’ve made it this far, and it seems you have—I hope you will subscribe. I plan to make Hot Globe™ a pretty fun ride.
Thanks for your support.
Photo credit, James Wing for the NY Times
