Maggie's Farm

Another crushing climate report. Anyone else wish the climate would just crush us already, and get it over with? I’ve been reading this hyperbole since the early 1980’s! Humanity is doomed. Just 1.5° C rise in average temperature and it is, “species extinction, more widespread disease, unliveable (sic) heat, ecosystem collapse, cities menaced by rising seas.” Our children and grandchildren will be in peril. Wait, they said that about my future in the 80’s. Of course, no report is complete without the smokestack in the background of a dried-up lakebed, but this time it is a dried-up farm parcel, filtered to an ominous grey. The ‘smokestack’ is likely emitting steam. And of course, a picture of a lovable polar bear and cubs.

I really did get a chuckle over the drought risk map. There’s not data for drought potential in the Sarah desert region of Africa? Really? Everywhere else on earth is likely to have drought, severe drought in the Great Lakes region, but no data for the Northern hemisphere. The natives in the northern region will have the “snow melt from beneath their snowshoes.” Antarctica did not even get a place on the map.

“We are quickly approaching the point of no return.” I think this will be my fourth point of no return. We must become vegans and stop our mindless consumption. “Life on Earth can recover from a drastic climate shift by evolving into new species and creating new ecosystems, humans cannot." Humans can’t evolve? I thought that is how we got here?