save the cucumbers!
* editorial today: “climate change isn’t a single issue; it frames all” – i guess cause we’re all “in” the climate – “the widening wealth gap . . . limits the bandwidth many have available to wrap their heads around this. they’re focused on meeting basic needs” & don’t have resources to advocate or shrink their footprints. but now for the good news: it’s raining in chennai! (1-7 cm – enough to stop the need for 50-tank-car trains to ship h2o 215 km daily?) the water board congratulated the space agency on its rocket launch, saying: “if you find any water on the moon, you know whom to call first.” “desilting” of reservoirs continues. meanwhile, a friend sends more good news: artificial wetlands work; sea cucumber fisheries protected in indonesia; shellfish farms can filter seawater; urban leopards eat rabid feral dogs; congress “permanently” reauthorized the land & water conservation fund; seagrass meadows are being restored; trees are being planted – another friend sends news from australian think-tank: “detrimental impacts of climate breakdown, such as increasing scarcity of food and water, will act as a catalyst on extant socio-political instabilities to accelerate disorder & conflict over the next three decades”; instability of jet stream, gulf stream, no streams, wildfires, heatwaves, blah blah blah; adding that: “even for 2c of warming, more than a billion people may need to be relocated, & in high-end scenarios, the scale of destruction is beyond our capacity to model, with a high likelihood of human civilisation coming to an end” which doesn’t mean we can’t save sea cucumbers, or grow real cucumbers, save leopards or one another for as long as may be but what do them aussies know about the cloimate, anyway? they think it’s winter right now! well, actually . . . they’re having “the most severe drought on record,” some towns “on the brink of running out of water,” w/”daily temperatures @ a record high” – the last “wet year” was 2016 we’re all in the climate – but are we “all in”? well, alls i know is what’s in front of my face, & the weather here is gorgeous! hi of 83 f, lo humidity, slept with windows open last nite, &c what me worry? (who killed alfred e. newman?) meanwhile elsewhere another european heat wave: the bike riders zip through 104 f in s. france; all-time hottie for bordeaux; nuclear power plants shut off: river water too hot to cool them; "our ponds are empty & the meadows withered"; rhine impassible to shipping for first time ever – its source, meltwater from alpine glaciers, slowing to a trickle: “we get 30 million tons of raw materials shipped from rotterdam . . . for thyssenkrupp steel, the rhine is a question of survival.” in u.s., potomac river, running past d.c., measured record 94 f; 2 m acres burned in alaska (so far – “arctic circle wildfires are now at unprecedented levels”); & “44,000 people signed a petition calling for authorities to declare an emergency in the siberian federal district due to wildfires”; meanwhile again more floods in india, pakistan, nepal, bangladesh: 100s killed and millions displaced; while in laos, crops crinkle up: “my rice seedlings are about to die due to a lack of water. i don’t know what has happened this year & why the rains are so late.” & we don’t know what has happened, & what will happen, which may be the best cause for hope we have
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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. |