Its 2 am on a spring morning, normally a cool time, but now its hot, super hot and its just a foretaste of what lies ahead. In the last week here in the city, we've had one of the six hottest days in October ever recorded. Worse still we've had a heatwave lasting two days in succession which has never happened in October for the 150 years that the weather has been recorded.
In the garden I see the lime fresh shoots of the plants drooping, even drought-resistant indigenous plants begining to die. On the clothes line, the black teeshirts get peculiar pale lines bleached into them by a sun grown savage. The dye in the clothing reacts like photographic paper exposed to too much light.
Freak weather? No ways. This is a portent of what is to come, a foretaste of what is happening elsewhere as polar icecaps begin to melt, polar bears starve; rainforests begin to dry out and brilliantly coloured frogs die from fungus infections; crops dry and wither, rivers turn to dust, thousands of people in Africa starve...Global warming is gobbling up the world we know and love.
This is apocolyptic stuff and it happening now, in my generation, fueled by the very politicians who supposedly represent the baby boomers. Huh? I am a baby boomer and this is the antithesis of everything we fought for. My generation were the peace protesters, the hippies, the counter cultural revolutionaries. We were the generation who opposed apartheid and the Vietnam war, who warned of the dangers of pollution and championed conservation, who believed in democracy, love and peace; who wanted to move away from materialism and consumption, who believed we could create a better world.
So it seems unbelievable that in 2006, we have 1950s throwbacks in power - George W Bush and John Howard, conservatives who promote consumerism and support the carbon industry, who would rather export more coal than save the world. Their motto is use it or lose it, keep growing the economy in the same way even if it means boiling the planet and destroying everything in it.
An analogy would be asbestos manufacturers having political power and blythely telling the public: 'The only way we can make a profit is to sell more asbestos to the housing industry. Those stories about asbestos causing lung cancer have not really been proved scientifically. The important thing is to keep our business booming and ensure none of our staff lose their jobs. Asbestos is an essential for construction of houses - there's nothing else that is as cheap and has the same insulating properties. The key thing is to sell more and grow our profits for shareholders.'
Of course there would be an outcry if this happened. But with the catastrophic consequences of global warming about to affect everyone on earth Howard, Bush and their ilk show no concern. These so-called leaders just want to keep industry happy and grow their countries economies.
In future these myopic men will be remembered as the destroyers of the earth, the great barbarians. And those of us who can't sleep at night because of the heat? We have to start reminding them that our existence, that of our children and grandchildren is at stake as well as that of every creature on the planet.
In the garden I see the lime fresh shoots of the plants drooping, even drought-resistant indigenous plants begining to die. On the clothes line, the black teeshirts get peculiar pale lines bleached into them by a sun grown savage. The dye in the clothing reacts like photographic paper exposed to too much light.
Freak weather? No ways. This is a portent of what is to come, a foretaste of what is happening elsewhere as polar icecaps begin to melt, polar bears starve; rainforests begin to dry out and brilliantly coloured frogs die from fungus infections; crops dry and wither, rivers turn to dust, thousands of people in Africa starve...Global warming is gobbling up the world we know and love.
This is apocolyptic stuff and it happening now, in my generation, fueled by the very politicians who supposedly represent the baby boomers. Huh? I am a baby boomer and this is the antithesis of everything we fought for. My generation were the peace protesters, the hippies, the counter cultural revolutionaries. We were the generation who opposed apartheid and the Vietnam war, who warned of the dangers of pollution and championed conservation, who believed in democracy, love and peace; who wanted to move away from materialism and consumption, who believed we could create a better world.
So it seems unbelievable that in 2006, we have 1950s throwbacks in power - George W Bush and John Howard, conservatives who promote consumerism and support the carbon industry, who would rather export more coal than save the world. Their motto is use it or lose it, keep growing the economy in the same way even if it means boiling the planet and destroying everything in it.
An analogy would be asbestos manufacturers having political power and blythely telling the public: 'The only way we can make a profit is to sell more asbestos to the housing industry. Those stories about asbestos causing lung cancer have not really been proved scientifically. The important thing is to keep our business booming and ensure none of our staff lose their jobs. Asbestos is an essential for construction of houses - there's nothing else that is as cheap and has the same insulating properties. The key thing is to sell more and grow our profits for shareholders.'
Of course there would be an outcry if this happened. But with the catastrophic consequences of global warming about to affect everyone on earth Howard, Bush and their ilk show no concern. These so-called leaders just want to keep industry happy and grow their countries economies.
In future these myopic men will be remembered as the destroyers of the earth, the great barbarians. And those of us who can't sleep at night because of the heat? We have to start reminding them that our existence, that of our children and grandchildren is at stake as well as that of every creature on the planet.
posted by Linda Vergnani at 9:02 AM
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