It’s 2021.
2020, The year that will go down in infamy as the year the world went batshit crazy is over. Or is it over? 2021 started okay — just one attempt to overthrow a democracy. Then the end of Trump’s presidency brought a feeling of hope and relief to the world in general and climate activists specifically. But millions continued to die of the 21st century’s first pandemic as anti-vaxxers ran wild on social media platforms everywhere.
But 2020 was just another important step in realizing that the human race is fucked. The doomsday clock clicked just a little closer to midnight, the Covid crisis continued through January and onward and recent climate-related catastrophes are still being passed off as just another flood, heatwave, drought, storm, wildfire, famine, pandemic. Even with the incredibly encouraging executive orders Biden has written during his first 10 days in office, the climate crisis still only interests a small percentage of the planet. That lack of interest will likely kill many of the apathetic and pathetic alike, along with climate activists, their children and their pets.
The COVID-19 crisis should be a wake-up call for the pending climate catastrophe. Wait, you didn’t know that COVID-19 was connected to climate change? Well, let’s take a short detour and I’ll explain it in bullet points:
- Our way of life is causing us to use far too many of the earth’s resources.
- To continue with our decadent, animal-devouring, fossil-fueled lifestyle, we need excessive pieces of land.
- So we delve deeper into forests, marshes, rainforests and other areas, destroying eons of growth, vegetation and biological wonders.
- In addition, our fossil-fueled way of life is heating the planet, causing permafrost in the arctic regions of the planet to melt away.
- As we lay waste to these homes to millions of species, we expose ourselves to viruses that have been buried deep in these biospheres.
- These viruses become epidemics, which become pandemics, which become lockdowns and fodder for Amazon fires (both in the forest and on the site open in your other tab).
In a nutshell, that’s it. COVID-19 was not the first pandemic and it certainly won’t be the last. Other less fervent, non-pandemic viruses have plagued us over the past few decades, but if we continue on our current pace, the next deadly Zoom pandemic won’t wait 100 years to hit us, but will very likely be before England wins another World Cup (for you Canadians: before Toronto wins another Stanley Cup, and for you Americans, before the Jets win another Super Bowl — Why is it that everyone else has Cups, but Americans have Bowls? Does it have something to do with soup?).
And even before we start distributing Hazmat suits for kids, for air travel, for grocery shopping, for any human contact really, the other climate-related tragedies will track us down and ruin our day. Remember those? Droughts
Floods
Heatwaves
Storms
Wildfires
Famine
Other Vector-borne Diseases
I’m likely forgetting something, but you probably are feeling ill already. Get tested.
So now that I have your attention, there is something you can do about this, actually, many things, and not CAN do about this, but MUST do about this. But I will save the details for another rambling. Since it may be a while until I get myself to sit down and write about this shit again, just Google “What can I do to help the climate crisis?” (Hint: eat less meat!).
For now, you can take comfort in knowing that regardless of how we act during the next few decades, life on this planet will continue. It’s just a question of whether humans will be a part of it and how pleasant will it be for us to live here.