Weaponized
It is raining hard, a deluge for the past 20 minutes. At 6AM this morning upon waking there were signs that the downpour, with thunder and lightening of the early morning hours had passed. The sky was much lighter, and nothing was falling, the birds were singing. Standing in my driveway I encountered a neighbor who reported that Gages Lake rose a foot last night.
I hoped the rain was finished. But no, as I write waves of rain furiously pound the parking lot asphalt outside of my seat here at Starbucks.
Earlier my instinct told me to check the lower level in our home which is a partially finished basement. Over the past years occasionally water will enter the unfinished portion if a outside gutter is obstructed. As I examined the wall in our downstairs TV room, I felt wet carpet under my socks. The pressure of water runoff, likely underground, flowing downhill toward the lake had penetrated the foundation. I cannot conceive of a “solution” under these conditions. Water will obey the laws of physics, Nature will take it’s course. With good fortune, I’ll be able to dry out the carpet if the rain ceases in time. If not……
This is a local weather event. Likely the first of more heat driven effects of a warming earth. We cannot continue to foul our biosphere with our waste, the excess of our unmindful, preferred, way of life. Nature is being weaponized. The waste heat exponentially increasing due to the globalization of a affluent Western way of life, –is being captured by the oceans, and the atmosphere. Yet, we plunge blindly on.
Nature is turning. The cost of remedying the damage of these weather events will quickly deplete the reserves of wealth on which we have come to rely here in the West.
And so it goes.
