On My Radar | In the midst of Covid, don’t forget that our planet is dying
But in a pandemic, things change frequently and unexpectedly, and July felt as if a perfect storm had been unleashed.
But water scarcity on one side of the planet while watching flash floods hit other parts of the planet is a surreal experience. Watching devastating floods hit Germany, Belgium and Austria, in tandem with our own live-streamed images of looting and mayhem, made for a depressing week of doom-scrolling.
A few weeks earlier, on the other side of the planet, areas in western North America experienced a heat dome. After the 50°C heat subsided, a stench pervaded Vancouver’s Kitsilano Beach. They eventually traced the source of the smell – mussels, clams and other shellfish had literally boiled to death in the extreme heat and were rotting. The area’s water quality was affected because mussels and clams act as filters for the sea.
Permafrost is the layer of permanently frozen soil that sits under 65% of the Russian landmass and almost a quarter of the northern hemisphere. Perhaps more worrying is the fact that microbes containing diseases are also being released from thawing permafrost. Since we are in the midst of a pandemic, it is prudent to note that in 2016, an outbreak of anthrax in the region was traced to a 75-year-old reindeer carcass that caused the contamination after it had defrosted – but I will leave that thread for another dystopian column.