Hand Splints, Heat Waves, and Climate Change

               My right hand is restricted by a plastic splint and it has been hot for several days. I am having flashbacks to 1988, when, using a hand scythe to mow down some big weeds in the side yard of my rental, I sliced open my right index finger. I knew right away it was bad. I grabbed my finger and hitched a ride to the emergency room with the guy living downstairs. A few hours later, I had stitches and a splint that held my finger immobile and extended for the next three weeks.  It was difficult to deal with my hair, but I quickly developed techniques for moving the mixing bowls at the bakery around and for pounding butter with the rolling pin.

                !988 was a really hot summer. Starting about the same time as my injury, the temperature in Portsmouth N.H. was over 90 degrees and humid  every day for six weeks (and Portsmouth is full of ocean breezes…).  Mark remembers it being hot in Tennessee. It was so hot and dry in the wheat growing west that the bakery had to raise prices that autumn when the cost of grain skyrocketed. It was hot. 1988 was also about the time we began to hear about Climate Change and its coming impacts on the world. It was scary stuff. “Is this what it’s going to be like with global warming?” we all asked. It was a general question, discussed on the news and over the counter. It was also non-partisan.  Almost everyone, democrat or republican, was aware of the science and part of the conversation.  And there was some movement to make changes to mitigate the worst of the damage. And then…

                It is thirty years later. Another accident. Another splint of plastic that causes my arm and fingers to sweat and swell in the heat.  And we are still talking about Climate Change. “Is this what every summer is going to be like? Hot, with wildfires all of August?” we ask. Unfortunately, the changes we need to make to mitigate the absolute worst effects of Climate Change are much greater than they were in 1988. If, in 1988, we followed Jimmy Carter’s lead, turned down the heat and put a sweater on, installed solar panels, insulated houses, invested in public transit, etc. we would be in a much better position right now. We could go gracefully into a new era focused on renewal energy rather than fossil fuels. Now, we have much more difficult decisions to make. Nuclear energy? What neighborhoods/cities/regions do we rebuild after big storms? Which do we let go? How do we support the huge rural population that lives throughout the country, the people who cannot walk to any services they need every day? What do we do about forest fires and the people who live in the woods? Not to mention the rest of the living beings on this earth. These are huge, complex, systemic questions. And time is running out. We do not have another thirty years.