having thought about
climate change for years & followed u.s. politics for decades, i finally arrived at the simple solution to solve global warming – but now i’m old & i forgot what it was. see kids: this is why the future is in your hands – you are our hope & we are inspired by you. now go get em! but seriously folks: researchers at u. of colo. say laughter is the best medicine: “stand up for climate change” – a standup comedy open mic for climate humor: this is the way to change peoples’ minds they say. you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, as the saying goes – which is fine if you want more flies, but you’ll be getting that anyway w/hotter temps. climate change: now leonardo di caprio’s agin it, billie ellish came out agin it, jason momoa’s agin it, jonathan franzen’s agin it, & it’s finally beating out game of thrones as a google search term! meanwhile 7 million displaced by climate chaos. what kind of poem would you make out of that? 7 million displaced by climate chaos in the first 6 mo. of 2019, that is – more than any 6 mo. in history. more importantly, sea-level rise will make it harder for more than 60 million people in the united states to flush their toilets. that’s right: septic systems don’t work: “dirt around the tank filters out contaminants. you flush, waste fills a tank on property. bacteria breaks it down. the heavier material falls to the bottom of the tank. eventually, the effluent goes into underground pipes & gets released into the soil.” waterlogged soil = contamination of ground- water, drinking water, & all that water you see people wading through, escaping floods. “this isn’t some third-world country, this is miami – this shouldn’t be happening here.” meanwhile, the guy who shorted the housing bubble tells his clients: “the market’s failure to integrate climate science with investment analysis has created a mis- pricing phenomenon that is possibly larger than the mortgage credit bubble of the mid-2000s.” i could go on and on and talk about the “historic” winter storm smothering the n. rockies in snow & shattering record lows; or the record hi temps in the east; or “flash drought” in the south; or devastating deadly floods in n. india (yr’s worth of rain in 4 mo.) & s. africa (where climate change cost 62k jobs); or an area the size of greece burned in the amazon rain forest (so far); or state of emerg. in honduras (drought); but i won’t, b/c “leave ‘em laughing,” they say; & this is where the punch line comes in - wait for it . . . wait for it . . .
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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. |