The Summer of Hell begins

The first day of Summer began with a thunderous boom over my house. The heavens unloaded after months of drought induced retention, while puddles lasted only so long as the dusty earth allowed before  absorbing the waters, and leaving behind a muggy steam that accumulated in the darker recesses of the piney woods. When it hasn't rained for such a length of time the phenomena becomes virginal and miraculous. A string of Facebook posts erupted online declaring the event, with pictures included, while I imagined my neighbors coming out to look upon falling water droplets as an infant would for the first time. It's moments like these that you realize the miracles that occur as a matter of inconsequential unrecognized irreverence. By my rain gauge there hadn't been any appreciable rain in more than sixty days, a day count that as long as I've been alive I can recall no such equal in droughts. South MS wasn't alone either, the drought is even more magnified and disastrous further West, on into Texas and Arizona where a string of historic wild fires continue to burn and remain visible from space. Thousands evacuated and whole communities gone up in smoke. If the drought hasn't burned your house down, it's destroying vital cropland, farming, and livestock that the rest of the world depends on. Farmers out there are having to make difficult choices yet again, as repeated years of drought have left them with little, a dwindling herd, and rationing. To pile on even greater misery is of course what we're all having to deal with  - expensive fuel. Thankfully, it has come down some in the last month as the dollar competes with the Euro, and the obvious unarguable sign that the US economy is "not well," that is, if one actually looks at the numbers. Apparently, a lost art among economists as it seems hedge funds, large banks, and day traders rather play off expectations than asset valuations, demand, and consumption. Those expectations revolve around the Greek bailout, the Fed asset purchases, and "better or worse than expected" analysis (after revisement, of course). Economic bets and day to day Dow watching is hardly worth mentioning anymore because it has no basis on whether I'm able to find a job or not, and speaking of which has become harder than ever. The drought just makes for sweaty interviews with a Dominoes Pizza manager that tells you there are only PT positions available. The weather it seems has become a mirror of opportunity.

If it's not a drought that's ruining the day, it's a climate weirding flood and there's no shortage of global occurrence in this regard. Wave after wave of  six inch pounders continue to sweep the Northern prairies, flooding the Missouri river basin, which of course all run into the MS river, a river that has already been hit with record levels this season. The Rockies are still full of snow while a series of Nebraskan dams and spillways are pressed to their engineering limits. The precipice almost certainly leaves one to conclude that a disaster could happen any minute. The media, like CNN, FOX, CBS, etc, seem totally incapable of reporting on any of it, even though a US nuclear power plant has turned into a industrial island beset on all sides with flood water.

Officials assure us that all is well, and that there is no risk to the public from radiation. How can any of us feel assured of anything after Fukushima, another global event the media has chosen to pretend is over, and a recent report of widespread radiation leakage - http://enenews.com/radioactive-tritium-leaked-75-nuke-plants-drinking-wells-contaminated-illinois-minnesota Despite all this I see the nuclear industry proponents weathering this, publicly speaking, as some of us slowly die from diseases we will have no idea were ever caused by radioactive particles. It is truly a gaffed and polluted world we live in. So if you didn't know about this particular nuclear power plant I urge you to pay particular attention as it could be the next 3 mile island story...or not. I am somewhat encourage to know that the critical infrastructure is 32' above flood expectations; however, there are issues with drains backing up, wiring going to shit, risk of fires, and leaking into what is essentially "clean" rooms. Alot of nuclear regulatory rules will requiring bending, a skill well honed by the commission. Meanwhile, the dams further up river are tested while various levees continue to fail and flood a home that might or might not be covered by the local news station. The lack of coverage of this unfolding disaster and the intentional blackout of Fukushima - which by the way is being considered a level 8 event (worse than Chernobyl), a whole new category - can only leave one to confirm that anything tied to radiation is taboo by corporate think tanks. Too much is invested in nuclear power. If you're lacking media coverage though, one can always turned to Al Jazeera....now isn't that ironic?

Well that's enough talk about droughts and floods on this Summer solstice so let's move on to an environmental report regarding our oceans that's been circulating the Internet on just about every major media site.   http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/oceans-on-brink-of-catastrophe-2300272.html Marine life is facing extinction within one human generation. Why? Us...that's why. We're dumping in them, spilling shit, over-fishing, and basically polluting the waters with every type of toxic residue from industrial society. All creatures pollute, and many of them are quite destructive, but it seems mankind takes it exponentially to another level, a level that has the capability of quite literally wiping life from the planet...a ELE event. There's just too many of us, and if you know anything about ecology there's a term they call "carrying capacity" and what happens when a species exceeds that limit. We're past it already, thanks to black gold (oil), and we're in the process of destroying and permanently lowering the carrying capacity. All known biological examples of this occurring results in a die off, a radical population reduction that brings the species below the "new" carrying capacity, a capacity now lower than the one before thanks to ecological scarring. Call it what you will, but this is real life, in the now, process of dying. That means we're in for starvation, rampant disease, and wars, all of which will be in magnitude to the growth acceleration we saw in the last hundred years. I believe it will happen much quicker than anyone expects, just as all the global warming consequences are now occurring much faster than what was once predicted.

It's a sobering thought as we begin the Summer of hell, and our children looked to us and ask
"Why did you destroy my future world???"