The Big Squeeze

Searching for title phrase in the old memory hut called this blog, I thought I had entitled an essay, but the earliest use of the term is from a January 4th 2013 entry: More 2013 Prognostications: A Lot of Negativity

I've expressed humanity's dismal chances before and this essay considers The Big Squeeze in terms of latitude loss of habitat in a warming world. We are heading for Hothouse Earth or are already in it. Hothouse weather sucks, Icehouse weather sucks, Interglacial Just Right. Well, we are out of the natural interglacial cycle now and the squeeze is coming from every direction.

Consider in Hothouse North America, we lose arable land to the north and south. Southern creeping desertification, and miasmic swamps with toxic metal streams and rivers to the north. Farming moves north but only so far.  Certainly not the scraped clean Canadian shield to plant crops, and the fertile valleys in the Canadian west are already at 100% use. So, a big squeeze.

It is fitting that Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The Gulf of Mexico was incredibly lush, vibrant and a great well of life. Sadly, most of the USA's fertile soils lie at the bottom of this gulf, agricultural runoff feuling dead zones of greater and greater size. Toxic industrial waste and every form of offal and filth has turned the lively and lovely Gulf of Mexico into the grisly dead Gulf of America.

Bug Apocalypse already in progress. Only our vermin survive nicely. Soylent Green overbudget and behind schedule. Another squeeze.

Fresh water, more specically fresh aquifer water is dangerously low throughout the Continental west and central plains. The best example of land subsidence is California's Central Valley with area drops of up to 40 feet. Meaning subsurface rock is getting squeezed like a sponge. The problem is the water is not replenished, and in fact goes to waste into a rising ocean. Many aquifers will be gone in five years

How many more squeezes? Science itself is creating more and more affluent people, with larger and larger appetites, so much so that just the past 10 years has used up more shit than the past 100, and the last 20 years equals the same amount of planetary devastation as the last ten thousand. And the next 20 years a million times faster still.

Can't really put the blame on Boomers for this one, huh kids? You complain about the state of the world we left you and yet you eat it in front of us. Cake of the world on petulant frowns, munching away