I Secretly Love Global Warming

 In recent weeks I have been thinking a lot about why we as a society are so reluctant to seriously fight to eliminate carbon emissions. I am an environmental voter. I look for and vote for candidates that take environmental science seriously, who appear to understand climate change, and understand that the only real solution is to dramatically cut emissions of green house gasses, and that our carbon economy. As an individual I purchased well insulated housing, use energy efficient heat pump, keep my thermostat at 67 degrees (60 at night) in the winter and wear extra layers. We bought Priuses more than ten years ago, and before that sought out the most fuel efficient cars possible. I recycle, reduce, reuse. Never replace items (including electronics) until they completely give out. As both and individual and a citizen, I try to be environmentally conscious about all my decisions.

But...you knew there was a but coming! But, I love having 60 degree weather the first week in January. I love that our winters here in eastern Kentucky are overall so much warmer and milder than they were twenty-five years ago. Yes, I absolutely know all the reasons why this is problematic. I understand how extremely mild weather in January, creates problems for plant life cycles, and how plant cycles can get out of sync with animal life cycles of hibernation, migration, mating and new generations. But I love it. My nearly 72 year old, arthritic joints love it.

I also know that we are not only getting warmer winters, we are getting hotter summers (which I don't like quite so much). Moreover, we are getting much frequent weather extremes, including the horrific flooding event that devastated eastern Kentucky in July 2022. I know all this. I know that the long term problems are going to be even worse. That the underpinnings of modern agriculture and modern society are threatened by climate change. Yet I still love these mild winters, I find myself cheering when I see that the NOAA three month climate predictions show high chance of warmer than usual weather this Jan/Feb/March. It also shows higher chance of precipitation, but as long as it's not snow...

All this suggests to me that the crusade against climate change has a significant problem, because I can hardly be the only person who intellectually grasps the problems of climate change, yet still on a personal day to day business enjoy its fruits especially in winter time. Which means that there are many of us, regardless of well we understand the problems created by climate change, might balk about making real  sacrifices in the comfort and convenience afforded by a fossil fuel economy that are really needed in order to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

The End of January - almost

 It is closing in on 1 am, my husband has been asleep for hours, but my brain won't shut down. I worry about getting up in the night, it might disturb the doggies, and if they get restless they would wake my husband, and he needs his sleep. I can always take naps in the daytime, one of the many benefits of retirement and aging. 

It is cold tonight but not so cold as to require a trickle to be run in the tub. The thermometer on the back porch read 25 degrees F, when we went to bed at ten. There is still snow on the ground from Wednesday night/Thursday morning, but not much. We have not had any long stretches of deep cold this winter so far. Only two nights in December when the temperature dipped into the teens, and exceedingly few days when the afternoon temperatures have stayed below freezing. Just Tuesday the afternoon high was 62 degrees F. 

I am very ambivalent about this. There was a time when I loved winter. When I walked a mile from graduate housing to the Patterson Office Tower in 20 degree or lower weather and found it exhilarating. I had a whole hierarchy of clothing depending upon temperature. Below 20 degrees I set aside the jeans and got out ankle length lined wool skirts with long johns underneath.  Age, rheumatoid arthritis, and asthma triggered by cold air, make walks in temperatures below 40 degrees no longer feasible. I no longer enjoy the cold weather. But I know that these milder winters are not a good sign. No one mild winter of course can be blamed on climate change, but the pattern of milder winters that we've seen in the last couple of decades most certainly shows the influence of global warming. 

Moreover, while winters have become more pleasant and less harsh, spring and summer have become hotter and more humid. The fleas and ticks have boomed in recent years with mild winters. As a family with dogs and cats this has become a major expense issue. We can no longer stop flea treatments in the winter months, with so much mild weather. The lower costs for heating do not offset the higher costs of flea treatments when one has 11 cats. 

Eastern Kentucky, on the northwestern flank of the Appalachian mountains, is well situated for a changing climate. While our summers are definitely getting warmer, we are higher in altitude, surrounded by forests, and living in hollers which provide shade. The prevailing winds bring eastern Kentucky plentiful rainfall, rainfall that has been increasing over the past couple of decades. While there are occasional periods of drought (in late spring or early fall), they are both rare and short. 

The population here is declining and aging. The coal industry has been in decline since it peaked in the 1920's, but it has become nearly non-existent in the past decade. Environmentally this is a good thing, but little has replaced those jobs, so communities and families are struggling. The biggest employers in most eastern Kentucky counties are hospitals and schools. However, I suspect in the long run, if we manage to maintain our society (and I sometimes have my doubts about that), eastern Kentucky is likely to become a very desirable place to live, not too cold, not too hot, and plenty of fresh water available. I do not know if I will live to see that day. 

A Valentine Wish

May you make peace
with all your past,
forgive yourself
let go the weight
and rise on wings
to dance in snow
and pipe your music
to the stars.

sgreerpitt

Nature's orchestra

At dawn freight train wind

hurtles rain in staccato bursts,

a cacophony assaulting the senses.

sgreerpitt

February 5, 2014

A January of Small Stones 29

Steep driveway arching away from the road,

frosted with a inch of smooth, sparkling snow,

touched only by tiny cat prints,

a perfect single line up the center. 

January 29, 2014

A January of Small Stones 27 & 28

Two meditations on the cold

#1 physical

Hat, hood, scarf,
‘til nothing shows but eyes,
and still the cold is a knife
in the lungs,
I retreat indoors,
Wheezing and coughing,
Struggling to breathe.

#2 Mental

The cold is amber, crystal clear,
allowing the tiniest details to be seen,
while immobilizing my spirit.
My eyes records a hundred small stones,
but my hands stuck in amber cannot write.

A January of Small Stones 25

Flash of movement

in stark, still landscape

dry leaf scampers

over the snow

like a brown mouse

seeking shelter.

January 25, 2014

sgreerpitt

A January of Small Stones 23

In the snowy woods

unexpected robins flock

flashing rufous breasts,

rise, wheel and settle again.

January 23, 2014

sgreerpitt

A January of Small Stones 21

chill eiderdown blanket

covers imperfections,

creates unity in white and black.

January 21, 2014

sgreerpitt

In Praise of Winter

At work today, a young woman making casual conversation asked me if I was "ready for summer." I hesitated, because it was one of those things that people say on a cold, grey day expecting only a pro-forma agreement, but then I said the truth "no, I'm not ready to let winter go yet." My response startled her, but she was working and needed to move on, so she just nodded and said bye.  

I am no longer as fond of cold weather as I was when I was younger. Winter weather exacerbates both my arthritis and my asthma. I dislike having to take all the additional medicines necessary to allow me to function when it is cold. I am also less confident of my ability to drive in sleet and snow as I once was. 

But I still love winter. I love how the forest becomes naked and the bones of the world show through - the rocks and crevasses, the bare forest floor. Every drive to work or store is a treasure hunt for the stark white fingers of sycamore trees. I love the lace of brown branches edging the mountains against the pale sky. I love the way the wind rattles the dry leaves and rubs the bare branches together. 

But most of all I love how winter makes spring possible. Until you have lived in a place (like California) where the transition from winter to spring is scarcely noticeable, where roses bloom all year round, you cannot truly appreciate how winter gives birth to spring.  So, no I am not pining for summer, nor waiting for spring, but living with joy in winter.

A January of Small Stones 10

Neither dark nor light,
neither warm nor cold,
lingering to breath
moisture laden air,
mild January twilight.

January 10, 2014
#smallstone

A January of Small Stones 08

January 8, 2014

On the porch

where feral cats

daily find their food

are unexpected

delicate traces

left by feathered guests.

sgreerpitt

A January of Small Stones 07

January 7, 2014

sunshine beckons.

toboggan snugged, shawl wrapped,

coat buttoned, bear-waddle

to the mailbox.

fragility

I'm participating in a month long a January Mindful Writing project from Writing Our Way Home (http://writingourwayhome.com). The idea is to get people to slow down and pay more attention to the world (especially the natural world) around them by writing about it. 

The project is conceived to allow those people who rush to and fro from work to shopping to home without looking up and outward to pay more attention to the world passing by. I am not one of those people.  I'm the kind of person who need to be told to look at the traffic and my instrument panel instead constantly scanning the hillsides and skies for trees, flowers, birds, etc.  I've been known to stop my car on the side of the road five or six times during my commute to take a picture of some lovely moment. 

Slowing down and paying attention to the natural world has not never really been a problem for me, however, making the effort to put those observations in writing has been. So my month long project is less one of paying attention than it is of turning my normal level of observation and attentiveness into words. 

Today my attention was captured by something different...my attention was captured by "the water" (see my earlier post this week "This is Water"). "The water" is our advanced industrial civilization, the medium through which we float taking so much for granted. 

I have spent the day noticing that the electricity has stayed on without fail all day, and that due to that electricity my house, this little box of wood and siding, has maintained a constant temperature of 64 degrees, all the time that the wind has blown, snow has fallen and swirled and outside temperatures slid from 18 degrees at seven this morning to 3 degrees twelve hours later. The heat pump has continue to cycle on and off, the compressor to work, the fan to blow. The lights have remained steady and cheerful. My computer and internet have continued to function normally.

We know from experience that this does not always happen, heavy snow, ice and cold have on multiple occasions over the years resulted in downed power lines and darkness. I know (because I do have TV and internet today) that else where in North America there are people who do not have electricity, and must struggle to find warmth and light to survive the cold. 

Such disruptions seem, anecdotally to have become more common, not just here but across the country.  I have an increasing sense of the fragility of industrial electricity based civilization. 

A January of Small Stones 05

January 5, 2014

the woods alight,

afternoon glow,

trees of gold

beckon the way. 

sgreerpitt

A January of Small Stones 03

January 3, 2014

deep cold

snow dry as dust

sweeps clean away.

To read more small stones by writers from around the world see:

http://www.writingourwayhome.com/

A January of Small Stones 02

January 2, 2014

faerie abodes

revealed

in the

naked woods.

sgreerpitt

Winter Meditations

I have always liked winter. When I was a child in California, winter was when the rains came and the hills turned green instead of brown. I liked wearing sweaters and wool more than I liked sundresses.

The thing that I have come to love best about winter is the bareness of the trees. In winter the architecture of the world is easier to perceive. I have always seen a parallel between the world in winter and human life in times of stress and difficulty.

I did not always take comfort in that revelation. When I was young I focused on frailty, on loss.

For the winds are bitterly iced
between trees that,
having lost their summer leaves,
are no longer seen as intertwined,
but only tenuously touching a few brittle twigs
here and there;
solitary in a gray world that prevents
even the insubtantial companionship
of a shadow.
December 11, 1972

As a young person I perceived (often falsely) the failure of friendships to survive stress. I mistook temporary solitariness for abandonment.

Over the years, however, I have come to cherish winter as a time of bareness and spareness. Living as I have now for many years with woods and forest all around, winter is a time when the world opens up, when secrets are revealed. Having seen more of human life,  and where once I saw bleakness and abandonment, today  I see strength, resiliance and people reaching out. It is in the hard and cold times that people draw together, offer each other support.

In winter
nature drops her disguises,
forest opens to sky,
rock cliffs are bared,
sheltering leaves fall away,
wind whistles through
tenuously touching twigs.

Walking the forest floor
one sees further, more clearly,
steps more surely
among rocks and fissures.
November 2, 2008

It is interesting to me that I used the phrase "tenuously touching" in both poems - an unconscious echoing. But there is a tenuous drawing away and a tenuous reaching outward. It is the latter I perceive today.

 

a year of small stones - 016 Snow Blossoms

Snow Blossoms


Overnight
blackberry brambles
have bloomed
in frothy frozen white
presaging May’s
softer blooms.


sgreerpitt
Monday March 28, 2011

"small stone 016 Snow Blossoms" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://sunflowerroots.blogspot.com.

a year of small stones - 014

pale, dry, ghost leaves
illuminate
winter forest understory.

sgreerpitt
Wednesday January 19, 2011

"small stone 014" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://sunflowerroots.blogspot.com.

Part of the "river of stones" project