The Shape of Things to Come

 

Climate Change is No Hoax

For those of us who are in denial about how climate shapes our lives, Reuters is reporting how climate events on the other side of the world could cause food prices to skyrocket. 

This is merely a foretaste of what climate change will bring us. You may believe that global warming is a hoax. You may end up eating those words.

• Wheat worries: China's growers are facing “disaster” after heavy rains, Ukraine might lose 20% of its winter-grain yield because of poor weather, and Australia's wheat and barley output might fall by a third next year because of el Niño.
• Even less-tasty news: A slump in global cashew demand has pushed Ivory Coast's industry to the verge of collapse, and heavy rain in the west-African nation is raising fears of disease in its cocoa crop.

These events, by themselves, are not proof of climate change and global warming. The severity and increasing frequency of these events are. The orange skies and unbreathable air in the eastern part of the United States are the result of a very dry winter in Canada. The National Geographic warns the orange skies are the future. We better get used to it.

We tried to control the world around us pulling ancient matter from the ground and burning it, eradicating entire chunks of ecosystems, without bothering to think about long-term ramifications … We forgot that we can’t just take without consequences; we forgot that we’re inextricably part of a larger system.

- Elizabeth Weinberg, Unsettling Extinction Together (2022)

There's a line from a 60's tune, Shapes of Things, used as inspiration for the title of this article, "Will time make men more wise?" 

The lyrics in the second verse ask, 

Now the trees are almost green
But will they still be seen?
When time and tide have been
Fall into your passing hands
Please don't destroy these lands
Don't make them desert sands

It seems greed and self interest got in the way.