“If you stay, you die” are the words spoken by Treasure Island City Fire Chief Trip Barrs as Florida prepares to confront a new chapter in the climate crisis. As these lines were written, the hurricane Milton (category 5) was preparing to cross the center of Sunshine Statewhich is barely recovering from the passage of Helene (category 4), which left 230 dead in the United States a little over a week ago.
Milton is an extreme weather event that scored a perfect 5 out of 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Meteorologist Noah Bergen expressed the imminence of a clear, deadly danger: “This hurricane is approaching the mathematical limit of what the Earth’s atmosphere above the ocean can produce. »
Arriving at the mathematical limits: the expression reaches such a degree of absurdity in my head that I struggle to conceptualize it. “We have accumulated piles of debris that will fly everywhere, debris piled up two or three stories spread all over the island,” warns Mr. Barrs. “All this debris will turn into missiles…”
I can already hear the whistling in my head, to which are added other violent whistling sounds of a completely different nature. “Leave or die” are also words that were uttered this week by the Israeli army in the Jabaliya refugee camp, in Palestine. The ongoing operation has left “a large number” of dead, according to AFP. After more than a year of massacres, a text published in July in the scientific journal The Lancet mentions that Israel’s cumulative strategies (attacks, road blockades, famines, diseases) would lead to a toll that far surpasses that published by Hamas (more than 42,000 deaths to date), or up to 186,000 deaths.
The contradiction spins at 280 km/h in my head. How do we manage to cover in the media, and with such a degree of precision and preparation, hurricanes as monstrous as Milton And Helene when we are incapable of presenting the missile storms that are hitting Palestine and Lebanon other than as the fruit of a complex “conflict”?
What language should we use so that the message torments us to the point of leading us to lash out, to rebel? Do I have to do conceptual mathematics? 186,000 deaths, that’s 808 hurricanes Helene. That’s at least two hurricanes a day, for a year.
The absence of adequate emergency funds to respond to climate disasters and proactive investments in weapons is another clear and easy calculation to make. Flee or die in Palestine under American missiles, flee or die in Florida under debris that has become like missiles: this is the new normal that we accepted in a fraction of a second.
Absurdity also tastes like maple syrup. After an unprecedented season of wildfires and flooding in Canada, Qualinet Group celebrated its growth with a new headquarters. The director of operations, Roger Vigneault, does not hide the reality that awaits us (and which explains its success): “Qualinet wants to be everywhere in Quebec, in all regions, so [la croissance] is part of our business plan, but it was really accelerated by Mother Nature. »
In other words, we accept this news as a celebration of a growing SME, and not as another glaring example of which we are not ready to deal with the embers that are fanning under the effect of the climate emergency .
Noticing this double violence, I feel madness taking hold of me, my body is on the verge of nervously breaking down. Pain and absurdities follow one another: on my screen, the videos “Prepare with me to face the hurricane” follow those of Palestinian children begging for money to eat. It’s incredibly stupid.
Be a spectator of the absurdity, but, above all, don’t intervene. Stay in your cubicle while the building collapses, burns and gets bombed. Don’t look at the flashing exit door sign.
The definition of insanity is the absence of reason. However, the delirium that consumes me frees me: the enemies have never been so clear.