{"id":46636,"date":"2019-06-13T17:47:05","date_gmt":"2019-06-13T22:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46636"},"modified":"2019-06-13T17:47:57","modified_gmt":"2019-06-13T22:47:57","slug":"fire-and-flood-politics-as-usual-amid-planetary-destruction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46636","title":{"rendered":"Fire and Flood: Politics as Usual Amid Planetary Destruction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fire and Flood: Politics as Usual Amid Planetary Destruction<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Photograph Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture \u2013 Public Domain<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More and more, we look into our screens and gizmos. And this helps us \u2014 almost as if they were made for that purpose \u2014 not to think about the weather outside. Kept busy \u201ccurating\u201d our own lives, we are regularly spared evidence of the coming catastrophe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long ago, in a memorable poem<\/a>, Robert Frost guessed that there was a human need to bring the moods of the world into conformity with our moods:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

He says he has seen the \u201chead\u201d of the tree \u201ctaken and tossed\u201d in rough weather, as his own head was \u201ctaken and swept\u201d by a dream. This resemblance between the world and himself somehow added to his interest in life:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This sense of the human place in the fabric of nature \u2014 that there may be a deep connection between inner and outer weather \u2014 is starting to seem a thing of the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can we still have inner weather when the outer weather changes so regularly and drastically? When 500 tornadoes rip through<\/a> the country from Kansas to Pennsylvania in a matter of weeks? Or when 875,000 California acres burn down<\/a> in the course of a summer? Rather than hear the message, we look into our smartphones or at our computer screens whose backgrounds may include breathtakingly lovely pictures of the planet \u2014 photos that show how beautiful a place it has been. As if we could have this Earth forever in reach, as if we could preserve it with a password or, by logging off, exchange it for another as lovely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fire and Flood: Politics as Usual Amid Planetary Destruction Photograph Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture \u2013 Public Domain More and more, we look into our screens and gizmos. And this helps us \u2014 almost as if they were made for that purpose \u2014 not to think about the weather outside. Kept busy \u201ccurating\u201d our own […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[140,1053,5493,26049,827],"class_list":["post-46636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate","tag-climate-crisis","tag-counterpunch","tag-david-bromwich","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46636"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46637,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46636\/revisions\/46637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}