This is a recurring theme in ye old Duck. But I can face the facts. Scientific consensus is that a barrier island might no be the place to make a lasting investment. Of course we can disagree on the duration of lasting. I'm hoping for something multi-generational here. I don't want to dictate where the progeny live or anything like that, but we are creating a family compound of sorts. And I hope that in whole or in part, it's a place the family uses indefinitely. Mine is not an investment seeking a monetary return. It's an enjoyment return. Also maybe a sense of place return. I hope that my daughter can feel like she is not simply from here, but of here. A product of the wind and waves and sun. I hope she can look at life as someone raised on a literal and figurative edge.
New research concerning Antarctic glacial melt seems to confirm our fears of sea level rise. What's more it really converts our fears into expectations, by concluding that the catastrophic damage is already done. It's only a matter of time. Somewhere between 80 to 900 years, give or take. The horizon for this forecast calamity is greater than previously offered, but the severity is far greater. The recently published study that prompted my musings today predicts a minimum of four feet of sea level rise--possibly ten.
The doom is not what I find interesting. It's the deferred nature of the doom. And our human relationship with deferred doom in general. I'm a worrier, to be sure, but if you put a long enough lead time on pretty much anything and even I can ignore it. I'm sure there is a delicate calculus in my brain that allows my risk analysis to skew in whichever direction is most convenient. I don't understand that calculus though. I can only approach it in metaphor.
It goes something like this:
I've run four days in a given week. I've eaten healthily. I've kept my beer intake to somewhere only slightly over embarrassing. I've taken my vitamins. I have done my work (that I get payed for). It is a sweltering Saturday. I have worked all day (unpaid) building something on the compound. The evening is just beginning to cool. All that is left for me is to shower, eat a sensible dinner and reverently reflect on the weeks accomplishments before nodding off to sleep, perhaps with my young daughter on my lap. Perhaps my wife is gently caressing my rapidly graying hair.
What will actually happen though is probably more like this. My father will have been smoking some piece of salted fat ensconced meat all day. I have known since the coals started that, in spite of my better judgment, I will devour more than three normal serving sizes of this meat. Nothing will wash down smoked meat like cold beer. Once you've consumed five beers and four pounds of barbecue, it will only makes sense make my rounds devouring anything else on offer at the table. Desert later, who knows. And as my foggy head hits the pillow one beer and one hour beyond any hope of waking up without a headache, I'll think . . . now that wasn't a healthy end to the week. No I will not. I will think, what a great day!, and nod off.
And therein lies the rub. Certainly buckets of barbecue and gallons of beer do not a smiling cardiologist make…or maybe they do. You get my drift. But I don't know that cardiologist. I do know a night on the porch, and though it might be killing me, it's killing me softly. I'll jog tomorrow!
And here I am in duck, building my castle on the sand. And the sand is warm! I probably can't make my fellow man behave well enough to keep that same sand from sooner or later becoming soggy.
I'm not describing anything unique though-but I do wonder. In the face of conclusive evidence that we should all wake up tomorrow, and postpone whatever it is we have to do, and concentrate on dealing with climate change, most of us will wake up tomorrow and do whatever it is we have to do and postpone dealing with climate change. Something about this irresponsible behavior is equal parts typical, shocking, and terrifying. And it is totally human.
No comments:
Post a Comment