Catastrophic Normalcy

For two decades now we've been ignoring the impassioned pleas of the world's top scientists about how our use of fossil fuels was much more than just a bad idea. That was then, this is now: massive storms, flooding, forest fires, mind-blowing heat waves (2010 was the hottest year in recorded history). Such things are no longer 'projections' - they are happening right now. Welcome to the new normal:

Catastrophic Weather Events Are Becoming the New Normal -- Are You Ready for Life on Our Planet Circa 2011?

By Bill McKibben

If you were in the space shuttle looking down yesterday, you would have seen a pair of truly awesome, even fearful, sights.

Much of North America was obscured by a 2,000-mile storm dumping vast quantities of snow from Texas to Maine--between the wind and snow, forecasters described it as "probably the worst snowstorm ever to affect" Chicago, and said waves as high as 25 feet were rocking buoys on Lake Michigan.

Meanwhile, along the shore of Queensland in Australia, the vast cyclone Yasi was sweeping ashore; though the storm hit at low tide, the country's weather service warned that "the impact is likely to be more life threatening than any experienced during recent generations," especially since its torrential rains are now falling on ground already flooded from earlier storms. Here's how Queensland premier Anna Bligh addressed her people before the storm hit: "We know that the long hours ahead of you are going to be the hardest that you face. We will be thinking of you every minute of every hour between now and daylight and we hope that you can feel our thoughts, that you will take strength from the fact that we are keeping you close and in our hearts."

Welcome to our planet, circa 2011--a planet that, like some unruly adolescent, has decided to test the boundaries. For two centuries now we've been burning coal and oil and gas and thus pouring carbon into the atmosphere; for two decades now we've been ignoring the increasingly impassioned pleas of scientists that this is a Bad Idea. And now we're getting pinched.

Read More @ AlterNet

I'm left wondering what kind of communities will form within conditions where catastrophic normalcy permeates? What type of individuals will we generate and what types of practical adaptations will we be necessary? Will the ‘stress’ of such an existence increasingly require us to shift our priorities towards survival as opposed to civility and/or other such complex luxuries? Perhaps our next move is to begin cultivating explicitly post-apocalyptic sensibilities? I believe it’s time to ask these questions in earnest.