There's frequent discussion about how to frame the climate change issue in such a way to make people see how it affects them personally. That such a need exists indicates the extent to which most of us in this country live within a human created bubble. Most of us leave our climate controlled homes, drive in our climate controlled cars to our climate controlled places of work. Most of us don't notice how one year differs from another.
I'm a tobacco and beef cattle farmer living in South Central Kentucky. On an intellectual level, I can kind of grasp that a one or two degree rise in average world temperature might not be a good thing, but it doesn't fill me with a sense of urgency. Weird anomalies in our local weather often do. This summer, our local weather included 11 consecutive days in late June with temperatures over 100 degrees. The jury is still out on how much that spell cut the corn yield. It all depended on what stage the corn was in. Some fields were cut slightly. Some fields were almost ruined.
For me, the big hurt was to pastures. Mine were in good shape prior to that super hot spell, but by the time it was over, grass and clover were cooked to the ground, almost as if being burned off by a fire.
Then it turned off wet. In a normal year, perennial grasses and clovers out compete most weeds. One clipping is usually all that is required to adequately suppress competing species (known by many as weeds). This year, after being cooked to the ground, grass and clover was unable to rebound fast enough to suppress all the annual weeds that sprouted in the heavy July rains. This was the worst summer ever for cockle burrs. They shot up taller than me in some bottoms and were pretty bad even on hill tops. That amounted to real dollars and cents out of my pocket for a second clipping.
Oh well, the extra expenses I'll get to subtract from my adjusted gross income will help insure that once again, I'll be among those whose several thousand dollar tax bill does not include any Federal Income Tax. I should be happy that this year's weather has helped me retain my status as free loader.