Climate Sunday: Fire, Water, and the Sacred Things

 

Saudi Health Minister Fahd bin Abdurrahman Al-Jalajel said that 83% of the 1,301 fatalities were unauthorized pilgrims who walked long distances in soaring temperatures to perform the Hajj rituals in and around the holy city of Mecca.https://t.co/ULoOMijRBI

— KATU News (@KATUNews) June 23, 2024

The Saudi Health minister can go ahead and blame the faithful for being "unauthorized" to come to do the Hajj, but this denial is hiding a very terrible story--the Hajj is becoming unsustainable. The pilgrimage to the site of the two holy places is too hot in the summer months for many people--the aged, the disabled. The faith of the pilgrims is great--the human ability to withstand the temperatures that are becoming more common is limited.

We've seen climate activists target several works of art, but most recently, the painting of Stonehenge got our attention:

This act disturbs ancient lichens that have protected the stones for one thing (ignore JK Rowling--she actually is Dolores Umbridge which is just the worst thing, and even worse, she is and probably knows it).  It's a weird act of vandalism that detracts from the message that we need to protect the things we love, for another. Also, just as a person with some ancestral connection to Blighty, there's some folk shit you need to leave alone. You fuck about with ancients liths and you are bound to get spirited off and knackered by rogue Morris dancers the next time you're exiting last call at the pub. 

Climate change is going to fuxxor the things you love, anyway. It will have to shift cultural events like the Hajj. It will move populations. Unique peoples will need to migrate because of the environmental strain and the inability to feed themselves. But we will also lose monuments and other signifiers important to our sense of culture. 

We are increasingly vulnerable, everywhere, to fire and flood. 

Flooding in northwest Iowa, caused by heavy rainfall, has impacted 1,900 properties, leaving hundreds destroyed, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds told reporters Sunday.https://t.co/HjVLXRNDk5

— ABC News (@ABC) June 24, 2024

Instead of climate activists damaging existing cultural touchstones themselves, maybe they would do better by demonstrating how climate change will take the things we love from us. Try to make the spiritual connection. Don't threaten our cultural signifiers in the now, tell us how they will be damaged if we don't act. Give the punters some shitty AI--they will be impressed enough. 

Vandalism cheapens the debate when the situation is far more dire than "Hey, look at these trolls!" We truly ARE losing the things that matter to climate change. We need to think not abstractly, but in terms of solutions now. How do we create an enduring culture? How do we do sustainability?  Those questions are more difficult than stunt-activism. But that is the work that is needed. 

Do art--make positive change--change the culture, don't attack it.