Is Ukraine Distracting Us From Climate?
Ukraine has the lead, climate has the small print. The truth is, all our crises are connected by those who would dominate others
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A New York Time Article Displays How We Bury One Crisis Under A New One.
Very Unpopular Strong Opinions Blog by Christyl Rivers
Doom scrolling is distracting
The wee hours of this morning found me doom scrolling the New York Times.
I set muttering useless questions:
Can the world mount a useful response? Has Putin committed suicide yet?
Like everyone else, I am distracted from another issue that also affects all life on Earth.
An article, the Unseen Toll of a Warming World grabbed my attention by the throat.
Months and months ago, I added to this article. In short, it outlines how people across the country are having our mental health walloped like no other time in history.
Obviously, there are the physical effects of blizzards, hurricanes, heat waves, famine, conflict and wildfires. There are vanishing livelihoods, meaning and purpose. There are people losing hope. There are landscapes — and seascapes — losing wildlife, beauty, and even our greatest source of inspiration and healing: nature.
We’ll never hear those birds sing again
My teeny contribution was to describe two lovely robins, (I called her Robin Right, and him, Mr. Right) that nested on our Pacific Northwest Porch tiny home. It was the spring and summer of 2021, the hottest, driest, on record.
The photo is of the Right family’s three carefully tended, gorgeous blue eggs.
After the triple digit heatwave — a heat dome — scorched my home land with record setting temperatures, the birds disappeared. We were gone at the time. I will never know what happened, but of course, anyone could guess.
The record temperatures killed more than 500 people in the region, and sparked lethal fires. By fall, floods between…
