Portents of our future

I predict this will be the era of the American refugee. 

We are halfway there already. Sure, plenty of liberals are moving to Canada or Portugal, or at least thinking about it. But those aren’t the refugees I’m talking about. Practically unnoticed, hundreds of thousands of retired folk, families and young people are already living in their cars, vans and rvs. The reasons are many, but most commonly because shelter is a luxury now, when the cost of renting an apartment or owning a house is so ridiculously high. 

With Appalachia a mud hole of flood debris and California burning, there will be even more people in tent encampments and WalMart parking lots. More jobs lost, more businesses closed, all tourism dead. Two destructive “natural disasters” in one season, on different coasts, different elements (wind +water vs wind + fire) but both amped up by more dangerous weather conditions. This is what climate change will increasingly look like - one city after another wiped out and all those people homeless and adrift. 

This will be the era when we lose tangible connections to our past.  Instead of things and buildings, we will carry our culture in our hearts and memories. Our car trunks will be filled only with the essentials of the day. Our economy - designed to sell cheap stuff to fill multiple rooms in a home - will stutter and fall, and even more jobs lost, more evictions, more refugees. 

I frequently drive through a part of Morganton, NC that was mostly spared the recent flooding, except along one road that bridged a stream. The entire area is still being cleaned up 3 months later, but the most heartbreaking loss is the little storage business where every one of those 50 or so metal carrels has sodden, muddy garbage piled high in front of the doors. That garbage used to be memories, heirlooms, things held for the next generation. Kids’ toys, photo albums, extra chairs for Thanksgiving. 

It’s an object lesson, both that storage spaces won’t save our things, but also, that we will have nothing of our lives to leave to our children, if we don’t mitigate  climate change, and blunt the effects of end-stage capitalism. 

So think on how long we want to wander in the wilderness before we take this seriously. Think on what this incoming administration will do to advance Bitcoin and AI, both massive energy hogs, and to free up industry to burn, baby, burn. 

That idea should give everyone PTSD.