JUNE 10, 2021 – Lately, extreme heat has descended upon our part of the world. My wife habitually announces that “It’s so hot” to remind me so. I’d adapted to warming trends. After all, I figured, isn’t adaptation a hallmark of evolutionary success?
I used to hate the heat, but that was back when I had a hot temper and was obsessed with training for an (elusive – what was I thinking?!) sub-2:30 marathon. In more recent times, I warmed up to heat—complacently. It fired up my imagination wherein I pretended to be living the good life in Santorini or at an all-inclusive in the Yucatan or along the Seventy Five Mile (sic) beach in Queensland, Australia. Life was warm, life was good.
Eventually, however, the warm life became a large pot of water heating on the stove, and I . . . ? I turned into a . . . frog! In fact, every single soul on the planet turned into a springy amphibian . . . in the same pot, which theretofore had been our common pond. Some of us have become “jumpy” over the look of our webbed feet, while others grow agitated to the extreme by the fast-warming water. Leap though they will, they can’t clear the rim of the pot to turn down the heat. All too many frogs, meanwhile, swim round on their backs as if in the pond. The power of denial lulls them from fear and urgency.
The drought in the West, meanwhile, worsens to a critical stage. But “critical” isn’t yet “central,” given our addiction to “Right now!” news. On a Zoom conference yesterday, a California participant, normally cool-headed, said his state is bracing for a really bad fire season, given the heat and drought. If present conditions persist, by August, crisis could become catastrophe for millions of people dependent on the hydro-systems of the Colorado River. As water and power shortages are exacerbated by fire, more people will question the viability of life in the Southwest and move . . . to places like Minnesota, where deceptively sky-blue water is still in the pre-boiling stage.
The pace and impact of climate change is unprecedented in the annals of civilization. With populations concentrated in vulnerable areas, disruptive migrations of the sort we saw from Syria and Africa in 2015 will become the norm. Already there’s evidence that much of the migration from Central America to the United States is spawned by climate change. Wait for places like Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan, with populations of 116.4 million, 104 million, and 44.4 million respectively, to become embroiled in water wars. (In April, they broke off talks over GERD (Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam), which Ethiopia is constructing on the Nile.)
All frogs need to learn from our clumsy, fractious, stumbling response to the viral pandemic. Darkening the horizon are game-changing disruptions that will make us nostalgic for the days of mask mandates and bar closings.
It’s time to leap-frog out of our complacency. It’s time to convert the killer pot back into a sustainable pond—and ourselves back into a viable species.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
