Watching “climate retreat” enter the public lexicon has been a little like watching the sea level rise. It’s gradual and almost theoretical most of the time, and then a king tide comes along to spotlight the new normal.
Sometimes that “king tide” is in the form of an actual king tide (Key West edition), sometimes it’s in the form of a hurricane ….
Bravo Wired for proposing an epidemic, so to speak, that we can all get behind: “Solar Panels Could Be the Best Fad Ever.”
I don’t know about your neighborhood, but in mine I have a hard time finding solar installations to emulate. Still, Clive Thompson reminds us of the potential energy ….
So, a novel coronavirus came along, and just like that every single future thing on our calendars has been cancelled or “postponed.” Our cars sit idle outside; we have simply stopped moving. In the future, assuming that this is a unique event, no one will believe how quickly society went from “normal” — working, going to school, going to movies, embracing an old friend — to abnormal. Or it seems to me, how quickly the word “normal” changed to describe something completely new in the human experience ….
New writing on climate “multitasking” — “5 Strategies that Achieve Climate Mitigation and Adaption Simultaneously,” by Isabella Suarez at the World Resource Institute.
Her five suggestions:
• Protection of coastal wetlands
• Promotion of sustainable agroforestry
• Decentralized energy distribution — and production
• Securing indigenous people’s land rights
• Improving mass transit
I want to place here some articles that are emblematic of this moment — meditating on what we’re losing, visiting things we won’t be able to visit again in the same way.
Truthout, “Alaska Is Already Irreparably Changed by Climate Disruption,” December 9, 2019. Dahr Jamail visits Alaska and hikes to an old haunt on Chugach Mountains for what may be the last time.
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