My world is burning. Hurricane force winds combined with years of drought yielded wildfires that are consuming communities. Today, my next door neighbor jumped in the pick up truck to collect his hysterical sister after fire destroyed her home. A veteran fire fighter said in his 30 years on the job, he had “never seen winds like this.” I wonder what climate change deniers would say if they were running out of their houses one step ahead of apocalyptic fires.
When I wrote “Free Mama Earth” and released the video shortly after United Nations’ 2015 Climate Change conference in Paris, optimism permeated the environmental movement. There was a feeling that humanity would stop drilling, frakking, burning fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy. With the ascension of reactionary, Orwellian politicians in the last year, it might seem that we are doomed to slow suicide via climate change, but I have faith that we shall overcome.
Just like enslaved African-Americans won freedom after confederates fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, starting the civil war, Earth will be freed from greedy, obtuse humans who poison our water, air, and soil. Some rich, powerful people believe they can ravage Earth, then escape to Mars, but that is a pipe dream. I dined with a NASA scientist who said the atmosphere on Mars is carbon dioxide (poisonous to humans); the temperature is too cold to sustain human life and the gravity is only a third of Earth’s gravity. Perhaps if we weren’t spending trillions on tax breaks to the rich and wars, we could fund NASA and build the infrastructure to sustain human life on Mars. But in the here and now on Earth, Americans in Houston, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico died and others lost everything in hurricane Harvey and Maria’s winds and flooding. Now southern Cali is burning “Hotter.” Connect the dots. Climate change is real.
One Love…
Aria