here’s a writer who sez “we can’t
shelter in place for climate.” true enuf. but: warnings from the experts will have long-term effects on “societal memory,” she sez. she has a y-axis and an x-axis that prove “the real lesson of covid-19 is that society can respond forcefully & collectively when enough of us are well-informed of what needs to be done, and the government supports individual action with laws.” can’t argue with that . . . meanwhile, the “institutional investor group on climate change, members of which include black rock” (ooooooo) sez covid recovery plans “that ex- ascerbate climate change would ex- pose investors & natl. economies to escalating financial, health, & social risks in coming years,” enjoining national govts. to avoid “risky short-term emissions- intensive projects” (if it don’t sound good in a poem, it’s prob’bly not compelling rhetoric, either); the natl. leaders nod gravely & say “suresuresuresuresure” the transnational capitalist class keeps meeting and recommending; meanwhile, beneath the clouds, in forever-over-yonder: japan times asks “how much cal- amity can east africa take?” meaning: covid + “biblical” plagues of locusts + “exceptionally heavy rainfall, causing floods that threaten life and livelihood from ethiopia to tanzania and all parts in between” (which helps spawn more locusts, and so on; readers of this verse chronicle know this already); & covid means few to spray (hard-to-get) pesticides to stop the locusts; meaning, food scarcity, that regional revenant, rears its maw & haunts and hunts again this week: 5,000 displaced in uganda; 1,800 families homeless in kenya; 1.7 m burundians in need of aid, 39k displaced, “although that number is still rising as flooded houses continue to collapse” & those in “temporary relocation sites” where “everyone washes themselves, their cooking utensils & clothes in this stagnant water,” as the red cross worker sprays it w/decontaminant (“the toilets have overflown” in the floodwater) rich countries are printing money to “bail out” their own corpos; will they (literally) bail out africa? elsewhere: siberian fires 1.5 - 3 x > this time last year; in transbaikal, “a larger area than the whole island of maui” is toast; it’s almost 90 f in siberia, & "people self-isolated outdoors & forgot about fire safety”; as fires still burn in chernobyl zone; & 7k acres in yucatan, a week on; abnormally dry spring in europe; abnormally hot one in morocco; heatwaves in pakistan & shanghai; record hi’s in central u.s.; record hot march, april in dominican; driest-ever april in romania -- but no tornadoes in kansas! (so far . . . dorothy.) not so elsewhere: 351 twisters, 2nd worst for april in u.s. records, killed 40 in southeastern states . . . “communicating the facts,” sez the writer w/the graph, “continues to affect action more than so called ‘influencers.’” communicating to move “the climate risk dial of the least vulnerable segment of the population” means showing climate chaos “to be a matter ‘individually relevant’ to them, now” i think she means us, o global- northern reader hence i catalog the facts, in hopes of upping your “social acceptance” -- i.e., belief that it can happen here, is happening here, to you & yours, & maybe considering the idea that it’s time
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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. |