#MYLDN (1146)

Doom ahead..please do not read if you want your Friday sunny side up…

All the photos this week were taken during the heatwave. I chose not to write about climate change during the endless sunshine as it seemed such a downer to mention whilst we were having such a glorious summer and I enjoyed it just like everyone else. After reading the Great Disruption by Paul Gilding (which laid out exactly how the environment was going to collapse) I was initially very depressed but ultimately came to the conclusion that there is no point wasting a perfectly good present for a perfectly hideous future. And yet, the days of being able to enjoy unusually warm weather without knowing that it actually signfies something very very bad as oppose to something good are over. A hot sunny day is no longer something positive.

At least global warming is at least now being mentioned in news items about the weather. Its omission has been eerily absent until this year when it just could no longer be ignored. Each subsequent month and year becomes the hottest on record and yet it has taken decades of ignoring the cries of climate scientists for the mainstream media to confirm the reasons for these alarming trends in extreme weather. We have had a massive increase in fires, floods, hurricanes and heatwaves but it is only very recently has it finally become  acknowledged that it is a result of man made activity and an increase in co2 in the atmosphere. Well not if you’re Trump, obvs, but who really gives a fuck what he thinks..

The weirdest thing for me is that the news went from not mentioning it at all to going straight to discussing how we will have to cope with a much hotter planet with volatile conditions. What happened to the solution stage? We seem to have skipped it. The planet seems to have gone from denial to defeatism in one fell swoop. Why are the leaders of this planet not putting everything aside to deal with this when it is has been accepted its happening? Why are we wasting time with bullshit like Brexit and all the other bollocks people are banging on about when there is something looming that threatens to destablize everything on Earth? Why are countries not even attempting to reach the modest targets from the Paris Climate Summit which are not even close to being enough in the first place? George Monbiot wrote in his book ‘Heat’ in his book 2006 that we needed to reduce emissions by 90% to have a hope in hell and he was calling for immediate action and that was over a decade ago. Why can’t we get our heads around the fact that this is not something that possibly might happen but something that is very real and happening right now?

The problem with human brains is  we cannot look ahead and we are hardwired to ignore really bad news. We cannot get our heads around it and it doesn’t matter how much information we are given we choose to block it out because we cannot compute it. As does everyone around us including all those who have the power and the ability to do something about it.

I often wonder what future generations will think of us as they deal with the shitstorm we allowed to happen? They will cry: what the fuck were you doing? why didn’t you do anything? And so to future generations I would like to say…

Umm, well, firstly, sorry. I know conditions might no longer be very pleasant but would like you to know that we did try to stop it. We protested a bit but no-one really listened, we recycled our waste but not enough so it would really make a difference..umm, we would have done more but they invented the internet and smartphones and we all got kind of busy with that, we did sign some petitions, and stopped using plastic straws, sometimes, and plastic bags, but our governments didn’t really do anything because it was a topic no-one wanted to hear about and the fossil fuel companies got in the way of progress and we couldn’t do anything to stop them and so we, umm, kinda gave up a bit cos nothing was happening and so just to say soz really, we, umm, did everything we could, sort of. I mean, not really but we were really really unhappy about it, that’s for sure but then Netflix came along, and there were just so much good telly to watch, and we just couldn’t face it, and so we got wasted a lot, and that helped, but not really and then Trump came along and we all got distracted with that circus..and well, a lot of people were saying it wasn’t really happening so umm, we thought maybe it wasn’t but turns out it was so hopefully its not too too bad for you and hopefully, eventually, evolution will step in and make the species on Earth more resilient to the new climate, and well, just, good luck, I guess…and yeah, sorry again…

That should do it right?