Review: Sharp Objects

Sharp Objects

Author: Gillian Flynn

Published: 2006

Genre: Psychological thriller, mystery, Southern Gothic

Note: This is a review for Gillian Flynn's 2006 novel, not the recently-released miniseries adaptation on HBO.

Despite my avid fondness for storytelling, for five years I never picked up a novel and read it simply because I wanted to. Not because it was assigned to me for school, or recommended to me by someone else, but just to see for myself how the story ends. That changed when I read Gillian Flynn’s riveting debut Sharp Objects last week. It took me one day.

For some context: I only decided to read Sharp Objects because of HBO's new miniseries adaptation starring Amy Adams. The show is absolutely excellent, but my impatience with its slow-burn pace (and my ever-present fear of Internet spoilers) meant I was quite desperate to know what happens next. Lucky for me, the show is a very faithful adaptation of its source material, given that Flynn is involved as both a producer and a writer. Two episodes is all it took for me to take up the book.

Poster for HBO's miniseries adaptation, starring Amy Adams and Patricia Clarkson.

Yes, Sharp Objects is a short read, coming at just over 250 pages, but it was rendered even shorter by my utter inability to stop reading till I was finished. It’s dark, morbid, vividly written and deeply suspenseful. It’s also unafraid to tackle some difficult and provocative subject matter, including self-harm, alcoholism and parental neglect. It’s often hard to read, but much harder to put down.

Sharp Objects follows Camille Preaker, a Chicago-based reporter who is sent back to her fictional hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri, to cover the murders of two young girls. Wind Gap is a small and insular community teeming with gossip and secrets around every corner, which means word gets out fast anytime something is awry. The murders instill fear and suspicion among the town’s residents, all of whom seem like they have something to hide. It gives Camille plenty of investigative bone to chew on as she reacquaints herself with Wind Gap’s history.

The most challenging history Camille has to grapple with, however, is her own, as she goes to stay with her overbearing mother in their eerie, Gothic family household. This introduces a recurring theme throughout a book: an attraction to darkness. Camille, we learn, is both an alcoholic and a self-harmer, having carved words all over her body, each with its own meaning and salience to Camille’s tortured past and psyche. Much of this psyche was forged over the course of her upbringing in Wind Gap, which included the death of her half-sister Marian when the two were children, and the subsequent breakdown of her relationship with her mother. In returning home upon a tragedy befalling innocent children, Camille is slowly drawn back into the dark void in which she first lost her own innocence.

What’s interesting, though, is that Camille is not just a walking repository of gloom and despair. In fact, she’s quite the opposite: she describes her experiences in Wind Gap with the keenly observant eye of a reporter and the blithe and sardonic wit of someone already familiar with the town's idiosyncracies. Since the entirety of the novel is told from Camille’s perspective, her voice adds color and character to the story’s events that a less nuanced protagonist would be unable to achieve. Camille is not an “unreliable” narrator in the vein of Flynn’s other hit novel, Gone Girl, but the juxtaposition of her dry and “journalistic” tone with the dark and twisted nature of the events provides the novel and its heavy subject matter with an uncanny accessibility. You yourself become drawn to its darkness with an almost morbid curiosity, much like Camille. You learn to empathize with her pain rather than be put off by it.

Much of this owes to Flynn’s brilliant writing style, which manages to be vividly descriptive yet natural enough to feel intimate – human. Once again, Camille’s characterization works to Flynn’s advantage: she can imbue her descriptions with a degree of detail and pathos that feels entirely appropriate to her protagonist, and thereby flesh out the novel’s Southern Gothic world in an organic way. And though we the reader become attracted to the darkness of said world, we are never desensitized to it. That vague yet piercing feeling that something is very, very wrong in Wind Gap lingers throughout the novel and offsets even its quieter moments with a constant feeling of dread. This book is still a thriller at heart, and when it amps up the tension (particularly in the third act), it becomes downright harrowing.

Of course, with a great setting comes great characters, and Flynn enlivens her story with a rich supporting cast that is just as well-realized as her protagonist. Camille’s aforementioned mother Adora, while thoroughly odious due to her emotionally abusive behavior, remains an enigmatic presence throughout the novel. This is mainly because she is an especially well-connected resident of Wind Gap, using her family wealth and social influence to maintain a pristine “old money” exterior among the other townsfolk. But the character that leads a true double-life is Camille’s teenage half-sister Amma, who Camille meets for the first time upon her return to Wind Gap. Amma is her mother’s personal doll at home and a rebellious troublemaker by night, and her bond with Camille over their mutual yearning for escape introduces a fascinating dynamic between them that evolves in unexpected ways over the course of the story. Furthermore, Camille’s news story puts her at odds with both the town’s disgruntled sheriff and a detective coming from Kansas City to investigate the murders. Her interactions with these characters as well as various town locals and families provides for some trenchant commentary on themes like gender, class, grief and adolescence, and offer the welcome contrast of seeing how the murders affect "ordinary" people.

What I found most impressive about Sharp Objects was the strikingly efficient pace at which it advances its story. The narrative could have been stretched to twice its length and dragged on with extraneous detail and unnecessary subplots, but Flynn eschews such distractions and keeps the focus tightly trained on Camille and Wind Gap, resulting in a story that’s relatively simple in the way of plot but endlessly absorbing in its exploration of characters. Indeed, character development is the main thrust of the book’s mystery, and Flynn is able to sustain reader intrigue into Wind Gap's various secrets without sacrificing realism or logic in the process. The book is also respectful yet inventive in addressing the topic of self-harm, and the effectiveness with which it incorporates the subject into its story indicates that neither Camille nor Flynn care whether the reader is judging. It’s a heavy topic, yes, but the book is more than strong enough to carry that weight with grace and confidence.

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I absolutely recommend Sharp Objects to anyone who enjoys a good murder mystery, or simply wants to liven up their summer evening. I suppose a “trigger warning” is in order for anyone who finds mental illness or self-harm to be too sensitive a subject, as it’s something I see frequently expressed on the Reddit community for the miniseries. As for the TV adaptation, I also strongly recommend seeing it – everything about it is flawlessly executed, from the acting and music choices to the surreal, dreamlike quality evoked by its unique editing style. It also makes the smart choice of presenting events from other perspectives rather than only that of Camille, which adds further intrigue and complexity to the world of Wind Gap.

As for the question of which one to try first, I can only speak from experience and say I watched two episodes of the series before starting the novel. This has worked well for me, since the early (slower) chapters of the novel are made more entertaining with the imagery of the series’ actors and settings in mind. Finishing the novel has also made the rest of the series more fun to watch, as I have the added excitement of seeing the novel’s pages come to life onscreen. Knowing how the story ends does not detract from the experience at all, since there’s still an element of surprise to how exactly the series adapts the book to its format with each episode. There are also a few new characters and subplots introduced to the series that aren’t in the book, and though I don’t expect these elements to alter the general course of the plot very drastically, they still add new dimensions to the story while maintaining the authentic tone struck by the novel.

Hope you guys enjoy Sharp Objects! Thanks for reading!

Black Mirror

The episode "White Christmas", starring Jon Hamm. The last episode to be aired on the UK's Channel 4 before
the series moved to Netflix in 2016.

Warning: The following post contains spoilers for episode 1 of Black Mirror.

It’s been a while since I came across some good television, so I figured I’d try and check off a box on my ever-expanding list of series to catch up on. It’s worth noting that in the past, I used to get exceedingly attached to the shows I’d watch, at the expense of many of my other priorities. But over the last two years I’ve been able to find a better balance between work and play, and my TV diet has shifted from mere entertainment to more informative programming.

As such, the increasingly popular Netflix sci-fi anthology Black Mirror is different compared to your run-of-the-mill TV drama. For starters, it’s an episodic anthology – every episode features a different cast, crew, story and setting. Therefore, the only thing binding this show’s universe together is the thematic threading woven by its writers, not by any particular characters or stories. Second, the point of each Black Mirror episode is to serve as an allegory for the effects of technology on our everyday lives. The bizarre and surreal scenarios presented in the show are all just series creator Charlie Brooker's observations of how our phones, computers and televisions – the titular “black mirrors” – reflect our changing psyches and interactions with one another. In that sense, the show is simultaneously drawing audiences into its dystopian fictional universe(s) as well as making us more aware of the role technology plays on our real lives. And it does so through some of the most finely-crafted television I’ve come across in years.

Right from the outset, one of the more impressive traits of Black Mirror is how fluidly it strides between genres, themes and narrative structures. From the pilot onwards, we go from a satirical political thriller to a dystopian, existentialist sci-fi tragedy, to not one but two relationship dramas with a futuristic bent. As the series continues, we’re treated to at least two horror-thrillers, a Star Trek-inspired space adventure, a touching retro-futuristic love story, and a 90-minute Christmas special that begins like a sitcom and ends with viewers’ heads both figuratively and literally spinning. But despite this colorful stylistic platter, the show is notorious for using any one of these genres as a means of telling bleak, terrifying stories that carry trenchant social commentary along with them.

Season 1, Episode 2 - "Fifteen Million Merits", starring Get Out's Daniel Kaluuya.

You are now entering spoiler territory…

Take the infamous pilot episode, “The National Anthem”. I’ve heard countless reports of fans of the show hearing from their friends that they were disgusted to have been recommended Black Mirror after having watched this first episode. Why? Well, the plot goes something like this: the fictional prime minister of the UK is threatened with the murder of a beloved princess unless he films himself having sex with a pig for the entire country to watch. And despite his best efforts to thwart or deceive the kidnappers, he ends up actually having to go through with the obscene act. 

As a disclaimer, the other episodes of the series are very different from this one, but what’s immediately appealing about this daring pilot is how brilliantly it’s written and directed, taking this absurd scenario and playing it entirely straight. We get to see dramatic shots of the PM looking out his window in somber contemplation. Tense scenes of him arguing violently with his wife and staff. Frenetic chitchat among media figures deciding which censorship rules to break in landing the scoop on this bizarre national emergency. But what starts as an amusing, seemingly satirical piece of political drama morphs into a truly depressing ordeal that we witness the characters endure. We’re left thinking “he can’t possibly do it, can he?” right up to the point where he actually does, and maybe a minute or so into it as well. Of course, all we do see on camera is a montage of onlookers displaying a smattering of emotions: shock, amusement, horror, confusion, disgust, and almost certainly one or two looks of arousal. But we, the viewer, are part of that crowd as well, perhaps wondering whether it really was a good idea to listen to our friends’ TV recommendations.

"That scene." ("The National Anthem")

I obviously don’t fault viewers for recoiling at the fact that they just witnessed a character fuck a pig in the very first episode of this series. Most of us aren’t exactly into that, it would seem. But I believe that this episode is an appropriate barrier-of-entry to the rest of Black Mirror, despite being starkly different in its presentation compared to most other episodes of the show. Charlie Brooker is testing his audiences’ capacity to look past the raw content presented on screen – starting with a challenging, lurid example – and to actually try and decipher the thematic messaging driving it all. As it turns out, the true horror of “The National Anthem” is not that the prime minister of the UK fucked a pig on live television, but that the insurmountable pressure from the media and from within his government led him to such a decision in the first place. Throughout the episode there is talk of the PM’s plunging approval ratings, his public persona, the accountability of the government, and the celebrity status of the kidnapped princess (perhaps a commentary on Kate Middleton and the superficiality of the Royal Family and its extensive press coverage). Such factors – image, status, social approval – can lead to us entirely corrupting our personal morals and dignity so we can still cohere with the fabric of society. “The National Anthem” shows us how the expanded role of social media only exacerbates this pressure and leads us to increasingly define our roles in society based on popularity, ratings, “buzz”. This could not be more relevant within our current political climate and the nascent “digital age”.

No more spoilers past this point.

Subsequent episodes of Black Mirror have been more ambitious with their production values and thematic depth - also, mercifully devoid of bestiality, though just as merciless with their storytelling. Episode 2 pits its protagonists in a dystopian, prison-like complex that forces its citizens to consume inordinate amounts of advertising while accumulating virtual currency as a means of maintaining their sustenance and socioeconomic status. The episode is in many ways bleaker and more depressing than the pilot episode, not only with respect to the inescapable situation plaguing its characters but to how closely it mirrors modern consumerism and our collective slavery to corporate advertising. The episode to follow returns to the modern world, but where the wealthy can choose to get a digital chip implanted in their heads that stores video recordings of all of their memories (think a “Snapchat story” of your entire life). It focuses on a married couple carrying these chips, where the husband suspects his wife of having an affair. The episode stirringly explores how even in a universe where privacy is almost entirely obliterated by technology, people will still find ways to lie and deceive one another. It’s the endurance of human fallibility in a society where stunning technological breakthroughs redefine the way we interact with ourselves and others. Not that different from the world we live in now, huh?

Season 1, Episode 3 - "The Entire History of You". Memories can be digitally recorded, stored and
replayed via the fictional "grain" technology, seen above.

In fact, Black Mirror’s social commentary is so apt that it predicted several world events prior to their occurrence. For example, the season 3 premiere “Nosedive” features a society in which people’s socioeconomic status is based on a 5-star “rating system” on a universally-used social media app. While the episode’s intent was merely to satirize apps like Instagram and people’s psychological dependency on Internet attention, something frighteningly similar to the technology it depicted is now underway in China. The Chinese government has planned the rollout of a “Social Credit System” by 2020 that blacklists citizens who are perceived to have committed wrongdoings and rewards citizens with more “approvable” lifestyles, using a government-arbitrated “social credit” as its metric. Pilot programs are already in effect: in 2017, the government stated that an estimated 6.15 million Chinese citizens were banned from taking flights due to “social misdeeds.” And this March, the government announced plans to add trains to the transport options withheld from those with poor “social credit”. Multiple news sites jumped to comparisons with “Nosedive” in covering developments on this issue.

Season 3, Episode 1 - "Nosedive", eerily similar to China's "Social Credit System".

Other examples of Black Mirror’s prophetic storytelling include season 2, episode 3, “The Waldo Moment,” which features an obnoxious animatronic television character being put on the ballot as a candidate for Parliament. While the episode was poorly received when it aired in 2011, it has since attracted renewed attention for its relevance to the US presidential election, in which our own obnoxious television character found his way to the Oval Office. And perhaps most absurdly, rumors broke in 2015 that former British Prime Minister David Cameron engaged in sexual acts with a dead pig while a student at Oxford, four years after “The National Anthem” aired on television. Brooker was appropriately stunned, insisting that he knew nothing of this scandal when writing the episode and that it was merely a once-in-a-lifetime coincidence.

As I continue my way through Black Mirror, I always find myself in itching to know “what happens next” despite the independence of the episodes’ narratives and characters. That’s because the real story behind this show is in its parallels to the relationship between technology, society and human nature itself. Never have I seen a TV show make such effective use of its themes, where half the fun is in learning the philosophy encased in the episode’s events rather than just treating that as an afterthought to the “entertainment”. The series rests on the principle of having something to say, rather than just to keep its audiences glued to the screen. But for the record, it is pretty damn entertaining, too.

I "rate" Black Mirror a 5/5! Newcomers out there might want to skip episode 1 and come back to it later. It's a great episode, just not for everybody.

Thanks for reading!

Musical Ecstasy: A Recap of My First Concert

There are certain sensory experiences and states of mind that I suspect I will be forever closed off to – perhaps for my own good – among which is the influence of psychedelic drugs like LSD, psilocybin and MDMA (“ecstasy”). There is, of course, an intelligent conversation to be had as to how appropriate certain stigmas about drugs really are: the aforementioned substances as well as marijuana can land many users in prison despite being far less dangerous than life-ruinous drugs like tobacco and alcohol, which are enshrined in the cultures of almost every society on the planet. However, I don’t trust my own sense of self-control nearly enough to seriously believe that I can use any of these substances in “moderation”, and so I am left to seek experiences that at least approximate certain criteria that drug users claim their dope of choice to satisfy. I’m now quite confident that my first concert from last night satisfied all of them.

To offer some context: the electronic musician Zedd has embarked on his worldwide “Echo Tour”, and the WaMu Theater in Seattle was only his second stop. Zedd is an artist I’ve followed for over five years and is someone I credit with alluring me to the electronic dance music (EDM) scene to begin with. It’s worth noting that the term “EDM” carries some embarrassing connotations of mainstream pop music that I have done my best to distance myself from, having generally followed more underground and experimental artists for most of my listening tenure. Nonetheless, there remain figures in the mainstream scene that are as humble, honest and genuinely passionate about their musical endeavors as any artist you can find, and I’m pleased to say that Zedd has historically held this distinction. I additionally admire the man’s appreciation for experimental and unconventional music, which he has shown with his endorsement of Grey, a duo that I have been religiously obsessed with over the past two years for a host of reasons. Zedd brought them along to open for his set, which doubled my excitement for the event.

If you are an active participant in the EDM community, as I am, you will quickly notice the ubiquitous fondness for live events amongst listeners. This is no accident: most electronic artists build their careers as DJ’s, and much of the music in the genre is produced (and often listened to) in the context of how maniacally it can get a thousand people to behave in public. In fact, a song’s onstage efficacy is increasingly treated as its only important criterion, and as a result, there exist some literally ear-splitting tracks out there that casual listeners would be best advised not to go near. Enjoying such music requires either 1) a certain empathy for the concert experience, 2) an adequate imagination, or 3) a mildly masochistic taste in music, as many appear to have. However, the infatuation with concerts runs deeper: one of the most popular subjects of discussion in electronic music forums is just the sensory bliss provided by seeing your favorite artist perform live. These rapturous moments are said to connect listeners together as a sort of family sharing in the communal pleasures of music, on a level that is unparalleled by any other mode of musical enjoyment. Naturally, I’ve always felt a certain detachment from even the most eloquent of these descriptions, simply because I hadn’t a clue what it truly felt like to be part of a concert.

That all changed dramatically last night. My introduction to concert life was an experience that can only be sufficiently described by hyperboles. Which is to say that although hyperboles are meaningless precisely because their claims are so outlandish, my time at the show did in fact live up to such promise. It was indeed “nothing like I’ve ever felt before,” “the best time of my life,” and at times, even felt “unreal.”

My view of the concert.

Some specifics are clearly in order. Right from the two-hour wait in line, I felt quivers of elation merely due to the novelty of the situation. Here I was with a friend, unaccompanied by any adults, out in the bustling streets of an urban metropolis waiting for one of my favorite musicians to perform right in front of me. My eagerness was amplified as we made it into the concert hall, a seemingly endless room with multicolored stage lights piercing through the darkness. The first set of the night was performed by R&B artist Lophiile, a native of Seattle filled with humor and enthusiasm. It was definitely fun to continuously jump and handwave while sandwiched between horny 20-year olds, but that primal energy I was waiting to release wasn’t quite provoked until Grey appeared on stage. This deserves its own description…

The Grey brothers performing live.

Above, I mentioned being “religiously obsessed” with Grey’s music for quite some time. This includes having listened to each of their songs for weeks on end, keenly waiting on announcements of new material, promoting their tracks on the social media handles I use in the music community, and proselytizing about their work to every budding consumer of music I come across. Much of this boils down to a matter of personal taste: as a musician myself, I pay attention to elements of songs that take a practitioner’s ear to keep track of, and Grey’s cleanly mixed production, innovative chord progressions, attention to detail and frequent use of acoustic guitar and unique sound design make for a winning combination by my book. They also began their career anonymously, which provided the allure of following a brand-new musical act that boasted professional-grade production quality from the very outset.

All things considered, it was surreal seeing them physically stand before me and rock their hearts out with music I’ve developed such an attachment to over the years. The moment of the night, of course, was when they ended their set by playing their track “These Roots” that I had tweeted my piano cover of to them that very morning under my online “Batman” moniker. They even yelled “this one’s for Batman!” into the mic, which resulted in a mix of amusement, excitement and mild confusion from the audience, and a solid few minutes of sheer stupor from one particular member of the crowd.

Zedd entered the stage at around 10:30 PM, and despite two hours of sweaty dancing, jumping and arm-flailing, none of us were even remotely depleted of kinetic energy. As many fans of his work know, Zedd has a penchant for including some truly marvelous visuals to complement his set, which featured both recent hits and fan favorites selected from his discography. The combination of foot-stomping music, flashing strobe lights and beautifully rendered 3D graphics made for a visual and auditory treat that seriously transcends description. I’ll let the video below explain itself:

What becomes apparent over the course of witnessing something like this is that the cocktail of sensations involved – the joy of listening to an artist you idolize play some of your favorite songs right before your eyes, the perspiration that makes the texture of your hair unrecognizable, the brief loss of your voice amidst fervent sing-alongs, the abnormal feeling you get merely by standing still as opposed to moving to the music – cannot be stirred by words alone. It’s easy to see why I just could not be very moved by even the most expressive accounts of live-show euphoria: the sensation is forever encapsulated in the moment, and can never be fully recapitulated by any amount of description.

Of course, admitting this appears to render this entire blog post pointless, but it is my hope that my efforts to immerse you in my experience with language will at least slightly convince you to go and immerse yourself in the language of my experience. Find an artist or band you follow that is performing in a city close to your residence and buy tickets without hesitation. There is a myriad of adjectives I could use to try and pin down the nature of what I underwent – one-of-a-kind, intense, self-fulfilling, dare I say “spiritual” – but of course, none can do justice to the raw contents of that love letter to the senses that performers deliver with utmost sincerity. If there was ever a drug that you’d do good to get high on, music would be just the one.

The Climate Conversation

Picture by me!

Last month, President Trump finally came to a decision on the United States’ role in the UN Paris Climate Agreement of 2016, opting to pull the nation out of the deal. As one might expect, the move was met with a firestorm of criticism from both sides of the political spectrum, as well as from around the world: at the G20 summit in early July, the 19 other world leaders at the conference chose to move forward with the climate pact despite Trump’s dissent, delivering a swift blow to the US' international stature as a leading player in climate progress. Since then, the news headlines have been taken over by other chaos from the White House and its never-ending stream of Russia-related incriminations, so I felt it was appropriate to pull the climate issue out of the mud and find ways to improve the conversation surrounding it.

The current state of Americans’ knowledge on climate change is, at best, embarrassing: according to a rigorous study conducted by the Pew Research Center and published last October, while most have accepted global warming as a real phenomenon, only 48% believe that it is caused by human activity. In response to questions about whether global warming would result in wildlife/habitat harm, storm increases, droughts and water shortages, forest damage and sea level rise, the average percentage of respondents who said yes to each turns out to be only 42%. Perhaps even more appalling was that only about 27% of the people surveyed believe that climate scientists understand the causes and solutions to climate change. Trust in the much-discussed scientific consensus on the matter was also at 27%. Given that the United States has the world's largest GDP, invests more money than any nation on aid to developing countries, and spends about 40% above the OECD average on education, our ignorance on what has repeatedly been called “the greatest threat to humanity” is both depressing and terrifying.

There are many possible reasons as to why we are so illiterate on this contentious issue (and why there is even any contention to begin with), not the least of which is the collective effort by lobbying firms such as Heartland and the Competitive Enterprise Institute to cast a shadow of skepticism over the findings of climate scientists. Masquerading as “think tanks” conducting honest scientific research, these institutions are in fact propaganda machines whose gears are well-oiled by handsome sums of money from corporations like Exxon and Koch Industries. Their task is to destroy the credibility of evidence linking human activity to global warming, and then vilify all of the associated scientists before crowds of easily-deceived voters. Their methods include reproducing climate reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), except with modified data that softens or contradicts the original conclusions, effectively dismissing the “alarmist hysteria” that seems to have preoccupied most of the scientific community; more often, however, these organizations host public rallies where speakers shower their impassioned audiences with nuggets of American conservatism (“free enterprise," “limited government”) in order to repudiate the “liberal elites” trying to slay these cherished ideals with the swords of science.

Such strategies have successfully poisoned the air in the chambers of Congress with the toxic odor of denialism: in the 2010 midterm elections, numerous Senators and Representatives were forced to surrender their support for environmentally progressive programs (such as the cap-and-trade system, which failed to get signed into law) as well as their general acceptance of human-caused climate change, all under the looming threat of losing campaign funds from crucial donors like Americans for Prosperity and the Koch brothers. This carried on into the 2014 midterms, where at least five climate-concerned legislators lost their seats to climate deniers. Today, 53 out of 100 Senators and 232 out of 435 Representatives, the majority of whom are Republicans in either house, deny the science of climate change or reject action against it. Among them is the current chairman of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works – I’ll let the irony here speak for itself. 

And so, given all of this evidence, it becomes rather tempting to assail politicians and fossil fuel companies for prioritizing their wallets over the planet and blinding so many Americans to our climate emergency with their obscurantism. This is especially true in the age of Trump, who in addition to tearing away at numerous Obama-era climate policies, has nearly emptied the halls of his government of those who believe in the science of climate change and filled the resulting vacancies with people like EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, a man who cannot even get himself to admit that carbon emissions are at all related to atmospheric temperature increases. The former Oklahoma attorney general, who seems to have lent his entire legal career to the interests of the oil industry, spent years suing the very organization that he is now responsible for leading. Legend has it he's using issues of Nature magazine as toilet paper.

However, what’s interesting is that the recurring statements made by climate change deniers are almost amusingly easy to refute. What follows is a list of the more popular attacks on climate science and their rebuttals, most (if not all) of which you readers will have seen before:

Global warming is a hoax created by the Chinese to cripple the U.S. economy.
This famous gem hails from the vast library of bullshit that is Donald Trump’s Twitter archive. One need not look far beyond a Google search to disprove it: the past three years have consecutively set the record as the hottest for our planet, continuing the unprecedented rate of global temperature increase that we have seen for the past several years. Accepting this still leaves the second half of the above argument intact, although it too was handily crushed by a statement from the Chinese foreign minister last November assuring us that no, China did not invent the concept of climate change to hobble its top trade partner.

It’s snowing outside! What is this ‘warming’ you speak of?
A position so ridiculous as to border on satire, yet broadcast with a straight face before the U.S. Senate by the snowball-wielding James Inhofe of Oklahoma (and, to little surprise, Trump in this 2013 tweet). The truth is within the grasp of a child: simply, climate and weather are not the same. Weather refers to short-term local conditions in precipitation and temperature, while climate refers to long-term weather patterns over a larger geographic area.

Scientists don’t agree on global warming.
They most certainly do. Among climate scientists from over 80 countries actively publishing their work in peer-reviewed journals, there is about a 97% consensus that climate change is occurring as a predominantly human-caused phenomenon.

Global warming is caused by the Earth’s natural cycles.
This argument is admittedly more worthy of a rational discussion than the above three, though just as wrong. It refers to three cyclical processes corresponding to the Earth’s orbit around the sun, collectively referred to as the Milankovitch cycles: the “wobble” of the Earth’s axis (precession cycle), the angular variation of the Earth’s axis between 22.1° and 24.5° perpendicular to its orbital plane (tilt cycle) and the expansion/contraction of the elliptical shape of the planet’s orbit (eccentricity cycle). Each cycle fluctuates between periods of warm and cool terrestrial temperatures on intervals between 26,000 and 100,000 years. Currently, all three cycles are moving towards cooler temperatures, and yet the Earth’s average temperature continues to rise to record heights. This confirms that there is a different force at play here, accelerating the warming of the Earth beyond its natural cadence. Given what we know about the relationship between carbon dioxide and the global greenhouse effect, the various sources of anthropomorphic CO2 (and other greenhouse gas) emissions – coal-burning power plants, petroleum usage/traffic congestion, deforestation, etc. – and the alarming rate at which said emissions are increasing, it is rather obvious that human activity is the leading contributor to climate change. Even if this evidence was somehow proven to be wrong, the “natural cycles” argument would remain doomed.

Climate change will only affect other species, not us humans.
Setting aside the lapse in ethics that must be committed in order to disregard the suffering of millions of different plants and animals around the globe, it is also dishonest to hold this view in the context of our own species. To consider just one point of contact: a mere two feet of sea level rise will amplify most hurricanes to categories 4 and 5, and shrink the intervals between floods in the Pacific Northwest alone from every hundredth year to every single year. Another notable example is Florida, a state teeming with Trump voters (and home to his weekend abode for presidential laziness, Mar-a-Lago), where increases in sea levels will see most of its southern coast get swallowed by the ocean.

We should spend more time worrying about the spread of infectious diseases and starvation.
What advocates of this position fail to realize is that worrying about climate change already entails concerns about starvation and infectious disease. Current projections show devastating shortages of food and water supply in regions where both are already pitifully scarce, such as much of sub-Saharan Africa (which is home to over 800 million malnourished people). Global temperature increase will exacerbate the droughts in these zones even further, thus displacing hundreds of thousands of climate refugees into neighboring countries where most are unwelcome due to sheer capacity. Warmer temperatures also allow for parasitic diseases like malaria to thrive in greater concentrations, where they are currently scourging over 200 million people each year.

Shifting to renewable energy sources is economically detrimental.
This is a myth of greater magnitude than any described above, and seems to be the chief culprit deterring even educated minds aware of climate science against the movement from fossil fuels to green energy sources like wind, solar, etc. There are consequently several prongs to the counterargument, the sharpest being the remarkable job increase that renewables can provide. According to a report published by the Environmental Defense Fund earlier this year, the number of jobs in the sustainability sector is growing at 12 times the rate of the entire U.S. economy, and has added 100,000 new jobs annually over the past six years. This stands in stark contrast to Trump’s current attempts to bolster job growth: for example, his executive order authorizing the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline was purported to add “28,000 new jobs” although the real number is less than a seventh of that estimate. Additionally, his efforts to revive employment in coal, oil and natural gas industries will almost certainly prove futile, as the rate of job increase in the fossil fuel sector declined by 4.5% between 2012 and 2015 and is projected to continue doing so. Finally, there’s the news from earlier this year that China is ready to invest at least $360 billion in renewable energy sources, which would result in at least 43 million new jobs opening up over the next 3 years and could potentially outcompete the US in the renewables market, given the path on which our nation’s leader has currently opted to take. It would seem, therefore, that the country that Trump accused of inventing a problem in our climate is now poised to reap the fruits of its solution.

As I said, there’s probably more than a familiar line or two in the points above; after all, they have been ceaselessly repeated on air and on paper by news outlets like The New York Times, politicians like Bernie Sanders, and beloved science communicators like Bill Nye, who has taken to the masochistic habit of debating (and probably educating) men like Tucker Carlson on television about global warming, but to no avail. This raises a key question: if the facts about global climate change (and proof against contrary opinions) are nakedly available on the Internet and on newspapers to the eyes of any audience, even that of Fox News, then why are so many people still drawn to patent falsehoods about the matter, and why are others so reluctant to act? A series of maps published by Yale University’s Climate Communication program surveyed people from across the United States to geographically illustrate the distribution of opinions about various issues pertaining to global warming. While about 70% agree that global warming is occurring, only a narrow majority of 53% believe it to be human caused. Here’s what this difference looks like on a map:

As for the question of whether most scientists believe global warming to be happening, only 49% said yes:

And if we take a look at which counties voted for Trump in the 2016 election, here’s what we get:

From BrilliantMaps.com

This data clearly shows a geographical overlap between disbelief in human-caused global warming (as well as its scientific consensus) and support for Trump. Of course, while there are many issues besides the environment that are likely to have tipped voters in Trump’s favor, these maps still raise the question of how the man’s preposterous notions about the climate remain impervious to the abundance of scientific information available to many of the people living in these territories. What makes this even more confusing is the amount of support that renewable energy investment is getting:

The map above, which looks as if it’s literally bleeding with approval, illustrates an average of 82% of Americans backing green energy investment. Even in majority-Republican, Trump-supporting regions, the average is about 70-75%. This suggests that the real issue lies less in the actual rift between climate facts and climate opinions and more on how this difference is being communicated, if at all. There is additional data that further attests to this…

Here is the contrast between Americans who believe global warming will harm their fellow citizens, and those who believe it will harm them personally:

The above maps from Yale were included in a New York Times report analyzing the researchers’ findings. The article’s authors summarized the glaring disconnect quite succinctly:

“Part of this is the problem of risk perception. Global warming is precisely the kind of threat humans are awful at dealing with: a problem with enormous consequences over the long term, but little that is sharply visible on a personal level in the short term. Humans are hard-wired for quick fight-or-flight reactions in the face of an imminent threat, but not highly motivated to act against slow-moving and somewhat abstract problems, even if the challenges that they pose are ultimately dire.”

Indeed, it appears that most Americans are already aware of how dire those challenges really are. 70% of respondents in Yale’s poll agree that global warming will harm future generations:

It seems, however, that there is one more crucial dimension to this psychological perplexity. According to the New York Times, only 18% of Republicans consider the environment to be among their major considerations when voting – a number that has steadily dropped since the early 2000’s. However, about 59% of Republicans believe that addressing the environment, specifically the issue of climate change, will bring about major changes to Americans’ lifestyles, according to the Pew poll I cited earlier. These data points seem to be the final puzzle pieces that complete what I believe to be a reasonable conclusion about our climate perception issue: most Americans agree that global warming is real and poses consequences for future generations. Most Americans also consider it prudent to invest in renewable energy sources to combat this problem. However, the issue is not a top priority for most Republican voters, and many are unwilling to shoulder the responsibility of accepting global warming to be caused by human activity. Therefore, many are reluctant to accept the potential changes to their lifestyles that will result from tackling climate change head-on. 

This is where the line is drawn between addressing climate change in principle and addressing it in practice. Within scientific circles, we engage with seemingly endless troves of data that reaffirm all of our so-called “alarmism” about climate change, and yet these numbers prove utterly unconvincing in the face of the farmers, coal miners and factory workers that we need as allies in our push towards renewable energy. One of the frequent arguments used by politicians and lobbyists in protest of President Obama's 2012 Clean Power Plan was that it would only benefit well-educated coastal elites with the money and connections to develop renewable products, while leaving blue-collar employees (predominantly coal miners) to languish under the rug. 

That sentiment is not entirely unfounded, as coal demand has been declining for decades and took an especially big hit after Obama’s plans were unveiled. According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), coal consumption in 2016 was at a meager 15%, eclipsed twofold by natural gas (29%) and petroleum (37%) while renewable energy was steadily catching up at 10%. Numerous coal companies went bankrupt by that year – one of the few left standing was the conglomerate Murray Energy, whose CEO Bob Murray became one of Trump’s leading campaign advisors. The passion with which Murray and other pro-coal advocates fight for their industry’s survival stands in curious contrast with the actual size of the coal sector: it currently employs a little over 69,000 workers total, about a fourth of whom are actual mine workers – this amounts to only 0.02% of the entire US workforce. Furthermore, an op-ed posted in The New York Times pointed out that much of today’s “coal country” in America is in fact more of a nostalgic cultural mindset than an active economic region; a large portion of their labor is being outsourced to automation, which means that not even the most potent strain of Trumpian populism can really deliver on promises to save those jobs. And yet Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by over 3 to 1 in states like West Virginia, traditionally known for having the largest coal mines in the country. This peculiarity underscores an important truth about the coal industry: it may be small, but its cultural identity is a powerful weapon in presidential politics.

It would help to better understand this cultural force by putting a face to some of the coal industry’s longtime workers and get a proper snapshot of their sentiments towards America’s changing energy demands. Take the case of Homer Hickam, a retired coal miner from West Virginia whose memoir recounting his time in the job was adapted into the acclaimed 1999 drama October Sky. His interviewer on NPR pointed out the spectacular dangers of working in a coal mine – since the 1940s, over 100,000 workers have died while on the job with upwards of 1,000 casualties per year – and inquired about what exactly allures workers to stay in the caves for so many years amidst such risks. Hickam responded with some useful clarity:

“Well, again, they love it. They're highly trained, it's what they know best, it's their world. And to take the skills that they have and go somewhere else and apply them, well, they probably wouldn't have as much fun. I know a lot of people who think that that's strange for me to say, but coal miners actually have fun with what they do. (…) Every day is an adventure. (…) Every day there's something new, there's some challenge to overcome. There's some special things that they have to do to get the coal out and also keep themselves safe. So, every day at the end of the day, they're able to say, hey, we loaded x number of tons of coal, we all got out safely, so they have a sense of satisfaction that they did something important. You know, that goes a long way toward the quality of life.”

Hickam’s remarks are one out of a countless number of such insights provided by coal-country natives, but work as an accurate summary of why many of his people fall in love with the character of coal work. It connects them with skills that they are well-adapted to, and the satisfaction achieved after a hard day’s work proves emotionally salient for most of their lives. Therefore, it would appear that the true cause for concern among coal miners towards Obama-era regulations is not callousness towards the environment, but the fear of a deep cultural harmony getting ruptured. Pennsylvania coal miner Todd Brunsak provided further testimony of this in an excerpt from an interview from March:

“Every day it was something new,” Brunsak said of the Obama era. “I felt like [the government] was attacking me personally, me and my family.”

It is quite evident that clearing this cultural hurdle will require a different plan of attack.

Moving forward, the major implication for scientists, politicians and climate activists is that there is a crucial yet oft-overlooked theater on which to wage the war on climate change: rhetoric. As much as I despise charges of “elitism," I believe it is imperative to admit that reaching over the aisle and convincing followers of Trump’s climate-agnosticism to shift their views cannot involve a language of complex graphs and hundred-page documents of research, but one of practical lifestyle changes and their cultural impacts. As clear as our climate data may look to us “coastal elites," it is equally clear that its message is not reaching the ears of those who need to hear it most: the vast numbers of rural populations and blue-collar employees whose political representatives are leading the push against environmentalism. 

This may seem like a bizarre or superficial approach, if not insulting to all the scientists we have to thank for this seemingly “ineffectual data”. However, I know of several rather compelling cases for its potential success, most of which have been neatly compiled in a story for the New York Times business section aptly titled “Discussing Climate Change Without Saying ‘Climate Change’”. Readers of the article are first treated to the environmentally-progressive farming techniques of Doug Palen, a Kansas native who has led an influential movement within his community for the practice of no-till farming, or the planting of crops without significant damage to the land’s topsoil. In a region of America beleaguered by drought, no-till farming has proven to conserve up to 80% of the water that would have otherwise been lost to evaporation under tilled soil, and is estimated to achieve up to 15% of the total reductions in carbon emissions necessary to stabilize the Earth’s climate. Not once do terms like “climate change," “global warming," “Antarctic ice shelf” or “green energy” appear in the vernacular of locals to Palen’s town of residence, and yet no-till farming has become commonplace throughout the area. I have little doubt that following Palen’s example elsewhere in the Midwest will go a long way in improving the climate change consensus among farmers in the region, which is currently at a measly 8%.

More direct efforts were also documented in the story: for instance, Carl Priesendorf, a teacher who is also based in Kansas, has labored to square his knowledge on climate change with the deeply religious, anti-scientific attitudes of most of his students by working his way up from simpler scientific topics like electricity. Annie Kuether, a member of Kansas’ state legislature, has set herself apart from her climate-denying colleagues by amassing a coalition of farm-based voters in support of wind power. A project is now in place to build a transmission line that can deliver 4,000 megawatts of wind-generated electricity into states east of the Mississippi and into the Appalachians. This region, too, has seen some progress thanks to the efforts of Gil Gullickson, an Ohio-based magazine editor who has been putting the spotlight on global warming for the past two-and-a-half years. Clearly, there is hope to be found among our common citizens even amidst the failures in Washington D.C.

This is not to say that a better PR campaign in red states is the ultimate solution to climate change – it is simply what looks to be a viable means of getting our fellow Americans more involved and informed. There remains the malevolent force of political manipulation on the part of powerful corporate executives and lobbyists, who have left many of our elected representatives too docile to stop the White House from crumbling in ineptitude or take any action of their own. Of course, the climate has many more influential companies on its side – Tesla, Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft to name a few – and the tireless campaigning efforts of concerned politicians, activist groups, schools, celebrity figures and, above all, scientists themselves. But our outreach must gain a firmer grasp upon territories whose climate movement isn’t as momentous, which won’t happen so long as we attempt to engage them on the terms of our own echo chambers. Our energy economy is shifting to a greener direction, which means that the fossil fuel industry is faced with a hard but absolutely necessary transition to the renewables sector. The first step in making all this possible is to ensure that we are all on the same page.

Thanks for reading!

- Tejus

In Defense of Safe Injection Sites

Update (11/23/17): Success! Initiative 27, which, sought to ban safe injection sites in Seattle, has been struck down by a King County judge on grounds that it infringes upon the work of public health authorities.

Our country is in the midst of a rather alarming opioid crisis. Over 2.6 million Americans were addicted to opioids in 2015, from which more than 33,000 died from overdose (this figure has quadrupled since 1999). Major pharmaceutical giants like Purdue are largely to blame for facilitating the initial epidemic: the aggressive sale of prescription painkillers such as oxycodone and fentanyl from the early 90’s and onwards has, in a tragic irony, ruined the lives of the companies’ most loyal customers, and has heavily contributed to rising addiction rates throughout the 2000's. However, what has truly caught the nation’s eye is the staggering spike in illicit, street-level opioids, particularly in the case of heroin. The drug has seen a sixfold increase over the past 15 years and is claiming the most victims among those aged 18-25.

The government has long attempted to thwart this problem by gavel, but to no avail; it has been proven time and again that prosecuting and jailing drug abusers is a hopeless and counterproductive means of remedying their situation, and that opioid addiction must be addressed as an issue of public health. This shift in attitude was only recently reflected in the federal government with the passage of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) in 2016, although reform on a state and local level has been in the works for the past decade. A number of innovative solutions have been put on the table since, but by far the most controversial has been the proposal of implementing “safe injection sites” in cities with high rates of heroin addiction.

As the name might suggest, the premise of a safe injection site is that heroin addicts, mainly among homeless populations, are given a controlled environment in which they can get their fix under the supervision of a medical assistant. So far, the only such facility that exists in North America is Insite, located in a seedy district of Vancouver, BC. Established in 2003 to combat Canada’s rising HIV infections, the site has not had a single death occur on its grounds, and has contributed to a 35% decrease in overdose rates within its vicinity. A similar project has been proposed in Seattle, where it has enjoyed strong local support (including that of the mayor and numerous King County executives). However, the prospect of introducing a safe injection site to the US has still been met with pushback, similar to that of Canadian conservative groups throughout Insite’s tenure.

In May 2017, an initiative was introduced to ban the implementation of safe injection sites in King County. Backed by figures such as Bothell mayor Joshua Freed and State Senator Mark Miloscia (R-Federal Way), Initiative 27 is said to “[protect] taxpayers by prohibiting public financing of drug consumption sites” and seeks to “[encourage] local governments to offer treatment instead of continued drug use.” At first glance, this effort seems reasonable in principle, but I was surprised to see how quickly its proponents’ arguments crumble on contact with contrary evidence.

A map of drug overdoses in part of downtown Seattle. (KIRO 7 News)

Miloscia, the most vocal spokesperson for Initiative 27, is riding on the common theme among opponents of safe injection sites: that such facilities encourage continued public drug use. After all, it’s easy to be put off by the notion that heroin addicts are using near your own neighborhood. However, this is exactly one of the concerns that safe injection sites would help solve. Currently, heroin users in the Seattle area commonly use public restrooms, alleyways, and crowded sidewalks to acquire and consume heroin; in fact, many addicts choose such locations near popular shopping centers and restaurants like Nordstrom and McDonald’s, given the commonality of heroin exchange among homeless shelters nearby. This has proven to be a burdensome nuisance to many of the companies in question: McDonald’s, for example, stated to KIRO 7 News that one of its local branches had to hire a private security detail to ward off heroin users from its property, which imposed “substantial costs” upon their business. Given such grievances, it seems only rational to concentrate heroin usage to only one or two locations, in order to avoid the dispersal of heroin users among public locations that safe injection opponents themselves probably visit on a regular basis.

Another argument justifying Initiative 27 is that it saves taxpayer money by barring government funds towards drug consumption. What one may not realize, however, is that the current rate of overdoses in Seattle is already taking quite a large toll on taxpayers. The Seattle Fire Department has had to respond to almost 2,700 overdoses over the past three years, for which each individual call costs them at least $2,000. This has translated to millions of dollars of taxpayer money being spent since 2014, to say nothing of the estimated hundreds of unreported overdoses that Seattle Fire is working to address. As seen in Vancouver, safe injection sites dramatically reduce overdose rates, and so implementing them in Seattle would mean less money spent by the fire department and, consequently, taxpayers.

Even with these obstacles aside, however, there remains the indisputable fact that safe injection sites still aid in drug consumption. I suspect that this is the most troublesome detail for critics, who favor direct treatment instead. This is where one must consider what “drug treatment” entails in order to be effective, and why forcing addicts into it is not a reliable solution to their condition. On a neurological level, potent opioids such as heroin bind to receptors in the limbic system, causing pleasurable sensations to reach the brain’s reward center. The diminished sensitivity of opioid receptors due to repeated substance use leads to heightened tolerance and increasingly worse withdrawal symptoms. There are several theories as to what it takes to reach the actual “addiction” stage of this process, but the conclusion that is most relevant to this issue is that the prefrontal cortex, which normally sends inhibitory signals to the reward center in order to control impulsive behavior, is compromised by long-term opioid usage, which then amplifies drug craving and makes it much more difficult to contain. This means that opioid addiction is less a conscious choice than it is a psychological disorder, and that therefore, simply “discouraging” drug use (let alone through punishment) cannot be expected to actually stop it.

The implication for treatment, then, is that substance abuse disorder cannot be treated instantaneously, and that addicted patients have to gradually decrease the opioid dosages they take in order to abandon their habits. The reason nurses are present at injection sites is to ensure that this process occurs in a safe, controlled manner. Of course, the sites must come equipped with supplementary drugs that can help with additional problems that may arise as a result of this type of treatment: for one, if a patient must recover from his or her drug habit at a faster rate, their average heroin dosage would have to be reduced to a greater extent; the drug methadone can help mitigate any withdrawal symptoms that will undoubtedly arise from this approach. More importantly, nurses will need a consistent supply of naloxone, a drug that is highly effective in counteracting overdoses. Insite has reported about 1,000 overdoses having occurred at their location since the facility was established, and the only reason that none have been fatal is because nurses were quick to administer naloxone.

In the long run, safe injection sites in the US would need a continuous source of funding in order to sustain themselves. In Canada, Insite holds a special exemption from the country’s narcotics laws, although this seems unlikely to happen in the US (not in the least due to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ intent on returning to Nixonian prosecution measures against low-level drug offenders). An op-ed posted in the Brookings Institution suggested that the government adopt a “tiered-evidence” approach to addressing the opioid crisis, in which greater sums of grant money are awarded to states whose treatment programs are both innovative and backed by sufficient evidence attesting to their efficacy. In the case of Seattle, this would require that an evaluation program be put in place to track the results of safe injection sites once implemented. I have suggested elsewhere that safe-use facilities be integrated into Seattle’s ongoing “LEAD” program, a novel client-centered therapy system working to redirect homeless heroin users to temporary shelters and medical care. The program’s effectiveness was analyzed to impressive results by a team of researchers at the University of Washington, who could provide similar efforts to assess safe injection services if they are ever put in place.

Nonetheless, these proposals are all currently contingent on the defeat of Initiative 27, which will be voted on this November. It needs 47,443 signatures to pass. So far, support for safe injection sites remains strong among Seattle and King County officials, whereas a political action committee started on behalf of Initiative 27 has not reported collecting significant sums of money. This could of course change in the coming months, especially given the fact that Seattle mayor Ed Murray, a strong supporter of safe injection sites, is not seeking reelection amidst scandalous allegations surfacing from his past. Regardless, it is my hope that his proposals see the light of day, because they could very well pave the road for the solution of America’s worst drug epidemic.

Thanks for reading!

References

• McNeil, D. G. (2011, February 11). An H.I.V. Strategy Invites Addicts In. The New York Times.
• Beekman, D. (2016, April 4). Heroin, cocaine users in Seattle may get country’s first safe-use site. The Seattle Times. 
• Young, B. (2017, May 11). Initiative proposed to ban heroin safe-injection sites in King County. The Seattle Times. 
• Green, S. J. (2015, April 8). LEAD program for low-level drug criminals sees success. The Seattle Times.
• Wagner, D. (2016, November 7). Seattle heroin overdoses: See maps of where each case happened, 2014-2016. In KIRO 7 News.
• Kosten, T. R., & George, T. P. (2002, July 1). The Neurobiology of Opioid Dependence: Implications for Treatment. NCBI, 13-20.
• Collins, S. E., Lonczak, H. S., & Clifasefi, S. L. (2015, March 27). LEAD Program Evaluation: Recidivism Report. University of Washington.
• Markovich, M. (2017, February 7). Inside the Vancouver, B.C. "safe injection" site Seattle, King County want to use as model. Komo News.