I make coffee this morning for Nancy, visiting from Austria. She was best friends with my wife in middle school. Later, as a foreign exchange student, Nancy married an Austrian and has lived there ever since.
When I hand her the John Muir mug, she’s just gotten off the phone with her husband. Constant rains have raised Tulln’s rivers and broken the dam trying to hold back the reservoir. Their basement is filling with water.
From late summer into fall, Kane County suffered a drought, with hot, cloudless skies, wilted flower beds, paled lawns and baked streets. Moreover, July 2024, was the earth’s hottest month, “extending the streak of record-high monthly global temperatures to 14 successive months,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Then Hurricane Helene swept over the Gulf, smashed into Florida’s panhandle, and destroyed everything in its path better than General Sherman by using water, not fire. Friends of ours in Englewood slept with a foot of water (and rising) in their one-story house. Another friend’s condo building had four feet of sand dumped in their parking area.
Hurricane Milton followed, launching tornadoes ahead of it like artillery shells to make traversing the state easier.
Last year, I went to a reception held at a South Elgin restaurant packed with diners. Suddenly, everyone’s phones buzzed; a tornado was sighted heading toward us.
I went in search of stairs down to a basement, but all I found were people continuing to engage with food and conversation. I called home. My wife, following the storm on TV, said, yes, there’s a tornado aimed your way.
I returned to my group and continued to chitchat. The tornado, I later learned, landed less than a mile away.
See? I, too, succumbed to peer pressure to ignore the very real danger resulting in large part from human-activated climate change; I ignored the warnings and hoped for the best—survival.
Oh, sure, my wife and I are energy efficient in a few ways: we installed new insulation (to cut down energy use), we drive hybrids and we vote for politicians who believe 97% of astrophysicists whose research confirms what 90% of Americans believe, that human activity (mainly the burning of fossil fuels), has led to worldwide atmospheric, geographical and political upheaval.
The Columbia Climate School explains global warming: “carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases act like a blanket or a cap, trapping some of the heat that Earth might have otherwise radiated out into space.”
Too many fossil fuel conglomerates, U.S. politicians and major world leaders who could influence the limiting of carbon dioxide won’t act responsibly because they risk losing financial empires or an avid fan base.
They’re like Titanic’s first-class passengers who sip champagne in defiance of an ever-increasing tilting ship. The least we can do is to start bailing until we can get in lifeboats to Mars.
In what ways? Third Act, an organization whose mission is to educate and move people to curb climate change, suggests contacting members of Congress to support “the Fossil Free Finance Act (S. 1138) that will require big banks to stop financing greenhouse gas emissions…. Last year alone, the banks poured $673 billion into fossil fuel companies.”
National Public Radio advises driving an electric vehicle and simply driving less.
Finally, Polar Bear International posits, “By casting our votes for leaders who will prioritize action on the climate crisis, we’ll ensure a better future for polar bears and all of us.”
Think Polar and go to the polls.
• Rick Holinger taught English and creative writing on the college and secondary school levels. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, his writing appears in Hobart, Chautauqua, Boulevard, Witness and elsewhere. His book of poetry, “North of Crivitz,” and collection of essays, “Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences,” are available at local bookstores, Amazon or richardholinger.net. Contact him at editorial@kcchronicle.com.