Member-only story
Horror
A personal essay on climate change
Ican’t write about climate change. The facts are too distressing and the disasters pile up exponentially. Freak waves. Freak floods. Freak winds. Freak drought. Freak hail. Freaky supercharged storms. Barefoot refugees trudge to borders and wait or worse. Farmers commit suicide.
I have an emergency kit ready in the shed.
In safe old New Zealand, a huge truck got blown over by a freak wind on the Auckland Harbour Bridge and Auckland city is on perpetual water rations and having fights with the mayor of the Waikato for greater access to the Waikato River. The dry season is longer and harsher and mini tornados are sprouting up north, sending corrugated roof iron flying. New Zealand never had tornados before.
Never.
This week Canterbury was flooded with torrential rain. It wiped out bridges and roads and left farmers cut off. Great dinosaur skeletons of debris are jammed up against river banks and access bridges. Bulldozers are hired to clear paddocks whose topsoil will take years to recover. If ever. The lady at the charity shop tells me she can’t get second-hand clothing stock because the trucks from Christchurch are delayed. Same with fruit and veg produce. The lady in the bookshop tells me the same.
