They lie as if bracketing a continent’s agony. They are among the first tombstones for an age that is being slowly but mercilessly swept from its place atop the civilized world by fire and water.
In the North, a sprawling expanse of black ashes, where the village of Lytton, British Columbia, first had to endure a savage heat wave leading to the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada — 121 degrees Fahrenheit. Then the next day, June 30, virtually the entire village and its surrounding homes burned to the ground in a raging, 20,000-acre wildfire that, like the heatwave, was the spawn of global climate change. 1,000 people are homeless.
In the South, on the water at Surfside, Florida, a pile of crumpled concrete that was a 12-story condominium building until in the early morning hours of June 24 it simply fell down, crushing its occupants. For decades there had been reports of rising sea water regularly — at every unusually high tide — infiltrating the lowest level of the parking garage to depths of two to four feet. For decades it had been known that the building was slowly sinking into the reclaimed wetlands on which it had been built. No one knows for sure what exactly brought it down, but the role of climate change will emerge as a major contributing cause. (Exclamation point: a hurricane, one of the earliest ever in the season, is approaching Florida as this is written.) The death toll is expected to reach 150.
Someone should hold services over these tombs. Words should be said, and cut into granite. Pretty soon, there won’t be time.
As usual, The Onion has the most accurate reporting.
https://www.theonion.com/contractor-informs-biden-it-d-be-cheaper-to-just-tear-d-1847165691
Except we can’t afford to tear it down. Maybe salvaged lumber from McMansions can be used to make smaller houses.
Very difficult to salvage chipboard :)
There are tens of thousands of burned dead trees plus a similar number of dessicated dead trees from the 2017-2020 mega drought and close to a billion little burnt corpses littering the Australian landscape from the continental scale bush fires last year. Plenty of tombstones here!
I sure am glad that this climate change is going to happen some time in the future for a moment I thought I was living in it now!
As another sombre soul mentioned the other day ” If this is what it is like at +1.5C – more will be hell”
Yesterday’s evening weather report was instructive. The weatherman said that the current atmospheric haze was only partially due to high humidity; smoke from the western fires was also a contributing factor. I live in Columbus OH – well over fifteen hundred miles from the fire zone…Not good.
Living the dream (nightmare variety). Sitting here absorbing the erudite wisdom and empathy about the Western wildfires and eastern Florida condo collapse. Sitting here looking out the window at the smoke from the wildfires currently burning. I am (relatively) next to Lytton. We pass through it often traveling to Vancouver and on occasion stop for coffee.
Just before the Lytton fire the Spark Lake fire (ironic name, eh?) broke out and has been burning ever since. Most days we can’t see across the lake in the morning. This morning the 6 am sun was an orange bright ball in the sky. I guess one could call it Nature’s stop light. That too is an ironic metaphor – cars, traffic and traffic lights, CO2 emissions, nature using the same as a signal.
Yep, we just went through the consecutive temperature record breaking days and we are heading back into more high temperature days. Not turned up to 11 as before, just 9 or so – merciful master. And I am one of the fortunate ones with a new house with new A/C system and well insulated. Eyes are burning from the smoke though. Not all the time, but multiple times a day.
Yep, living the dream in BC. (Not complaining here. Point is looking at climate change square in the eye – as we have with pine beetle kill too).
On the other coast, my mother-in-law just sold her house in Miami. Although in one of the “higher” parts of the county, still got out just in time. Based on the previous articles and comments, here’s my engineer based question about the Champlain Towers condo collapse. (Strong French and Canadian connection there, notice they symmetry?). I am not a structural engineer, this is an observation.
The history of water flooding the lower parking levels…, you know a lot of that water is coming up from the ground – right? What do you think all that water is doing to foundation pilings and footings? A good guess it is washing them out. That is, removing supporting material. Just a hunch, but that’s where I would start looking.
What does that say for the whole Potemkin Village of condos all along the coast of Florida? Uh-oh… To borrow from Natalie Merchant:
O promised land
What a wicked ground
Build a dream
Watch it fall down
(San Andreas Fault)
Am living amongst some of these tombstones (watching one in action right now), and visiting others because that’s the land we live in now.
I had the good fortune to see the Maniacs in some clubs here in Buffalo when they were still forming up. ’81 or ’82 it would have been. They were doing mostly covers, if I remember correctly, and pretty raw, but there was little doubt in my mind they were going to make it.
It was Merchant’s voice. Inimitable I think is the word that best describes it.