Can I just say, yesterday I got spooked. It wasn’t just the fear of falling on black ice, it was also the hearings with all that gaslighting, inverting of sense and fact. How the lying seems to work. By now, too, I know that I always feel terrible after trump has been abroad. The embarrassment and the visible costs of his corrupt incompetence are harsh to note.
How fragile it all seems! I know people say it all the time, but yesterday I felt it in my body. How we might not make it. As a republic or a planet.
Prompt after writing prompt produces articulations of rage and despair about climate deniers and about the damage itself. After teaching Tuesday’s class (on Zoom because of the snow emergency), I thought, why does this keep coming up? Then yesterday: why doesn’t it come up more?
In fact, how can we talk about anything else?
Tomorrow there’s a climate strike in Copley Square. I’m not planning to go. It’s been a long week with K in China and back to back snowstorms. But I laud the young people skipping school to protest — getting their priorities right.
The first thing I listened to this morning was the inspiring, intelligent, beautiful Naomi Klein. She and Rebecca Solnit keep trying to remind us that climate denial is violence. Abuse. Part of a pattern of corporate greed.
It’s worth the six minute listen.
‘They are true planetary arsonists’ — Journalist and author @NaomiAKlein explains how Trump and other ‘strongmen’ leaders are perpetuating the climate crisis pic.twitter.com/OCllnqwHGY
— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) December 5, 2019
PS A few weeks ago, I read Maddow’s book about ‘the world’s most destructive industry on earth’ — the fossil fuel industry. Amazing how much is about Russia.
oh, Dee. Yes. All she said. But we already know that. It’s Klein, Good Woman Klein, but who is she speaking to?
is it possible there are those who will hear a new message? Who? This is not new.
It IS them, those grossly opportunistic fearmongers, but really…it’s us too….the majority
who will just go along and get along because it’s too hard. As old Gore said, it’s an
inconvenient truth.
It isn’t anything we haven’t heard before, true, but since the cloak of denial and inaction, even among those of us trying to pay attention, is thick and weighted with habit, I think it bears repeating. And her message of hope, however bracketed by information about catastrophe, seems to be something I need to hear frequently. It’s hard to hold it in my head or heart.
I wonder what she would say, though, if asked: who are you speaking to? It’s a good question.
(I think she has a new book out, so in part it is to get that word out.)
A new book. Nice.
I think it will be when stuff doesn’t work any more.
We will go…oh, now what.
Maybe great granddaughter Emrie will be a young adult then? I will be dead.
But maybe it’s as close as her? …she is 2 now
But what about in the meantime, all the lifeforms that will be required to make great CHANGE???
Do they matter?
I want to scream
I am working so hard, so sweaty to understand this
A new book. Nice.
I think it will be when stuff doesn’t work any more.
We will go…oh, now what.
Maybe great granddaughter Emrie will be a young adult then? I will be dead.
But maybe it’s as close as her? …she is 2 now
But what about in the meantime, all the lifeforms that will be required to make great CHANGE???
Do they matter?
I want to scream
I am working so hard, so sweaty to understand
Well if we have twelve years to act and acting would require fundamental, widespread and radical change, it’s going to affect people older than Emrie — including my boys (in their twenties).
these are such strange dark days but revolution is in the air!
I hope so!
Anyone with children and grandchildren should take serious notice. Here in Maine the effects are already obvious. Less rain. Less snow. Colder. Hotter. The soil is dry and lifeless. All we need is Wind and what soil we have will blow away.
Here in Massachusetts the seasons are hardly recognizable at times. An entire summer without rain. A winter with nine feet of snow. Hemlocks dying of disease. Ash. When we first lived in the house, one or two weeks in August were unbearably humid and hot. Not it’s as much as eight weeks.
I dunno … watching Maddow last night as she listed all the evil doings of Russia … but then, the horrific drawings of a CIA torture victim’s experience … “we the people” are as bad or worse than the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, the Saudis because we know better and can be better than we are … I am sickened by all of it
Yes. It was eye popping. Sickening as you say. And it punctured that head wagging idea that’s been floating around for some time about how, against all odds, here was someone (trump) who makes bush look pretty good.
ugh the world just seems crazier than it used to be, or maybe I’m growing old and therefore more realistic and pessimistic; I remind myself to keep looking at our children, the younger generation offers hope
Yes. Hope resides in our kids.