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Okay, if you want to grasp the new world we're now in, imagine this. No, not a Phoenix that set a record of 31 straight days above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (with, it seems, more to come); nor an Iran where the government had to declare a two-day "holiday" when temperatures passed 120 degrees Fahrenheit; nor even Canada, where more than 1,000 fires were still burning, many in totally out-of-control, as August began. Imagine instead heat waves yes, heat... waves... in (and be suitably startled)... Antarctica. And yes, you read that right, you really did!
We are now in such a broiling world that even Antarctica experiences heat waves. Recently, in fact, the temperature there rose to 40 degrees Centigrade above average. Talking about cold spots, this spring Greenland experienced record temperatures up to 50 degrees Fahrenheit above average (and it wasn't even summer yet), while the temperature in the Arctic has been rising four times faster than the global average. So, hold your hats, we are increasingly in what TomDispatch regular Frida Berrigan calls an "oven world."
Ice? Check your refrigerator, not the Arctic where summer sea ice is disappearing, while the planet's oceans experience an unprecedented heatwave. What a planet! And each of us is living a life on it, but the question that will only become ever more critical is: How do you live such a life in a world being broiled by the greenhouse gases from fossil fuels? Let Berrigan offer you a few of her thoughts on one life in an increasingly scorching world. Tom
Walking in an Oven World
One Step in the Right Direction
Too hot.
Too dry.
Too many weapons.
This world needs changing.
But that's too vague. After all, this world is already changing, just not in ways that are good for you and me.
You know the facts. July 2023 was the hottest month on record ever since we humans started keeping track of the temperature. And it's only getting hotter. As Petteri Taalas, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, told the New York Times, the recent all-too-extreme weather is just "a foretaste of the future."
Declaring War on Ourselves
It's not raining. Not at least where (and when) so many of us need it for drinking water or agriculture or recreation. Uruguay is out of water, with the government prioritizing data centers and multinational corporations instead of its thirsty people. In South Africa, the government is proposing purifying water from abandoned mines as a solution to a protracted water crisis and lack of drinking water. People in cities like Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi, know what that feels like. It's not just thanks to natural shortages, but mismanagement, corporate misdeeds, lack of investment in critical infrastructure, and racism, all mixed with climate change. And that's only the beginning. Dozens of metropolises are in danger of ending up with contaminated or scarce drinking water (or both). Worse yet, when it does rain, it's killing and destroying like the flash floods in Vermont a month or so ago or in China's partly devastated capital, Beijing, and environs just recently.
And if nature taking aim at us weren't enough, it seems that we've declared war on ourselves. Not just in places like Ukraine or Sudan, where the death tolls are in the thousands, but closer to home, too, where Americans are madly over-armed with nearly 400 million guns. I'm thinking about our cities and towns, highways and byways, schools and synagogues. After all, according to the Gun Violence Archive, such weaponry has killed more than 24,000 people so far this year alone (and that's already more than the number of civilians killed in Ukraine and Sudan combined).
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