The Climate Ostrich

If We Remain Climate Ostriches, Billions of Our Children May Die

Real ostriches dig holes in the sand and occasionally put their heads into the holes. They do it not to hide from danger but to protect their progeny, the future of their species. They lay their eggs into the holes to keep them safe and put their heads into the holes to care for the eggs.

Climate ostriches are not real ostriches but humans like you and me, who bury our heads in the sand so we don’t have to think about or see the effects of climate change. Most of us are climate ostriches who would rather not worry about the deaths of our progeny, the possible extinction of our species.

Why Are We Climate Ostriches?

I’ve asked this question to a lot of people. One of the best answers was from a retired CIA spy (really and truly) who happens to have a degree in geology. He said, “Of course I know that disasters such as wildfires, floods, hurricanes, droughts are getting worse and happening with increasing frequency and intensity. But I don’t know whether that’s human caused or what to do about it. Nor do I want to know. Scientists and Government decision makers who understand this better than I do will fix it. I don’t want to think about it. It’s too depressing.”

I’ve also asked this question to literary agents, cybersecurity experts, salespeople, and even an attorney who spent nine years in jail for child molestation (again, really and truly). They said things like, “I’m too busy trying to keep a roof over my head, food on the table, and taking care of my family. I don’t have time to read what scientists say, and I was never good at science anyway. Will my not eating meat or making my home uncomfortably hot or cold to save energy keep people from dying? I can’t see how. It doesn’t make sense. Somebody else will figure it all out and take care of it. That’s how things always work. I’d rather not deal with it. Stopping climate change is not for me.”

Can Experts Prevent Disaster If We Keep Our Heads in the Sand?

No, not quickly enough! If most of us keep our heads in the sand, billions will die. We know we must reduce the carbon we put into the atmosphere and remove the carbon that’s already there. We know every second we delay will cause more and more people to die from wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, floods and other climate-related disasters. If we delay long enough (years rather than seconds), many, many people will die not just from these disasters but also from starvation as drought and heat damage world agriculture, from cities washed away by sea-level rise, from diseases caused by vector migration, from the death of the phytoplankton that makes most of our oxygen, or simply from heat stroke.

Yet we continue to delay. Why? Because even those in power are climate ostriches. Dr. James E. Hansen testified about the climate disasters to the U.S. Congress and Presidents, and even Chinese leaders starting in the 1980s, but they kept their heads in the sand. He still speaks to them, and he’s been joined by thousands of other climate scientists all telling of the climate tragedies we can prevent. But we’re not preventing them. Those who can prevent them remain climate ostriches.

Because of climate ostriches, we keep increasing the amount of carbon we put into the atmosphere. We do almost no drawing it out of the atmosphere. The temperatures keep rising, and more and more people die.

If Climate Ostriches Quickly Go Extinct, Can We Mitigate Climate Disaster?

Yes! We know how to stop putting carbon into the atmosphere and how to remove carbon that’s already there. We’re doing some of it already but not enough and not fast enough. We are still increasing the carbon we put into the air and removing very little.

So how do we mitigate climate disaster? How do we stop being climate ostriches? We pull our heads out of the sand and become friendly: climate friendly. What does climate friendly mean? I have four things in mind:

1.   Vote climate friendly: vote for climate-friendly candidates; vote against climate ostriches

a.     This will change Government funding concerning the climate. If done well, it will not increase taxes but will move money from climate destroyers to climate savers.

b.     It will change Government legislation to encourage citizens, industrialists, and investors to help fix the climate.

c.      It also will increase the number of climate-friendly judges, so judicial decisions will help fix the climate and not hurt it.

2.     Buy climate friendly products. We switched from boxy TVs and computer displays to flat panels incredibly quickly. The same was with pay phones to cell phones and with horses to cars. Purchasing power is incredibly strong. We need to buy climate-friendly, such as:

  a.   Buy homes with solar panels and heat pumps

  b.   Buy electric cars

  c.   Buy food from climate-friendly companies (Lipton, Mars, and General Mills purchase from farmers using methods that pull carbon out of the air)

3.      Invest in climate friendly corporations/financial firms (ask your 401K/financial advisors for ESG)

4.      Be friendly. Talk to your friends and neighbors about climate. Persuade them not to be climate ostriches.

How Do We Persuade Climate Ostriches to Take Their Heads Out of the Sand?

Sigmund Freud and his sister married a brother and sister (really and truly once more). Freud’s double nephew, Edward Bernays, made use of Freud’s ideas to become the undisputed father of public relations, the techniques and methodology of persuading large numbers of people.

Scientists use technical terms like ppm, degrees Celsius, and CO2. These have nothing to do with Freudian desires and are boring with no persuasive value. Note they were not used in this article. Caring for progeny and the future of one’s species are Freudian desires but less strong than sex. The same is true for friendship and our fascination with interesting animals such as the Ostrich. Prose text articles are limited in the use of Bernays persuasion techniques. That is where art comes into play.

Harriet Beecher Stowe predated Bernays, but her UNCLE TOM’S CABIN used the same techniques he described. That is why her book played a role in ending slavery in the United States. (Abraham Lincoln is reported to have said to Stowe, “So you’re the lady who started this great war”). I am using the same techniques in my novel, MOURNING DOVE, to persuade climate ostriches to take their heads out of the sand and help mitigate climate disaster. Having readers identify with characters who experience Freudian sexuality, love, ecstasy, and even mourning can be very persuasive. Many novels have changed the world: GRAPES OF WRATH, 1984, THE JUNGLE, THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO, and many others. I am trying to do the same.

We need other artwork incorporating Bernays techniques for persuasion. Bob Dylan’s music helped persuade the U.S. to end the Vietnam War. The movie TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD fought Jim Crow America. Picasso’s Guernica is a powerful anti-war work of art. Picasso once even went so far as to declare, “Painting is not made to decorate apartments; it is an offensive and defensive instrument of war against the enemy.”

It takes a lot to pull the heads of millions of climate ostriches out of the sand. If you are a great artist and can use the techniques of Edward Bernays, we need you.

Who am I? Why am I writing this? I have recently finished a powerful global warming novel as part of my personal war against the climate crisis. Please help. Friend me on Facebook, Follow me on Twitter, and connect with me on LinkedIn. I need a great literary agent and a great publishing company to market the novel and print a lot of copies. Agents and publishers look at an author's social media numbers as a sign of potential buyers. So please Friend me, Follow me, and Connect with me, and comment on what I post. Consider it as doing a small part in saving humanity from the ravages of global warming. Thanks.

Shawn Oueinsteen      
www.shawnoueinsteen.com
mourningdovenovel.blogspot.com 

The Pitch for MOURNING DOVE

Pitch from Baseball's Only World Series Perfect Game, Don Larsen, 1956

This is my pitch for MOURNING DOVE, the novel I, Shawn Oueinsteen, wrote to help put mankind's climate-disaster mitigation on a war footing.

Logline for MOURNING DOVE

A post-apocalypse family of climate scientists, engineers, dreamers, and sharpshooters travels from their climate-extinction-prevention station in Alaska to Antarctica to join distant family rebuilding civilization; in their journey, they see how tragic and heart-rending a climate apocalypse can be

Elevator Speech for MOURNING DOVE (aka Jacket-Flap Summary)

“Dammit Jen! You didn’t have to die to get me to grow up.” These are the words of the main character, Ttuuee, and they are false. Witnessing his sister’s murder triggers his coming of age with the character of a diamond, hard and brilliant, with sparkling but sharp-edged humor. Leading the family, his experiences include drawing into his arms the painted body of his adopted witch, as she sobs with regret she was born truly evil. Sleeping at the bedside of his deathly ill father, he awakens with joy hearing Dad’s obviously phony delirium, a joke; Dad is no longer a breath away from dying. Ttuuee smiles into the ocean breeze as he watches the pirates who attacked flee in their damaged ship. He forces an evil queen (a cousin) to remove handcuffs from his father’s wrists. He savors a hug of thanks from his Rembrandt girl for his suggesting and then digging a grave to bury the old, old dog she grew up with and loved. A few years later, he places a billion-dollar engagement ring onto her finger.

Two-Page Synopsis

The mission of Jen Darlton’s family for generations has been and still is to prevent further extinction of all life and when that’s done travel from their climate station in Alaska to Antarctica to join family restoring civilization from the climate apocalypse. Jen’s Mom, a climate scientist, believes they can do no more concerning extinction and she starts leading the effort to go to Antarctica. But Mom dies due to a surprise ice storm caused by climate change. As Mom’s body is lowered into her grave, Jen, promises to her mother’s soul that she will fulfill Mom’s dream.

Jen’s Dad refuses to go. Grandpa tells Dad how a pair of mourning doves made a nest in the carport of his childhood home. When the mother bird was killed by a neighbor’s cat, the father bird stood a foot away from the nest and shouted, for 18 hours straight, the call of the Mourning Dove: koo kurikoo koo koo. He flew away and the eggs eventually rotted. Grandpa tells Dad not to let his own children rot away without ever seeing others their own age. To Dad, Jen cries, “Koo kurikoo koo koo.” That changes his mind.

At the fall of the U.S., Grams was a colonel and her father was chairman of the Joint Chiefs. As a result, their Alaska station is well provided for and includes a military cargo plane. An airplane malfunction forces them to touch down in a small joint Naval/Air Force base town in southeastern Brazil. They inspect the town, which appears deserted. Jen wants to give Ttuuee a birthday present and sees something he would like. She arises early the next morning and runs off to get the present before the others wake up. Ttuuee gets up and realizes she is gone. He awakens Dad and they start off after her. But as they leave the safety of their plane, they find they are under attack. They learn later these are from a family of “post-apocalypse have-nots,” who wish to murder them for their supplies and capture Jen. In the post-apocalypse world, healthy young women are a valuable commodity. Dad is a trained sharpshooter and he, Ttuuee, and Jen all carry U.S. Army-supplied munitions that are well maintained. Dad kills the attackers and they race to the town center. There they see Jen fighting to escape from a young man about her age. Her assailant reaches for a pistol near him, Jen grabs his arm and bites it. In desperation, he grabs a knife from his belt with his other hand and stabs Jen her through the heart. He is shot by Dad, a moment too late.

Shortly after Dad and Ttuuee finish burying Jen, Dad hands Ttuuee a pistol and begs Ttuuee to shoot him, and then shoot himself. Ttuuee slams his fist into Dad’s chest. He shouts, “No! Jen had a mission she died for. We will achieve her mission or die trying.”

Dad and Ttuuee carry heavy bags of water back to the plane on a very hot day, Dad feels sick and collapses, unconscious. Ttuuee cannot wake him. But he feels a hand on his shoulder. Its from a young woman who wears only impressionist camouflage paint. She wipes Dad’s face and chest with a wet cloth. She drips water onto Dad’s lips. He wakes up coughing. She and Ttuuee half walk, half carry Dad to her home, which she shares with an old, fat, dark-skinned artist named Manny. Her name is Gerta, and she gives Dad her bed.

Ttuuee and Gerta both care for Dad and he slowly recovers. Manny suggests they continue to Antarctica using a Brazilian military spy ship his mother worked on just prior to the climate apocalypse. The ship’s name is the Bucephalus. As they set sail, they fight off an evil king (Manny’s cousin). Manny has coughing fits in which he spits up blood. During one fit, he intentionally falls overboard to die at sea. Near the South Orkney Islands, they are attacked by pirates, who attempt to seize the Bucephalus. Ttuuee and Dad use the ship’s sophisticated weaponry to defeat the pirates.

Grandpa’s cousin, Catherine, built the Darlton colony with great family wealth she and her cousins inherited. Grandpa and Catherine are on different sides of family hatreds ongoing for more than a century but they get along. However, Grams hates Catherine and says she created the colony not to rebuild civilization but to make herself queen. Shortly after docking, Ttuuee notices a girl in strong sunlight and dark shadows. With the lighting and her mischievous smile, she reminds him of Rembrandt self-portraits. He thinks of her as the “Rembrandt Girl.” As Ttuuee begins school, he befriends her. Her real name is Snana, which comes from her Lakota heritage.

Grams proves to be right about Catherine. She has Dad arrested. She attempts to have Ttuuee seized but he manages to flee from his captors and run to the Bucephalus. He instructs it to immediately run a program he wrote to use the Bucephalus weaponry to save the colony from a threatening glacier. When the noise dies down, he has the Bucephalus amplify his voice. He announces that his ship just saved the colony but never again will it assist the colony unless they immediately release his father. He knows his demonstration scared everyone who saw it. Catherine has Dad released.

Snana’s very old, beloved dog dies. Ttuuee volunteers to dig a grave under a tree and help her conduct a proper funeral. She is grateful. She mentions that Catherine brought mourning doves to the colony. A few days later, they spend a day together in the woods and enjoy each other’s company as they see and hear the doves. On another day, she plays for him parts of a Lakota symphony she is composing. As he walks back to his ship, he stops to rest at a comfortable grassy patch. He thinks of how much he is attracted to Snana, and how nothing speaks to the rebuilding of humanity as much as a new symphony that incorporates tribal melodies. He leans back and shouts to the sky, “Thank you, Jen, wherever you are.”

He hears a very distant response. He is sure it is Jen’s voice. It says, “Koo kurikoo koo koo.”
A few years later (epilogue), Ttuuee places a magnificent Darlton-family engagement ring on Snana’s finger.

Who I am: Author Autobiography of Shawn Oueinsteen

My hopes and dreams were baked in before I turned five. As editor-in-chief of a movie magazine, my Dad was kissed by Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe but said my mother was more beautiful than either of them. When my Mom died, my father wrote a love poem to her every day for a year. Because of that, MOURNING DOVE character Max Nytlee writes love poems to his wife every day after she passes away. Romance is in my DNA. The final pages of MOURNING DOVE include a diamond ring being slipped onto a beloved's finger.

When my father was a teenager, the Philadelphia Phillies offered him a contract as a pitcher, but World War II ended his baseball dreams. As a toddler, I used to watch him pound out sentences using two fingers on an old manual typewriter. Then he would tear the paper from the machine, scrunch it into a ball, and throw it to the floor harder than he ever threw a baseball. He did that hundreds of times and never got to his novel's second page. I started writing fiction at the age of seven. I studied for an Master's Degree in creative writing under J.R. Salamanca, whose first two novels became major motion pictures. At the age of twenty-two, I wrote a short novel and had it published by a division of Random House. I type, with all ten fingers, at more than 120 words per minute.

My big sister hated me. Almost from the day I started to walk, she would get me to follow her, lead me to places I didn't know, and intentionally lose me. If I was lucky, strangers would see me crying and come to help. She lost me once when we were on vacation. I couldn't tell the strangers how to reach my parents. It was many hours before both sides called the police. My sister took great pride in being the bad kid. She enjoyed, and still enjoys, being in trouble. She would never do her homework. I can't help but be her opposite. I am the good kid. I always do my homework. As homework for my climate novel, I have read more than 200 books about climate change, many by scientists. I have connected on social media with more than 35,000 climate experts, and I communicate one-to-one with many of them. Readers of my blog have recommended me as a climate-change expert to give a speech and perform in a podcast.

An evil soldier with a bayonet stabbed and killed my cousin as a baby in the arms of my grandmother's sister, my mother's favorite aunt. This was in Auschwitz. After a climate apocalypse, migrants will become hungry, thirsty, and diseased, and will experience their loved ones dying. People will kill people, doing anything for food, water, electricity, and medicines to stay alive. I wrote MOURNING DOVE to keep babies from being stabbed to death in their mothers' arms. That is why I am so very dedicated to marketing MOURNING DOVE, as I describe in the Query Letter.

I am very confident that a top literary agent will represent me and will sell MOURNING DOVE to a great publishing company. To follow the progress of MOURNING DOVE, and see whether my confidence is justified, please friend me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, and connect with me on LinkedIn. Thanks.

Shawn Oueinsteen      
www.shawnoueinsteen.com
mourningdovenovel.blogspot.com