August and summer has finally arrived. Until now it’s been mild in Central Ohio. We didn’t have the heat dome that crippled the Northwest. We don’t have to worry about the wildfires that ravaged so much of the West. There were no floods sweeping through our streets, carrying away our cars, houses, and neighbors like Tennessee, Germany and China.
Haze and humidity hang over the buildings like a shroud. It’s the worst case scenario closing in on mankind.
Poison Ivy develops increased virulence with higher levels of carbon monoxide, additionally the growing season is longer so the plant is not only stronger it is more plentiful. Kudzu is an invasive species of vine that is threatening to swallow the southern portion of the US. It thrives on mild winters and hot, humid summers, it is a beautiful monster, and you can’t help but be awed by it. If you’ve ever seen photos of abandoned villages in China covered in green it was probably Kudzu. It just brings such visceral images of an empty American continent slowly being covered.
There is a mild, wet winter forecast, ideal conditions for the vectors of Dengue Fever and Hantavirus, mosquitos and rodents. These diseases were once considered tropical, or at least sub-tropical, but have started appearing farther north in terrifying numbers. It is commonly accepted by people educated in the field of infectious diseases that global warming will lead, inescapably, to more, and worse, global outbreaks.
Water is growing scarce in many places, as drought blankets and cripples swaths of continents. Food supplies are dwindling, as temperatures rise and once fertile lands bake into dusty cement. It isn’t difficult to imagine desperate refugees from California moving north and east to escape a once beautiful country that has turned into a Canto from Dante’s Inferno, where unrestrained hubris sends sinners to a hot, sizzling, damp hell filled with people telling them it’s only a seasonal blip, just one of the occasional things that happen and disappear, no cause for concern.
It is a future filled with tragedy, and it may be too late to do anything to stop it. The climate has reached the point of no return, there is no going back. It is to be hoped that with drastic, immediate action the world will still sustain life, but it’s not a given. It could have been avoided, too, if society had listened to the evidence, the scientists, instead we listened to the petroleum companies, the auto makers, the giant money making machine that has come to dominate politics. Such a shame, we had so much potential.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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