Monitoring and Enduring Disaster

GOOGLE comes in handy. I typed in "How large an area is covered by the severe drought which currently afflicts northwest Arkansas? The answer was that it covers a large area, consisting of several states, including parts of Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, among several others. And so be it. Misery, as we say, loves company. We in the land of opportunity (Arkansas) are not alone in our suffering. It may eventuate that our suffering grows to include everybody in the world, even including the conservative Republicans of America sho dismiss climate change as a liberal hoax, and content themselves with their superstition that in the end all will be well, because, if nothing else, at least they, the chosen few true believers, shall soon be raptured into heaven,leaving the rest of us behind to fend for ourselves amid dwindling sources of fresh water. Once in a great while I almost wish I were one of those fundamentalist Christian types who smugly ascribes everything to God's Christian and only Christian will, and leaves it at that. The song "Rainy Night In Georgia" came to my fevered thirsty mind. Feel like its raining nowhere in the world, or all over the world, except here. Then, I notice on the news that there is flooding in Texas, not so far away from where I live Texas, and the thought that it would be nice if those rich big talkin' Texans would share just a ittle bit, we could maybe repay the favor at some future date, when they are similarly afflicted, as they, and the rest of us, doubtless will be, all too soon. Most frightening of all is the knowlegde that this new climate iseither her to stay, or here to keep changing, probably for the worse. If only the words of a certain moronic head of state, that is indeed the climate has changed, it will certainly "change back" had an iota of truth. But, alas, there is not an iota of truth to be found anywhere in or near word's spoken by the American Prevaricator-in-Chief. It is frightening to me to even contemplate what the weather and teh climate will be like not only in my neck of the woods, but globally, over the next decade, and the next several decades, without some human high tech intervention utilizing technology not yet in existence. The more than eight billion people currently alive will soon become nine billion, and scientists who study the relationship of the human species to the planetary ecosystem tell us that this nine billion is just about the maximum number of humans who can simultaneously inhabit the Earth without disastrous results. In 1997 I think it was the newspaper in my hometown celebrated one hundred years of publication by inviting anyone and everyone to submit an entry in an essay contest in which the participnts were required to submit an essay describing the world in the futuristic year two thousand and ninety six. I took the optimistic approach, an envisioned a future world in which twenty billion people lived in enormous high rise buildings all over the planet, utilized much of the Earth's land area for agriculture, and much of it for natural habitiat, in which all other species of life could exist without human interference.That was thirty years ago. Like all other future predictions made by humans, mine was undoubtedly so far off track as to be fatuous, but, considering the apparent current direction of our species as we plunge into the future, at this point, I think I might take it. I came in third place in the contest, and was awarded twenty five dollars for my trouble. Einstein placed a note in a time capsule in which he admonished future generations to be better people than, as he said "we were". He said something even more intelligent about the future: "I never think much about the future; it arrives soon enough". I prefer that response, and I think I'll take that approach.