Chapter Three
Nov. 1st, 2014 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ljgeoffChapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter 3 -- 3472 words
October of 2014 was the hottest October in more than 120 years of record keeping. Australia and New Zealand, China, the Mideast, most of South America, as well as Western Europe -- all experienced temperatures well above average. In the US, the heat and drought in California continued unabated.
On October 28, a low pressure area formed out in the central Pacific, east-southeast of Guam. The storm, Super Typhoon Nuri, passed north of the Philippines and kept churning north, just missing Okinawa and Japan, and slammed into the Aleutian Islands on November 8. Weather forecasters re-christened the storm the Bering Sea Bomb.
As Nuri pushed north, the storm displaced the jet stream, causing the arctic polar vortex to spill out across North America. Temperatures fell like a rock: Billings, Montana went from 53 ° F on Sunday, November 9 to 19 °F on Monday, November 10th; Chicago, Illinois went from 65 °F on Tuesday, November 11 to 33 ° F on Wednesday, November 12; Buffalo, New York went from 54 °F on Wednesday, November 12 to 34 ° F on Thursday, November 13.
Just like in the severely cold northern hemisphere winter of 2013-2014, the anti-science rhetoric began popping up online. My brother-in-law posted a link to a book titled Dark Snow by so-called climatologist John Casey, who is peddling the idea that the earth is actually getting colder because of a decrease in solar sunspot activity.
When I posted back that the author had never published a single peer-reviewed paper on climate science and that his degree was in physics and business, my brother-in-law wrote: “I've seen some of the weather predictions and that's the most basic part of climate. Can't give any credit to people who are "guessing" that CO2 has anything to do with global warming. Too many variables out there and they choose one. Not buying it.”
“What will it take,” I said to Mike. We were tucked up in bed, me cyberslacking and Mike killing dragons or somesuch.
“Hmm?” Mike didn’t look up.
“You brother,” I said. I read the comment. “He’s a damn smart guy. If damn smart guys don’t see how climate change is effecting the world, what will it take for the not-so-smart guys to see it?”
“They won’t. Ever.” He grunted at his game and then said, “Even when they’re dying -- it’ll be the fault of those Godless liberals, or the illegal aliens, or The Government, or any other damn thing rather than their own damn fault.” There was a tiny scream from his computer speakers and he stabbed at the keyboard. “Rats.”
I clicked on a link and an article popped up on my screen. “The United Nations just published a study,” I said, scanning the text, “saying that the US can definitely cut its carbon emissions 80% by 2050.” I paused, reading ahead. “It says, The roadmap shows that such drastic decarbonization may be possible if all political barriers are absent.”
“All political barriers are absent? Is that what we’re banking on?,” Mike said and leaned over to look at my screen. “Who said that? The United Nations?”
“Yep.”
He rolled back onto his butt and settled his computer back onto his lap. “Well, nobody’s gonna believe them. They want to destroy the United States. One World Order.” He grinned at me, “It’s in their charter, don’t ya know.”
“See,” I shook my head, “this is why I think civilization is doomed.”
Mike went back to his game. “This is why I believe you.”
I really can understand how it might be hard to see a warming earth when buried neck deep in snow. As Nuri dissipated in the Bering Sea, pushed aside our dysfunctional jet stream and the displaced polar air rolled across the northern hemisphere, the polar air gathering moisture from the Great Lakes and blasted it down as one of the biggest snowfalls on record.
Up in Negaunee on the southern shore of Lake Superior, my son Carl said that it was coming down so fast that by the time he got to the end of the driveway, five inches had collected at his starting point.
But it was Buffalo, New York that made the headlines; a whopping seven feet of snow fell between November 17th through the 20th. The snow fell so fast that it packed into a solid mass before plows could get to it -- front-in loaders had to be brought in to pick it up and haul it away. Several people died from cardiac arrest while shoveling, and one man was found dead in a car that had slid into a ditch and buried fifteen feet under snow.
My backyard only saw a few inches of snow but on the 22nd of November, the snow turned into a rain that pounded, on and off, for three days. Mike and I drove quiet and contemplative through the rain from our fourth session of marriage counseling.
I’d been thinking all week about the nature of love -- what it feels like on the inside and what it looks like on the outside. The previous week had been very hard. I thought that I couldn't go on as we had been these last couple of years because now I know. The thing that changed wasn't that Mike suddenly decided that he wasn't in love with me, it was that he admitted the reason he'd been emotionally distant was that he wasn't in love with me. For me, knowing made all the difference.
The night before our counseling session, Mike and I sat in the dining room while the little boys watched TV in the livingroom. I pulled up a dining room chair and Mike turned the desk chair around so that we faced each other.
“I need some space to come to grips with this. It‘s all new to me. I need time to get used to knowing ... “ I swallowed, trying not to cry. A lot of people would be yelling at each other, but Mike and I weren’t the kind of people who yelled. I wasn’t even angry -- just so very sad. “I’m not mad at you. I know that you can’t help what you feel ... or what you don’t feel.” My nose stung and I swiped at the tears.
Mike moved in his chair as if he would say something, but didn’t.
“It’s just… I’m still in love with you and it hurts too much to be around you knowing that you’re not in love with me,” I said.
He rubbed a hand over his face. “How much time? How much space?”
“I don’t know,” I said, miserable. “I told Luke that I’d stay here until Christmas…” I trailed off because I couldn’t imagine leaving but I couldn’t imagine staying.
I looked down at my lap, at my hands, fingers twisted together. “It hurts too much to sleep with you. It’s just … maybe tonight I could sleep in Trentyn’s bed, and he could sleep with you.”
He looked at me and I couldn’t read his face. When had I stopped being able to know what he was thinking? When had he got so good at being unreadable?
A thump and a holler upstairs got us moving. I began to tidy the toy-strewn living room while Mike went to give the kids a bath and read them a story.
And put them in their own beds.
I was wrung out. Mike went downstairs and I took a shower, laid a towel across my pillow and then wept again. I'm so tired of weeping. Every time I’d settle down, I’d think of all the things I would not have when I left -- family suppers, my garden, the goddamned unfinished greenhouse, and the warmth of Mike next to me.
I thought about how he knew I wanted to sleep apart but had engineered it so we'd sleep together. It was such a hope-filled action. Look, it said, things don't have to change. I fell asleep weeping, lonely for the warmth of him next to me. Thinking, but everything has changed.
I woke up the next morning and luxuriated for a few moments in the nearness of Mike. A sudden thought came spiraling up from my subconscious -- would it kill me to act as if he were in love with me?
But that was crazy. I rolled on my side and watched his sleeping face. What if acting as if he were in love with me lead to him being in love with me? What were the chances?
I reached out and rested my hand on his chest. He snorted but slept on. How would I feel if he never again felt in love with me? I knew that he loved me, that I was dear to him. Best friends. Could that be enough?
A thought niggled: act as if. Act as if you’re going to succeed. Act as if the world isn’t ending. Could I act as if Mike was in love with me? I scooched a little closer and breathed in his scent. Yes, I thought, i>if he can act as if he was in love with me.
I decided that it was worth a try.
I have a friend who’s an astrophysicist. About twenty years ago, I stopped into his office in Marquette for a cup of coffee and to catch up. I’d just got pulled over and ticketed for driving without my seat belt.
“Aargh! Stupid seat belts!” I threw myself into a chair next to his desk. “I know that it’s good to wear them, but we never wore them when I was a kid and I keep forgetting about the damn things!” I waved the traffic ticket in the air and then shoved it into my coat pocket.
A mug of coffee had appeared at the corner of the desk while I was ranting and now Mark pushed it closer to my hand. I grabbed it up. “Stupid seat belts,” I muttered, burying my face in the steam.
Mark cocked an eyebrow at me. “Adaptation is a hallmark of intelligence,” he said mildly.
I think about this often. Everything that lives must adapt or die. Even viruses that barely fulfill the definition of “alive” are brilliant at adaptation. Humans are masters at it.
But the coming storms will be a challenge that may be beyond us. What will happen, what is happening right now, is that as the world warms the amount of water in the air will increase. The estimate is that for every degree celsius of world warming, world humidity will increase by seven percent. But that’s an average. What will also happen is that moisture bands will shift toward the poles. And places that are arid will dry out more while soggy places will get wetter.
It’s hard to make heads or tails of it all-- unless you live in Duluth, Minnesota. On July 20th, 2012 it began to rain. And rain. Over the next twenty-four hours, Duluth experienced a record precipitation event with over ten inches of rain falling on the northeast side of town. If that rain had come as snow at the same temperature as it was in Buffalo in November 2014, Duluth would have been hit with eight feet of snow.
The Sunday after Thanksgiving, we all piled into the minivan and up to Mike’s mother’s home, three hours north. As we drove through Grand Rapids, I pointed out the patches of snow still piled up from the Nuri-made snowfall.
Climate models predict that these type of precipitation events will become more common. By the middle of the century, extreme precipitation may be the only kind of rain or snow that we get. Communities will be washed away or stranded, like the towns of Lyons, Longmont and Boulder Colorado in the extreme rains of September 2013.
“So… 2025,” I said, “there’s a good chance we’ll have at least one extreme precipitation event a year -- either 10 inches of rain or eight feet of snow. And periods, maybe months when we don’t have any rain or snow at all. We’ll need a system of cisterns, and a safe way for the water to run off.”
Mike nodded. “Yep. And then there’s hail.”
With a sinking feeling, I remembered how my friend Mary Ann’s garden had been flattened by hail this last summer. My mind raced. “The only way to protect against hail is to have reserves. We have to be able to store a year’s worth of food…”
“Two years’ worth,” Mike corrected and added, “We’ll have to have a plan for forest fires, too. It’s not like we’ll be able to call the fire department.”
Fire fighting equipment -- I added to my internal list. There was so much to consider that for a moment I simply let my eyes wander out the window, not thinking of anything at all.
The International Energy Agency was founded to address issues of the 1973 oil crisis. I was twelve years old at the time, and I remember the lines at the gas stations and the pinched look on my parents’ faces. As time has gone on, the IEA has broadened its scope to not only international energy security, but economic development, climate change and environmental degradation. It’s a particularly staid and conservative organization, led by a team of world class economists, strategic business analysts and energy market managers.
In 2010, the IEA said that the world was on track for a warming of 3.5 °C increase by 2035. In 2013 they reported that, yep, we’re still on track -- their estimate, based on the best science and on the lack of world-wide support of decreasing carbon emissions is that the world will see a 3.5 °C increase above baseline in a mere twenty years.
Crickets.
A few newspapers and blogs posted about the prediction, mourning the loss of species -- mankind included. But there was no outcry of alarmism, no wild-eyed suggestions of hoax. Just the same acknowledgement of the projection being a worse case scenario and of course it won’t come to that.
It’s as if we’re in a canoe heading toward a waterfall; we can see that we’re moving faster, and some of us are even considering the drop into the abyss. Of course, most of us are ignoring it because what can we do about it? We might as well enjoy the lovely view of the riverside flowing by as well as we can.
In the 2014 report A bridge to nowhere: methane emissions and the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas, Cornell professor Robert Howarth writes that an increase of 1.5 to 2 °C will tip the earth system into an “alternate state.” The lower bound of this danger zone, 1.5° warming, is predicted to occur by 2030 unless stringent controls on methane and black carbon emissions are initiated immediately, he writes.
We are not only heading toward storms that rip cities apart, but also the collapse of ocean ecosystems, the end of modern agriculture, and the extinction of the majority of all life on the planet. In human terms, a 3.5 °C world will be able to sustain only a billion people. Many would die from the wars that will ravage the planet as we convulse in our societal death throes. It will be another hockey-stick graph, with deaths climbing as the temperature rises. It’s almost impossible to imagine the scope of loss, but on average, a million people will die every week, every year for the next ninety years.
I dont’ think that the death of billions is the best plan for decreasing our carbon footprint.
My son Jake worries about me. “You’re gonna drive yourself crazy with all this shit,” he said, his face creased in concern. “You gotta, I dunno, just find joy in the time that’s left.”
“I’ve never been good at living in the moment,” I shrugged. “And besides, I have grandchildren.”
We were walking after a bountiful Thanksgiving dinner. Jake shoved his hands in his pockets and kicked at a stick in the pathway. “You really think it’s gonna work? This plan of yours? Do you think we can survive with some little farm out in the woods?”
“I have to hope, Jake.” I lifted my face to the sun and a cold wind blew hair in my eyes. “I have to do what I can and this is the only thing I can think to do.” I looked at him and tucked my hair behind my ear. “I have to act as if some of us will survive.”
“I’ll be there,” he reassured me. “You can count on me.”
I reached out wordlessly and gripped his shoulder, then gave him a pat. He hadn’t been with us to look at the property, so I sketched it out for him. “There’s a hill, and the south side faces a small wetland. We’ll build the house facing south and into the hill. The top of the house will come even with the hilltop and have an earthen roof.”
“That’ll be kinda dark, won’t it?”
“The south face of the house will be mostly windows, but yeah, the back of the house’ll be dark. We’ll have to put a berm between the house and the wetland, to protect against flooding, and clear the trees and brush from around the house to protect against fire…”
“Like they do in Australia,” Jake nodded. “Having the house buried in the hill will protect it some from fire, too, I think.”
“We’d be off grid, of course. We’re looking at a wind turbine and water tank system for electricity generation. I was thinking that in forest fire situations, we could use the water in the tank to wet down the ground around the house.”
Jake shook his head. “How can you think of all this shit?”
I felt one side of my mouth come up in a lopsided grin. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”
When we got back from our Thanksgiving visit, I got a call from a neighbor who’d become a good friend over the last year. The winter before they’d been in a bad way and Mike and I had loaned him and his girlfriend some money. We’d made a deal that instead of paying me back with cash, he’d help me dig a new garden bed. But he hadn’t come through, and Luke and I dug the bed without him.
“I just wanted to call and say how sorry I am that I didn’t help,” he said. “I got caught up in my own problems and I dropped the ball.”
I pursed my lips. “Mmm … well, I’ve got some projects for this spring. That big planter-gazebo thing that I never got done this year, and I want to put two thin beds in back behind the house for tomatoes.”
“Yeah?”
“Yep. You can make it up to me.”
“That sounds great. And I have this idea; I can get some of the neighborhood kids doing some stuff. Teach them some martial arts right there in the grass by the garden beds, and they can pay for their lessons by working in the garden.”
I tamped down the low level of despair that is my constant companion. Working with children is the hardest. I looked out the front window, across to the garden and in a radiant flash, I could see them there -- laughing, goofing around, hands in the dirt. “That sounds great!” My voice sounded over-bright. “I could send them home with a few things - some tomatoes and broccoli, stuff that they might like.”
We were quiet for a beat, thinking of spring and children. “I love ya, Moe,” I finally said. “I’ll let you know when you can help.”
“You got it, girl. I’ll be there.”
I walked through the house and looked out the back window at the unfinished greenhouse. Mike and I had decided that the basement would be the best place for the fish tank. There was a basement window that came out right in the middle of the greenhouse, and we could feed the hoses through there. Our first crop would be lettuces, broccoli, chard and sweet peas.
He was really getting behind the whole idea -- even offered to help make the fish tank. I rested my forehead against the window and breathed out, my breath making a soft, white smudge on the glass. One of the cats jumped onto the window sill. I scratched my fingers down her back and tried to believe that I’d finish the greenhouse, that the garden would bloom, and that children would come and love the garden and growing things like I do.a>
“As if, as if, as if,” I whispered to the cat.
Chapter Four
Chapter Two
Chapter 3 -- 3472 words
October of 2014 was the hottest October in more than 120 years of record keeping. Australia and New Zealand, China, the Mideast, most of South America, as well as Western Europe -- all experienced temperatures well above average. In the US, the heat and drought in California continued unabated.
On October 28, a low pressure area formed out in the central Pacific, east-southeast of Guam. The storm, Super Typhoon Nuri, passed north of the Philippines and kept churning north, just missing Okinawa and Japan, and slammed into the Aleutian Islands on November 8. Weather forecasters re-christened the storm the Bering Sea Bomb.
As Nuri pushed north, the storm displaced the jet stream, causing the arctic polar vortex to spill out across North America. Temperatures fell like a rock: Billings, Montana went from 53 ° F on Sunday, November 9 to 19 °F on Monday, November 10th; Chicago, Illinois went from 65 °F on Tuesday, November 11 to 33 ° F on Wednesday, November 12; Buffalo, New York went from 54 °F on Wednesday, November 12 to 34 ° F on Thursday, November 13.
Just like in the severely cold northern hemisphere winter of 2013-2014, the anti-science rhetoric began popping up online. My brother-in-law posted a link to a book titled Dark Snow by so-called climatologist John Casey, who is peddling the idea that the earth is actually getting colder because of a decrease in solar sunspot activity.
When I posted back that the author had never published a single peer-reviewed paper on climate science and that his degree was in physics and business, my brother-in-law wrote: “I've seen some of the weather predictions and that's the most basic part of climate. Can't give any credit to people who are "guessing" that CO2 has anything to do with global warming. Too many variables out there and they choose one. Not buying it.”
“What will it take,” I said to Mike. We were tucked up in bed, me cyberslacking and Mike killing dragons or somesuch.
“Hmm?” Mike didn’t look up.
“You brother,” I said. I read the comment. “He’s a damn smart guy. If damn smart guys don’t see how climate change is effecting the world, what will it take for the not-so-smart guys to see it?”
“They won’t. Ever.” He grunted at his game and then said, “Even when they’re dying -- it’ll be the fault of those Godless liberals, or the illegal aliens, or The Government, or any other damn thing rather than their own damn fault.” There was a tiny scream from his computer speakers and he stabbed at the keyboard. “Rats.”
I clicked on a link and an article popped up on my screen. “The United Nations just published a study,” I said, scanning the text, “saying that the US can definitely cut its carbon emissions 80% by 2050.” I paused, reading ahead. “It says, The roadmap shows that such drastic decarbonization may be possible if all political barriers are absent.”
“All political barriers are absent? Is that what we’re banking on?,” Mike said and leaned over to look at my screen. “Who said that? The United Nations?”
“Yep.”
He rolled back onto his butt and settled his computer back onto his lap. “Well, nobody’s gonna believe them. They want to destroy the United States. One World Order.” He grinned at me, “It’s in their charter, don’t ya know.”
“See,” I shook my head, “this is why I think civilization is doomed.”
Mike went back to his game. “This is why I believe you.”
I really can understand how it might be hard to see a warming earth when buried neck deep in snow. As Nuri dissipated in the Bering Sea, pushed aside our dysfunctional jet stream and the displaced polar air rolled across the northern hemisphere, the polar air gathering moisture from the Great Lakes and blasted it down as one of the biggest snowfalls on record.
Up in Negaunee on the southern shore of Lake Superior, my son Carl said that it was coming down so fast that by the time he got to the end of the driveway, five inches had collected at his starting point.
But it was Buffalo, New York that made the headlines; a whopping seven feet of snow fell between November 17th through the 20th. The snow fell so fast that it packed into a solid mass before plows could get to it -- front-in loaders had to be brought in to pick it up and haul it away. Several people died from cardiac arrest while shoveling, and one man was found dead in a car that had slid into a ditch and buried fifteen feet under snow.
My backyard only saw a few inches of snow but on the 22nd of November, the snow turned into a rain that pounded, on and off, for three days. Mike and I drove quiet and contemplative through the rain from our fourth session of marriage counseling.
I’d been thinking all week about the nature of love -- what it feels like on the inside and what it looks like on the outside. The previous week had been very hard. I thought that I couldn't go on as we had been these last couple of years because now I know. The thing that changed wasn't that Mike suddenly decided that he wasn't in love with me, it was that he admitted the reason he'd been emotionally distant was that he wasn't in love with me. For me, knowing made all the difference.
The night before our counseling session, Mike and I sat in the dining room while the little boys watched TV in the livingroom. I pulled up a dining room chair and Mike turned the desk chair around so that we faced each other.
“I need some space to come to grips with this. It‘s all new to me. I need time to get used to knowing ... “ I swallowed, trying not to cry. A lot of people would be yelling at each other, but Mike and I weren’t the kind of people who yelled. I wasn’t even angry -- just so very sad. “I’m not mad at you. I know that you can’t help what you feel ... or what you don’t feel.” My nose stung and I swiped at the tears.
Mike moved in his chair as if he would say something, but didn’t.
“It’s just… I’m still in love with you and it hurts too much to be around you knowing that you’re not in love with me,” I said.
He rubbed a hand over his face. “How much time? How much space?”
“I don’t know,” I said, miserable. “I told Luke that I’d stay here until Christmas…” I trailed off because I couldn’t imagine leaving but I couldn’t imagine staying.
I looked down at my lap, at my hands, fingers twisted together. “It hurts too much to sleep with you. It’s just … maybe tonight I could sleep in Trentyn’s bed, and he could sleep with you.”
He looked at me and I couldn’t read his face. When had I stopped being able to know what he was thinking? When had he got so good at being unreadable?
A thump and a holler upstairs got us moving. I began to tidy the toy-strewn living room while Mike went to give the kids a bath and read them a story.
And put them in their own beds.
I was wrung out. Mike went downstairs and I took a shower, laid a towel across my pillow and then wept again. I'm so tired of weeping. Every time I’d settle down, I’d think of all the things I would not have when I left -- family suppers, my garden, the goddamned unfinished greenhouse, and the warmth of Mike next to me.
I thought about how he knew I wanted to sleep apart but had engineered it so we'd sleep together. It was such a hope-filled action. Look, it said, things don't have to change. I fell asleep weeping, lonely for the warmth of him next to me. Thinking, but everything has changed.
I woke up the next morning and luxuriated for a few moments in the nearness of Mike. A sudden thought came spiraling up from my subconscious -- would it kill me to act as if he were in love with me?
But that was crazy. I rolled on my side and watched his sleeping face. What if acting as if he were in love with me lead to him being in love with me? What were the chances?
I reached out and rested my hand on his chest. He snorted but slept on. How would I feel if he never again felt in love with me? I knew that he loved me, that I was dear to him. Best friends. Could that be enough?
A thought niggled: act as if. Act as if you’re going to succeed. Act as if the world isn’t ending. Could I act as if Mike was in love with me? I scooched a little closer and breathed in his scent. Yes, I thought, i>if he can act as if he was in love with me.
I decided that it was worth a try.
I have a friend who’s an astrophysicist. About twenty years ago, I stopped into his office in Marquette for a cup of coffee and to catch up. I’d just got pulled over and ticketed for driving without my seat belt.
“Aargh! Stupid seat belts!” I threw myself into a chair next to his desk. “I know that it’s good to wear them, but we never wore them when I was a kid and I keep forgetting about the damn things!” I waved the traffic ticket in the air and then shoved it into my coat pocket.
A mug of coffee had appeared at the corner of the desk while I was ranting and now Mark pushed it closer to my hand. I grabbed it up. “Stupid seat belts,” I muttered, burying my face in the steam.
Mark cocked an eyebrow at me. “Adaptation is a hallmark of intelligence,” he said mildly.
I think about this often. Everything that lives must adapt or die. Even viruses that barely fulfill the definition of “alive” are brilliant at adaptation. Humans are masters at it.
But the coming storms will be a challenge that may be beyond us. What will happen, what is happening right now, is that as the world warms the amount of water in the air will increase. The estimate is that for every degree celsius of world warming, world humidity will increase by seven percent. But that’s an average. What will also happen is that moisture bands will shift toward the poles. And places that are arid will dry out more while soggy places will get wetter.
It’s hard to make heads or tails of it all-- unless you live in Duluth, Minnesota. On July 20th, 2012 it began to rain. And rain. Over the next twenty-four hours, Duluth experienced a record precipitation event with over ten inches of rain falling on the northeast side of town. If that rain had come as snow at the same temperature as it was in Buffalo in November 2014, Duluth would have been hit with eight feet of snow.
The Sunday after Thanksgiving, we all piled into the minivan and up to Mike’s mother’s home, three hours north. As we drove through Grand Rapids, I pointed out the patches of snow still piled up from the Nuri-made snowfall.
Climate models predict that these type of precipitation events will become more common. By the middle of the century, extreme precipitation may be the only kind of rain or snow that we get. Communities will be washed away or stranded, like the towns of Lyons, Longmont and Boulder Colorado in the extreme rains of September 2013.
“So… 2025,” I said, “there’s a good chance we’ll have at least one extreme precipitation event a year -- either 10 inches of rain or eight feet of snow. And periods, maybe months when we don’t have any rain or snow at all. We’ll need a system of cisterns, and a safe way for the water to run off.”
Mike nodded. “Yep. And then there’s hail.”
With a sinking feeling, I remembered how my friend Mary Ann’s garden had been flattened by hail this last summer. My mind raced. “The only way to protect against hail is to have reserves. We have to be able to store a year’s worth of food…”
“Two years’ worth,” Mike corrected and added, “We’ll have to have a plan for forest fires, too. It’s not like we’ll be able to call the fire department.”
Fire fighting equipment -- I added to my internal list. There was so much to consider that for a moment I simply let my eyes wander out the window, not thinking of anything at all.
The International Energy Agency was founded to address issues of the 1973 oil crisis. I was twelve years old at the time, and I remember the lines at the gas stations and the pinched look on my parents’ faces. As time has gone on, the IEA has broadened its scope to not only international energy security, but economic development, climate change and environmental degradation. It’s a particularly staid and conservative organization, led by a team of world class economists, strategic business analysts and energy market managers.
In 2010, the IEA said that the world was on track for a warming of 3.5 °C increase by 2035. In 2013 they reported that, yep, we’re still on track -- their estimate, based on the best science and on the lack of world-wide support of decreasing carbon emissions is that the world will see a 3.5 °C increase above baseline in a mere twenty years.
Crickets.
A few newspapers and blogs posted about the prediction, mourning the loss of species -- mankind included. But there was no outcry of alarmism, no wild-eyed suggestions of hoax. Just the same acknowledgement of the projection being a worse case scenario and of course it won’t come to that.
It’s as if we’re in a canoe heading toward a waterfall; we can see that we’re moving faster, and some of us are even considering the drop into the abyss. Of course, most of us are ignoring it because what can we do about it? We might as well enjoy the lovely view of the riverside flowing by as well as we can.
In the 2014 report A bridge to nowhere: methane emissions and the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas, Cornell professor Robert Howarth writes that an increase of 1.5 to 2 °C will tip the earth system into an “alternate state.” The lower bound of this danger zone, 1.5° warming, is predicted to occur by 2030 unless stringent controls on methane and black carbon emissions are initiated immediately, he writes.
We are not only heading toward storms that rip cities apart, but also the collapse of ocean ecosystems, the end of modern agriculture, and the extinction of the majority of all life on the planet. In human terms, a 3.5 °C world will be able to sustain only a billion people. Many would die from the wars that will ravage the planet as we convulse in our societal death throes. It will be another hockey-stick graph, with deaths climbing as the temperature rises. It’s almost impossible to imagine the scope of loss, but on average, a million people will die every week, every year for the next ninety years.
I dont’ think that the death of billions is the best plan for decreasing our carbon footprint.
My son Jake worries about me. “You’re gonna drive yourself crazy with all this shit,” he said, his face creased in concern. “You gotta, I dunno, just find joy in the time that’s left.”
“I’ve never been good at living in the moment,” I shrugged. “And besides, I have grandchildren.”
We were walking after a bountiful Thanksgiving dinner. Jake shoved his hands in his pockets and kicked at a stick in the pathway. “You really think it’s gonna work? This plan of yours? Do you think we can survive with some little farm out in the woods?”
“I have to hope, Jake.” I lifted my face to the sun and a cold wind blew hair in my eyes. “I have to do what I can and this is the only thing I can think to do.” I looked at him and tucked my hair behind my ear. “I have to act as if some of us will survive.”
“I’ll be there,” he reassured me. “You can count on me.”
I reached out wordlessly and gripped his shoulder, then gave him a pat. He hadn’t been with us to look at the property, so I sketched it out for him. “There’s a hill, and the south side faces a small wetland. We’ll build the house facing south and into the hill. The top of the house will come even with the hilltop and have an earthen roof.”
“That’ll be kinda dark, won’t it?”
“The south face of the house will be mostly windows, but yeah, the back of the house’ll be dark. We’ll have to put a berm between the house and the wetland, to protect against flooding, and clear the trees and brush from around the house to protect against fire…”
“Like they do in Australia,” Jake nodded. “Having the house buried in the hill will protect it some from fire, too, I think.”
“We’d be off grid, of course. We’re looking at a wind turbine and water tank system for electricity generation. I was thinking that in forest fire situations, we could use the water in the tank to wet down the ground around the house.”
Jake shook his head. “How can you think of all this shit?”
I felt one side of my mouth come up in a lopsided grin. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”
When we got back from our Thanksgiving visit, I got a call from a neighbor who’d become a good friend over the last year. The winter before they’d been in a bad way and Mike and I had loaned him and his girlfriend some money. We’d made a deal that instead of paying me back with cash, he’d help me dig a new garden bed. But he hadn’t come through, and Luke and I dug the bed without him.
“I just wanted to call and say how sorry I am that I didn’t help,” he said. “I got caught up in my own problems and I dropped the ball.”
I pursed my lips. “Mmm … well, I’ve got some projects for this spring. That big planter-gazebo thing that I never got done this year, and I want to put two thin beds in back behind the house for tomatoes.”
“Yeah?”
“Yep. You can make it up to me.”
“That sounds great. And I have this idea; I can get some of the neighborhood kids doing some stuff. Teach them some martial arts right there in the grass by the garden beds, and they can pay for their lessons by working in the garden.”
I tamped down the low level of despair that is my constant companion. Working with children is the hardest. I looked out the front window, across to the garden and in a radiant flash, I could see them there -- laughing, goofing around, hands in the dirt. “That sounds great!” My voice sounded over-bright. “I could send them home with a few things - some tomatoes and broccoli, stuff that they might like.”
We were quiet for a beat, thinking of spring and children. “I love ya, Moe,” I finally said. “I’ll let you know when you can help.”
“You got it, girl. I’ll be there.”
I walked through the house and looked out the back window at the unfinished greenhouse. Mike and I had decided that the basement would be the best place for the fish tank. There was a basement window that came out right in the middle of the greenhouse, and we could feed the hoses through there. Our first crop would be lettuces, broccoli, chard and sweet peas.
He was really getting behind the whole idea -- even offered to help make the fish tank. I rested my forehead against the window and breathed out, my breath making a soft, white smudge on the glass. One of the cats jumped onto the window sill. I scratched my fingers down her back and tried to believe that I’d finish the greenhouse, that the garden would bloom, and that children would come and love the garden and growing things like I do.a>
“As if, as if, as if,” I whispered to the cat.
Chapter Four