Wildfires, Hurricanes, Tornadoes!

Many people can’t seem to wrap their minds around the idea that if we want lessening climate change problems and curtailment of other sorts of devastation like massive spills and air pollution, we need to use less fossil fuels. We also have to stop taking away more and more of the natural world for economic development, stop personally using up ever more resources to climb up the socio-economic ladder and stop increasing the human population. After all more people will require more and more jobs provided based on further gobbling up the biosphere, as well as even more resources in use..

Cutting off your connection to the natural world leads to biodiversity loss and other troubles, obviously:

cutting-the-branch

My elderly friend lived in Santa Rosa, California until recent fire events forced her from her old-person retirement community.

Here’s her city-town now:

santa-rosa-fire-20171011

Santa Rosa’s charred now, but we’re all facing fire (or flood or heat wave) soon – LA Times

Imagine facing this sort of misery when you are in your nineties? How can you possibly imagine picking up your life and putting it back together at that age? You don’t have necessarily the energy, will or wits (mental capacity) to do it.

Moreover, she has a very small pension and no children. Who is supposed to help her financially and in other ways?

I enquired of another friend of mine in Petaluma, California: “Are you all right? Are you safe? Is your home safe?”

She responded :”Fires all around. yes town is evac center—1000’s in shelters now here.Ptown ok right now. I am ok, still packed a few bags.”

Devastated people, including many who barely escaped with their lives and who lost their homes, flocked to her town in the thousands as a potentially safe haven. Yet everyone is on standby alert in the event that it, too, has to be evacuated at any moment since fires all but surround it! How alarming is that for my friend and all the rest of the people? Nerve racking!

My friend in Petaluma has it particularly tough. She’s recovering from breast cancer and can’t work on account. She is very poor and I have sent her money to help her survive due to her illness and her inability to work.

She has no husband and no children. So what is she supposed to do? Where is she supposed to go? Where can she survive if her rented apartment with all of her belongings, including furniture, go up in flames? … Why, she doesn’t even now have enough money to own a car. She walks or bike rides. So what is she supposed to do? I will repeat.

Of course, it’s not just in California, USA. These ugly events are happening across the world. For example:
Officials reported nearly 900 wildfires in Italy on Monday, with people evacuated from residential as well as touristy parts of Rome and Naples, and around Mount Vesuvius, near Naples.Jul 18, 2017 – From Wildfires Roar Across Southern Europe – The New York Times


Forest fires in Russia. In this July 28 satellite image released by NASA, smoke from fires near Moscow is. More than 300,000 acres have burned in recent days … – From Forest fires in Russia – Telegraph

Like tourist season, wildfire season is also in full swing in British Columbia. Whereas tourists are welcomed to the Canadian province, wildfires are not. In British ... – From Wildfires Continue to Beleaguer Western Canada | NASA

… and the list of places being ruined by wildfires goes onward and onward.

phw9

California wildfires: Calistoga evacuated amid blazes

It’s not as if many people cannot connect the dots between their own personal behaviors, our human collective behaviors and an increasingly ruined world. While self-deception about helping the world because one recycles garbage that nobody really wants to use much at all may be momentarily comforting, it doesn’t lead to improvement. It leads to this sort of scene:

denial-global-warming

Of course, we still have climate change deniers or people across the globe that don’t even know that it exists. Why — I even recently heard of some still blaming sunspots for changing weather and climate change conditions.

comic-news-global-warming

Of course, yet others do know that these monumental climate change conditions, which will worsen over time, do exist. Yet they pretend that they don’t. After all, to admit means to be less personally in the money! It means cutting back in lifestyle.

cut-emissions-global-warming

Clearly, we all (except the poorest of the poor) have to cut back on lots. We have to cut back on fossil fuels, resource use and economic development. If we don’t, our world will be in a shambles way worse than it is now.

We humans have to smarten up. We need to start transition town movements now! Yet how many people can we convince to follow this model at this stage of disintegration of the environments around us? (Most are still in la-la land in terms of a need and desire to change their ways.)

The terms transition town, transition initiative and transition model refer to grassroot
community projects that aim to increase self-sufficiency to reduce the potential effects
of peak oil, climate destruction, and economic instability.
– From
Transition town – Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_town

Yet we have to keep trying to convince others, anyway. It’s because we have to keep looking ahead. No, it is not just about us, and our ease and comforts, our advantages today. …

The Seventh Generation Principle is based on an ancient Iroquois philosophy that the decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future. … The Great Law of Iroquois Confederacy formed the political, ceremonial, and social fabric of the Five Nation Confederacy (later Six).May 29, 2012 – FromWhat is the Seventh Generation Principle?

https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/seventh-generation-principle

In the end, we need to stop warring against the planet and ourselves in order to get
advantages (like oil resources in  the Middle East). We need instead to lay down our
 swords and shields for good.

As the fellows in this video sing: I’m going to shake hands around the world” and

“I ain’t going to study war no more!” … Let’s all follow suit!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43F8-xMkAS4

a gospel song also known as Ain’t Gonna Study War No More and/or

Gonna Lay Down My Burden..first …

Sally Dugman is a writer from MA, USA.

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