Turning Point
Mother Nature Called. She wants her planet back.
This is that moment when you
decide, as a species,
what’s important.
Having profit
Or having a
place to
Live.
“Some firefighters report flames 150 metres high. Read that again, slowly. Flames 150 metres high. Higher than a 40 storey building.”
Imagine a towering inferno of pure flame
terrifyingly majestic, feeling the heat,
Inescapable, inexorable, impossible,
Watch as it consumes your world
It’s fuel? Your hubris, your belief
In your dominance over nature.
It feeds on your history
The denial of your
Failed leaders
Vacationing
In Hawaii.
Relaxed.
“They don’t care if people burn. They don’t care if the planet burns. They care only about their power. They will be the lords of the ashes.”
THEY don’t care if people burn. They don’t.
They won’t care as rivers flood your town.
They won’t care as your taps run dry
And Zero Day comes to your city
They won’t care as fracking
Destroys your water table
Or salmonella comes
home for dinner
To them you
Matter less
Than
$.
It
means
if you want to
have a future, you
will have to fight for it.
You will have to take these images
These terrors, these moments of pure
Untenable tragedy, where the impossible
Becomes a way of life, a new religion
An acceptance of natural forces
Where we sacrifice our children
Our future, to the demanding
Incestuous gods of today
progress and profit
feasting on us all
Our bones
cracking
In the
pyres,
and resist.
In Case You Didn’t Know
In case you have been on vacation in Hawaii for the last three months, there has been over a hundred fires burning on the continent of Australia. Fires which have exceeded the largest and most impressive fires that have ever existed in our recorded history. About 12.35 million acres of land have burned across Australia, according to the Associated Press. 500,000,000 animals have been estimated to have been killed in this conflagration.
Here’s what you need to know. Brace yourselves.
Thaddeus Howze works as a writer and editor for two magazines, the Good Men Project, a social men’s magazine as well as for Krypton Radio, a sci-fi enthusiast media station and website. He is also a freelance journalist for Polygon.com and Panel & Frame magazine. Thaddeus is the co-founder of Futura Science Fiction Magazine and one of the founding members of the Afrosurreal Writers Workshop in Oakland.
Thaddeus is also the host of a climate change podcast called Climate Change By the Elements, where they break down the threat of climate change and the real enemy of us all, predatory capitalism which powers an industrial super-machine with only one agenda, to turn the living world into profit no matter what the environmental cost to the rest of humanity might be. We talk about why climate change is happening and how to talk about it among your peers, friends, city councils and any other place where the existential threat of climate disaster will rear its inexorable head.
Talk about it with us. Plan ahead wherever you live. Climate change will not be able to be stopped by individuals. It will require a group effort, one which spans the entirety of everything which we think makes us Human. It means, its up to us to save ourselves. Here’s a link to one of our live recordings.
