Cold Reality

Living in a very red state - a place where even the mention of climate change will get you seriously strange looks - I'm really getting a kick out of the current propane shortage.

Just in case you hadn't heard, there is actually a very serious shortage of propane directly due to the fact that farmers - who use the liquid fuel to dry wet crops - used more than FIVE TIMES the forecast amount due to a VERY wet harvest season.

Fast forward a few months to the arrival of the polar vortex - inarguably due to a destabilization of the Arctic air currents due to global temperature changes - and suddenly the price of the remaining propane is two and three times the regular price.

Which makes life down on the propane-based farm kinda rough.

As I am currently employed in retail selling things like electric heaters, wood stoves and pellet stoves, I am witnessing a palpable panic when customers come storming in to find an alternative - ANY alternative - to their dwindling and incredibly expensive propane.

And the panic only intensifies when they are greeted by fewer and fewer alternative sources of heat as the shelves are stripped bare.

In every encounter, I SO want to make a comment about climate change but expect it would end ugly. But maybe, just maybe, this episode will get some of these folks thinking climate change a little more seriously.