Basic Training for the Climate Apocalypse

.Let me set the scene as it is today, August 22, 2020. Northern California is an out-of-control inferno. At one point yesterday, it was reported that the area had more than 300 active fires, the largest of which were near Vacaville, outside of Sacramento and Santa Cruz, which is due west of San Jose. Smoke from these fires have made outside activities dangerous with particulate readings ranging from 240-385 PPM. Here in Santa Clara County, we're still under stay at home orders due to COVID, with no end in sight. Every time a county or city tries to open up, the virus explodes, forcing officials to backtrack and lock things down again. We're not testing and tracing or playing whack a mole, which is what it takes to kill a pandemic. We are a collective Sisyphus, led by a venal psychopath who believes COVID will "go away like a miracle." He believes that injecting people with bleach is an idea who's time has come and that there is a secret cabal of child molesters and cannibals hellbent on destroying our country.

This lunacy and ignorance hides a very real, ultimately inevitable reality. Our future looks more like this than what it did pre-COVID. The reason NorCal is ablaze is not arson. It isn't due to the malfeasance of PG&E like the awful Camp Fire a few years ago. It was due to 12,000 dry lightning strikes--a weather phenomenon that people here who have lived in this area for 50- 60 years have never seen before. An event like this is no surprise to many of us who have been calling climate change the single most important issue of our time. It's so big that no one can see it and act on it. So we fritter our precious  time in fits of social media-fueled conspiracy theories and delusion. In thinking that the stock market is reality, that explosive economic growth is a physical law of nature, even though we know damned well that economic growth as we currently define it is a pathogen hellbent on destroying our existence. And the virus marches on. Soulless, ruthless and indiscriminate. And climate catastrophes like fires, mega-storms and droughts are just part of normal.