“strangely enough,
i think the death toll of the coronavirus at the end of the day may be positive, if you consider the deaths from atmospheric pollution lockdowns are preventing,” sez the french think-tank dude — meaning the 7 m dead of pollution yearly > probable virus deaths (so so insensitive to say); “why are we so much more afraid of the coronavirus than climate change? what is so special abt the coronavirus that we are ready to put the world on lockdown b/c of that?” (ok, that’s it! — get him out of here!) but uh oh -- here comes u.n. head guterres: viral infections eventually slow down, but not the climate crisis, “the defining challenge of our times” for decades to come; & u.n. chief weatherman adds climate threat “is greater to our species than any virus” we need a manhattan- project-type push to find a vaccination against climate change, what i say! i mean, sure this winter proved to be the warmest ever in europe, but feb. turned out to be only the second-warmest on record, next to 2016, only 4 yrs ago, which proves we’ll always have 10 yrs to save earth! meanwhile 65 flood warnings in u.k. -- they built more barriers along the sylvan wye to keep it from washing towns away in already-flooded areas (while the p.m. tries to focus their attention on viruses): 300,000 affected by ongoing drought in sri lanka; & in uruguay, govt. declares state of emergency in 5 departments due to drought (“6 meses sin lluvia”); record wet winter in alabama; & graveyards in canada’s n.w. territories are melting; other than that, & all the other deadly disasters readers of this chronicle are familiar with from past weeks (most of which continue or people are still cleaning up after), only the arctic, animals, the past & future are left: the past: insurers dole out £360m to pay for storms ciara & dennis; “significant warming” in india from 1951-2015, “study sez”; the future: indian ocean weather patterns caused fires in australia & flooding in e. africa are likely to worsen; amazon rainforest could collapse in 50 yrs & become net carbon emitter (“new report sez”); and so on (you can read all about it in the 2019 world meteorological org report); but for now, as we re-don our surgical masks and hazmat suits, and con- vert our f2f courses to on- line, we now return to our regular programming . . .
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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. |