climate change

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — June 24th

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Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 24th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on June 24, 2014 on my old blog.

Nothing to Write About

I don’t know what to write about today. I’ve been posting daily for a while now, and something always seems to pop into my head just in time for me to write about it.

Or a WordPress Daily Prompt comes to my rescue. But today’s prompt doesn’t do anything for me.

I’m not in the mood to rant about anything today and I don’t have any inspirational ideas for a piece of flash fiction, either.

It’s not as if there’s nothing going on the world that’s blogworthy. There’s all that crap still going on in Iraq, which, according to Dick Cheney, is all Obama’s fault.

The Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that anti-abortion protesters at abortion clinics are civil, respectful people who just wish to inform and educate women who are seeking an abortion about their alternatives. They really are sweethearts, those anti-abortion protesters.

Oh, there’s the World Cup (yawn). And baseball’s All-Star game is coming up in mid-July (double yawn).

Strange weather patterns are all around us, with severe droughts in some parts of the country and heavy rains and flooding in others. I’m sure it has nothing to do with climate change, though.

Have you heard about poor Hillary Clinton? I mean that literally. Poor Hillary. Just ask her. She says she’s dead broke.

The Pope has excommunicated all Mafia mobsters. That will teach ‘em. No doubt they’ll change their evil ways.

The IRS lost a bunch of emails due to a computer crash. I’m going to use that line the next time I’m called in for a tax audit. They should be able to relate to “I don’t have any of my tax records because my hard drive died.”

An ex-Goldman Sachs trader who told his mother he was going to get a $13 million bonus is suing his former employer because he only got a discretionary bonus of $8.25 million. Maybe he can float a loan to poor Hillary.

And then there was the American exchange student in Germany who climbed inside a giant stone sculpture of a vagina, got stuck, and had to be pulled out of the vagina by 22 firefighters.

So please accept my sincerest apology. I don’t know what to write about today. I seem to be at a loss for words. Maybe something will come to me by tomorrow.

Who Won The Week — 04/17/22

Fandango4 Comments

The idea behind Who Won the Week is to give you the opportunity to select who (or what) you think “won” this past week. Your selection can be anyone or anything — politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors, bloggers, your friends or family members, books, movies, TV shows, businesses, organizations, whatever.

This week’s Who Won the Week Winner is a man who won a $217 million lottery jackpot in France and has given away much of his win to charity.

After winning the second largest-ever amount on France’s EuroMillions, the man, a retiree living in the south of France who has remained anonymous but has been given the nickname of “Guy,” has donated most of the sum to set up a charitable foundation promoting global environmental protection. The foundation he created, called Anyama, is named after an Ivory Coast city, for the purpose of protecting the planet.

He said he never had an interest in acquiring “boats, castles, or sports cars.” The donor was influenced by his experience living in Ivory Coast, where he frequently witnessed a “ballet of trucks” hauling off heaps of lumber from forests. “Giving,” said Guy, “transforms indignation into concrete and useful action.” He added, “Above all, it is the expression of a conviction that I want to share with as many people as possible.”

So congratulations to “Guy,” who put his money where his mouth is when it comes to taking concrete action in the fight to combat climate change.

If you want to participate, write your own post designating who you think won the week and why you think they deserve your nod. Then link back to this post and tag you post with FWWTW.

What about you? Who (or what) do you think won the week?

Before It’s Too Late

Fandango31 Comments

The members of the progressive caucus were in lockstep as their chairman began to expatiate on the urgency of dealing with climate change. “We are in the middle of a historic drought,” he said. “Our once plush green fields have turned to arid deserts. We must stop procrastinating or we will continue to have out of control wildfires and other weather extremes that will further exacerbate our climate crisis, which grows more dire with each passing month of inaction.”

“The foregoing comments from my esteemed colleague on the left,” the conservative congressman interrupted, “reflect his empty, liberal rhetoric designed to provide cover for all this hysteria around so-called climate change. Throughout recorded history there have been multiple cyclical weather patterns, yet our planet has survived and humanity has thrived.”

“Sir,” the progressive caucus chairman said, “climate and weather are not the same. Weather refers to short-term atmospheric conditions, while climate refers to long-term and potentially irreversible changes to the weather averaged over an extended period of time.”

“You liberals are bound and determined to destroy our economy by spending billions of dollars to fix a problem that doesn’t exist,” the conservative congressman said. “There have always been incidents of wildfires, massive storms, floods, and earthquakes. Let us not be reactionaries and go off half-cocked.”

“Congressman, you are seventy-five years old. If you can’t do what’s necessary to save our planet for your generation, think about what you can do to save it for your grandchildren’s generation — before it’s too late.”

“That’s their problem, not mine,” the congressman said coldly. “They’ll figure something out.”

“No, congressman, it’s up to us to figure this out before we completely squander our children’s futures. We need to act now or we will have missed this, and possibly the final, opportunity to save our planet.”

Written for these daily prompts from yesterday: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (lockstep), Your Daily Word Prompt (expatiate), Ragtag Daily Prompt (arid), My Vivid Blog (procrastinating), E.M.’s Random Word Prompt (foregoing), Word of the Day Challenge (cover), and The Daily Spur (incident).

5 Things I Don’t Want to See in 2022

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Dr. Tanya asks us to list 5 things we don’t want to see in 2022.

1. I don’t want to see Donald Trump get away with having almost destroyed the American democracy.

What I do want to see is Donald Trump being arrested, tried, convicted, and incarcerated. Along with all of the others who schemed, planned, and participated (and are still participating) in the Big Lie and the attempt to overturn the election of Joe Biden in 2021.

2. I don’t want to see Republicans taking back control of Congress in the midterm elections in November.

What I do want to see is American voters recognizing that, should Republicans gain control of Congress, that could be the last nail in the coffin of our democracy.

3. I don’t want to see COVID-19 and its variants continue to plague humanity.

What I do want to see is people willing to get vaccinated and to mask up so that we might finally put this pandemic behind us.

4. I don’t want to see continued complacency around climate change.

What I do want to see are definitive actions by governments around the world to abate the devastation that continuing on the path we’re on with respect to climate change will lead to.

5. I don’t want to see a decision by the Supreme Court that would, for all intents and purposes, overturn Roe v Wade and make abortions illegal in the United States.

What I do want to see is a recognition that women have equal rights, especially when it comes to managing their own reproductive health, and that the ultimate decision a woman makes about her pregnancy is a personal and private one.

And So It Ends, And So It Begins

Fandango19 Comments

I was originally planning to write a post about what a disappointment 2021 was, but when I read the Editor’s Letter in the latest issue of The Week magazine, written by the magazine’s editor-in-chief, William Falk, I decided that he expressed far better than I ever could how disappointing of a year 2021 was. So I thought I’d share with you what he wrote.

This is a dark time in a dark year. It began horribly, with a violent assault on the Capitol intended to stop the peaceful transfer of power — a first for our nation. The climate showed us where we’re headed, as biblical droughts baked the West and sucked reservoirs dry, 115-degree heat waves paralyzed Portland and Seattle, and a polar cold snap froze Texas solid. Forests in the Western U.S. and the world exploded into flames. Monstrous tornadoes — almost never seen in December — erased communities across Kentucky and the Midwest. The pandemic we thought we’d beaten in the spring roared back twice, through Greek-lettered, mutation-disguised variants that have filled hospitals and morgues with the voluntarily unvaccinated. In this season of renewal and of hope, it takes real effort to find optimism about the future in our sore, beleaguered hearts.

We can reasonably hope the pandemic will wane this year at last, after holding humanity hostage for more than two years. But there’s no reason to expect an end to another viral epidemic — of misinformation and tribal hatred — that endangers our democracy. Americans no longer share common facts, information, or trusted sources and experts; a virtual secession has already occurred. Extremists are pushing the parties further apart, and on the Right, a radical, anti-democracy movement is gaining momentum. Three retired U.S. generals warned this week that a disputed presidential election in 2024 could cause “a total breakdown of the chain of command along partisan lines” — and actual civil war. If that sounds nuts, remember that two years ago, an insurrection and a pandemic were just as unimaginable.

In the face of so many troubles and sorrows, what do we do? For perspective, I often think back to what my parents’ generation faced, and how dark it must have felt as 1941 gave way to 1942. Then, as now, surrender was not an option. Curse the darkness. Fight. Persist. The light is coming. Eventually.

The only area on which I may differ with Mr. Falk is where he believes, “The light is coming. Eventually.” I’m not that optimistic. I sincerely hope that he is right and that I am wrong.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Image credit: LemonBox@zazzle.com.