In a World Responding to Climate Upheaval

This is that era now, written up in publications and on broadcast reports in all the decades I remember, when the greenhouse effect would wreak its changes noticeably, almost everywhere. Those changes have come on so subtly, but are so sweeping in their effects that many who think about it can't yet sort out any consistent response much less a forced ending to the ways we live, travel and earn a living. Every step and every sidestep, where fossil-fuel-reliance is in demand, reverberates--and which decision may be worse than which in terms of another outburst of carbon, ozone-depleting byproducts, methane, etc. here beneath the skies? If we're going to personally do anything to lower emissions it should have worth obvious at least to the doer, and, we figure, should be something we can afford. Anyway, what does it matter, up against all the wholesale stuff that keeps going on--commercial trucking and air travel, oil refining and fracking, military maneuvers and bombings and urban overgrowth, because there is still economic, military and population growth worsening climate change.

We follow our hearts, and what are better drivers than hearts informed by minds, where this matter is concerned?

There are so many compounding effects from climate change along with shortages aggravated by massive population growth; it's disconcerting to think what may be required of ourselves not to mention whole societies. Not just in death but in survival, too, there is shrinkage. What we love we will try to save, or help it to save itself. Each of us who are concerned bears a repository of lifestyle modifications or intentions in response. For those who have no cares about the whole situation, the world will do its best and worst to convert such people into different versions of themselves.

When I was still young enough to have picture books from the library, there was one book whose cover illustration bore a sun drawn in wavering, black kindergarten-grade lines on desert-gold background, a vision of skyscrapers on the sun. For a moment I may have been charmed, but mostly I remember how these pictures touched me with despair--for I could imagine living on an earth-like sun, maybe not the real gaseous devouring sun but a planet all about heat and light--all that a person could want of it. Any number of readers might be smitten with the picture but for me it felt like a vision of sterility. Who would want to live on a hot planet that had scorched itself bald?

That memory came to mind last evening as I drove in the old Prius back from my downtown day, at long last, after days and days above freezing, even many nights above freezing, in a brisk December snowfall. It was not quite blinding but enough to make the roadsides uniform and slow the motorists down. A full measure of my old childhood glee awoken by a downpour of snow awoke in me so I was exuberant again, talking to myself and the radio announcer, peering along the dark route ahead for the ever-more-remarkable glimpse of winter's splendor. Tomorrow, I said, I'll go out since the hunters are all gone and see what I find on the way to the river. Never mind that there probably won't be enough snow to ski on.

It is significant what subtle but widespread effects a climate has, probably on all of us. As realms known for snow and ice seem to transform, before the eyes of those of us in love with their beauty, to something out of a fairy tale or movie or dream memory, we're not necessarily enchanted. It is possible to feel partially stranded, ignoring the emergency of folks in other places watching the ground alongside  their neighborhood subside into the sea because of ice caps shrinking, seas rising. For the many who are grieving climate change, our personal identity, along with that of the place, is being baked away. What used to console us with a feeling of eternity is in the early stages of a transition that will move us far from a lot, if not all, of what we cherish. How our mood responds varies daily, but if we're tackling or waiting out other issues, we may seem to observers like someone waking up out of troubled dreams into a problematic Monday, the opening of a week defined by confusion.


Cottonwood in Pasture After Frost - watercolor & pencil, 8x11"