The entire west is on fire. Even Alaska is on fire. We recently had a heatwave in which we had temperatures of 115-118 F (121 in a Canada town, which promptly burned to the ground, killing many), in a cool temperate zone. Streets buckled in Portland, and vinyl siding melted off of houses. A friend  in Portland fried an egg on the sidewalk there and filmed it for all to see on the internet.  Over 1.5 billion shellfish cooked in their shells off the coast of British Columbia and Washington.

After the  heatwave, all the traumatized people of the Pacific Northwest cleaned up their dead chickens and rabbits. Most fruits had burned up on the vine, but hey, at least it was cooling down to 90F. Thank God that’s over! But what if it isn’t over? What if this is the new  normal, before an even worse normal comes along? And how soon will that next new normal come? What will happen to the price of food, when so many crops are ruined in horrendous heat? When do we start fighting in earnest over water? My little town is restricting water already in July, and we have two to three months before we get any rain. Our water supply is a small creek that gets impounded in summer, and it is already almost dry. Why aren’t the people in my town stopping the building of new houses? We’re adding about 30% to our population over the next two years, yet we’re about to run out of water completely. Why is our city government not worried? Shouldn’t they be trying to find ways to get people some rainwater collection tanks? Shouldn’t they be promoting or providing composting toilets? And shouldn’t they be limiting development, instead of planning for growth?

I think we can assume  these heat waves will come more frequently. We keep setting new records each year, records for high temperatures, and records for low rainfall. But how long can trees withstand such heat waves? Places with occasional temperatures of 115F  in summer generally have very little vegetation. Portland matched the highest temperatures in Las Vegas, and Las Vegas is a desert. There’s hardly anything growing there. Las Vegas, like California and Arizona and Nevada and a part of Mexico, is dependent  upon Lake Mead for its water, and that lake is drying up. Last I heard it was about 30% full.  For at least a decade I’ve read articles, studies indicating that the lake will be completely dry by 2025 or so. And has anyone done anything about it? Has any state government tried to stop the huge influx of people moving into Arizona or Southern California? No, the economy, especially the real estate market, is too important. There’s no program for providing water catchment to the people, there’s no moratorium on development, there’s no apparent strategy for averting disaster.

And how will that disaster play out? Will the taps just dry out one day? I imagine a person getting ready for work in the morning and turning on the tap to fill his coffee pot with water, and getting nothing. Puzzled, people all over are staring at taps with no water, as the pipes groan and belch and then go silent. Or will the cleverest people sell their property soon and move to some  rainy area which will later collapse under the weight of the increased population and become a desert? When will the golf courses simply dry up? And will people soon start drinking the water from their ponds and swimming pools? Will some return from a vacation to find that someone has stolen the water from their in-ground pool? That has happened in California. How long will it take to play out? Will millions lose all their money as the price of real estate collapses, as it finally becomes apparent that the area no longer supports human life?

How many towns will burn up? Quite a few people have lost a home in a fire, only to move to a new town and lose their home there a year or two later. There were some who lost homes in Paradise, CA and moved to Talent OR, which burned up last year. Napa has burned more than once, Ojai (CA), Lytton (Canada), Paradise(CA), Talent (OR), Phoenix (OR), Santa Rosa (CA), and many others. It’s no longer possible to get insurance on a vineyard in Sonoma County. And nobody questions it. The unthinkable has become the unquestionable.

The thing with feathers….

I’ve heard that there are some academics who believe in near term human extinction (McPherson, for example), and I always thought such an idea was far-fetched, too extreme. But now I am not so sure. I’ve had a nosebleed all day from the suffocating smoke here in Northern Montana, yet the air quality here (indexed at 135) is pretty good compared to what we had for weeks in Oregon last summer (600+). I wonder if we’ve reached that point of no return. For years there’s been a focus on the rising oceans, with a timeline of 100-200 years before the coastal cities are all under water, but perhaps that’s not the biggest threat. Lying in the dark, trying to sleep, I see monstrous fires and sustained heat waves reducing enormous swathes of the planet to a charred wasteland. I see skeletons lying in the sand, all sorts of animals, and humans too. I see lush landscapes that I have loved rendered unrecognizable.

Given My despair and pessimism why do I continue to study and do permaculture? What’s the point if it’s all going to burn? I suppose that there’s still a small part of me that hopes I’m wrong. A nightjar chirps outside in the dark, begging me not to give up on him. I’m reminded of Emily Dickinson’s poem on hope:

"Hope" is the thing with feathers - 
That perches in the soul - 
And sings the tune without the words - 
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird 
That kept so many warm -

I've heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

I cannot abandon the nightjar, the deer slumbering under the may tree, the finches and chickadees resting in the pea shrubs. If I were to give up on them, how should I live my life? I cling to the feathered thing that perches in my soul.