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| Redwoods burn in California's Big Basin State Park near Santa Cruz. |
In
record breaking heat more than 100 wildfires are now burning in California and other western states. It is so bad that the Big Basin Redwoods northeast of Santa Cruz, the California’s oldest and most treasured State Park. The rugged
valleys nestled in steep mountains
near the Pacific Coast are usually immune from such big fires because
dense fog dampens the ancient Redwoods most mornings keeping them damp. Smaller
seasonal fires do burn there and
serve to clear underbrush far below
the crowns of the big trees. But this year those crowns are super dry kindling for wind-whipped fires.
“We
are devastated to report that Big Basin, as we have known it, loved it, and
cherished it for generations, is gone,” said the Sempervirens Fund in a statement. “Early reports are that the
wildfire has consumed much of the park’s historic facilities. We do not yet
know the fate of the park’s grandest old trees.”
 |
| A California inferno. |
Western
wildfires last year were even more intense
and widespread. And devastating fires also swept Arctic regions of North America and Asia,
broad swaths of Australia to the
very edge of Sydney, European forests, in Amazonia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
At
the same time accelerating global
climate change was melting glaciers
and sea ice, raising ocean levels,
and threatening low lying islands and coastal
regions. Disaster everywhere you looked.
Almost
a year ago I was moved by those horrific
events to write a poem which once again seems apt.
The
Fire Next Time is Now
August
27, 2019
For this they willfully forget: that by the word of
God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the
water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.
But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are
reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
—2
Peter 3: 5-7 The Bible New King James Version
Okay, so
Biblical Prophecy is not my thing.
Mumbo-jumbo,
mystic-tristick bullshit.
It gives me a
rash and a headache.
But this creeps
me out, you know?
Cripes look at the headlines!
Record Heat Wave Feeds Massive Australian Bush Fires
Wildfires Permanently
Alter Alaska’s Forest Composition
Huge Wildfires in the
Arctic and Far North Send a Planetary Warning
Siberia is Burning!
Lungs of the World
Ablaze in the Amazon
More Fires Now Burning
in Angola, Congo Than Amazon.
Maybe Peter, or
whoever wrote in his name,
was onto something after all.
I don’t know exactly who is un-godly
—me probably,
you maybe,
those guys over
there,
but maybe the
day of judgement and perdition
is on us all
after all.
We failed
somehow despite the warnings
of a thousand Prophets, Jeremiahs,
and Cassandras
who warned us over and over
to do something before it’s too
late.
Is it too late
really? We beg for answers from the Holy
seers.
Hear our plea
Al Gore
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Gagged scientists of NOAA
and NASA
Greta Thunberg and your children’s crusade.
Elders of the Alaskan Nunakauyarmiut
Tribe
Can we wake up,
you know, like Scrooge on Christmas morning
fresh and new, our eyes wide open
and throw open the shutters to buy
the world
a turkey and a second chance?
Probably not
that easy.
But you know
what’s worse?
That Bible guy said no flood this
time,
but he was wrong—
the oceans rise, the world sinks
Fire and Flood
Fire and Flood.
Fire and
Flood
—Patrick
Murfin
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| Fire and floo,Fire and f;ood. |
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