Report from the Oven…
Another summer of triple digit heat, no rain, and worries about if the water tanks will last until the fall rains. Climate change is a hoax by the Chinese to kill the American petroleum industry my neighbor says. You get lots of neighbors like that in Texas. Folks like me, who reads the science, and believes the science, find that pretty self-serving.
Of course, when your retirement is based on the stock you own in a petroleum company, you don’t want to worry about how much your next dividend is going to be. When your whole identity is based on being from Texas where oil is more common than water, of course you don’t want to admit you have been lied to.
The owners of the petroleum companies do not care about the environment. They figured by the time it got bad, they would be dead and their ungrateful children would have to deal with it. HA, jokes on you! That fancy place on Marco Island, gone with the hurricane. That cozy cottage up on that river in Vermont, washed away. The hunting lodge you rented each fall to shoot moose and elk in Canada, burned down. Your outdoor party on the patio of your high rise apartment in Manhattan, moved inside due to smoke pollution from the fires in Canada.
Welcome to the new normal of earth climate, and it will get worse. The Texas heat is causing a record burning of natural gas to generate electricity for the air conditioning we need to survive. That is going to make it worse. The flaring of natural gas in the Permian basin is not helping, nor is the legislation to discourage solar and wind generation.
Yes, you can blame China or India, or whatever other country your right-wing new sources want to blame, but their weather is just as bad. You’d think if it were a hoax, it would not affect them. Funny thing about that, it is the whole world. And you can’t escape. There is no planet for plan B.
As my mother used to say when things got tough, “There aint no Hell, you’re living in it.”
