I spent the weekend with some friends in Victoria, BC. A small tourist town on the southern coast of Vancouver Island where the primary activities are wandering down quaint alleyways, shopping, and eating. Victoria is a town that begs you to look at it. Look at twinkling lights strung along the eaves of old buildings. Look at the arches of Chinatown. Look at the expensive Irish wool, at drink menus, at your fellow tourists. Look at the size of the ocean pressing against the shores, the dark ominous water that stretches across the face of this whole planet. Look at how very very small you are.
Look at how very very small you are.
On Sunday night we depart Victoria and the boat eases away from the harbor. Within minutes the lights of Victoria twinkle out of existence. Darkness pulling around itself until land and waves merge into a single, dark, nothingness. Only the motion of the boat belies our movement. Glass becomes mirror and the reward for looking out the window is to see the interior cabin reflected darkly back at me. Yet I cannot stop myself from looking out to where the sound becomes the sea. An expanse of water so massively incomprehensible that it barely feels real. We are out to sea. Literally. Metaphorically, too. I worry that we’re losing our way.
This week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report that said we are dangerously close to irrevocably damaging our planet. That we are already experiencing the effects of global heating and that wide-scale consequences of carbon emissions will be felt within the lifetime of every person reading these words. We have crossed a threshold. And yet humanity plows ahead. Ignoring the cries of young activist who are begging us to change.
On the day the report came out I left my office and wandered down to the edge of Puget Sound where I could look across the water at the Olympic Peninsula. Severe, rupturing peaks just breaking through the clouds. Their very essence is wild and I stare at them for a long time. The smell of low tide singes the inside of my nose and buses rumble heavy behind me. But it feels as though I am standing at the edge of the world. Water, slate grey and cold under identical skies sealing off the city from the wild land just visible yet so far away. I feel compelled to look at these mountains. Something in their very nature pulls at the child that lies sleeping in my chest, saying come look, come see what is beyond the edge of the world you know. But on this day there is a sense of urgency undercutting it all. Come see the mountains before it’s too late they seem say. And part of me wonders if it already is.
If you haven’t watched the video of Greta Thunberg addressing the UN then it’s the first thing you should today.
What a crock. Quit fear mongering and spreading lies from politicians. Check the science yourself and make your own conclusions. Climate science is not settled. True science is never settled and needs fierce debate. The “cure” in this case will be worse off for for the poor people in this world. The rich elite will not suffer from their foolish wasteful edicts.
John, kindly take your old man bigoted views off my blog and go bother someone else. You are not welcome here.