Global Warming

I’ve taken the current State of Emergency status in our town today as a chance to torture myself with completing a tax return, which of course means I am cleaning the top of the kitchen cupboards.

It’s a delay tactic until alcohol can appear at my side at a socially acceptable hour.
On the plus side, I may at last be able to put my surname to my very own species of newly discovered Chytridiomycota (Google it). I’ll call it Kitchendetritus Smithsonii and become famous in academic circles, somewhere.

Meanwhile my children have piled up their mammoth collection of dirty clothes in my office, in a half-hearted attempt to prove that they have nothing to wear and need new clothes.

They’re now zombiefying themselves with WIFI, glancing up bleary-eyed only long enough to send a nerf bullet hurtling past my head.

My 15-year-old is on her way to a party through rising flood waters 10km from here. We drove through town past NZ Army trucks and Police vehicles as I ranted about her not appreciating the severity of the risk I was taking to get her to her sleep over.

Fortunately, she realised she’d forgotten to bring something. So I was able to U-turn the people mover in the driving rain and return home to hand over responsibility to my husband and his high wheelbase ute.

This is the third severe storm in four weeks (after a summer drought) and it’s getting a bit shit.

It’s what we should expect from climate change. Rising sea levels. More frequent extreme weather events – such as droughts (especially in the east of New Zealand) and floods. A change in rainfall patterns – with increased summer rainfall in the north and east of the North Island and increased winter rainfall in many parts of the South Island.

What are the effects of climate change on human health? A warmer climate is expected to increase the risk of illnesses and death from extreme heat and poor air quality. Climate change will likely increase the frequency and strength of extreme events (such as floods, droughts, and storms) that threaten human health and safety.

I am sometimes accused of being flippant but it’s only because my own personal safety has not been compromised a great deal so far (due to a well-built, new house and the decision to hand my teenager over to the spouse when essential travel was required).  

Health, however, may be a different story. The first glass of Sauvignon Blanc has been consumed, and it’s a little past 3pm on a Thursday.

Well I guess we could just deny it, enjoy the alcohol and go for a pleasant walk to the beach now couldn’t we Donald?
 
(Written for you in Kauai Laurel!)