As February unfolds, its first day brings sub zero weather: minus seventeen degrees comes as a shock after the previous week\u2019s sixty degrees-plus. Comments abound on the Internet mocking \u2018global warming\u2019 even as the coldest winter in U.S. history enfolds the eastern two-thirds of the continent.
\n\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0In Denver we\u2019re on the backside of the monster storm crossing the country on Groundhog\u2019s Day; no wonder P. Phil doesn\u2019t see his shadow in Pennsylvania\u2026but he surely would here!
\n\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The extreme weather makes it clear that climate change is already upon us. And even Colorado\u2019s sunshine fails to cheer me up: last evening\u2019s 60 Minutes reported on the newly discovered abundant supply of the world\u2019s oil to be wrung out of the sand in Canada; the next segment showed how the melting glaciers in Antarctica are disrupting the food supply of the Chinstrap penguins and thus they are going extinct.
\n\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 There was no commentary made connecting the stories! \u00a0This is unconscionable! \u00a0That there was not even any mention that ‘making oil from tar sands liberates THREE TMES the amount of CO2 as does conventional oil extraction’ (Tim Flannery in The Weather Makers) is criminal!! \u00a0<\/p>\n
So why is that?! Why aren’t we being informed so that we the people will wake up and take responsibility for how our actions are desecrating the planet?\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Street wisdom suggests that pretty soon the Earth will shuck us off like a bad idea and regenerate itself. I hold out hope that we\u2019ll let that regeneration come to pass while we are still here!\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 Milt has spent these huddle-indoors hunker-down days working on his computer, crunching renewable energy numbers. We fantasize harvesting enough current sunlight to provide light and heat, plus run computers and perhaps even power an electric car. We have little illusion that our meager efforts will make a diddly-damn bit of difference in this consumerist culture controlled by corporations. And anyway, the local energy provider will allow an individual home to generate only so much energy that threatens profits!!
\n\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 Thirty years ago Milt built a sunroom to provide south facing roof space upon which to place solar panels; today\u2019s technology promises far more efficiency, which is why Obama refused to reinstall Carter\u2019s solar panels on the White House roof. But why weren\u2019t there any in place at all, all this time?
\nWe knew at least that far back that burning fossil fuels was disrupting the delicate balance of the Earth\u2019s ecosystems. Now the window of opportunity to reverse the process has all but closed down completely; at best, we might keep it from getting worse, though it may already be too late for that as well: multiple feedback loops were set into motion years ago.
\n\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 Despair has set in: I stare up at the mural we have just completed in the dining room and shudder with the realization that in the vast expanse of Time since the Big Bang, we humans have emerged so recently and yet done so much to undo that which took millions of years to come into being.
\n\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 In a feeble act of defiance, this February I send out cards that depict a smiling polar bear wearing sunglasses saying have a seriously cool Valentine\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n
I try to imagine one of my granddaughters putting the card in a keepsake box and one day sharing it with her granddaughter,\u00a0who\u2019ll ask\u00a0what IS that?\u00a0That old question from our generation what did you do in the war Daddy?’ morphs into the one pressing in on us:<\/p>\n
‘what did you do to\/for the planet, Grampa?’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As February unfolds, its first day brings sub zero weather: minus seventeen degrees comes as a shock after the previous week\u2019s sixty degrees-plus. Comments abound on the Internet mocking \u2018global warming\u2019 even as the coldest winter in U.S. history enfolds the eastern two-thirds of the continent. \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0In Denver we\u2019re on the backside of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-living-sustainably"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":399,"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions\/399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nowforourturn.org\/CosmicReflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}