Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

Poetry does not prevent massacres. It cannot undo bombs, snipers’ bullets, mass starvation, sickness.

— Trish Salah / “about this poem” / poem-a-day

The frequency at which extreme fires occur around the world has more than doubled during the past two decades, according to an analysis of satellite data. The results provide the first solid evidence to support a nagging suspicion that many scientists and others have had as they watch a seemingly endless series of infernos scorch ecosystems and communities: wildfires have increased somehow, and climate change is almost certainly a factor.

— Jeff Tollefson / “You’re not imagining it: extreme wildfires are now more common” / Nature

… So, night after night,
we sit in the dark of the Roxy beside grandmothers
with their shanks tied up in the tourniquets
of rolled stockings and open ourselves, like earth
to rain, to the blue fire of the movie screen
where love surrenders suddenly to gangsters
and their cuties.

— Lynn Emanuel / “Blonde Bombshell”

No amount of adaptation to climate change can fix Miami’s water problems …

“Rain bombs” such as Invest 90L are products of our hotter world; warmer air has more room between its molecules for moisture. That water is coming for greater Miami and the 6 million people who live here. This glittering city was built on a drained swamp and sits atop porous limestone; as the sea keeps rising, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasts that South Florida could see almost 11 extra inches of ocean by 2040. Sunny-day flooding, when high tides gurgle up and soak low-lying ground, has increased 400 percent since 1998, with a significant increase after 2006; a major hurricane strike with a significant storm surge could displace up to 1 million people.

And with every passing year, the region’s infrastructure seems more ill-equipped to deal with these dangers, despite billions of dollars spent on adaptation.

— Mario Alejandro Ariza / “Miami is Entering a State of Unreality” / The Atlantic

After Novocain, pain
returns in small surges
you might mistake for the life
it has replaced.

— Joyce Carol Oates / “Poem for the Poet’s Bithday” / The New Yorker

It is widely accepted that humans have been heating up the planet for over a century by burning coal, oil and gas. Earth has already warmed by almost 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times, and the planet is poised to race past the hoped-for limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming.

But fewer people know that burning fossil fuels doesn’t just cause global warming — it also causes global cooling. It is one of the great ironies of climate change that air pollution, which has killed tens of millions, has also curbed some of the worst effects of a warming planet.

— Shannon Osaka / “We’ve been accidentally cooling the planet — and it’s about to stop” / The Washington Post

 will anyone    make it stop?

— Trish Salah / “without a word”

What I’m Listening To:

Hey, hey
Hot sun shines so loud
Hot sun
Cool shroud
Hot sun
Mountains melting down
Sweet doubt
Hot sun

— Wilco / “Hot Sun”