Living in a Movie

On the 11th of September 2001, as I watched the television and sobbed, people around me repeatedly said,

“It is like a movie!”

August 2018: Reports of the most intense heat waves ever seen are coming in. Death Valley was at 127f three days in a row. LA reached 111f. Quebec and Finland both reported the hottest temperature ever recorded in their histories.

https://www.axios.com/global-heat-wave-stuns-scientists-as-records-fall-4cad71d2-8567-411e-a3f6-0febaa19a847.html

A city in Oman recorded the hottest nighttime low ever. It did not get below 109f. AT NIGHT. I have never seen 109f during the DAYTIME.

This is dire news. It is not interesting, it is not crazy. It is dire.

So.

Americans mostly do not understand science. Scientists keep talking but we do not understand what they mean. 2 degrees celsius means nothing, it is sound without meaning, it is gibberish to Americans.

What we do understand are movies. So! Here is Climate Change in a nutshell:

Mad Max actually happened in Ohio.

Let that sink in. Give it a few seconds.

The size of this problem is planetary. See, we keep thinking the effect will be weaker because the planet is so big. We keep thinking it will mostly just affect the coasts. We keep thinking it will happen in the future. We are wrong. It is the other way around. The planet’s size is speeding up our greenhouse effect.

Lakes are heating up, fast. Rivers are drying out. Water is sterile enough at 120f to wash dishes. The oceans are not just getting bigger, they are getting hotter. 2018 is seeing enormous wildlife die-offs. Flocks of birds are collapsing in the heat and dying. Cattle are cooking to death in the fields. 1000 and 2000 year old baobob tree groves – supremely adapted to desert heat – are suddenly dying.

If we are going to live, we have to pull together like the Avengers, like the Seven Samurai, like the Rebellion against the Empire. The time is now. Right now.