I am sitting here, typing this, while the boys are napping. My computer is telling me it’s 81 degrees outside.

My two apps/widgets that tally my weather report 80 or 81 on this balmy day.

On the other side of this large continent, Hurricane Irene hovers over North Carolina. A rare hurricane that is slated to travel the entire eastern seaboard.

A map of Irene's progress courtesy of weatherunderground.

Washington D.C. and Colorado both had 5.x earthquakes on the same day, a few weeks ago. Texas is suffering from the hottest summer in 90 years. On the West Coast, we have a funny, unpredictable summer, although balmy compared to these other places. But in this “balmy” place, we had a cool, wet July. This means there were many crop failures. We are still an agrarian society that depends on a level of predictability with weather. For our food club, farmers had failed cherries failed. Our tomatoes are late. Our farmer’s peaches, apricots, and nectarines are late.

It makes sense to me that this is in part do to what we’ve done to affect climate. That is: climate change. Global warming. We are causing our earth to get warmer, so animals move to higher elevations faster than previous patterns, and we can’t predict crops. As an agrarian society, we rely on a certain level of predictability so we can plan for our future. When weather is unstable, our lives can be unstable and erratic.

By ignoring global warming and its predicted affects, we fail to plan for our children’s future. I hope these wild earthquakes and hurricanes will continue to wake people up. I hope this will encourage people that local is better for security and our environment. Simply, I hope.

Related articles

• Hurricane Irene update: Significant threats, even with Category 1 (csmonitor.com)
• Assessing Climate Change on a Drought Stricken State (nytimes.com)
• Global Warming has Wildlife on the Move (ft.com)
• As Climate Warms, Some Scientists See Irene as Harbinger (nytimes.com)