It’s halfway through July. The grass is burned, the community pool is a body-temperature vat of sunscreen and sweat, and although we’re in a drought, it’s a wet heat.
Nasty.
It’s worse over on the news pages as we deal with another summer in an election year, but I thought I’d focus on the disgusting nature of our climate. Primarily that it’s changing and we get to live through Earth having a fever rather than an ultra-premium ice age with glaciers sliding down from Canada and shoving entire cities aside.
Can you imagine the threat of a glacier coming in at like 2 feet a year? (Don’t quote me on that). For sake of comparison, let’s say we get a fast mover gaining a kilometer per year. That puts the threat on a similar timeline as global warming. 50-100 years and the thing will probably run into a city whereas in the Prime universe, it gets eaten by rising oceans. Both valid threats, but think about the differences in response. Is anyone filling sandbags or building mounds today? Nah. And why should they? Threat’s far off.
But that glacier sitting 50 km out? People would be piling into pickup trucks with their shotguns and ice axes to start fighting back. It’d start out as homesteaders, but soon the government would step in and organize the war effort. Cordon the area and set the Army Corps of Engineers loose. The big ordnance. Or, they’d turn the thing into a giant ice mine to keep cocktails cold.
Also, fire.
Burning stuff to reheat the planet would become a civic duty. Laundry machines are gone. Burn the clothes after use. Burn everything after use. Reduce, reuse, recycle? NO! Increase, Ignite, Immolate!
Then the pyro religions would rise up. Hell isn’t hot, it’s cold. Only fire can cleanse and help ascend you to the hot heavens above. All hail the mighty Prometheus. He gave us fire and even though we aren’t pagan anymore, he’s back on the cool list.
Instead, we get to sweat it out in our underwear. Gross.
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