The World in Flames

If you're feeling a little skeptical about climate change, I'm not a scientist, and whatever I say here will be based on my perceptions as a regular person, but people, open your eyes and get your heads out of your arses! While fires burn in Arizona and California, we can't really be surprised, it's been happening for at least a decade, it's not new.

Have you ever been to England? I was there just last year, and the constant drizzle and gray skies were a comfort to me, because that's the way I have always imagined London. London is a city where you can sleep in the daytime because the sun never shines too brightly, and you can have beer for breakfast if you have the stomach for it. But the drizzle has evaporated in England, and the changing climate of our mysterious planet has thrown our staid English cousins a couple of curve balls.

When you use the words wildfires and England in the same sentence, there seems no logical way to connect the two. Wildfires don't happen in damp places, they happen in places where there is not a lot of rain. Wildfires happen in dry and arid places, in places where there is air conditioning and fire fighters who know what they're doing.

What do you make of this headline?

Fire, drought and a dangerous rise in pollution: welcome to tinderbox UK

Me, I'm not a scientist, and describing soggy England as a tinderbox seems absurd and in the realm of the impossible. But I trust the cautious Guardian to give me the news without drama, and so I am forced by logic to believe that England is facing a dire environmental crisis, and therefore, we must react in some way to the danger that threatens us all. The British are so reserved and so polite, that they will most likely not even scream when they are consumed by the flames. But we are Americans, we are loud and obnoxious, and we have no regard for niceties. We should be making some noise, sounding the alarm, and thinking about solutions.

The fires are spreading, the planet is warming, and we worry that the message we are sending will scare off the general public.

The public needs to be afraid. Very afraid.

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