Heat Dome

half idaho's ablaze; its filth's spewed wide;
particulates too small to settle down
from Puget Sound to Continent's Divide
paint skies like Mordor's many shades of brown.
All outdoor sports events must be deferred;
asthmatics struggle for their every breath.
A year of pulmonary wear's incurred
for every week we're casting dice with Death.
Each photon intercepted overhead
destroys the lapse-rate soaring pilots love.
Black-body shifted down to bleary red
the atmosphere's still warmed, but from above.
Grim legacy from when the West was cool/\
presents a terrifying pool of fuel.

New Normal

the EastBay's not inured to heat and smog
that withers plants on Torrance windowsills.
Here, Summer's moderated by the fog
that shoots the Gate to curl against the hills.
It's when the wind swing East that Hell breaks loose;
the Breath of Mordor roars down that terrain
those gracious homes can roast you like a goose
when eucalyptus blossom into flame.
In places no one lived before A/C,
a blackout could prove lethal pretty soon.
A forest pool, or just a verdant tree
is worth your life on such an afternoon.
John Wesley Powell pre-viewed what's to come,
but never dreamt home buyers'd be so dumb.

Two-party/no choice

Joe Biden trusts the one-D voter map
that he inherited from Hillary.
Predictably, the correlation's crap
when one proceeds from such a fallacy.
Progressive policies win big in polls
But neither major party wants to hear
Joe's Wall Street donors know they're in control
Between these two old men, there's naught they fear.

And now, it seems the Senate may stay Red
there's nothing that they're going to enact.
Joe's program--if he had one--is born dead.
That's not a loss, but not a "win" in fact.
Trump's gone; that's cause to celebrate!
Now, climate dies while Joe procrastinates.

"unusual weather we're having, ain't it?"

Untimely Spring as snow dissolves in rain
While Aussies suffer unremitting heat
The Polar Vortex won't stay in its lane.
Al Gore was right; we've joined him in defeat.
The WeatherService can extrapolate
the patterns that were normal years ago.
But greenhouse-gases broke the steady-state
and salt-flats crack that should be under snow.
Next week, the powerlines may all contract
and stress the phonepoles as they all draw tight
winebottles spit their corks out, or just crack
as Arizonans shiver in the night.
Miami doesn't even have to freeze
Before iguanas thud like hail from trees.

end of an Age

Like Saruman's last mischief in the Shire,
Trump desecrates what he can't understand.
The fossil fuels he pumps into the fire
ensure catastrophes, on sea and land.
Galadriel bequeathed a wooden box
of probiotics to heal MiddleEarth
from orcs, and greed, and violence, and pox;
The Fourth Age had great omens at its birth.
But we've wrought this catastrophe ourselves
no elder race would answer if we'd call.
No Bombadil, no wizards, no high elves.
We fight alone, our backs against the wall.
This Armageddon we've made on our own
We get to save the planet all alone.

urp II

Methanogens detox ungulates' gut
by stripping hydrogen out of the chyme,
that forms when fermentation's firmly shut
from oxygen (if only for a time).
What's once produced is belched into the air
to trap IR--'though UV shines right through.
A threat to which we're slow to grow aware
as we poach in our man-made greenhouse stew.
A million years of symbiotic bliss
recycling cellulose into prime meat
could make a sterile Venus out of this
blue planet as it traps more of our heat.
Our steak in worlds to come's ever more dear
if we must buy it with our atmosphere.

pirate king

Macron holds Bolsonaro to his word;
the Amazon must photosynthesize.
To scorch the planet's lungs is just absurd;
without the rainforest, our species dies.
Such conflagration's more than law allows
whole tribes are perishing among their trees.
But ranchers, eager to export cheap cows
would liquidate a word's patrimony.
Pariah nation, shut out in the cold
no European's gonna buy its beef.
Their trade agreement's getting put on 'hold'
until Brazil repents and ousts this thief.
The human species' running out of time
for fascist who see profit in such crime.

donors balked

Now, Biden backs a Climate Change debate
despite the ukase of the DNC.
As if to save our planet shouldn't wait
but warrants the least bit of urgency.
Haim Saban frets too many feel the Bern;
to fix America would be too tough.
He wanted Hillary to serve "her turn";
tell voters to be satisfied enough!
A generation's come of age since Gore
acknowledged what we're doing to this Earth.
But donors like the way thing were before;
they know the whole world's price, but not its worth.
The "factions" that had cost our Framers sleep
have sown the whirlwind; dust is all we'll reap.

no soft landing

Low-status walruses thud on the shore
to splatter messily on rocks below.
High-status males staked beach-front claims before
and snort at the idea of letting go.
As climate change puts sea-ice out of reach
they vie for any haul-out they can get.
if not prime sugar-white sand on the beach
at least a bluff that's only sometimes wet.
But depth perception doesn't get them mates
and climbing rocks won't pass their genes along.
Their females weigh a bull on other traits
that warming seas abruptly rendered wrong.
Dire metaphor for blind pursuit of cash
gigantic pinnipeds are prone to crash.

transparency

Pete Buttigieg speaks less than half his mind
expounding narrative, not policy.
He'll freely speak of what he's left behind,
but what's ahead's not there for us to see.
Obama's "looking forward, and not back"
precluded prosecuting anyone.
But mayor Pete's unbothered that we lack
clue-one of what he thinks ought to be done.
"I'm smart; just trust me" won't cut any ice
when Warren's program's all lined up to roll.
This contest must not be just who sounds nice;
our planet's future's riding on this poll.
'Though youthful candidates get fawning fuss,
the bankers' fav'rites just don't work for us.

"empires make their own reality"

Lysenko kept his Kremlin patron rapt
and Josef Stalin wanted to believe
duress would make plants mutate and adapt
environment determines more than seeds.
But crops don't care for ideology;
when seasons are too short, or wet, they fail.
His threats can't countermand biology;
farm folk had none to eat, and less for sale.
Now, politicians sneer at Climate Change.
Again, they'd push the scientists aside
in favor of a policy deranged,
forgetting all the million who had died.
When governments defy reality
our world confronts "to be, or not to be".

omens

Thus hurricane, we're warned, its bigly wet
whole towns will flood, some houses will be lost.
Insurers have already made that bet;
no individual need bear that cost.
But actuaries only see the past
not all things are as constant as they'd seem.
Our climate's changing, and it's changing fast.
Tomorrow's not regressing towards the mean.
South Florida's subsiding in the sea
and Bangladesh will be too wet for rice.
Saskatchewan may grow more grapes than wheat;
but that's conjectural--we're casting dice.
The Fermi paradox has been explained;
they've each flushed their own biomes down the drain.

under pressure

The crocus thrusting past the dregs of snow
to pass its genes along, can't miss the date.
Banked glucose from last Fall's spent now to grow
to rendezvous with bugs that pollinate.
While salmon hatching out in gravel beds
rely on plagues of insects to wax great,
concatenated species, "food" and "fed"
choreographed to each proliferate.
'Til CO2 knocks all of this awry
each Spring thaw sets another record-mark;
red photons that should leak into the sky
get tangled in our blanket, 'though all's dark.
Darwinian biology of change
may not keep up as Climate gets deranged.

the fault is not in our stars

Orion stalks us from the Southern skies
no quarry can escape his sword, and bow
laid bare beneath the huntsman's twinkling eyes,
where there's no figleaf, and no wisp of snow.
High season, when we ought to be on skis
our storms are pounding Florida, and Maine.
The drought that's beating Capetown to its knees
has San Franciscans praying for more rain.
The Winter snows and rains that used to fill
our reservoirs to bridge the Summer dearth,
now flood one state, but give another nil
as we disrupt the cycles of our Earth.
The stars can't sigh; they know this plot too well.
It's how such species make their worlds a Hell.

second time as farce

Lysenko's back, and famine's close behind.
New politicians think they can outwit
established science, like they mean to find
a way to separate the stink from shit.
This time, it's Trump, denying that we cause
the droughts, and floods, and deaths by hurricane.
Defying scientists, whose graphs and laws
all point to costs, where all he wants is gain.
America's become a laughing-stock
pariah, while the world works hard to plan
plan-B that circumvents this strutting cock;
the planet's not in awe of any man.
A leader terrified of being led's
unfit to serve a nation as its head.

changes

leaves skitter on the duckpond's frozen face
the trees re-clad in snow before they're bare
the seasons whirl at an abnormal pace
it's Winter before Autumn's fully here.
the GulfStream wavers, Iceland holds its breath
without it, what could keep the cold at bay
can geothermal spare them from slow death
if heat's transported somewhere far away?
More moisture's carried in the atmosphere
as heat's trapped by exhausts from car, and cow
old vegetation patterns, year by year,
seem ill-adapted to the here-and-now.
Trump still thinks Climate Change may be a hoax; 
his talking points are written by the Kochs.

change is gonna come

as Florida subsides beneath the waves
its seats get re-apportioned farther West
denialists can flee their wat'ry graves
but can't escape their fate with all the rest
a house divided gets no chance to heal
as goals and values tug the halves apart
the backers of the artist of the deal
express contempt for those of Bernie's heart
what unifying vision can emerge
to offer leadership our country lacks
today, we're marching to our nation's dirge
exacerbated by the Donald's hacks
a tide of bile's rough seas on which to float
and--sink or swim--we're all in the same boat

the shape of things to come

electric cars will wean the world from gas
because they've just got fewer moving parts
complexity's a vestige of the past
however dear that purr was to our hearts
by freely using sun or wind or nukes
and not relying on a single fuel
both Ford and Daimler seem short-sighted kooks
more "obsolete" than "charmingly old-school"
a better battery would seal the deal
to daisy-chain 'phone cells is passing strange
electrics will have much broader appeal
when each charge gets four hundred miles of range
in time, we'll fix the infrastructure bug
I've seen the future, and it's got a plug

Uurp

methanogens take out low-valent trash
'cause hydrogen could not just be left free
formed in the rumen's anaerobic mash
reduced to claim a bit of energy
so H2 gets combined with CO2
and eructated to our atmosphere
and much the same takes place in kangaroos
although they vent it through their derrieres
as IR's blocked but sunlight still pours in
our post-industrial heirs bear the cost
two hundred years' coalfires left them our sins
and what had been an Eden has been lost
until it's gone, too few know a thing's worth
just such a wreck was once our mother, Earth

urp

methanogens detox ungulates' gut
by stripping hydrogen out of the chyme
that forms when fermentation's firmly shut
from oxygen (if only for a time)

what's once produced is belched into the air
to trap IR 'though UV shines right through
a threat to which we're slow to grow aware
as we poach in our man-made greenhouse stew

a million years of symbiotic bliss
recycling cellulose into prime meat
could make a sterile Venus out of this
blue planet as it traps more of our heat

our steak in worlds to come's ever more dear
if we must buy it with our atmosphere