I woke up this morning, had a coffee, freshened up, and went behind my computer starting another day working on our website. I opened the window and looked at a bleak orange sun and a white sky. It’s very warm, and spring hasn’t even started. We’re still in winter.
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Smoke from the Amazon forest, the third day now, clouding the sky and sun. The news said: stay inside if you can, close your windows, and wear a mask if you go outside (reminds me of COVID-19, by the way). Status: very unhealthy.
I live in the mountains, 900 meters altitude, with pure air. Well, mostly, but not today, obviously. Mind that the Amazon is about 3,000 km away from here, but a band of smoke is traveling across Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, reaching the South of Brazil and even Uruguay and Argentina. Yes, a wide band of smoke traveling 5,000 km and affecting life. Affecting health.
Mankind. What the f*ck have you done? Deforestation of the Amazon, burning it down, burning fields for the next plantation of crops and clearing fields for pasture, combined with drought, all at once. And the government does … nothing! But it’s not only here. It’s all over the world. Nobody is exempt any longer. It seems nobody really cares or wants to really do something about it. Talk, talk, only talk.
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From Europe to Canada, from the USA to India, China, Thailand, Africa, South America, and Australia. Either burnings because of droughts and climate change, or clearing fields for new crops, or just “simply” one-in-a-so-called-lifetime devastating heat waves year after year breaking records, clearing forests for new human habitats, or burning fossil fuels for the holy economy. It’s an absolute disaster.
I’m working here, now, today, trying to make sense of it and at the same time trying to make a living. I’m reflecting on the future, and thinking — what’s the point of it all? And I know, I feel, it’s just gonna get worse. Not only droughts, fire, and smoke, but also torrential rains and floods, tsunamis, storms and hurricanes, earthquakes … it will not stop. Not in my lifetime, and probably not for a long time to come.
What to do? What can I do? I think I need to accept that it’s out of my hands and out of anybody’s hands. It seems that our Earth has reached a turning point. Even if we would want to (and the big corps and governments clearly don’t), I think we wouldn’t be able to stop the Titanic hitting the iceberg.
Let’s pray and say thanks. Let’s be grateful we can still see and experience a more or less “normal” world. And let’s brace ourselves and embrace each other for what’s coming.
