TATRANEWS
September Newsletter
Dear Friends: We are living in the time of some major catastrophes: the devastating coronavirus pandemic, wildfires in the American West, the Siberian north, the Amazon rainforest, Australia etc., hurricanes and tropical storms in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, the melting of key aspects of the two polar icecaps (just a few days ago a huge chunk of the Greenland ice sheet broke away, and two major Antarctic glaciers broke loose, this soon after the collapse of the Milne Ice shelf in Canada into the sea) and the mind-boggling disappearance in fifty years of more than two/thirds of our wildlife and the likely extinction of more than one million species of animal life in the next years. These monumental tragedies can all be traced back to climate change and the pollution we have unleashed on earth, exacerbated by the catastrophic lack of global leadership. Unfortunately, at this crucial time in history, many of the most powerful and largest countries in the world are led by self-serving tyrants such as Trump, Putin, Xi, Modi, Bolsonaro, Duterte, Erdogan, Johnson, Orban, Netanyahu, just to name a few. We need to change our ways and get these corrupt Neros who fiddle while Rome is burning out of power as soon as possible! In the US, it is more crucial than ever that everyone votes in the upcoming election and votes accordingly, otherwise this country will truly become a malevolent dictatorship and continue in its spiral of self-destruction. As someone who studied with Professor Roger Revelle (one of the first scientists to point to the deleterious effects of greenhouse gases) at Harvard in the early 70s, I have been fighting the climate change battle since my university days. I am proud to say that I helped two successful renewable energy companies get going -- they are now both global forces in solar, wind and other forms of clean energy -- and my son, Nicholas, is working with a renewable energy fund in Africa. Now, in my retirement, I continue the fight through my writing: my last two poetry volumes, Extinction and Extinction Rebellion are poetic calls to action, and several of my thrillers are based on environmental calamities. It is important that we all do our part or we could face going the way of the Dodo bird! I am digressing from my usual focus in this Newsletter on writing, but this is such a critical issue and such a critical time, that I feel I must speak out. Just briefly though -- the second edition of Arctic Meltdown is progressing nicely to publication by Black Opal Books, and with my friend Lucinda Clark at P.R.A. Publishing we are looking at doing something exciting with the short stories in The Mind Spins. More on these in subsequent Newsletters. I will leave you with a poem from Extinction Rebellion, appropriate for the times. Frolicking flames The frolicking flames of hellfire devour our primeval forests: we burn filthy fossil fuels, spewing into the air gases that trap the sun’s heat, warming earth, causing drought that scorches the land and melting the polar ice cap— sea levels rise, flooding our towns eroding beaches, wasting floodplains— we are destroying mother earth and much of life that lives on it, including our conceited selves. Please, please stay safe and well. With my warmest wishes, Geza
