Duh, It Ain't Climate Change!

Uncle Bubba feels dumb, dumb, dumb. He can't believe that he just never saw the dog-gone truth. But he does now and it came in a watershed moment while listening to a podcast from 99% Invisible, episode 355 titled Depraved Paradise. In short, Mexico City is running out of water. In part, by building a paradise on the porous lava fields of El Pedregal. As Joni Mitchell sang, "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot..." and housing, lots and lots of housing. So, too many people, historically poor design ignoring geographical anomalies and all of the infrastructure aimed at draining the rainwater from the basin, due to flooding, works against efforts to retain water for human consumption. So, "Mexico City is flooded, thirsty, and sinking — it’s a complicated problem with no simple solution..." Within the content, it was stated that Mexico City is pumping water out of the aquifer twice as fast as it can be replenished. Doesn't that strike y'all as an impossibility? It does to Uncle Bubba. He was never a math whiz but that's one of those things y'all hear and go, huh?

All of this was summed up by the host stating that climate change is only going to make all of it more extreme. Boom! That's when the flood of truth rushed into Bubbie's brain. All this talk about climate change isn't really about extreme weather, it's about OVERPOPULATION. But nobody wants to talk about overpopulation because it's a slippery slope and makes politicians nervous. For instance, we'd have to talk seriously about worldwide birth control, the living conditions of third world countries, increased emergence of new epidemics and pandemics, increased habitat loss, less freedom and more restrictions, elevated crime rate, the depletion of all natural resources, not just fresh water.

Uncle Bubba dripped with sarcasm, "Why would they talk about solutions to all these complex issues when click-bait headlines can be grabbed and political grandstanding bellowed by blaming rich white dudes? They say if we just stop polluting all problems are solved. Stop consuming and polluting, hahaha! Y'all can't have one without the other; it's the world we've created." In Bubbie's view, our "leaders" just figure that it's easier to call it a generic term and talk about the weather than to get to the truth.

I told Uncle Bubba that this is called a misnomer and he told me that he thought Miss Nomer might've been his 8th-grade teacher. We both agreed that when we talk about climate change we all should just keep it about the weather.