It’s a beautiful summer day, not too hot with mild temperatures in the high 70s. It’s a lovely fall afternoon. The leaves have turned bright yellow and orange and there’s a slight nip in the air. A snowy winter day has us cozy up to the fireplace. Normal. When days are normal for the season, we forget we are on the precipice of global climate chaos. But we must remember the scorching summer temperatures, the melting ice caps, the torrential rains causing devasting floods, and the powerful hurricanes and tornadoes destroying lives and property. Those events are not normal and have happened from time to time in the past. But now they happen more often. Now temperatures are reaching uninhabitable numbers in some places and for too many days. 120 degrees in the Middle East, 110 in Arizona and Texas. Life cannot be sustained in those temperatures. Oceans are too warm for fish. Warm water provides less oxygen. The melting glaciers are causing the Gulf Stream to be compromised because fresh water doesn’t sink and the engine for the stream is shutting down. The Gulf Stream provides warmer temperatures for the North Atlantic countries. If it stops, England will become as cold as Siberia.
The chaos inflicted on wildlife that will lose habitat, fruits and vegetables that will not survive temperature swings, torrential rain, and droughts. This will cause food shortages and the extinction of species. Wildfires that destroy forests and homes. But it’s hard to face this dystopian future on a beautiful day. We humans are in a quandary. We are used to our cushy lives with air conditioning and packed grocery stores. We can’t imagine anything different. And the science is not conclusive. Mother Nature might have a fix. If only. Something may kick in that we had no idea about and balance everything out. If only.
But right now we are on track to having the odd bad weather events become more frequent. Normal will become a new normal with infrequent mild weather and shortages of food and clean water prevailing. And sooner than originally thought. We must do something but we collectively don’t know what to do. Some of our stupid elected officials think this climate crisis is a hoax, and he threw a snowball into the Senate to prove we are not in a global warming trend. Yes, we still have mostly good weather days, for now. But for how long? If only this planet had a natural solution to bring back balance.
If only.
