Talking About the Weather

I know that talking about the weather is the smallest of small talk, the type of inoffensive speech that makes it safe to talk to total strangers. I hate small talk, preferring to talk about people’s passions, as I am passionate about mine. But look at the freaking heat index!

We’re under a heat advisory here in Northwest Missouri. The heat index (a measure of how heat and humidity get together to cause misery) is 108 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature without the heat index will be 98 degrees F. People die of heat stroke at these temperatures. I won’t be going out today because I take medications that make me prone to the consequences of high temperatures. (Of course, human nature being what it is, I desperately want to go to Starbucks to write.)

I think about climate change a lot when the weather gets like this. It’s not just my imagination; scientists note an increase in weather incidents like this. On average, our world is getting hotter. I think about this from the viewpoint of someone sixty years old: I remember when we didn’t worry about this. I don’t want to worry, but I am worried. How will this affect the world’s people?

As a Midwesterner (United States), I’ll be far away from the flooding and some of the extremes as they come. But how will people in poverty fare? People without air conditioning? There are ways of living, but do we still know them? Do we remember how to do them? What will we have to give up of our 21st Century values to enact them?

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I wonder how life will change. I wonder if I cannot change my life enough to make any difference in the slide into turbulent weather. Thinking this as I sit in my writing spot is a lonely moment, because it’s sobering to think about a future I can’t control. To think it all goes downhill from here.

I could be wrong. We are always on the brink of great innovation. Change is always possible. Maybe someday, riches will be measured in how we relate to others. I do not feel optimistic at this moment in 98 degrees F.

The Heat

Can I just stay inside?

The weather outside is hot. By hot, I mean 105 degree heat index, 100 degrees actual. A July sort of thing, not a June thing. I get sick from the heat easily, so my strategy has been to stay in the air conditioner and NOT. GO. OUTSIDE.

The point of no return?

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I wonder if we’re past the point of no return when it comes to climate change. If these patches of extreme heat are our “new normal”. Gardens will wither and winters will be frigid and snowy.

My psychiatrist is a bit more sanguine about climate change. He’s a libertarian and a fervent believer is progress, and he believes that scientists will find a solution, just as they did (partially) with the ozone hole. I hope he’s right — I think the wind farms that surround us may be part of the answer.

A reprieve

The weather is supposed to clear by tomorrow, greeting us with temperatures in the 60s and 70s. I will celebrate by going to the cafe and visiting an intern on Wednesday in Kansas City.

How hot is it where you live?

Let me know!

Bleak futures

I’m in Kansas City on the Plaza at Kaldi Coffee, drinking a cup of Ethiopian coffee. In coffee tasting notes, this cup has big berry with a tart lemon acidity. I’m enough of a coffee connoisseur (read: snob) to appreciate differences in tastes, and Ethiopian coffee happens to be one of my favorites.

In some of the futures I write, this coffee would no longer exist in the US. In one of the futures I’ve written, Country Club Plaza itself lies in ruins bombed in street riots, crumbling and teeming with the destitute. It’s weird to sit here with double vision, questioning the peace I sit in, the calming electronic music, the superlative coffee, the pastry counter tempting me with its wares.

But isn’t this the double-vision we all face when hearing about climate change, poverty, injustice? We know these things are in the world, yet they seem unreal when we’re sitting at leisure in our favorite places.

I try to extricate myself from the spiderweb of comfort, to do something more concrete than to write, but I don’t know what to do. The president of my country signs executive orders to mine and log the natural wildlife reserves and parks, guts the Environmental Protection Agency, and emasculates the regulations that have brought the US back from the smog-filled days of my childhood. I feel powerless.

Recycling doesn’t seem to be enough. Driving a compact car seems paltry. I need to get out of my comfort zone to do something, because I’m the one who can afford to. What can I do? I can write about the difficult futures and their seeds in the present. I can write about the evils of the present. I can write these deftly enough that they’re readable.

And I can vote, and encourage others to vote in ways that choose nature over profit. Maybe that would mean fewer coffeehouses like this; I don’t know. But I’d give up some of my comfort for that world.