Fire, Water, Wind, and Insincerity
In Which I Complain About People Who Cut Trees and Do Dumb Studies
I am seriously all tuckered out. I turned in a long piece of writing yesterday, on the heels of another one last week, and thenceforth sat in a chair, gazing into the middle distance, instead of contemplating what I might want to write about for today. I was desolated not to blog on one of my favorite days—Good Shepherd Sunday (here’s an old blog post to make up for it)—and to miss podcasting yesterday, but I just couldn’t exert myself for yet more words. Forgive me!
Fortunately, I woke up this morning to a whole heap of interesting news and bad takes. I watched a short clip of J Lo exhibiting herself, I started reading that long piece about how young women should marry old men so they, the young women, won’t have to do any work, and I caught up on the news about Yale and Columbia.
Upwards in my mind, however, is that people around here, where I live, are cutting down so many trees. I’m not sure why this is happening, but every day on my long morning walk, I’m confronted with whole fleets of tree-cutting trucks, of dead branches lying strewn around, forlorn, of dead stumps and blowing sawdust. And this morning, as we drove past one nice stretch of lawn maintained by the city, it was covered, Mordor Fashion, in trucks and backhoes. No less than six glorious trees lay dead on the ground, the green grass strewn with delicate, pale new leafy growth left to wither.
“Why is this happening?” I cried.
“It’s probably global climate change,” said Matt. Which, honestly, it may be. Are people cutting the trees in their gardens for fear of big storms? That their roofs and powerlines are in danger of the wind? Or are they just bad people?
Anyway, the “risk of exposure to the adverse effects of climate change” are everywhere. As we watch various elite institutions meltdown, deliberately hacked to bits at their spiritual core by people who should be in charge of nothing and no one, here is yet one foolishness to add to the heaps of intellectual ruin—from the College Fix:
A new study out of UCLA says same-sex couples are at greater “risk of exposure to the adverse effects of climate change” than straight couples. These effects include “wildfires, floods, smoke-filled skies, and drought,” according to a report from KQED. Same-sex couples disproportionately live in coastal regions and cities, which are more vulnerable to such disasters. They’re also more likely “to live in areas with poor infrastructure, worse-built environments.” Washington DC, which rates high for “climate risks” such as heat waves, floods, and “dangerously strong winds,” has the greatest proportion of gay couples in the U.S.
Oh my word, this is peak 2024. What an unbelievably silly time to be alive. I love the sense of helplessness. These poor same-sex couples, randomly living in coastal regions and cities with bad infrastructure and the constant threat of weather. How terrible for them! We should all cease being happy and trying to make the best of our sorry, inland, wretched lives. Or rather, I suppose, be willing to give up whatever energy, infrastructure, or comfort we have left so that the weather will calm down, like some sort of sacrificial rite.
San Francisco ranks second, and also faces a high climate change risk. According to KQED report, the city’s Leather & LGBTQ Cultural District flooded 22 years ago, “swamping” the entire area. The closest supermarket, Rainbow Grocery, also got flooded. Ari Shaw, director of International Programs at UCLA’s School of Law’s Williams Institute who specializes in “international human rights, LGBTI politics, and U.S. foreign policy,” noted the study “cuts against the narrative” that LGBT individuals “have access to all the resources that they need.”
Um, does anyone in the US right now have “access to all the resources they need?” But see, those who decide to live in the richest places that have the most cultural and political cache, and yet continue to vote for corrupt, worthless politicians who enrich themselves on the backs of even the LGBTQIA+ “community” are the real victims here. The Rainbow Grocery was flooded 22 whole years ago—what a travesty.
We don’t have a Rainbow Grocery here in the banlieue. In fact, our grocery store—the one nearest my church that made life vaguely bearable for a poor neighborhood full of people of varying ethnicities and religious inclinations—was deemed not to be making enough money and so was closed down.
How tragic to discover that being gay and atheist isn’t enough to keep the flood waters at bay.
Anyway, academia is still going to study this important issue:
Shaw said his team considered same-sex couples because the U.S. Census gathers information on cohabitating same-sex households but does not broadly collect sexual orientation or gender data. “This study helps to shine a light on what is likely a much larger and more complicated picture,” he said. “Our findings probably understate the true impact that climate change is having on LGBTQ people.” The new research moves the needle in helping the nation understand who is at risk of climate disasters, UC Irvine sociology professor Michael Méndez said. He previously studied how queer communities are often left out of disaster planning. “The needle is moving slowly,” Méndez said. “These disasters are not happening in isolation. If an individual is feeling discrimination, or a lack of safety in their home and a disaster happens, they can feel even more vulnerable.” But what Méndez said the study doesn’t reveal is who the same-sex couples are in terms of [race], income and their positions in society.
I’m going to go out on a limb (that’s just a little joke) and observe that most of “us,” no matter our sexual proclivities, are not that worried about “global climate change.” This is performative risk assessment. If anyone was genuinely worried that the waters were rising up to our necks, the very last thing we would find time to do is a study that “shines a light on what is likely a much larger and more complicated picture,” that “understates the true impact that climate change is having on LGBTQ people.” If people really thought that coastal cities were about to slide into the sea, those people would behave very differently. They would start trying to rescue people and change infrastructure and get people to move and come up with a solution that was indeed workable, even if the forthcoming was 75 or a hundred years off. But that’s not what’s happening. What’s happening is that “we”—and I use the term so broadly so as to exclude myself—are busily finding more victim groups, as many as possible really, for that is the most pressing need of the day. Who Is About To Be Injured? Who has suffered something so excessively minor that no cure or solution would make any difference?
Here’s the solution that’s actually being offered:
Among several recommendations, Shaw and study co-author Lindsay Mahowald say climate disaster relief should be “administered without discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression,” and that future surveys like the U.S. Census ought to include “measures of sexual orientation and gender identity.”
In the spirit of holding two thoughts together in my mind at the same time, let me just point out that it’s possible to be anxious about, and to care for the environment—the world, if you will—and the people in it. It’s possible to want good things for people who live on the earth, to desire for them to be comfortable and happy, and most importantly, good, and at the same time not cut down every single tree because it might fall over in a storm. The same-sex couple should be called to repent and believe the gospel, and people who cut trees for no reason should be encouraged to stop it. In fact, they should be given free money to plant more. God made it all—the people and the world—for beauty and for goodness. Therefore, until he cleanses it with fire as he promised somewhere in the Bible that he would do, you will find me over here, muttering angrily about the lack of trees.
So anyway, have a nice day!
It may well be that most of us are not that worried about global climate change. But some of us are. One person I know is very worried. (I know because I am related to her by marriage). We talked recently after she came back from visiting her homies back in California. Somehow the subject slewed over to the great numbers of young people who are experiencing shocking amounts of anxiety. She brought it up, not me.
“Why do you think that is?” I asked.
“It’s climate change,” she said confidently and sorrowfully. “They are all worried that the world is coming to an end.”
I know she moves in circles more financially and educationally elevated than my own so she has an excuse for being dim in certain ways. But all I could think of were the droves of young people in my church confidently going to school, working after school, raising chickens, fighting cancer, getting married, playing frisbee, and whose thoughts about climate are confined to whether they will be able to make lots of money shoveling snow or mowing lawns after school. I could not think of anything else to say but that being told you have to reach down deep inside of yourself to figure out if you are a girl or a boy or what kind of sexual experience is likely to give your life any meaning was the more likely explanation for anxiety levels in young people today. She is very polite. Not much else was said on that subject. I can tell it’s getting harder and harder to avoid talking about Christ. That’s a good thing.
😂 Yes.