“Back to normal.” What a seductive phrase. It feels like there has been a collective yearning for a return to “normal” since Donald J. Trump won the Electoral College back in 2016.
Those of us on the left yearned for a return to “normal” from Trump’s erratic, slipshod, grifting presidency. The kinetic frenzy of those four long years was exhausting and debilitating and would have been a horrendous penumbra on the very concept of “normal” all on its own – but to top it off, along came COVID.
Since COVID hit we’ve mostly ALL been longing even more fervently for a return to normal. We’ve been craving normal since those first terrifying months of huddling inside (those of us who could, that is) and scrubbing our mail and groceries with bleach. Back then, normal seemed almost impossibly out of reach. Now? It still isn’t coming soon enough, as we wake every morning hoping another COVID virus variant hasn’t popped up overnight like Krampus.
When grown-up, experienced, actual politician Joe Biden won the presidency, the non-MAGA majority hoped that finally, with his “been there, done that” hand on the tiller, we’d get back to normal. Instead, our divided politics have grown increasingly rancid, bitter, and violent. The National Guard has been deployed to Kenosha, WI in case of street violence at the conclusion of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. GOP representatives in Congress who voted for the Biden infrastructure bill are getting death threats.
It’s not just politics that makes us dream of getting back to normal.
After every wildfire these past few summers – after every massive hurricane and punishing heat wave – we’ve also yearned for a return to climate normal. We wish for a summer without wildfires. We hope for an unremarkable hurricane season. We long for a day or a week to go by when we do not learn about yet another terrifying effect of climate change, like atmospheric rivers and bomb cyclones.
Here’s NASA.
The effects of human-caused global warming are happening now, are irreversible on the timescale of people alive today, and will worsen in the decades to come.
Global climate change has already had observable effects on the environment. Glaciers have shrunk, ice on rivers and lakes is breaking up earlier, plant and animal ranges have shifted and trees are flowering sooner.
Effects that scientists had predicted in the past would result from global climate change are now occurring: loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise and longer, more intense heat waves.
People – climate migrants – are on the move.
Record numbers of people are migrating, primarily in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. According to a recent study, 15 percent of the population of those three countries – over five million people – are making concrete plans to migrate north.
In Madagascar, climate change-induced famine is on the way.
More than one million people in southern Madagascar are struggling to get enough to eat, due to what could become the first famine caused by climate change, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).
COP26 wrapped up last week. As reported on in many excellent diaries in the Climate Brief group, the general consensus is that it was a failure, with very few “upsides” to report.
George Monbiot, the Guardian columnist and expert on the intersection of politics and climate change, pronounced the COP26 final document a “limp rag” and said the gathering itself was an “utter betrayal.”
So what do we do now? When the existential monster hurtling toward us already has one huge, menacing foot in the door, and when governments are short-sighted, recalcitrant, and shackled to the interests of fossil fuel behemoths and a tiny oligarchic elite who will stop at nothing to protect their profits – what do we do?
We take matters into our own hands, I’m afraid.
Extinction Rebellion is frequently reviled for snarling traffic. The group is often seen as “over-the-top” and “performative” and “annoying” – even by progressives, many of whom would (perhaps understandably) rather engage in civilized discourse and use the legislative process to move forward with climate action.
To put that wish for polite, incremental change into perspective, here’s the Coquihalla highway completely snapped in two (all credit to Pakalolo, who featured this in his blockbuster diary earlier today).
That’s probably gonna snarl traffic pretty badly, don’t we think? It seems to me to be – and I am just spit balling here – a tad worse than a minor traffic inconvenience on the downtown streets because a ragtag group of activists are marching to City Hall.
It’s not going back to normal. Climate change is accelerating.
We cannot lose hope in these final moments of being able to do something to slow the changing climate. We cannot give up on trying to prevent the worst from happening.
We might get our politics back on track, if we stay the course, fight hard, smash disinformation, and get out the vote.
But our planet is not “going back to normal.” It’s changed. Our best hope now is to open our eyes, gird our loins and fight with all we’ve got.
We have the power.
- Sit in.
- Boycott.
- Occupy.
- Follow the example of the suffragettes, the Indian salt marchers, the civil rights movement and the Polish and East German democracy movements and get arrested.
Obviously, everyone can’t do this. Most of us have a job — responsibilities — mortgages to pay. But some of us must. Enough of us must! It’s our last hope.
#ClimateRevolution
#HairOnFirePeople
As always, thanks so much for reading and taking the time to comment.
-Kïra Thomsen-Cheek
@KiraOnClimate
kirathomsencheek@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/HairOnFirePeople/