Rising tides

Twenty million-plus confirmed Covid-19 infections around the world. And it took fewer than six months to arrive at this point.
Rising tides: surging seas, surging coronavirus, surging fear.

News blues…

Europeans view with astonishment and alarm the United States' failure to contain the spread of coronavirus.

Perhaps nowhere outside the US is America's bungled virus response viewed with more consternation than in Italy, which was ground zero of Europe's epidemic.
But after a strict nationwide 10-week lockdown, vigilant tracing of new clusters and general acceptance of mask mandates and social distancing, Italy has become a model of virus containment.
"Don't they care about their health?" a mask-clad Patrizia Antonini asked about people in the United States as she walked with friends along the banks of Lake Bracciano, north of Rome. "They need to take our precautions ... they need a real lockdown."
Much of the incredulity in Europe stems from the fact that America had the benefit of time, European experience and medical know-how to treat the virus that the continent itself didn't have when the first Covid patients started filling intensive care units.

Moreover, a major new survey  of EU citizens found that

… almost 60 percent said their view of the US had worsened since the start of the pandemic. By contrast, just 6 percent of respondents said their view of the US had improved.
European perceptions of the United States slumped in European countries that were previously regarded as being Washington's closest allies, thanks to Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. 
The crisis [has] inflicted dramatic and lasting damage on the reputations of Europe’s two biggest economic partners: the United States and China. Each superpower has seen its reputation collapse in some of the countries that were its closest allies and partners.

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Predictably, a report finds widespread infection among U.S. children. 

As schools face the daunting challenge of reopening while the coronavirus continues to spread, at least 97,000 children around the United States tested positive in the last two weeks of July, according to a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. It says that at least 338,000 children had tested positive through July 30, meaning more than a quarter tested positive in just those two weeks.

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How can it be that anybody still supports Donald Trump?

According to CNN Trump’s “position is no longer deteriorating. A look at the polls shows that even as coronavirus cases and deaths rise, Trump remains within striking distancing of Biden.” What’s more, Trump recently “signed four executive actions that included deferring payroll taxes that provide funding for both Social Security and Medicare.”
This, as a pandemic rages and more than 5 million Americans are confirmed infected with Covid-19.
As “the American people desperately need relief,” noted Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.). “…the president decided to defund Social Security and Medicare.”

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In South Africa, the vuluzelas fell silent.

Healthy futures, anyone?

Focus on Kiribati (pronounced Kiribas). Kiribati, population 119,449, consists of 33 atolls and coral islands (22 inhabited) divided among three groups: Gilbert, Phoenix, and Line Islands.
Economic activity once centered on mining rock phosphate, but deposits are exhausted. 

Click to enlarge. 

The small and beautiful island… in the Kiribati group was mined for rock phosphate from about 1906. 
Top photo: the island shortly before mining began.
Bottom photo:  taken soon after, shows vegetation and soil removed to extract the phosphate rock. 
(c) Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa.

While a $500 million fund created with mining revenues continues to provide significant budget support, Kiribati now relies on foreign assistance, emigrants' remittances, fishing, coconut exports, and tourism. Kiribati is most famous for its world class fly fishing, great scuba diving, and astounding seabird wildlife. 
Kiribati’s newly re-elected president, Taneti Maamau, plans to raise the islands to counter sea-level rise. He will seek support from China and other allies to elevate the islands from the sea, partly through dredging. 
… “The strategy is still in development but clearly identifies raising our islands as a way forward in our fight against climate change. This is also clearly demonstrated in our national climate change policy.”
… To solve chronic flooding in the overcrowded capital, Tarawa, [proposes] to replace causeways – landfill between islands that supports the main road but which can cause beach erosion – with an elevated bridge road running the entire length of the atoll on the sheltered lagoon side. It is the sort of massive infrastructure project China might fund, and has the expertise to engineer. 

Hmmmm. Besides raising the temperature of ongoing geo-political disputes between China and the US regarding offshore resources, one wonders about the practicalities of Kiribati’s plan.
Can “dredging” produce enough material to raise these atolls (“ring-shaped reefs, islands, or chain of islands formed of coral”)?
And at what harm to long-suffering and imperiled coral?

Will China supplement and transport building material to Kiribati – a journey of between 10,600 to 11,000 km? Isn’t that prohibitively expensive under current economic conditions? 

One painful and politically incorrect solution might be to relocate Kiribati’s islanders to more secure areas. (For thinking people, sea level rise is a fact of life; humans must and will adjust . I’m sympathetic: my condo on San Francisco Bay is threatened by sea level rise.) 

On the other hand, Pacific islands and islanders have been used and abused for decades. Perhaps it’s payback time?

Backstory: More than 60 years ago, the United States tested radioactive weapons on Bikini and Enewetak atolls (of the Marshall Islands).
Today, these atolls remain far more radioactive than Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Sarcasm follows: Instead of the enormous expense of China hauling material to Kiribati, the US could recycle and donate material from Runit Island’s Runit Dome? 

The dome, aka “The Tomb,” the Cactus Dome, was built to contain toxic nuclear waste after the US conducted nuclear tests in 1958.
With the Marshall Islands only 2,373 kms from Kiribati, wouldn’t it be cheaper to recycle and transport the dome’s 46 cm (18 in) thick, 115 m (377 ft) diameter concrete dome and the material it encapsulates - an estimated 73,000 m3 (95,000 cu yd) of radioactive debris, including plutonium-239?
(It’s a matter of time before sea level rise drowns then breeches Runit Dome and releases deadly toxic material into the Pacific Ocean.)
Economically distressed Kiribati could use free materials to elevate the islands and cover it with another concrete dome or two. 

Voilà! Both countries benefit by promoting the reduce, reuse, recycle philosophy.
Additionally, the US could mount a concerted propaganda campaign to highlight its gifts to Kiribati, thereby enhancing its tarnished global reputation and cleansing its appalling history at Bikini and Enewetak.
Kiribati would become a model of modern ingenuity in the face of climate change. (The atolls couldn’t look worse than they did after the removal of soil and vegetation to extract rock phosphate back in 1906.)
The tourist industries of both countries would thrive!
A win/win!

Finally, people would “get so sick and tired of winning!” 

*** 

The Lincoln Project: Regret  (0:55 mins)
Really American: Biblical Idiot  (0:37 mins)
Meidas Touch: Vote Proud: Enough is Enough  (1:20 mins)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

I’ve gone from mowing lawns, weeding, maintaining the garden pond, composting, hosting various obsessions , spying on garden creatures , videoing garden creatures , essentially, doing anything to ward off the doldrums.
Yet, behold, the doldrums.
I’m becalmed. Stagnating. Listless.
For now, I’ll choose to blame Lockdown. Winter. A visit geared to check on my elderly mother’s well-being extending… and extending…with no end in sight.
But…
What if I’m falling apart?
What if the whole world is falling apart?
What if this is the end of the world as we know it? (Sabine Hossenfelder – coronavirus version - 3:35 mins)