Danger leaps or creeps. We’re feeling the creeping heat of climate change in warming oceans and heated landscapes. Briefly too hot where I live, briefly unbearable in locations I don’t plan on visiting. Year after year, less arctic ice lets more heat into oceans, fueling even less ice and more ocean heat — more energy driving storms and hurricanes. Permafrost melts, adding methane to the atmosphere, trapping more heat, melting more permafrost. These cycles amplify as we throw blanket after blanket of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere with our cars, homes and industry. Amazon forests remove carbon dioxide, but as trees are cut, the Amazon will eventually emit, rather than remove, the gas. The danger seems to creep, but with cycles in place, it is spring-loaded to leap.
The destabilizing imbalance of emission and removal is only now becoming obvious to many of us. Continuing business as usual, we are the proverbial frog in a pot set to boil. Humans, such an adaptable species, have always engineered and created their way into better situations. We know the solutions, all we need is the political and personal will. Act boldly on this climate emergency.
— Kendra Zamzow
Chickaloon
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