Monday Nov 27, 2023
The shame of minor disappointment
10,000 minutes
The final four days of the week were spent with grandchildren, here and interestate (although I managed a couple of short work sessions in Sydney). I achieved a potent clean-up of queued minor drafting jobs but made next to no progress on Chapter 13. I know too well that I’m meant to take these family-oriented weeks in my stride, and I do, I do, I do take them in my striding stride, but I also confess to frustration, a low-level fizz of it.
Monsters
COP 28 commences in three days in Dubai. In spite of my cynical view that somehow the fossil fuel merchants of death have hijacked it, I’ll be watching and listening with interest. This is important.
I’ve wondered whether Australia’s climate change minister (I won’t add the capital letters he insists upon) Chris Bowen would dare to attend COP28. Well, he will. And he has come out firing, releasing projections (both our major parties love issuing “Dodgy Brothers” projections rather than making policy decisions) claiming Australia will more than meet its modest 2030 emissions reductions targets. An excellent article reveals that such claims are “dwarfed” by ongoing approvals of future fossil fuel projects. In other words, while Albanese and his team pretend to slash our own-consumption emissions, they feed the global fossil fuel industry pumping out emissions elsewhere. Our national dilemma, of course, is that Bowen and Albanese are infinitely preferable to Dutton’s archaic, recently ousted Liberal Party. Dutton himself keeps blathering on about the dangers of renewables and a push into nuclear; none of the majority of voters who threw his party out will believe this nonsense for a moment, so Albanese can prevaricate within safe electoral margins.
Brilliant novelist Tim Winton, a hero of mine, lashed the fossil fuel industry five days ago when giving a keynote speech at a nature writing prize ceremony. “The deliberate and successful campaign by the oil and gas industry to hide climate science from the public, and sow doubt and confusion to this day,” he thundered, “is a crime against humanity on a scale I can barely process, let alone forgive.” When he described the fossil fuel giants as “forces that must be defeated,” I realized I’ve been holding back my own rage for far too long. Rage and sorrow, sorrow that I should feel this way.
William Nordhaus is a distinguished economist who has been instrumental in perpetrating rubbish in the field of the financial effects of climate change, the latest update of his 2018 numbers forecasting only a 3% GDP hit at +3C. No one with numbers in their blood and with eyes to see what is happening at +1.1C credits such sophistry. This Reuters article suggests that at last some discourses are hoping to reject Nordhaus, which I guess is good news of a kind.
Mortality
I have booked a Dexa scan (a low-radiation, speedy whole-body scan that gives you your lean body mass and fat %s, a good way to see if you’re a deceptively lean physique like I suspect I am) and VO2 Max test (that measures your ultimate highest oxygen utilitization as a tool to see if you can improve physical exercise) for next Monday. Disappointingly, I’ve lapsed a bit on diet, eating too much oil and fat, so that I’ll get to those tests 1-2 kgs too heavy and not at peak jogging fitness.
We all have these fairytale scenarios in our minds where we quickly optimise diet and exercise, reach our weight and fitness targets, and “improve” as functioning bodies. Such plans are, after all, what we talk about when we aim to maximise healthfulness and do our best to resist the scythe of mortality. I call them fairy tales because few of us get from A to B without stumbles.
I have to keep telling myself that shortfalls, such as this one, are minor compared to my achievements. I eat 80-90% “really well,” I exercise nearly every day, I’m viewed as quite slim and fit. Sure, I have a blocked artery, and sure, that shocked me, but I’ve responded quite sensibly and resolutely.
So I disappointed myself but at a minor level. I tell myself I’m okay. Yet I feel real shame and genuine anxiety. What will unfold over the next few weeks?
A week to anticipate
In contrast to the past fortnight, this week should only have one interrupted day. Routine should set in. I smile.