I posted a video on TikTok talking about the challenges I have been having with this situation in the present.
Last week, after spending time with my sister, I returned to an apartment that had no air conditioning.
OK, fine, this is generally something I can deal with. However, when it’s 90+ degrees outside, this means that the temperature inside is at least 95 degrees. The dog was panting all the time and moving really slowly. I was concerned she would have heat stroke.
Did you know that your phone won’t charge when the air temperatures are too high?
And then cap it off with 3.5 hours of sleep one night.
THAT WON’T DO.
You see, the challenge with a heating earth is that our places become uninhabitable if they get too warm unless we have air conditioning. An estimated 61,000 people died in Europe last year because they don’t have air conditioning . . .
The air conditioning that is also harming the earth.
Can you imagine what would happen around this country if the air conditioner stopped working?
Yeah, now you see we have a climate problem.
As of when I’m writing this, I’m in Hanover, NH to lead a writing retreat (reflections on that in a later post). Right now, it’s been raining, one inch per hour, over the NE portion of the United States. This has been happening for 12 hours. TWELVE HOURS.
Roads and bridges have been washed out in Upstate NY.
West Point is going through it . . . there are cars that are submerged under water.
An Amtrak train could not pull into Poughkeepsie because of too much water – it had to back up into another station.
They are expecting this level of flooding in Vermont and New Hampshire.
Flooding . . . and we’re 400 feet above sea level here in NH.
This is not about bad weather.
The weather is a result . . . the problem is that we are fucking up the earth enough that we are seeing profound changes in the overall climate.
One of the writing retreat participants said that scientists are already seeing changes in the trees because the region is getting too much rain.
We the human people have to break our addiction to fossil fuels. And this is not a consumer thing . . . corporations have to shift how they do business. This is not just making gadgets out of plastic (plastic is a petroleum product!). This includes how we do agriculture.
And we must turn to political systems to force corporations to do this.
We’re hearing lots of noise from the Republican party about not being woke.
About legal systems that don’t work for the elite.
About “free speech.”
About transgendered children.
About ending access to birth control.
About respecting one’s religious practice.
About banned books.
About ending critical race theory (don’t get me started on this one . . . ).
And I could go on and on about how they want to ruin peoples’ lives.
What they aren’t talking about is how people are dying because of the climate emergency. One woman drowned yesterday in the flash flood.
We can no longer push to figure out how to decide who is and is not our people.
We need each other more than ever . . . because politics don’t change in isolation.
I had my sister and this retreat to keep me out of an overheating apartment. I can talk about climate change at a retreat. And I know that my reach has to be MUCH bigger.
We need each other.
We need each other.
We need each other.
It’s time to organize yourself to learn about the policies of federal and local candidates for public office next year.
It’s time to talk to the people who refuse to vote. Because with mother nature, our lives depend on it.