Climate Change

I have been in an absolute fog lately. I've been forgetful, scatterbrained and somewhat mentally absent in general. More so than usual. I have a to-do list that is growing and I've been neglecting things like household chores and my novel. 


This is a roundabout way of saying I've been feeling preoccupied. Actually, I'm still in bed as I write this. It's my day off and I do have things I could be doing and yet here I am. My kittens are doing rounds of battle on the bed at my feet. I hear the occasional growl over my laptop screen. Now? They're taking five to groom themselves. I feel like they are more productive than I am.


Yesterday was that crazy downpour. Weather has gotten so extreme as of late. I remember winters where the snow was up to my knees. Summers were hot and humid, but not nearly so painful. I don't remember those walls of heat and the feeling of literally being cooked just from being outside. Rain was more frequent and it would last most of the day and drizzle down, not come after periods of drought and then pour in buckets for an hour straight and cause floods.


Obviously climate change is happening. We can see it all around us. Our winters are getting milder and our summers unbearably hot. And yet for some reason all the leaders want to do is ignore it. I can't help but notice that those most in denial about this problem have something to gain financially. And those who have power to do something but opt not to are going to be dead by the time it really gets bad. To hell with the rest of us, I guess.


I wonder about the life a future child of mine would live. Going out to play in the summer is, frankly, agony. It's too damn hot. It's just not safe to be running around out there in humidity that feels like 40 degrees and a sun that can scorch your skin to a crisp. And winter? Well, sledding down hills is out, if the recent past is a sign of the future. No snow. And ice skating outdoors? Not cold enough. The only good thing would be not having to wear a snowsuit under the Halloween costume.


I wish this was more of a priority over "growth". Growth is all well and good, but not if the planet has gone to shit. Any time I hear people prioritize the economy over the environment, all I can think of is a bleak and increasingly humid future and the death of outdoor ice hockey.

Musings

Sometimes I think about the world we live in and I get scared. I mean, not scared in the way you get if you live in the wrong part of Los Angeles. I don't fear I'll die or be mugged at gunpoint.

I'm scared about where we're headed as a species and as a civilization.

We're overpopulated. There's only so much space for humans to live, for agriculture to feed us, and for all the other deserving species of animal and plant to grow and thrive. And we've hit that mark. I want a child and I feel significant guilt about it because I don't want to inflate the numbers even a little.

We're whipping through petroleum, which is responsible for, frankly, our entire way of life, which has been unevenly distributed for the past 100 years, and now we're running out and there seems to be no contingency plan. I mean, there's finite resources and we're burning through them. And economists are calling for growth! Growth! Growth! Why? What about maintenance? Maintenance! Maintenance!

We're overpopulated and powerful influences like the Catholic church are warring against contraception, despite the fact nearly all Catholics use it. American politicians are doing all they can to remove a woman's right to choose, to actually declare an embryo a person.

Which would make miscarriages a homicide investigation. You could arrest a pregnant woman for drinking. Plan B would be illegal, as well as in-vitro-fertilization. They're already forcing women to undergo ultrasounds, whether the doctor deems it necessary or not, and the doctors have to describe the fetus. There was a bill mandating a vaginal probe ultrasound prior to getting an abortion, never mind what the doctor thinks is needed, just to punish the woman, basically.

We have all these human beings in the world who can't eat, who have inadequate care, and they're trying to ensure all possible pregnancies result in babies, whether the mother in question wants to or not? One fucker wants to mandate women carry dead fetuses until their wombs expel the remains, because that's what livestock does. Because women are livestock.

I always knew these types didn't look at women as people, but it's less common that you get such flagrant evidence of it.

The world is totally different than it was when I was a kid. So in 20 more years, it should be totally different yet again. I'm not a doomsayer, but I can't help but feel a sense of impending calamity. Toronto was warm and snowless this winter. In the last 65 years it's never been so dry and warm. It's unnatural. Between what feels like a collapsing understanding of rights for women, overpopulation becoming a problem, growth depleting our resources and the climate altering into god knows what, I'm feeling nervous.

Maybe this is why The Walking Dead is popular right now. It's like everyone else is feeling a sense of the end of an era of time. When I was a kid, the United States was the world superpower, I grew up in the affluent '90s, and snow covered the ground. Things are changing. People are more aware of that, too, I think thanks to the internet.

I know I'm not alone here.

Muly

May is ending and thanks to global warming, it's felt like July for awhile. When I was a kid my mom regaled me with tales of jumping off the garage roof into great drifts of snow. I'd look around at about one foot of snow and think, huh. What's the deal?

I'm going to regale my children about how it used to snow on Halloween and how we all used to have to wear snowsuits under our costumes like chumps. I remember this one kid from California was in the neighbourhood one year and was planning to wear just a T-shirt and we all chuckled at him. We knew better. It was just too damn cold.

Now? Well hell, I had bare legs this past Halloween. And it's been like that for a few years now. And March, which used to have snow storms was like May used to be. And May? It's been air conditioner weather. My dentist had to call and cancel my appointment until June because the building doesn't turn on the A/C until then and they've been roasting in dental hell. And in my last place, the heat blasted into my face until June 15th. It was so ass. The bi-laws haven't even caught up to the climate changes.

It's all kind of creepy. I wonder, though, if there has ever been an era of time where people didn't feel as though their world as they knew it was falling apart? Probably not. But then I think this is the first time that rather than social or political change, it's been the global environmental changes that have people worried.

And yet people are still buying Hummers, having tons of children, not recycling, leaving the lights on, running the washing machine for three shirts. Even water is becoming a commodity and we here aren't feeling the effects because we can turn on the tap. Companies like Coke are situated in developing countries and sucking up the water to make a soft drink while surrounding communities go thirsty, as though water didn't rightfully belong to us all.

I wish our government in power now gave a flying shit about the environment. Everything else be damned if we create too much damage in the name of creating wealth that won't matter if Newfoundland and PEI wind up under the sea. But I guess Alberta would be okay and after all, the evangelist PM we've got probably thinks Jesus will be here any day now to whisk him away to Heaven, so why not consume all he can now?

Sigh.

But I suppose there's always hope for the future.