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“Lake Powell ‒ the massive Colorado River reservoir that produces power for millions of homes across the West ‒ is the emptiest it has ever been entering the hottest part of the summer. And the worst is still to come.” {USA Today 25 June}
https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/lake-powell-hits-lowest-summer-190043854.html
One of the gravest errors I ever made in life was once entertaining the notion that climate change — or ‘global warming’, as it was generally called in those days — was a ‘hoax’.
Over time, and for a gazillion reasons that begin and end with a certain tangerine-coloured demagogue, I grew disillusioned with the sorts of people who insisted upon such things. More inconveniently still, the evidence kept piling up. One can ignore a fact; one cannot indefinitely ignore ten thousand of them.
Not only was I a sinner for denying what is happening to the planet, I was also a monumental idiot. For whatever reason, I resisted the idea that mankind was responsible for changes in the atmosphere; now, I simply laugh at the notion that somehow humanity is not responsible. Why would we not f**k up the environment, as we do with virtually everything else we touch?
Looking back over a decade and longer, I suspect I was far too eager to curry favour with certain people in my orbit, and consequently accepted a great many notions that simply did not withstand contact with reality. To my credit, however, I had the good sense to head for the lifeboats the moment Trump lumbered into view. Even a fool may occasionally recognise the sound of an approaching avalanche.
In any event, the argument is over. Climate change is real. It is occurring. It is already reshaping the world, and before this century has run its course it will render parts of it scarcely recognisable. Nations will suffer. Peoples will be displaced. Entire ways of life will disappear.
Future generations are unlikely to enjoy the assumptions of comfort and abundance presently taken for granted across much of the developed world. They may find themselves living under conditions rather closer to those endured by their distant ancestors than those imagined by the futurists of the twentieth century.
It is a fait accompli. The apparent price humanity must pay for progress.
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
