heat
The big story here, as everywhere, is an unrelenting heat wave that set in a week ago and doesn't appear to be letting up any time soon. My car thermometer read 100 degrees as we came home from the pool this afternoon, and while I suspect that reading was actually a few degrees hotter than the actual temperature, but still, that's hot. We're lucky, I know, just to have the heat and not the storms that knocked out power in the east. We're lucky to have air conditioning and a pool to go to in the heat of the day, plenty of fresh water to drink, and a cool basement to retreat to in the late afternoon when we're all too wiped out to do much but watch the Piglet movie for the fortieth time.
We're lucky we don't make our living off the land. This is a bad year for farmers in Wisconsin. A warm spring and late frosts devastated the maple syrup harvest and fruit crops, and the hot dry weather is taking its toll on corn and vegetables. I left the house at 5:45 this morning to water our community garden plot before the unbearable heat of the day set in. Even with daily watering, my tomato plants are clearly stressed, with curled leaves and wilting stems.
And in the midst of this, so many people are in stubborn denial over the evidence of global climate change. I genuinely worry about the future of the planet and the human species. Not to get all doomsday about it, but I fear it's too late to reverse the destruction we are bringing upon ourselves, largely because so many people who could affect change simply refuse to believe it's necessary.
We're lucky we don't make our living off the land. This is a bad year for farmers in Wisconsin. A warm spring and late frosts devastated the maple syrup harvest and fruit crops, and the hot dry weather is taking its toll on corn and vegetables. I left the house at 5:45 this morning to water our community garden plot before the unbearable heat of the day set in. Even with daily watering, my tomato plants are clearly stressed, with curled leaves and wilting stems.
And in the midst of this, so many people are in stubborn denial over the evidence of global climate change. I genuinely worry about the future of the planet and the human species. Not to get all doomsday about it, but I fear it's too late to reverse the destruction we are bringing upon ourselves, largely because so many people who could affect change simply refuse to believe it's necessary.
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