Extremes

Amber Waves Of Greed

It was 100 degrees today across the northern Montana – US Canadian Border region. A couple I spoke with taking refuge in a bar in Culbertson Montana said they had lived there 11 years and never seen anything like these temperatures (the mid 50″s bartender, a lifetime local, nodded in agreement).

The forecast for heading east into northern North Dakota tomorrow – where I’m heading – is for more of the same, but even higher temperatures of 101 degrees. Extreme.

Sorry, I’ve got no pretty landscape photo of all those “amber waves of grain”.

As I drove across the Montana prairie today, what I saw was “amber waves of greed” and insanity, as coal trains and 2 mile long 8 Diesel engine powered fracked gas trains with hundreds of cars rumbled non-stop.

The trains and their ear splitting horns formed a sharp contrast, as they roared by homeless men sleeping on the ground in Wolf Point on the Fort Peck Reservation, compared to the well dressed rich white folks embarking at the Whitefish, Montana “depot” – perhaps headed for a local day visit to West Glacier and Glacier National Park.

The Montana rivers – once you leave the western mountain region – are bathtub warm eutrophic sewers that provide zero relief for my suffering old dog.

I would not even consider a swim in that toxic algae soup.

During the prior major “heat dome” event, we were holed up at over 4,000 feet in the Cascade mountains, just west of Mazama, Washington in the Okanogan-Wenachee National Forest, see:

We suffered a high of 117 degrees, and 6 consecutive days over 100 (with nighttime lows of 75-80).

With No AC, living outside, and in a bus with a lot of windows that serve as magnifying glasses.

Luckily, we found a site next to an ice cold glacial and groundwater fed stream, where we both plunged every 15 minutes.

Or else we might have died (as hundreds of others did across the Pacific Northwest).

So, our tolerance of all the failures to act, the excuses, and the failures to tell the truth about what’s really going on is long gone.

Because I limit my comments to stuff I know, I mean YOU NJ environmental groups and NJ media, especially NJ Spotlight who should know better.

You can all fuck off.

And so can your Foundation funders, corporate donors, wealthy members, political hacks, and media friends.

I’ve lived a long, good life and Death is a part of life – but the end of human civilization is not part of the bargain we all struck in being born.

[End Note: Ironically, as I was writing this and the coal and fracked gas trains rumbled by, my solar powered inverter over-heated and crashed.

Double irony: as I tried to figure out how to respond to my local power outage, a pathetically tiny Amtrak diesel powered train just went by – all of 7 passenger cars and a mail car. That’s telling, in light of the thousands of coal, gas, and Chinese consumer product import cars that have rolled by in just the last few hours.]