Historic
heat wave brings 100-degree heat to 40 million in western U.S.
More than 40 million Americans are in the crosshairs of extreme triple-digit heat this week, with some spots soaring over 120 degrees as records fall across the West. The heat in many areas is downright dangerous, prompting excessive heat warnings in seven states where temperatures will be hazardous to human health.
The heat also reinforces a devastating drought that continues to reshape the landscape of the West while simultaneously bolstering worries of what lurks ahead in the fall come fire season. More than half of the western U.S. is gripped by “extreme” or “exceptional” drought according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, in the two most severe categories.
The above news is from the 06/15/21Washington Post. It could very well be an imagined news item in some 1970's dystopian sci-fi movie with the “greenhouse effect” as we called it then as the grim backdrop to the story (see Soylent Green (1973) with Charlton Heston). Well' folks we're there now. It's real; we did it. We let CO2 and methane trap so much heat that every summer is a crisis ridden mess – heat waves, Cat 5 storms, droughts, forest fires, deluges, mud slides and so on. It's just as they predicted. It got too GD hot. We did not do jack shit and we are still not doing jack shit to confront this very special world historical crisis. In the all important USA one entire political party believes it's all BS or at the very least an overblown other party's 'hobby horse'. The other party for it's part (until recently anyway) has responded weakly with do-gooder “green” talk about “sustainability' and “moving away from fossil fuels” but effectively doing little considering the gravity of the situation. But with so many distractions sapping the public's attention what can one expect It's hard to keep your eye on the ball what with a grossly mismanaged pandemic, a home grown demagogue blowing away democratic norms, nuclear armed rivals vying for geopolitical power. And behind it all global capitalism creating a new plutocratic world order. This while reactionary medieval religio-cultural fanaticism attracts the young, underemployed and alienated. That leaves little bandwidth left for the biggest crisis of all time- global ecocide. One wonders when the scientific commodity and the IPCC will finally throw in the towel and say. “Hey fuck it! It's too late now!”.
