An Intoxicating Truth
This article in The Independent is perhaps the best condensation of the impact that greenhouse climate change is having worldwide. It amazes me how near the issue is. Switzerland is watching its alpine skyline change before its eyes as mountains calve large chunks of rock held in place by millennia of ice-glue. They're even having trouble drilling for oil in Alaska because the number of permafrost days (when heavy equipment can travel) have shrunk from 150 days per year to 75.
Apart from the brand new barley fields in Greenland and the prediction that garden plots will be impossible in England in 20 years, the wine industry in California may be next to see the effects of climate change. Grapes are a very temperature sensitive crop, and they predict that in the next few (less than five) years, the industry will be hit very hard. I heard this story on NPR when I returned from California this summer. I thought, "What a perfect story for the effete NPR aficionado, choking on his pinot and staring wide-eyed at his radio." Kate and I were staying on the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, and we took a short tour through the outer fringes of Napa Valley where the tastings are still free and relatively untouristed. We had scheduled the trip during the hottest day in a notable summer heat wave that killed 130 people. Try drinking red wine and wandering the desert. It's like sweating phosphate-laced delirium. When the day was over, we found ourselves a cold diner and a blueberry malt. I remember a woman rushing in the front door, her white blouse soaked with what appeared to be an entire glass of Napa's finest, dripping with sweat and tears, slipping across the greasy floor toward the bathroom in the back of the diner. That could have been me, I thought. And it probably was.
I have often puzzled about the evolutionary mechanisms that allow a species to slow-cook itself, to foul its nest as we have. Certainly there ought to be an adaptive principle that can pull us out of this mess. But then I think of grapes and wine, and the fact that the last of the yeasties to dine on the grape sugars eventually drowns in its own waste when the alcoholic brew reaches that magical 12% mark. It probably makes perfect sense at the time. Blind to the signs of the end, the process predictably runs its course. Perhaps God is preparing for a party at his great winery in the sky.
Apart from the brand new barley fields in Greenland and the prediction that garden plots will be impossible in England in 20 years, the wine industry in California may be next to see the effects of climate change. Grapes are a very temperature sensitive crop, and they predict that in the next few (less than five) years, the industry will be hit very hard. I heard this story on NPR when I returned from California this summer. I thought, "What a perfect story for the effete NPR aficionado, choking on his pinot and staring wide-eyed at his radio." Kate and I were staying on the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, and we took a short tour through the outer fringes of Napa Valley where the tastings are still free and relatively untouristed. We had scheduled the trip during the hottest day in a notable summer heat wave that killed 130 people. Try drinking red wine and wandering the desert. It's like sweating phosphate-laced delirium. When the day was over, we found ourselves a cold diner and a blueberry malt. I remember a woman rushing in the front door, her white blouse soaked with what appeared to be an entire glass of Napa's finest, dripping with sweat and tears, slipping across the greasy floor toward the bathroom in the back of the diner. That could have been me, I thought. And it probably was.
I have often puzzled about the evolutionary mechanisms that allow a species to slow-cook itself, to foul its nest as we have. Certainly there ought to be an adaptive principle that can pull us out of this mess. But then I think of grapes and wine, and the fact that the last of the yeasties to dine on the grape sugars eventually drowns in its own waste when the alcoholic brew reaches that magical 12% mark. It probably makes perfect sense at the time. Blind to the signs of the end, the process predictably runs its course. Perhaps God is preparing for a party at his great winery in the sky.
posted by thebaffler at 7:34 PM
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