Fire and Ice

by Jaqueline McLeod Rogers

https://i.cbc.ca/1.6087223.1625116477!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/original_1180/lytton-fire.jpg

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-wildfires-june-30-2021-1.6085919

Is there any Climate Justice of Hope?

I wonder if the climate is changing even faster than we thought? I just read The Water Will Come,  by  Jeff Goodell–in it, he warns of coastal cities going under water as seas rise and storms stir the waters, and says without taking action this will be inevitable by the time our century ends.  He is particularly detailed in offering a critique of Miami development—so much reclaimed or terraformed land, whipped into shape too quickly, so that he suggests it resembles porous cream of wheat more than foundational clay or sand. One Miami developer he interviewed refused to worry and offered as shameless defense of his determination to do business as usual that by the time things fall down, he’ll be dead. While I was reading the book, on June 24 2021, the Champlain Towers South Condo collapsed in Surfside—linked to rumors of its having been built on unstable foundations that could no longer hold. They have so far reclaimed 95 bodies from the wreckage. 

And now mid-July, we are having a wild climate summer. Flooding in Germany, wildfires on the west coast of North America—and where I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, smoke is drifting in from the fires and there is terrible heat and drought, forcing farmers to talk of culling herds. This is the world we have worried about that many thought was still a decade away – this the world we are bequeathing our kids. 

No more fossil fuel dependency and carbon pumping! Maybe – just maybe – we can combine reducing our carbon dependance with some forms of geo-engineering that will use tech to our common and climate benefit. We are spoiling the bios as human home—sawing off the tree branch we are perched on.