Rain fell at the normally snowy summit of Greenland for the first time on record
Who to vote for this time in Canada?
“For the first time on record, precipitation on Saturday at the summit of Greenland — roughly two miles above sea level — fell as rain and not snow. Temperatures at the Greenland summit over the weekend rose above freezing for the third time in less than a decade. The amount of ice mass lost on Sunday was seven times higher than the daily average for this time of year. Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, said this is evidence Greenland is warming rapidly. “What is going on is not simply a warm decade or two in a wandering climate pattern,” Scambos told CNN. “This is unprecedented.”
Is this a sign that we have now reached the feared tipping points? Probably.
Are you upset? You should be. Am I distraught? I should be. But I am not. I am resigned. Accepting.
I accept that we will continue to do next to nothing until it is too late to avoid a lot of pain. It’s as if we are all addicts. Instead of being addicted to drugs or alcohol or gambling we are addicted to our high energy, high consumption life style. We just can’t stop. “Need” a weekend in Vegas? Off you go. “Need” a Ford F-150 truck? Get it. And boy, you really deserve a cruise and a bigger house because of Covid-19 and …. Yes, you DESERVE it! Of course, there is the minor detail that you are making the lives of your children and grandchildren miserable. Oh well, it’s worth it. I was told once by an acquaintance about how his life style was probably making his kids future miserable [to which he agreed]: “It sucks to be you.”
Most of us aren’t quite as brutal as that. But our inaction, not only at the personal level, but more importantly at the political level, is actually ‘saying’ the same thing to the future. We are in the middle of a Federal election here in Canada and the Liberals – who say and promise very nice things – but actually do next to nothing impactful – as they THE party of business as usual, will probably win. My guess is that issues like high housing prices and covid issues will dominate and the fires and droughts across the West will be very secondary.
Oh well, the house is burning – literally – but we must party on.
More exponential growth of the economy – because growth is our God. More stuff and more of everything is the source of true joy. Good luck with that.
So what are you to do? VOTE. Vote for somebody who will actually DO SOMETHING to prevent the climate disaster unfolding before our eyes. In the introductory quote the last word was “unprecedented”. You’re going to hear that word a lot. Until we actually stop worshiping the God of exponential growth and his Archangel the GDP. We need to worship another God – the God where we are but one piece in the gorgeous puzzle of life called Mother Earth. We are only once piece. But we are destroying all the others because we are so self absorbed. Humans are Narcissists. Do I rant? Yes.
Why? Because it’s personal now.
My daughter is breathing smoke from the fires in BC. Another daughter, an ICU nurse, is hiking in BC and can no longer see anything from the mountain tops because of the smoke. My brother’s cottage in northwestern Ontario has a large fire 10 km away – fortunately now [mostly] contained. The home of my Uncle in Germany was flooded when the local creek went form ½ m to 4 ½ m in 3 hours. Nearby, 140 people died when their creek went from ½ m to 8 ½ m in 3 hours, as they lay peacefully sleeping.
Yes, we are asleep at the wheel? When we will wake up?
So what can you do? Right now – VOTE. Vote for anybody who is not supporting business as usual and somebody who will actually ACT!
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