on this veteran’s day, I read that
“climate change could mean u.s. military collapse, new report warns” – destruction of infrastructure, disruption of power grid, increasing number of conflicts, humanitarian missions & o yeah epidemics among military & civilians: "it is increasingly not a matter of ‘if’ but of when there will be a large outbreak” now even the Fed is worried: $500 B climate losses over last 5 yrs: “damage to natural resources & infrastructure . . . health care, supply chains, agriculture, tourism, power generation & costs . . . disrupt business operations & economic activity” & (blahblahblah) c.; as if on cue, US productivity drops for 1st time in 4 yrs. . . . it’s one of those “scenarios,” don’t you know: not necessarily a cat 5 hurricane barreling up the houston ship channel or wall street or yr power company shutting off the lights b/c they can’t keep their own lights on; but just the drip drip drip, dry dry dry of a billion here & there, until pretty soon we’re talking real money. meanwhile the jet stream does its loopy sine-wave thing, sucking the cold from alaska & dumping it on us: hi yesterday 63 f lo yesterday 32; temp now (9 am) 22 f, windchill 7 w/snow. go figure – “funny weather, huh?” that’s not all it’s dumping: “kansas city area residents say they smelled an unusual odor, which meteorologists traced to a farm in albert lea, minnesota” (the top notch stock farm) – whoosh! elsewhere, it’s summer: “australia’s most populous state declared a state of emergency monday due to unprecedented wildfire danger” – 3700 sq. mi. consumed over the weekend; practically no rain anywhere in the country; 90 blazes blazing in the state, temps in 90s; + record dry spells in california & b.c.; nov. heat wave & wildfires in israel; record hi’s in britain; huge trash fire on turtle cay, bahamas – burning leftover rubbish from dorian to keep away the rats and roaches that are rummaging through the trash. meanwhile: “as many as 39,267 people (9,007 families) staying at 84 evacuation centers” after floods & landslides in cagayan state, philippines (tho could be anywhere, nowadays); & mumbai had most rain this monsoon season since 1979 & it’s still raining (it’s still raining everywhere it’s been flooding, it seems); yorkshire & the midlands flood (again) – “danger- to-life warnings” issued; & the head of scotland’s railway sez they can’t cope w/the x-treme weather anymore & I read in the paper where kansas has 309 “high-hazard” dams, with 26 of those in “poor” condition – it only takes one epic gulley-washer & you’ll need an army of little dutch boys; emergency action plans are missing or 20 years old; “in some cases, inspectors flagged spillways too small to handle the volume of water from increasingly intense rainstorms due to . . . [wait for it] . . . to climate change.” & that in a state of only 3 million. i find it necessary to trace this track of destruction day by day: to set it forth in a verse: it is important to us as long as we are here; & as long as we are here we might as well be aware of what it means to be alive in the combustible now
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |