Forget Climate Change, This Is A Climate Crisis
Record high temperatures on land & underwater, forest fires reaching uncontrollable levels, and the Panama Canal water is too low to handle high traffic. We need to take emergency action or perish.
For the entirety of my human life, I have tried to not be alarmist about climate change. I didn’t question the science, nor did I question the inevitable outcomes. However, I thought we had more time before we reached the tipping point. I thought I would be an old man before Hell on Earth came. Events this summer, though, make it clear that it’s occurring now, and we do not have the luxury of time any longer.
Here is a incomplete list of alarming developments just this summer:
More Canadian acreage has burned this year than any time in its history. The fires started earlier, have burned longer, and created more air pollution than ever before. That pollution affected the upper right quadrant of America for nearly all of June.
California was struck by only the second recorded tropical storm in its history this past weekend, causing road failures, mudslides, and flooding in the desert, especially Palm Springs.
Heat records have been shattered from Oregon to Arizona and from Texas to the Mid-Atlantic region. Not just for days, but weeks. This has not only caused the deaths of outdoor and migrant workers in multiple states, but is so bad in Arizona that their signature cactus, saguaro cacti, seen throughout the state, is dying off.
The saguaro cacti depends on desert thunderstorms to bring relief. Drought plus sustained 110° temperatures are killing them throughout Arizona. Waters off the coast of Florida have repeatedly reached triple digit temperatures, bleaching and killing coral reefs, which are vital to our ecosystem.
Waters off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada have jumped into the mid-20s Celsius, which is roughly 8-10 degrees higher than normal. The effect has been widespread deaths of salmon, which required colder water to survive.
Southeast Michigan just experienced its third “once in a century” thunderstorm in the past nine years, and second since 2020, flooding numerous highways and even Detroit Metropolitan Airport, forcing its closure for nearly all of Thursday.
As I said, this is not an exhaustive list, but it’s pretty bad when species are getting killed by these changes, especially ones who are in the environment that they were designed for. Cactus shouldn’t be dying in the desert they’re native to. Salmon should not be getting cooked by the water in their native region. The ocean should not be heating up to hot tub levels. None of this is normal, and it should be a siren call that the status quo won’t cut it any longer. The world must act as one. Those nations that benefitted from decades of fossil fuels should help rising nations use clean energy for the benefit of all mankind. Those words mattered once. They need to matter again.