Taoist Climate Change on Halloween

In the midst of the intensification of the very polarized and thus divisive U.S. presidential campaign “season” (i.e., year) during its last week, Halloween of 2024 occurred in Boston, Massachusetts not only without the need of trick-or-treaters and their parents to wear winter coats, but also with the option of wearing shorts and short-sleeve shirts without even having to wear a light jacket. That this was so as late as 8pm was nothing short of surreal not only to New Englanders, but also to any transplants from the northern-tier Midwestern and Plains states.  It being around 70F degrees well into the dark hours was nothing short of unprecedented, and so much so that the negative impact of the cold climate in detracting from the holiday in prior years could finally be grasped. I had realized this more than a decade earlier when I was in Miami during Halloween. There is indeed a silver lining to global warming for people living in places that are cold during the late fall, winter, and early spring seasons, even as contrary to political correctness it is to admit this even to friends. The proclivity of the human mind/brain to divide up the world in terms of dichotomies of mutually-exclusive, antagonistic poles does not necessarily fit with empirically with the real world. Taoism speaks to this.

  A man wearing shorts and a woman with bare shoulders (left); costumes not covered by coats (right)

Themes in The Dao De Jing include appearance versus reality, and order versus disorder. Maya, which means illusion, is in appearances but not reality. Both order and disorder are in appearance, and perhaps in reality as well. At the very least, Newtonian physics and quantum physics taken together provide good evidence that instances of both order and disorder exist in nature. This is without doubt in human society too. A political system can be stable for a period of time then suddenly, in the midst of revolutionary fervor, become disordered. Times of peace are more orderly than are times of war. Nevertheless, it is important not to overdo the starkness of these dichotomies. There is order even during war, and instability even in times of peace. In terms of the American political polarity being projected onto the member-states, President Obama reminded Americans that people drive pick-up trucks in “blue” (i.e., liberal) states and there are gays in the “red” (i.e, conservative) states.  There is some red in the blue and some blue in the red. Not that both colors mix or “bleed” into each other; rather, some of the other color can be drawn in as an island of sorts in a state colored red or blue. This has been visualized as the Ying and Yang of Taoism.

The Ying and Yang were originally meant a theoretical constructs used to explain change in nature. Literally, shade on the northern side of a hill can become directly lit by the Sun, and the sun-lit southern side can turn to shade—both as the Sun moves with respect to the hill. In Boston, that might be Bunker Hill. Dong Zhongshu (179-104 BCE) in China misinterpreted Ying and Yang to apply mostly to humans, as for example in terms of gender and hierarchy. The point of Ying and Yang was originally that difference forces in nature interact and can change into each other, whereas Confucianism has emphasized hierarchy and human control over other humans. We distinguish weak and strong, but in actuality things are always changing, and here we can see the imprint of Buddhism on Taoism. It is a trap, according to Taoist teachings, to divide things into polar opposites and value one pole over the other. Going to extremes doesn’t work in the long run. A weapon that is too hard will break; a tree that is too strong will crack; the strong and mighty may reside down below and the soft and supple may reside on top. The moral power, or De, of the way of nature (or the natural way), Dao, is not in favor of the artificial, absolutist dichotomies that we construct in making distinctions in the world.

Our assumption that the good and bad cannot touch falls prey to the point that some aspects of a good thing may be bad, and that some aspects of a bad thing, such as climate change, may be good. A Taoist would tell us that we should not feel morally ashamed in admitting this to ourselves and others. It is ok to celebrate being out on a warm night on Halloween in Boston or Chicago, for instance. In the case of Boston in 2024, at an informal street festival, a woman wore a cape as part of her costume. She was part of an informal marching band. Written on her cape was “Climate Mom.” I submit that “Climate Grandmother” might have been more fitting, as, at the very least, it would have suggested that record carbon emissions from human sources in the prior year would be “paid for” especially by the kids at the festival. Even in their case, the prospect that more of their Halloweens will likely not be hindered by having to wear a winter coat over a costume, and cut short, or compromised, by the physiological urgency of getting back inside somewhere to warm up, can be admitted to be a plus. Every Halloween of my youth in the northern Midwest meant that a winter coat had to cover whatever costume I wanted to show off while “trick-or-treating” outside.

That the Climate Mom was allowing herself to dance even as kids were too during a street-fest in Boston in 2024 suggests that even the dichotomy between the concerned grandmother and the care-free kids who would not have to wait many decades before they feel more of the bad effects of climate change can be relativized in a common spirit of enjoying the experience of being alive. The musicians playing in the crowd of revelers were caught up in the surreal experience of playing and dancing on a warm Halloween night in Massachusetts, which is north of New York City and just south of Maine.

Similarly, as the U.S. presidential campaign was really getting heated in the rhetoric being tossed around that week, a Trump supporter could admit to agreeing with something that Harris said, and a Harris supporter could admit to agreeing with one of Trump’s policy-suggestions. This bit of blue amid red and bit of red amid blue was almost unheard of in 2024, as partisans perhaps more than in any other presidential campaign season since World War II painted the opposing candidate as the incarnation of evil itself. In actuality, both Harris and Trump, like the rest of us, were still human beings and thus imperfect, again, like the rest of us. None of us are saviors or Satan, so it is important to distinguish ourselves and the world in which we live from the mythic language used in religion. Imagine if you will, people so glad that Halloween was on such a nice evening that a spirit of joyful dancing in a street could even include Harris and Trump, with everyone even at close contact, without thieves or police, simply relishing the experience of the senses in being alive without personal sorrows, politics, climate change, or foreign wars obstructing, for however briefly. Even the Climate Mom was dancing on a night in which it was clear to everyone that climate change was part of the cause of the comfortable temperature.

North-Pole Air in Illinois: An Effect of Global Warming

Lest I be too concerned as a native Illinoisian that while I am living in Phoenix in Arizona, climate change will increase the number of 115 plus days during June, July, August, and September in the urban heat-island that is expanding nonetheless, today that city is comfortably 90 degrees (F) warmer than it is in Northern Illinois. The respective highs today are 73 and -15 degrees (windchill at -35, so there is a 110 degree difference in how the temperatures feel). I have experienced -40 degree wind-chill (combining the effects of the temperature and wind speed) early on two mornings in Northern Illinois; today that wind-chill will be for at least 24 hours. Minnesota has been experiencing -60 wind-chill (and Montana, -70!). Records, all. 

Why? differential climate warming (more at the arctic than at the equator) reduces the Arctic jet stream's energy. Like a tired rubber-band, the circle of air becomes wobbly, and this in turn allows the frigid air at the North Pole to escape southward. So both more 115 and 120F days during the summer in Phoenix and more belching of Arctic air in the northern Midwest of the U.S. (and in the northern E.U. too!) are henceforth more likely. 

So in reading about Arizona and Illinois, you would naturally conclude that the extreme temperatures in BOTH directions are among the most notable ways we can tell that climate change is underway. The extremes already before 2020 should be understood as taking place while the oceans are continuing to absorb 93% of the increased warming of the atmosphere due to carbon and methane increases. Just think what the volatility may be like once the oceans have sufficiently heated that they will no longer absorb the excess heat!

Related Essay: "Hidden Warnings of Climate Change."

Getting the Seasons Officially Wrong: A Case of a Category-Mistake

Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post has not quite turned the corner with respect to spring, and the seasons in general. You see, “season” is used in two distinct though related ways in English. It can refer to four distinct weather/plant-life conditions or to the four parts of the earth’s orbit around the sun. Given the tilt of the Earth, the two are related but they do not occur together. While Achenbach acknowledges that the vernal equinox typically on March 21^st “is a moment of time specified by the motion of the Earth around the sun,” he refers to this as the official start of the meteorological spring. In actuality it is not. In the Northern Hemisphere, meteorologists record data from December, January and February as winter and March, April and May as spring. So in March 2012, meteorologists could already conclude that the preceding winter had been the fourth warmest since the record-keeping began.

Consider the insanity in claiming on December 19^th in the Northeast, the Northern Midwest, or on the Northern plains or further west that it is still fall. Yet even television weather people make the mistake of representing the winter solstice—the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere—as meteorological and botanical rather than astronomical in nature (to say nothing of the sheer stupidity in ignoring the obvious winter conditions of snow and ice). Meanwhile, still other people render the astronomical event as religious in nature. The ascendancy of the evergreen on the longest night is religious for those people even as it is botanical to others.

For my purposes here, it is sufficient to note that astronomy is distinct from  meteorology and botany. The latter two are relatively coincident as phenomena. To make meteorology and botany wait on an astronomical mark conflates different categories that do not cohere. It is not surprising that such thinking results in some rather obvious mistakes.

I argue that the same sort of cognitive flaw takes place in comparing a state in one empire-scale union (e.g., France) with another entire empire-scale union (e.g., the U.S.). The respective unions’ states are equivalent both in scale and politically in being semi-sovereign. Citizens in California could just as well say, “In California we do X (that really could be just about anything), while in the E.U. you do Y.” This statement seems strange on both sides of the pond, yet no one bats an eyelid at: “In the Netherlands we do X, while in the U.S. you do Y.” The asymmetry is based on European states’ rights (i.e., the antifederalist movement in American terms) and (frankly) American ignorance at America’s expense. So too, there is ignorance in a meteorologist announcing changes in the weather seasons based on astronomical bench-marks in the Earth’s orbit even as meteorologists do not use those bench-marks in recording data.

I suppose it is in reaction to the meteorologists’ inexcusable carelessness in conflating meteorology and astronomy (they are meteorologists, after all) that I note the beginning of a season by the actual shift in weather conditions. That is, I go from the empirical conditions on the ground. March of 2012 was warm even for spring across the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest. A day or two into the warmth, I naturally started referring spring having arrived. Sure, winter could have returned and then it would have been winter for those days, so the seasons can refer to particular weather conditions (being meteorological). Yet the seasons can also refer to more long-standing clusters of botanical/meteorological conditions. In that March, as soon as the flowers and buds were visible, that only added to my determination to say to folks, “Well, spring has arrived”—meaning on a more long-standing basis than just a warm spell. No one even put up a fight—even as the weather folks on television were still marveling that spring was still weeks away. They just made themselves out to be stubborn idiots, frankly. When they finally “celebrated” the arrival of the astronomical event of there being no tilt in the Earth’s relationship to the sun as if the event were meteorological, the weather “personalities” resembled people who get to a party hours late and announce that the party has officially begun. People at the party obviously know it has been going on for hours, and naturally look confused and ask the host, “who invited those idiots.”  Unfortunately, it doesn’t do any good to talk to a television set; the talking heads keep right on going, completely sure of themselves.

In March of 2012 in many of the northern republics of the U.S., it would have been crazy not to refer to the conditions on the ground, which included daffodils and even tulips flowering and bushes and even trees budding, as spring. Insisting that weeks in the 70s and even 80s are still winter just points to the fault in using the names of the weather/plant seasons to refer to the astronomical quadrants of the Earth’s orbit. There is no “spring” in outer space. If anything, it is a perpetual winter, though even this analogy fails. Furthermore, spring arrives at different times in North America, depending on how far north one happens to be. It really is a regional affair.

The standardization of record-keeping (e.g., spring as March, April and May) is entirely reasonable, but the category mistake with astronomy goes too far, cognitively/logically as well as empirically. Sticking to such a mistake even while making such obvious blunders (such as that 80 degrees with flowers blooming is still winter, or 25 degrees with snow is still fall) is a strange choice that suggests a certain mentality, given that the weather person could simply stay mum on the issue rather than say something that can easily be anticipated as looking stupid. Why even announce that it is still winter while standing outside in shorts among flowers? Why go to the trouble of announcing a category mistake as if it were valid? I suspect that part of the answer is an over-valuing on things being official. Besides the artificiality in such hypertrophy, the mentality involves the flaw of denial. “It doesn’t matter whether it is pouring outside, if there is no rain in my gauge it is not raining.” In a way, this is a version of lying. Refusing to admit an empirical observation on account of an ideological value one holds (excessively), one is willing to lie.

It is not as if the meteorological and astronomical change together. At the very least, the distinctly astronomical nature of the vernal equinox in March (when the earth has no tilt relative to the sun—which happens also at the equinox in September) should be specified rather than implying that the matter is meteorological in nature. Even though the days are getting longer in March (an astronomical matter), it takes time for the air to warm. Accordingly, the meteorological and botanical are not coincident with the astronomical. Treating an astronomical event as if it were meteorological is thus an error; it is at the very least misleading. To willingly mislead just to be official is the sordid mentality that perpetuates this ongoing category mistake.

Source:

Joel Achenbach, “A Warm, and Official, Embrace of Spring,” The Washington Post, March 20, 2012.