yes, i want to talk
about california, the canary in the collective american unconscious, but you may not know this: the world’s largest dam (3 gorges in china) is 20 m > warning level & 30 m from the top, as the yangtze pours 75 cu m/sec into its reservoir continuously (flooding upstream); “an overtopping dam is a worst- case scenario because it produces significant damage & can lead to the entire thing collapsing,” sez the engineering prof., which wd be bad for the 400 million humans who live downstream (entire u.s. pop = 330 m) . . . “but you can’t prove those floods are caused by climate change”; yeah, you can’t prove anything is caused by something affecting everything — but there’s a lot of the everything happening everywhere . . . take the 400 human beings killed by heat in nederland last week (no wonder everybody’s buying air conditioners in the u.k.!); or the 27 humans killed in bihar, 24 humans killed in punjab, & 800k displaced in kenya by floods. but yeah, let’s talk califas: probable hottest temp ever recorded on earth (death valley tues.); in san joaquin valley, “counties have issued emergency proclamations to prevent a pile-up of carcasses of cows killed from the recent stretch of scorching temperatures” (& resulting stench); & yes, fire fire fire: 11 k lightning strikes in 72 hrs, 367 known fires, 26 “major” (as of yesterday) 460 sq mi on fire as of thurs & 0% contained: "so my husband was driving the car & he got burnt and he had to leave the car and it blew up so i was walking down by myself & i got all these flames on me i lost my shoe but i made it god saved me”; while in vacaville “everything is gone” & the gov. sez if you don’t “believe” in climate change, come to california, w/ 62k evac’d, incl. travis a.f.b. & u.c. santa cruz, & in the evac center, “there’s some people coughing, their masks are hanging down”; & “in theory, breathing in a lot of bad air can make you more susceptible to a more serious covid illness,” sez the pulmonologist, b/c no cal had worst air quality in the world on wed., bad news for kids w/asthma in cities: "we can't open up the window, we're trapped, we're hot & no one can come over to play” (that pandemic thing, too); for adults w/asthma, too: "i keep thinking about where we would go if things go south”; you usta could dine outside, but not w/ash on the tables; "we are getting exhausted. it's suffocating physically & mentally, and we don't have control” — not anymore & mean- time 15% of power grid offline & guess what? “it is likely that there was more lightning because of global warming,” sez the physicist. well, no shit sherlock. all of which is to say you don’t want this to happen. & strictly speaking, it doesn’t have to, if you really really really didn’t want it
4 Comments
Denise Low
8/21/2020 07:56:11 pm
Joe, thanks for this... it really helps
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Joe
8/22/2020 06:46:50 am
Sure thing, Denise. Thanks for your poem Thursday!
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8/22/2020 12:05:24 am
Wow. This says/shows the oppression I've been feeling. Thanks, Joe.
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Joe
8/22/2020 06:48:10 am
Thanks for letting me know, Lindsey. I'm sorry about the oppression, but I guess it's a good thing to give voice to it. Thank you for the positive feedback!
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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. |