This weather - the relentless blue sky, the shining sun, the unusual warmth... lovely? Maybe not. My eco-depression has returned.
Picked up a copy of Rolling Stone at the library last night - read an article about global warming that left me weak in the knees. The whole world needs to read articles like this.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719
I felt numb today. Did a ton of paperwork, picked up the turkey, walked the dog, answered emails...and all the while felt pulled down by a heavy sense of foreboding.
But life has to go on, so you plan your Thanksgiving dinner, and you renovate a cottage, and get your hair cut, and everyone goes about their lives. That's what I do: get depressed about the environment, but then I perk up again. The backward slide into denial.
Because we are unable to imagine the unimaginable. Unable to grasp the global catastrophe that is happening. It isn't coming, it's here.
I predict that future generations, assuming we have a future, will look back upon this time as the age of swallowing horses and choking on fleas. The right of someone to smoke a cigarette - on an outdoor patio during a windstorm at midnight - garners more outrage and media attention than global warming. You can drive your Hummer and shake your finger at someone having a smoke. Because they're violating your right to fresh air, the selfish bastards.
Read that again: Smokers, not smoking, are dangerous to your health. Not the effluent from refineries, car and truck exhaust, dioxins in the ocean, pesticides and genetically altered food, acid-rain... No signs posted for all of that. No, it's smokers. Get rid of smokers and everyone will breathe fresh clean air. How dangerously insane....
The droughts in the US - where most of our food comes from - is being called "The 50-Billion Dollar Drought." Food prices will rise to record levels. What will we do if the US can no longer feed us? Cattle ponds are drying up in Arkansas. Illinois in in danger of losing its corn crop. Droughts in Canada, in Africa, in Asia, record forest fires, extreme weather being cited by meteorologists around the world...
The New York Times: "...From deep water drilling for oil to fracking for gas and arctic mining, there are no more limits. This is astonishing...it should also be alarming. We are tempted by our successes to exaggerate our power to solve the problems of the world — that if we really need to, we will be able to. We believe that our ingenuity, though it may cause some problems from time to time, will also help us get out of them. Yet the evidence increasingly points in the opposite direction. Since the United Nations set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988, investment in technology that could counter global warming has been on a tiny scale compared to that spent on technology that contributes to expanding energy usage, and thus emissions..."
Global warming is the story of the century, but how often is it front-page news? How long will we wait? Our oceans already have dead zones that are devoid of fish, and it's expanding everyday. The list of our planet's warning signs are seemingly endless.
* * * *
Lorenzo is on Mayne Island right now, installing doors. He is making a cottage for us which has been our dream for nearly twenty years.
But right now it feels tainted by a sense of hopelessness.
The ferry trip over there is already enough to fill me with guilt...all these ferries, half-empty, dumping thousands of gallons of eco-killing toxins into the sea. What are we doing?
I know I will never live on Mayne Island. Not unless I can be self-sufficient. The idea of parking myself on that island, in stupid oblivion, making trips to the grocery store where everything is shipped in, where every tomato I buy, every loaf of bread, was brought there by burning thousands of tonnes of fossil fuels, makes me feel sick. It makes me feel irresponsible. I will only live there when I can produce my own food, my own eggs and chicken, and hopefully install other green-sources of energy.
But what good will that do if you can't grow anything?
If it never rains?
If it never stops raining?
Anyway...Happy Thanksgiving.
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