I'm not sure what is meant by "these are the grounds for violence," the chorus of this Simon and Garfunkel inspired song about the unending winter in Winnipeg. I'll be honest with you, I'm sitting here in 70 degree weather while my daughter and edrie pack hay for Sani like it's an ordinary spring day. I'm sorry winter weather friends.
But let me be real, I enjoy the warmth with grave reservation because I know the sun beaming around the trees causing Sani's winter coat to shed with the longer daylight hours is about a month or two early. Here in the Bay Area, CA, we are supposed to be in the middle of our rainy season, but instead we are experiencing very warm spring days telling our ecosystem to do what it is supposed to do in another 4-6 weeks. This early transition causes a mistiming for creatures who depend on the accurate timing of a life cycle for its food and habitat.
These are the weeks in which we have an opportunity to appease the drought. But if it doesn't rain now, the likelihood we'll have rain in the months ahead are slim. If it does rain, it won't be enough to head off this drought.
So, it's not an ordinary spring day.
Last week the Plumber family watched all 9 episodes of Years of Living Dangerously. If you haven't watched it, I'm recommending you do. The series really brings reality home:
Decades ago, climate scientists predicted that rising global temperatures would lead to more severe and intense droughts due to combinations of increasing temperatures, decreasing precipitation, more evaporation, and a reduction in snow and ice packs. The effects of a warming world are already being felt in different regions of the world, including the Mediterranean and Southwest. These droughts threaten jobs, food security, water resources, and, in some places, political stability.
The series correspondents will take you to regions profoundly affected by climate change impacts. You'll witness the devastation climate change has caused for displaced people and the violence it causes for lack of water and grain.
In Climate Wars, Thomas Friedman witnesses how climate change is not only a “threat multiplier,” but a “stressor” that can take a volatile political situation and push it over the edge.
Below is a video of Thomas Friedman talking with President Obama. I can tell you TLO and I were riveted as we watched and listened to him. What feels like an overwhelming doom for my daughter's future became a moment of learning and hope as President Obama schools us in what to do. Guess what, we're doing it. Is it enough? Of course not, but we're doing it.
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Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with kossacks who are caring and supportive of one another. So bring your stories, jokes, photos, funny pics, music, and interesting videos, as well as links—including quotations—to diaries, news stories, and books that you think this community would appreciate. Readers may notice that most who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but newcomers should not feel excluded. We welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
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