Flash floods to heat waves

Boy, the weather has been wicked this past month: Europe suffering from fires, UK breaking temperature records since recording began in the 1880 (I think), the heat waves in the U.S., the fires in California, and those flooding. This week the bad news was centered on Kentucky.

The images coming out of Kentucky are horrible. I also think Kentucky had that terrifying tornado last fall or December – the one that went on for many miles. There were quite a lot of news stories about that tornado.

When I see those images from Kentucky and if I ignore those damages and downed trees, I can see that Kentucky is very beautiful. Very verdant, with hills and mountains and rivers and streams. Unfortunately, that beauty seems to hide poverty because I believe Kentucky is one of those poorer states. Poverty in the midst of beauty. Does the beauty alleviate the misery of poverty?

A quick glance at the internet search indicates Kentucky is the 40th state in terms of wealth. Fortieth out of 50. So, one of the poorer ones. The people can’t afford these kinds of devastation.

I think in my last post that was on weather, I mentioned that I had the impression that the climate deniers have gone quiet. I thought that maybe they are starting to realize that there may be something to the scientists’ claims of climate change. It’s hard to ignore the constant heat waves and the corresponding toppling of temperature records, the constant fires erupting in the Pacific Northwest, the constant flooding inundating the Midwest and mid-Atlantic, the terrifying tornadoes ravaging communities, and of course, the hurricanes with the storm surge, wiping away everything. It’s hard to deny that drumbeat.

According to one news media, I wasn’t imagining the silence: the climate deniers have gone silent, recognizing the climate change playing out around us. I was hoping that once the climate deniers face the truth, they would quietly stop obstructing efforts to combat the weird weather and begin joining hands to do something.

But the media source says the aim is to delay rather than deny. The delay is in the form of saying there will be harmful economic impacts if we try to curtail our energy use and change our source of energy.

Delay.

Well, that’s a good one. That doesn’t really help us but just makes things worse. I hope they get off of that wagon REALLY quick because the scientists say we don’t have much time. The climate change is happening faster than they expected. It’s all hands-on deck; we need them to stop mucking around.

Yes, there will be some economic impact, but we can lessen the impact by choosing new technologies to create new jobs, set aside money for training for new energy sources, and the owners of the old energy sources are already wealthy, they will survive okay. They can just invest in new cleaner energy sources. The wealthy will be okay; it’s the average worker and professionals that will need training to enable them to jump into new energy fields and new technologies. But we need to do that now, not later. The sooner everybody gets trained and off the old energy system, the better off we’ll all be.

Now, not later.

Don’t delay. Do it now.