So Lovely
It sure was pretty riding home from school this afternoon: the setting sun’s rays glinting yellow and red off the smooth-as-glass lake, the weather warm and dry enough that I didn’t need a raincoat, the early February false spring light enough that I got all the way home without having to turn on my headlamp.
If this is what global climate change has in store for us in the Northwest, it’s not going to be too bad—except for the millions of climate refugees we’ll have to assimilate into our population—and even though I realize the weather this winter has more to do with the El Nino conditions than the long-term anthropogenic effects on the season, I can almost see why those crazy climate change deniers go off on their denial schtick: it’s hard to get very exercised about the immanent end of the world when it’s so nice outside as it’s happening.
I guess it’s just another aspect of the human condition: we’re not very good at taking the long view; in fact, we’re probably hard-wired not to. After all, if we really accepted the inevitable fact that we’re fucking doomed as a result of our own behaviors, we’d all probably just lose it, and all would simply go to hell, starting, no doubt, with the global economy. I know I’d stop paying my student loans off, that’s for sure.
So instead of worrying about what’s going to happen—probably in my lifetime, but almost certainly in my daughter’s—I just pedaled along, enjoying the beautiful weather and admiring the flocks of robins, I think, that were perched all over the trees between Lake Forest Park and Matthews Beach.
And I consoled myself slightly with the knowledge that if it is only a matter of time before it all goes to hell, at least I’m not contributing to the incipient demise by driving and even better, I won’t be in a car when it happens.
If this is what global climate change has in store for us in the Northwest, it’s not going to be too bad—except for the millions of climate refugees we’ll have to assimilate into our population—and even though I realize the weather this winter has more to do with the El Nino conditions than the long-term anthropogenic effects on the season, I can almost see why those crazy climate change deniers go off on their denial schtick: it’s hard to get very exercised about the immanent end of the world when it’s so nice outside as it’s happening.
I guess it’s just another aspect of the human condition: we’re not very good at taking the long view; in fact, we’re probably hard-wired not to. After all, if we really accepted the inevitable fact that we’re fucking doomed as a result of our own behaviors, we’d all probably just lose it, and all would simply go to hell, starting, no doubt, with the global economy. I know I’d stop paying my student loans off, that’s for sure.
So instead of worrying about what’s going to happen—probably in my lifetime, but almost certainly in my daughter’s—I just pedaled along, enjoying the beautiful weather and admiring the flocks of robins, I think, that were perched all over the trees between Lake Forest Park and Matthews Beach.
And I consoled myself slightly with the knowledge that if it is only a matter of time before it all goes to hell, at least I’m not contributing to the incipient demise by driving and even better, I won’t be in a car when it happens.
posted by Professor Dave at 7:11 PM
1 Comments:
Here in the Midwest what global climate changes seems to be doing to us this winter is that we haven't had snow worth playing in - either there's too godawful much of it - that only happened once - or what's been happening more often and is really unpleasant is we get some nice snow, and then it rains or turns to ice. yeech.
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