This was me, peak parenting, or so I thought. My husband was participating in the Tour de Fuzz, a century to benefit the police of Sonoma County. I ordered white wine with a poolside charcuterie tray for our lunch at the Fountaingrove Inn, a landmark establishment that no longer exists. We were guests a couple of weeks before the fires. It was burned to the ground in the recent fires that obliterated many acres of Sonoma County. Here this day, gone the next. It was consumed by the Tubbs Fire.
Above are before and after images of the high school where the start of the century was staged. The destruction total. Fortunately for Santa Rosa, this high school was not in use as a school. Unfortunately the neighboring public one was.
Anyone who has been to Sonoma County wine country has seen these cypress trees lining the path to a winery. We live within an hour’s drive to Santa Rosa. We have made a life out of weekend trips to this beautiful corner of the earth. So to revisit last month after some of the worst fires in CA history, to see them scorched to the tip like skinny spent matchsticks was kind of jarring.
To enter the establishments where we have frequented, talk to the locals, hear about how many of their friends, their families are out of a home, out of a job, or worse, both, was fairly gut wrenching.
With two sets of CA wildfires of the most destructive on record in this season alone, and two apocalyptic hurricanes leaving over a thousand dead by recent estimates, I am done listening to denial of climate change. Scientists are in almost complete agreement. The few who will voice an alternative opinion are exploiting a payroll opportunity. There is overwhelming consensus that these are the consequences of climate change.
The worst part of it is how many people (scientists and politicians alike) know it. This is on the scale of the knowledge big tobacco had of the causative role smoking played as a carcinogen while Joe Camel still graced the pages of our Weekly Readers.
At a time when the US should be playing a leading role in the solutions that transform our dependence on fossil fuels to a renewable energy economy, we are the lone leaders in leaving the Paris Accord.
This is the defining moment of our times. There is no doubt. You can hear the gears grinding as GOP Representatives pivot from, “there is no scientific consensus ” to “The hour is too late.” They had our children’s future in their hands, and they sold it for short term political gain.
Disgust doesn’t begin to describe the emotions of this adult female who remembers cherishing her book “50 things you can do to save the world” snipping six pack rings and walking her radio flyer wagon around the neighborhood of her rural GA hometown as a middle schooler. It is time for leadership and action.
My friends and family just had a snow day Georgia in the middle of December. Instead of marveling at the beauty of the peacefully falling flakes, I wish more would stand back in recognition of the aberration and in abject terror that climate change means unpredictable extremes in weather that led their local forecaster to tell you to prepare for flurries that wouldn’t stick. Then pivot to the recognition that American citizens in Puerto Rico awoke to a thirteenth week without power or potable water in a botched recovery effort the likes of which our country hasn’t seen since Katrina. Then recognize global climate change is more of a national security threat than any radical Muslim or oppressed white male. It has the capacity to do millions of dollars in property damage, leave thousands homeless, kill hundreds with almost no warning. It will likely only worsen. Then come to tears when you realize this is just the new normal.
It is a time when our diplomatic envoys should be extracting their good inky pens and asking , “Where do I sign?” That is precisely what happened with the long negotiated Paris Accords, a textbook example of the power of global diplomacy. Instead, on June 1st our president announced we would be withdrawing from the long negotiated Paris Accords and hired a man to run the EPA who is a cartoon villain for human killing deregulation. And in response, Emmanuel Macron says please, come to France. Do your research here. We will fund you because the work needs doing. Make our planet great again. This guy gets it.
You can lament the inefficiency of national government, and there are few things government is really good at, but pooling resources to tackle global insoluble problems has to be on the list of its strengths. No single individual will innovate on a level to neutralize the threat of climate change, but sustained investment in innovative technology and conversion to renewable energy sources can have an impact.
Instead our president and his minions want us to party like it is 1929 and prop up coal while rolling back regulations that protect our environment and eliminating thousands of acres of National parks while tacking on drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge to tax reform because why not?
I am done. My sign is ready. When can I march. We have to fight to preserve our planet while she is in a position to save. There is no planet B. We as global citizens have to pop this nationalist bubble of ignorance and awaken to the terrifying reality that climate change is the greatest geopolitical threat facing our country and its world, and recognize that media bias meant it got all of 15 minutes in the 2016 presidential debates only because she brought it up.
There is only one party fighting for the future of this planet. But we all breathe the air. We all live on the the land. We all consume the fruits of the ground. We should all be terrified of the clear and present danger. Now is the time to demand more of our elected officials for the future of our children.