This from today’s Guardian. Sea level rise in Florida. Now to matters at hand. I’ve said since The Freak got elected that in some ways we deserve this buffoon. When the population is so greedy, so selfish, so uneducated and so happily uninformed, at some point something has to give, and when that “give” is intensely traumatic then potentially we will be faced with starting over. If we don’t we die. Maybe.
The Water Will Come, by Jeff Goodell, is a book about climate change, but God forbid anyone mention that term. You see as a collective Americans are just not ready for what is about to go down, or in some cases what is already going down, so the term “climate change” has become so politicized that if mentioned in some of the federal, state or local campaigns the legislation is killed by sitting Republicans bought and paid for by the energy companies. (The Freak’s entire cabinet is loaded climate deniers but that is no surprise.)
Suffice to say I would not want to be living in a place Miami long term.(And I think Miami is a really cool place.) Or along the edges of New York City, or say in Oakland or anywhere else that is going to experience the rising sea, and this is just in the United States. Think about places like Venice, Italy or Bangladesh, the Marshall Islands, etc.
At the root of this little equation is fossil fuel and CO2. I have no faith in our political system or the public, so this book was at least in part preaching to the choir. But what I loved about this book is the scenario it plays out by detailing the network of things that could or will fail when climate change progresses. Things like emergency funding, insurance, property value, water quality, loss of actual land, relocation of tens of millions of people. You see when one domino falls it’s going to trigger the rest to cascade. The only hope we have is that it happens SLOWLY.
PS: What have I done to do my part? Not enough, but I’m trying. Took out all water needy landscaping, so my yard only requires water once or twice a month. My water bill is often times $20 per month or less. My energy consumption has also dropped dramatically. Energy saving bulbs, no lights left on while I’m at home or away. Only those lights in my immediate area. Energy saving appliances that I run once or twice a month. I drive a lot, so I drive when I have to, and for long trips, but ride my bike everywhere else including errands, food shopping, the lab, etc. I’ve also cut down on air travel. You can’t fly around the globe on a nonstop basis and not leave a carbon footprint the size of Bigfoot, so I spend more time domestic than abroad. We are also going to retire the 10-year-old, 170,000 mile Prius for potentially an electric car, but that is perhaps not the statement people think it is. That power to charge often comes from coal plants, so in some ways we are trading one evil for another, and I have to do a bit more research if the electric car is the way to go over something like a Camry, which by the way has become a very interesting vehicle. Yes, that Camry. They are fast, efficient, safe, spacious and fun to drive. No I’m not sponsored by Toyota, and I’m not super high and unsure what I’m saying.
Get it, read it, brace yourself.