Towheeblog

Looking at weather and climate data should make people look forward. It this, then what? If more of this, then what then?

Tragicallty our species is very bad at extrapolation, at forward-thinkuing, at planning beyond the next few meals or next season. To age a bottle of wine or Scotch whiskey seems to be the apex of our planning abilities. In New Orleans residents and the poltically powerful talk of recover and rebuild. No thought will be given to reconsider, remove and relocate. Homes, refineries, power pylons will be replaced at or near sea level, targets for the next hurricane which is inevitable. After more than a week hundreds of thousands of Louisiana power customers (Many having numerous residents) are without power. Recently an elderly housing complex in News Orleans was searched–five dead from heat and lack of air conditioning. Those who cannot afford air conditioning or the expense of evacuation are welcome to stay home and die. Just as those who can’t find an empty ICU bed can just add to the covideath stats. After Ida the Coast Guard is “swamped” (click here) with oil spill reports. Of course it is cheaper to put refineries in coastal loiwlabds, to hell with risk. Far be it from any entity to plan for heat disasters, pandemics or 150 MPH winds. Let’s put those electric wires back up in the sky. Let’s pretend this storm will never happen again, at least not while I am on the city council or in Congress.

The times call for planning not mere exploitation for market forces. Time for pondering choices, not simply profiteering. We have run out of time and resources for heedlessm wreckless movign forward forward while we ignore all consequences.#

We Yanks have our woes–drought, forest fires, covid, hurricanes with many coastal cities, flooding, deep-seated self doubt that we are really United States. But we are not unique, just louder than most “nations”. Civil wars abound in Africa and Asia. Covid kills widely in Brazil and India. Two rivers we connect to what we call civilization are drying up—Tigris and Euphrates. Can we brng ourselves to recognize we are just another experimenta species here for a speck of time. Nature does not grant warranty nor guarantee.

There seems to be nobody trying the plan for where food will be grown when California or Burgundy or Mesopotamia or Australia or… become too hot and too dry. Phoenix is just now timidly trying to regulate how much lawn is grown and watered there! Our fifth largest city in a desert. Don’t ask “What are peopke thinking?” They aren’t.

#Almost two centuries ago DeTocqueville warned us and the rest of the literate world that Americans are prone to heedless, wreckless, driven action. Throw in some profit and power and maybe a chance to kill some opponent* and that drive becomes an illness. No omlette withiut broken eggs, no prigress without destruction. But now nature is moving toward her own campaign of destruction and we are just another experimental species here for a speck of time.
*See Genl. George Custer for epitome of this drive.