Sitting listening to the bathtub fill so that there’s water for the dogs and flushing, it feels like we’ve had an extreme weather event every other week since the beginning of December.
We’ve certainly had power outages, blizzards, school closures and floods and now, writing this editorial on January 9, 2024, we’re waiting for 40-60 mile an hour winds and heavy snow that will turn into rain.
The coffee is ground, the flashlights are staged, there is extra drinking water in pots and pans on the kitchen counter. Devices are charging – but only phones will work without power and the router for Wi-Fi. My co-workers and I are doing everything we can to get this week’s issue of the paper finished today and tonight before this next extreme weather event besets us.
The Valley Reporter has to be emailed electronically to our printer in Quebec by midday Wednesday to get our spot on the press, have the paper printed and returned to Vermont to get into post office boxes and mailed out of state and sent out for rural delivery. Given late breaking news, and Monday/Tuesday public hearings, that’s a challenge during a week of blue skies.
Green Mountain Power has warned people to expect to lose power, to expect high winds to bring branches and entire trees down on infrastructure. We know the drill. It’s getting old, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to get any less frequent.
Ironically, or not, The New York Times published an article on Tuesday, January 9, that started like this: “Month after month global temperatures didn’t just break records, they surpassed them by far. This year could be even warmer.”
“The numbers are in, and scientists can now confirm what month after month of extraordinary heat worldwide began signaling long ago. Last year was Earth’s warmest by far in a century and a half.
Global temperatures started blowing past records midyear and didn’t stop. First, June was the planet’s warmest June on record. Then, July was the warmest July. And so on, all the way through December,” The Times reports.
Some argue that it’s too late, that we can’t reverse the trajectory, which is disheartening and depressing.
We should at least try.
