As I write this letter, the death toll from the Guadalupe River floods in Texas this month has reached 134. Dozens more, young and old, are missing and presumed dead. At the same time, NBC News informed us on July 10 that four “1,000-year” floods had just occurred across the U.S. in less than a week. Today the air quality level in Burlington for small particulate matter is “5.5 times the World Health Organization annual guideline value.” We are all breathing air that carries contaminants from the 200-plus fires that have burned for weeks in Canadian provinces north and west of us, air worse than any I have breathed since moving to Vermont in 1973. Several recent articles declare that we can expect those fires to continue burning well into the fall. Is this worrying you? It should be! Because unless a very concerted effort is made very soon, events like these are on course to get much, much worse, month by month, year by year.

Our planet is very sick. We the people are the agents of the disease, but we are also the doctors. We have the means to cure the patient, but alas we are not doing so, because it will cost us. In the short term, life will be harder: we may have to restrict our vacation travel, have less spending money, live in cooler homes in winter, etc. And of course, while there are measures we the people can take, we certainly cannot fix this alone. We have to persuade the powers that be to act, the ones that determine if our energy comes from coal plants or solar arrays, that set and enforce vehicle emission standards, that ensure there are sufficient charging stations to support more electric vehicles, and on and on.

Unfortunately, we have ample evidence now, decades into this slow-moving apocalypse, that the powers that be are not going to act sufficiently without some form of powerful motivation. What could that motivation look like? How about assuring them that unless they act, they will soon be out of office, out of power. How about letting them know that global warming is by far the most serious development of our time and we need to change course immediately to begin the healing of the planet? How about a nation/worldwide shutdown of Business-As-Usual by us the people — a worldwide strike — until they listen?!

But we are reluctant to even entertain such a scenario — why, it’s not so bad we say; heck, I’m enjoying these milder winters here in Vermont; much of the time the seasons feel as they always have. True enough — and so far, those whose homes, communities, and way of life have been obliterated, whose loved ones have been lost in fires, floods, heat eruptions, are a small, and often distant minority. Here in Vermont, for instance, we’re not afraid of killer tornadoes (oh, but wait, I drive daily past the site near Middlebury where a tornado destroyed a house not long ago); wildfires are far away (but their smoke affects us every day); hurricanes are all down south (oh, except where walls of rock line our rivers and streams from the effects of Irene in 2011).

The point is, while it is still possible (but harder all the time) to look the other way, it takes very little to imagine the consequences of inaction 5, 10, 20 years down the line. And if we don’t act now those consequences will be devastating and will be killing our children, our grandchildren. People please – wake up and speak up! If you agree with any of this, make your voices heard — write letters to your local news outlets, let political candidates know how you feel, stage hunger strikes, walkouts — anything except Business As Usual! Those of you who remember the days of World War II perhaps recall how the nation was put on a wartime footing. Sacrifices were made, gas was rationed, people left their ordinary lives to work in munitions factories, the entire nation came together to help defeat an extraordinary menace. I contend that the menace we are facing now is even greater, the consequences of insufficient action even more dire.

David Gusakov

Bristol