The Frog Is Boiled...And Drowned

 As I write this in September of 2021, vast sections of the United States are suffering from climate change-induced disaster. The West Coast is on fire. The East Coast is under water. The South has been battered by storm and wind. And heaven only knows what’s coming in the near future.

In fact, according to a recent Washington Post story, “nearly” one in three Americans directly experienced some sort of weather-related disaster this summer.(1) And, continues the same article, in addition to that, over 60% of us live in areas that have recently suffered extended, and dangerous heat-waves. (That includes your humble narrator, by the way. I live in Central Texas, and the heat has been brutal, beyond even Texans’ normal tolerance for warm weather.)

Meanwhile, cities from New Orleans to New York have been on the receiving end of hurricanes and tropical storms. As I write this, much of Louisiana remains without power, and there are heart-breaking reports of men and women who drowned in New York’s basement apartments when buildings were suddenly flooded by wholly unexpected torrents.(2)

And all of this is chiefly the product of climate change. A planet growing ever hotter is rewarding our indifference to its fevers with storms of ever greater intensity, and droughts…and wildfires…of ever greater deadliness.

Yet, surprisingly large numbers of people…particularly, but not exclusively, on the Right…continue to deny that anything is happening. You still hear, in spite of everything, that climate change is a hoax.

What comes to mind, of course, is the old story of the boiling frog. The tale goes that the poor old amphibian goes into a pot, and then someone slowly turns up the heat. The creature doesn’t notice because the increase is so gradual. And, then, finally, it boils to death…a pair of frog’s legs ready for consumption. With attachments.

The story isn’t real, by the way. Apparently, it is a myth. Eventually, a real frog, in a real pot, notices that he’s started to expire, and leaps to safety. (3)

We're Cooked

I think most of us, now, are definitely in the same camp as that gradually steaming frog. We would, if we could, seek refuge. I think, if governments obeyed the will of their people, then we would even now be making serious efforts to turn down the heat. And, in a few years, we would make real progress in cooling the globe. 

But there’s the kicker. We may be fully aware of the boil, of the heat, and of our own imminent demise…but that doesn’t mean that Those Who Know Best are listening to us. There are many in our Elite for whom global warming seems to represent a problem of perception rather than of our species’ existence. On Fox News and OAN, in Congress and in State Houses across the nation…in Washington and Executive Office Suites everywhere…you hear that it’s all a Liberal Fraud, a Chinese conspiracy to cripple our industry, a fantasy sprung from the fevered imaginations of a few catastrophizing Greens…

And, of course, they have good reasons to say such things. Many of those them are involved with, or paid by the fossil fuels industry…either directly, or indirectly. And thus follow the money…cui bono?…who benefits? (4)

Not us. Not we poor frogs in the pot. We certainly won’t. Only them…

Or so they think.

Because, you see, there is no planet B, there is no escape from this world once we’ve ruined it (in spite, it seems, of certain billionaires’ fixation on space). Eventually, one way or the other, even the most privileged will find themselves at a loss. Eventually, heat, and environmental decay, and flame and flood…will claim them as well.

Thus, perhaps the story is wrong. Perhaps my analogy is wrong. It is not us ordinary folk who are the mythical frog in the boiling water. We are the genuine frog. We know our peril and would jump if we could.

It is they who are the mythical creature. It is they who do not realize their danger. It is they who will not admit their risk. Who think they can always somehow buy their way out of trouble.

But, in time…

They will face their end.

And if we go before them…if we have already perished…it will be very little comfort… 

To be the frog who took longest to boil…and so endured the most exquisite…and painful…variety of hell.

~Michael Jay Tucker

Copyright©2021 Michael Jay Tucker

Please visit my webpage at: https://www.michaeljaytucker.com/

Sources:

1. “Nearly 1 in 3 Americans experienced a weather disaster this summer,” by Sarah Kaplan and Andrew Ba Tran, The Washington Post, Sept 4, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/09/04/climate-disaster-hurricane-ida/
2.  “How the Storm Turned Basement Apartments Into Death Traps,” By Mihir Zaveri, Matthew Haag, Adam Playford and Nate Schweber, New York Times, Sept. 2, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/02/nyregion/basement-apartment-floods-deaths.html
3. “Boiling Frog,” Wikipedia, accessed Sep 6 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
4.  “The Climate Denial Machine: How the Fossil Fuel Industry Blocks Climate Action,” The Climate Reality Project, Sept 2019, https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/climate-denial-machine-how-fossil-fuel-industry-blocks-climate-action

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