<
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/16/california-extreme-weather-climate-crisis>
"I live in the Bay Area, famous for its mild weather, a place where climate
change feels a bit abstract – the problem of people residing in distant lands.
It’s easy to scroll through images of the increasing weather disasters –
cyclones, tornadoes, blizzards, floods, mudslides, rising seas and wildfires –
feeling horror but also a little smug at the luck of living in the land of
year-round shorts and relentless sunshine.
But our luck changed on New Year’s Eve, when a line of killer storms began to
assault California, soaking us with 24tn gallons of water, killing 19 people
and causing more than $1bn in damages.
While it’s true that Californians have been living under a historic, 20-year
drought, the water shortage has never seemed quite real: there’s always water
in the tap.
This same attitude of remove prevails regarding the record number of
drought-induced wildfires in our state – most occur in remote areas, out of
sight. When our family vacation at Lake Tahoe was cut short by a wildfire in
2021, we simply drove home to clean air – until the smoke followed us,
blackening the sky at midday and toxifying the air. Even then, our discomfort
was short-lived – we bought air purifiers and masks. There’s always a fix, a
hack, a workaround. I snapped photos of my daughter walking to school under the
eerie orange sky as a souvenir of this blip in our lives. A few days later, our
blue sky returned, as seemingly reliable as the tourists mobbing Fisherman’s
Wharf.
These past two weeks, however, have brought the planetary emergency into our
living room. The disaster images come from our neighboring towns, affecting
people and places we know."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
