I Did Not Expect This

It is one thing to rant and rave about the future when you expect the worst of things to happen when you are gone and safely dead. But it is quite another thing for it to happen when you are still alive, so I will say it out loud, I did not expect the future to happen so soon.

Could it be a lack of imagination? I don’t really think so, I have pontificated at length about the coming calamity of climate change and all of it’s attendant dangers, with the rise of new diseases being one of those. I have mentioned it in several blogs in the past couple of years, but I didn’t really think about how it would manifest itself. All of the other things like Ebola, Zika and minor pulses of dangerous flu-like viruses have been mild and often far away and happening to someone else. And now the Coronavirus, (Covid-19), is literally knocking at our door. I am older and have diabetes, along with a long history of lung infections, making me a prime candidate for getting gravely ill or dying from this. I have been in self-quarantine for two weeks now and I do not see an end to it for at least several months more, if that. Then, of course, there will be other outbreaks since the nature of the disease is that the symptoms do not appear for some time after people get infected so it is very easily spread around. The final conclusion of it will be when there is a good vaccine for everyone, which could be another year or more away.

This has caused me to stop and think about the next big thing that could occur. We have completely forgotten about climate change in the face of this more immediate threat. But it is still out there, moving along perhaps at a more leisurely pace to be sure, but still progressing none-the-less. What little, or big, surprises will it throw at us next. This past December, January and February were the second warmest ever for the U.S. with records going back to 1895. Less snowpack means less water for crops and less predictable times for planting and harvesting. Earlier springs are occurring with plants blooming and pollinators not ready for them. Less snow means less water for mountainous areas that are becoming more prone to forest fires. So a little nudge here and a little push there can add up to bigger things, and I am not ready for them. It was supposed to happen in 10 or 20 more years or longer. I am still here, and not ready for the future that I have been long predicting. If I have been that wrong, what about all of those other people who firmly deny that anything bad is going to happen at all? I’m sure they will be still in denial even when their older family members start dying. Viruses and climate change simply doesn’t care if we believe in them or not. You cannot wish this stuff away and it is time we learned that.

(Karma’s a bitch, and if it gets around to killing me off, then I should have had a better imagination, or more money to protect me and my family.)

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