Welcome to the July 2024 Cosmic Weather Forecast by Curtis Lang with Jane Sherry. Recently, Jane and I enjoyed our visit to a large lotus pond hidden in plain sight near Bethabara Historical Park. The pond and surrounding wetlands adjoin two busy streets, and are surrounded by strip malls and a daycare center, but once you get out on the boardwalk, it's beautiful.
. 
Here in Winston Salem, as in most of the Northern Hemisphere, the long hot summer continues. North Carolina is experiencing a flash drought, which appeared suddenly after a very wet spring. Scientists say this is the worst drought in our state since 2007-2008. Water conservation measures are in place in Western North Carolina already.
"The rare early onset of extreme temperatures and minimal rainfall in June could mean that the state could see summertime heat for another month or two without much of a break," says Corey Davis, assistant state climatologist at the NC State Climate Office.
We are far from alone in our misery. Extreme weather events have become the new normal all over the world.
A million people were still without power in Houston a week after Hurricane Beryl, the earliest Cat 5 ever to form in the Atlantic devastated Granada, Jamaica, Venezuela and the Yucatan, then entered to Gulf of Mexico and hit Houston as a Category 1 storm.
.gif)
National Weather Service Houston/Galveston TX, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
"Houston is no stranger to natural disasters, but living through two crippling power outages in two months has driven some in the city to consider what may be the ultimate evacuation plan: moving out," J. David Goodman reports in The New York Times.
"The more powerful of the storms, Hurricane Beryl, devastated the power infrastructure over nearly the entire city," Goodman reports.
When it hit, thousands of people were already living in shelters and hotels, according to state officials, because they had been displaced by an earlier weather event, the spring thunderstorms that caused wind damage and flooding," Goodman explains.
"Driving around Houston, it can be hard to tell which of the storms that crashed through the city had mangled the highway billboards, torn out the fences or knocked down the trees still strewn along roadsides," Goodman says.
"For some, it was too much," concludes Goodman.
Damages from Beryl are estimated to exceed $6 billion, and the May derecho that ravaged the Bayou City caused an estimated $5-8 billion in damages.
It's worrisome, I mean $5 billion every couple of months can add up!
And we're still early in hurricane season.
In Beryl's aftermath, since a total of 2.26 million people lost power during a relatively weak hurricane, the local utility company, CenterPoint Energy, has come under fire.
"CenterPoint Energy’s emergency line on-hold phone messages in the wake of Hurricane Beryl included an advertisement encouraging customers to purchase generators from Centerpoint's partners, drawing criticism from some Houstonians who say it was 'poor taste'," reports The Houston Chronicle.
The implication that all CenterPoint customers will need one from now on was not what Houstonians wanted to hear as they sweltered in the dark.
It's worth noting that CenterPoint was created when Texas Governor George W. Bush signed the bill that paved the way for utility deregulation in 1999.
As a public utility, HL&P had been required to reinvest ALL profits into its infrastructure because its primary responsibility was to the community.
Centerpoint, on the other hand, has a fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders.
And, I guess to its CEO.
In 2021, CenterPoint's CEO David Lesar received $37.8 million in total compensation, which is about 3-4X the pay package of a typical major utility CEO.
Lesar retired in 2023, a certified member of the Newly Rich, and Jason Wells became CEO.
Wells received only about $9 million in total compensation in 2023, but I am sure the CenterPoint Board of Directors will award him a Newly Rich pay package when he leaves the company, so don't be too worried for Jason.
Centerpoint achieved a $23 billion profit for its shareholders in 2023, and one way they achieved these fat profits was by neglecting to properly maintain power line right of ways, which means they did not cut down all the trees around power lines so the power lines won't go down in storms.
To insure that pesky Texas lawmakers pose no threats to Centerpoint profits, the company's CenterPoint Energy PAC distributed $1.55 million to Texas politicians since 2020.
This is just another way Centerpoint evades any community responsibility.
Now, who will hold Texas politicians who received this largesse responsible for this fiasco?
That is the question.
As Houston struggles to recover from back to back extreme, destructive weather events, the rest of the country suffers from the mind-boggling new climate normal we suddenly inhabit.
This week, another destructive derecho ripped through the Midwest, triggering a long string of tornados from Iowa to Chicago and beyond.
Flames from spreading wildfires engulf large regions in Alaska, Oregon, Canada and California.
Tornadoes ravage the Gulf of Mexico states.
Around the world, there's no shortage of extreme weather events and persistent record setting disasters brewing this long hot summer.
There have been long weeks of 52.3°C heat in Delhi and crop production in the Delhi region, India's bread basket, is in peril.
Record setting heatwaves grip large swathes of Central-Eastern Europe, and North Africa, while severe drought threatens large parts of southern Africa with starvation.
Wildfires in North America, July 15, 2024, Map by National Interagency Fire Center
Since late May uncontrolled wildfires have ravaged Brazil's Pantanal, the largest wetlands on Earth, where more than 1,800,000 acres have already burned this year.
"Since the beginning of the rainy season on April 1, China has experienced heavy rainfall, causing 20 floods in major rivers around the country," according to the World Socialist Website.
"[In China] Dozens have been killed, tens of thousands have been forced to evacuate, and countless more have been impacted," the World Socialist Website explains.
Disastrous spring and summer flooding constitutes the new normal in much of China, where a prolonged multi-month heat wave threatens to reduce rice, cotton and corn crops substantially, creating conditions of food insecurity for many millions of people.
If you're an American and you're worried about the impact of extreme weather events in your home town, you may think that even if insurance companies are exiting your area, as they are in Louisiana, Arkansas, Colorado, North Carolina, California, Oklahoma, Florida, Arizona and Texas, then the federal government will have your back if your home is destroyed or if you suddenly find yourself a climate refugee.
You'd better think again. The US spends trillions of dollars for unending wars but there's not much money available for disaster relief in the dawning of the era of uncontrolled and uncontrollable climate change.
The flag of the United States' Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is now denying requests for disaster aid, according to an article in Fortune magazine.
A FEMA official gave the Fortune reporter some advice for worried Americans -- "Practice self-reliance. If you are waiting for the federal government to help, lower those expectations."
FEMA warned lawmakers that "the federal government likely will run out of money to cover disasters at the peak of hurricane season," reports Scientific American magazine.
The Scientific American article explains that "For five weeks, FEMA stopped approving new long-term rebuilding projects; cut off funding for projects that were underway; and spent money only on emergency disaster needs such as rescuing stranded people, opening shelters, and giving displaced households supplies and cash."
So, yeh, we get it.
Insurance will soon be unaffordable in coastal areas, in areas prone to wildfires, in middle America where tornados are common, and everywhere that 1 in 100 year rain events could cause flooding, and the Federal government probably won't come to your assistance.
All this in a rapidly warming world with rapidly increasing carbon emissions that has just barely breached the 1.5º C increase in global temperatures threshold defined by the Paris Climate Accords as a red line for global civilization.
The period from February 2023 to January 2024 reached 1.52C of warming,
according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service.
If current trends in carbon emissions continue as scientists forecast, the Earth is set to return to a much more tropical climate regime featuring widespread commonly occurring extreme weather events, somewhat similar to what prevailed several million years ago, long before homo sapiens appeared on the planet.
And that momentous change is happening in a geological instant. Most living beings cannot hope to adjust to changes of that magnitude in such a short time frame.
We have to hope that maybe the more outspoken climate scientists' predictions of a 3-4º C increase in global temperatures over the rest of the century we've been highlighting in our Cosmic Weather Forecasts for the last four or five years are just too pessimistic.
Or maybe that hope is altogether misplaced.
If they were fully implemented, which they won't be, countries' current emissions pledges to limit climate change would still put the world on track to warm by nearly 3 degrees Celsius this century, according to a United Nations analysis entitled the Emissions Gap report, published in November 2023.
Climate Action Tracker's Thermometer indicates a strong probability that based on current policies
global warming will reach 2.7-3.4º by 2100 and continue to rise thereafter
"A 3-degree Celsius warming scenario would unleash a cascade of catastrophic consequences, including the displacement of over a billion people, the collapse of ice caps leading to uncontrollable sea level rise, widespread biodiversity loss, frequent and devastating extreme weather events, and the endangerment of critical carbon sinks like the Amazon and Congo Basin rainforests," according to Health Policy Watch.
And that bleak picture may be too optimistic.
"In under 50 years large swaths of northern South America, central Africa, India and northern Australia will become too hot to allow human life. And the acceleration of global warming suggests this deadline is being moved forward," according to a March 2024 article in BNE Inellinews..
Map of Uninhabitable Parts of Earth by 2070 on Current Path of Carbon Emissions,
courtesy of PNAS article by Xu et.al.
"Once these regions become too hot for human life an estimated 3 billion people will be forced to abandon their homes in the largest migration the world has ever seen, which will play out over the next three decades," Intellinews reports, citing a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
All this gloom and doom contradicts the continuous happy talk we've heard again and again over the last decade insisting that Paris Climate Summit goals for carbon reduction can be met with existing commitments and newly emerging green technologies, and global warming can be kept to 1.5ºC if we just reach the holy grail of NetZero by 2050.
Now it's starting to look like those goals are out of reach.
But that was actually predictable if you looked deeper than the headlines and the trending posts on social media.
Because by then the current Polycrisis besetting our Global Hydrocarbon Civilization was beginning to come into sharp focus for scientists at Stanford and elsewhere around the globe.
Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere (MAHB) Diagram of the 21st Century Polycrisis
As far back as 2015 an article published by Stanford University's Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere (MAHB) engaged in some fearless truth telling.
“Among many climate scientists, gloom has set in," the MAHB reported. "Things are worse than we think, but they can’t really talk about it … Climate scientists have been so distracted and intimidated by the relentless campaign against them that they tend to avoid any statements that might get them labelled alarmists, instead retreating into a world of charts and data.“
On the other hand, some courageous scientists have gathered together in a group called Scientist Rebellion to stage nonviolent protests in defense of our beleaguered ecosystems.
NASA Scientist Peter Kalmus, and other members of Scientist Rebellion, chained themselves to a JP Morgan Chase Bank building in Los Angeles in 2022 to protest the bank's many fossil fuel company investments and loans.
NASA scientist Peter Kalmus member of Scientist Rebellion
Kalmus delivered a tearful protest speech that went viral on social media, saying, “We’re going to lose everything. And we’re not joking, we’re not lying, we’re not exaggerating.”
The scientists are not alone in their concern about climate change.
62% of Americans "believe it’s likely that climate change is causing more extreme weather, including heat waves and droughts in summer, including 37% who think it’s Very Likely," according to a July 2024 Rasmussen Poll.
67% of those surveyed say that they trust what scientists say about the environment, at least a moderate amount, according to a Climate Insights 2024 Report.
Oddly enough, despite the fact Americans see videos of extreme weather events around the world every day on social media; despite the fact that the majority of Americans think this summer's extreme weather is caused by climate change; and despite the fact that a majority of Americans believe scientists who are sounding the alarm, a mere 21% of Americans believe that climate change is personally important to them, according to the Climate Insights 2024 Report.
Perhaps that's why politicians and corporate leaders feel free to peddle the myth of climate resilience while the world floods and burns.
"Ecologists first used resilience in the 1970s to describe the capacity of non-human living systems to adapt to danger or disaster," explains David Introcaso, Ph.D., a health care research and policy consultant, on UnDark. "The concept has since become adulterated."
"The federal government defines it simply as the ability to adapt to changing conditions and prepare for, withstand, and rapidly recover from disruptions," Introcaso says.
"Resilience now assumes the ability of organizations, communities, and individuals to quickly return to business or life as usual after calamity. Resilience encourages the growth of a culture of preparedness because a future defined by endless cycles of disaster and recovery requires continual adaptation," says Introcaso.
"The inherent problem with resilience is that — as Brad Evans and Julian Reid, Sarah Bracke, and others explained more than a decade ago — it’s not a solution but rather a cause. Resilience thinking assumes danger or disaster is endemic, a fait accompli," charges Introcaso.
Minorities who live in climate sacrifice zones and middle to lower income people who cannot afford whole house generators, hurricane proof windows and roofs, whole house air purification systems, ultra-expensive home insurance premiums, and other must-have climate resilience items, will simply be out of luck in a world where resilience is the gold standard of climate change mitigation.
Click the link to see Inside the Most Expensive Billionaire Bunkers on YouTube
Resilience is impossible for humanity as a whole.
Billions will be sacrificed so global elites can continue to accumulate staggering levels of wealth and build their billionaire bunkers.
What happened in New Orleans after Katrina proves the point.
Resilience and rebuilding were for the prosperous white folks who lived Uptown.
African Americans were bused out of New Orleans en masse, many never to return.
CenterPoint's advice to Houstonians that they should buy whole house generators provides further proof.
Resilience is a strategy for the wealthy.
If we choose to change the system, we can do better.
But ultimately, there is only one way for us to survive and thrive as a species in the coming centuries, and that is for us to set aside our differences, open our hearts, act with compassion, and treat all sentient beings as our brothers and sisters.
7 Chakras, by Peter Weltevrede
Peter Weltevrede, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
What is needed now is a revolution -- of human consciousness!
Nothing less will do!
Now is the time for all of us to make a collective, determined effort to heal the dark energy composing the subconscious death wish that currently structures our collective and individual human behavior patterns.
Now is the time to for us all to engage in meditation, prayer, ritual, crystal healing, Reiki and other forms of subtle energy work with the collective intent that humanity receive healing, grace, and guidance from Source, and from all our Guides and Teachers.
Together let us make it our intent this Full Moon week to raise the energy of the collective consciousness from the lower chakra energies that resonate with primitive notions such as the "survival of the fittest" to the higher chakra energies of Unity consciousness, compassion and respect for all living beings.
Jane and I will join you in the ethers!
Capricorn Blue Moon, Cancer Solar Festival July 2024 Cosmic Weather Forecast
This week, as I doomscroll through my Twitter feed viewing videos of climate disasters around the world, when I pop in to 30 different news websites every morning, and even when I watch TV, I keep asking Jane facetiously "Why does everything have to be so scaaary?"
If you've see the new season of Amazon's darkly satirical send-up of super hero franchises, The Boys, you know what I mean!
The New Yorker thinks it's scary too!
Along with its biting satire of the current American political landscape, it's full of scenes that get up in your face with close-ups of the most grotesque spewing of blood, vomit, feces, intestines and body parts ever on the tube, along with incredibly innovative sexual perversions that make de Sade seem like a girl scout.
In the real world, there are a lot of scary happenings: extreme weather, escalating wars in Europe and the Middle East, and apocalyptic rhetoric emanating from both Republicans and Democrats as we approach the November Presidential elections.
Speaking of the US elections, We have been saying that one or both Presidential candidates may not make it to election day.
As of this writing many Democratic party insiders and wealthy donors are keen to see Joe Biden resign and replace him with a candidate of their choosing, without consulting voters at all.
This would negate the votes cast in Democratic primary elections in 2024.
But hey, recalcitrant voters might turn out to be the biggest impediment to the Democratic Party victory so essential to preserving democracy in America.
As for Republican candidate Donald Trump, he narrowly escaped having his head blown off a week ago.
Last Saturday, in the run up to the Monday, July 15th Mars/Uranus/Algol conjunction in Taurus, an assassin shot at Former President Donald Trump, killed a bystander and wounded several others.
Trump wasn’t killed only because he happened to turn his head at the right moment to look at a chart extolling his accomplishments at the border.
Medusa by Caravaggio, 1597, Galleria degli Uffizi
.jpg){kind=link}
Mars/Uranus conjunctions signify electrifying, sudden, radical, often violent scenarios of all kinds in mundane astrology.
Algol is an extremely hot variable bluish-white star in the constellation of Perseus, also known as the Head of the Demon, a reference to the severed head of the Gorgon Medusa, who was slain by the Greek hero.
Needless to say, the conjunction of Algol with Mars/Uranus is one of the most inauspicious aspects imaginable. In the later part of Taurus, this triple conjunction squared Donald Trump's Mars in Leo, indicating the potential for violence on that day.
He was very lucky or very blessed that he was not killed by a shot to the head, like the Medusa.
Reflecting on the week's events, it feels like the end of the world, so how do we get through that and out the other side where the new awaits us?
We’re in the Tower and if we survive with the proper guidance from our future selves, we can travel a path of synchronicities and meaningful coincidences that will lead us out of the pitch black darkness and into the Shining Star light.
As we shall see, the Blue Capricorn Full Moon, the second Capricorn Full Moon in two months, gives us grounds for concern, but also offers hope that we can progress on our path of Spirit during the next lunar cycle and beyond.
On Sunday July 21st, at 6:17 AM EDT the Full Moon occurs at 29°08’ Capricorn, opposed by the Sun at 29°08’ Cancer, as we arrive at the portal which will usher in the season of Leo the Lion.
The Mars/Uranus conjunction will still be activated, but the Sun in Cancer will be sextile both Mars and Uranus, indicating the potential to harness the incendiary Mars/Uranus energy for constructive purposes in areas of our life where we are stuck or where we feel we are being oppressed.
Constellation of Cancer, Johannes Hevelius , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Moon in Capricorn will be trine Mars and Uranus, and this energy signature can empower us to exercise leadership qualities in areas of emotional life where we seek freedom and long for new emotional horizons.
Sun will oppose Pluto in Aquarius and the Moon will conjunct Pluto indicating the potential for grandiose, self-assertive behavior combined with a deep desire for complete inner transformation.
This Sun/Pluto opposition can also indicate an obsessive quest for security through aggressive, even dictatorial action that is framed as a defense of the underdog.
These stellar energies activated just during and after the Republican National Convention, were apparent as Presidential Nominee Donald Trump presented himself as a benevolent dictator who can guarantee voters national security and increased equity in a time of unparalleled social and economic inequality.
During Sunday's Full Moon, the Sun in the last degree of Cancer will be trine Neptune in the last degree of Pisces, indicating a flowing energy that supports compassionate spiritual practices designed to open the heart center and enable us to access the transpersonal realms of consciousness, so that we may experience Unity with the web of life we inhabit.
Creativity is enhanced with this Sun/Neptune Trine in water signs, so artists, writers, musicians and performers can utilize these energies to manifest their most elevated dreams and visions.
The Moon in the last degree of Capricorn is in a strong flowing sextile with Neptune in Pisces, indicating the potential for psychic awareness that brings us intuitive guidance about every aspect of our lives.
Enjoyment of the creative arts is enhanced during this period of time.
Moon and Stars, Photo by Josh Miller on Unsplash
The Moon/Neptune sexitle signifies a tendency to be overly idealistic in regard to our life choices, which can result in an inability to appreciate the somewhat flawed position in life we occupy. We may be dissatisfied with our mates, our families, our jobs, or our homes, and realize later that we were being hypercritical in our search for perfection where none can be found.
With Mars in the first degree of Gemini trine Pluto in the first degree of Aquarius, we are able to marshal all the power residing in the collective unconscious in pursuit of our highest material and spiritual goals.
If you have been struggling during recent times, the Mars/Pluto trine indicates you may finally be able to begin to manifest outcomes and desires that you've held in your mind's eye for quite some time.
This is a super energized Full Moon and if we can avoid being megalomaniac or nitpicky we can utilize this energy to jumpstart a new chapter in our lives, to rewrite our role in life, and to connect with intuitive guidance and creative impulses that will empower us in unexpected ways.
As the new lunar cycle unfolds, Jupiter in Gemini squares Saturn in Pisces on August 19th, and a much longer and much more powerful outer planet cycle begins to affect the collective consciousness.
Jupiter will make a series of squares with Saturn starting at that time and ending in June 2025, and this will be a marked contrast to the more harmonious outer planet aspects we've seen recently.
Jupiter and Saturn, courtesy NASA
For financial markets, this can be a time when successful investment strategies are revealed to be based on faulty assumptions. The Jupiterian impulse to take on increased risk in pursuit of outsized rewards in financial markets will collide with Saturn in Pisces' tendency to dissolve existing structures and thwart all expansive impulses.
Will the AI bubble burst?
Will the Fed fail to deliver the rate cuts Wall Street expects in the near future?
There are many possible scenarios that could result in market downturns that will significantly impact investors over the next year while these Jupiter/Saturn squares unfold.
If you are presented with fast changing financial scenarios during this time, don't hesitate to make needed adjustments in your portfolio and your spending habits.
For politicians, a longstanding sequence of optimistic assumptions, believable narratives and sly spin could suddenly coalesce into an Emperor's New Clothes moment when those assumptions and successfully spun narratives are revealed to be a collage of hubris, misdirection, miscalculation, and sheer falsehood.
Their popularity could suffer as a result.
The Emperor's New Clothes, Video on YouTube
But, despite President Biden's disastrous Emperor's New Clothes debate meltdown and the subsequent debacle triggered by the Democratic Party's famous circular firing squad, and despite Ex-President Trump's reach for heroic martyrdom in the wake of the assassination attempt, the more reliable polls in key swing states show that very little has changed in the Presidential race.
Logically, you would think that Biden's incoherence, the Democratic party's self-destructive orgy of recriminations, and Trump's miraculous survival of the Pennsylvania assassination attempt would result in a massive Republican lead, but it appears that it would take a truly Earth-shaking event to move the poll numbers significantly.
“As a person who built their reputation on predicting the political future I hope you can appreciate the importance of my next statement: I have no idea what in the hell is about to happen!!!," says Rachel Bitecofer in The Cycle. "I can see the next 4 months with stark clarity. Like the elections preceding it, 2024 will come down to about 100,000 votes in 6 or 7 swing states. Though horserace coverage will continue to breathlessly obsess over every new poll, quality or not, the truth is this race was a toss up 4 months ago, it’s a toss up now, and it’ll be a toss up in November.”
So, it's a long time until Election Day, and the race is still a toss-up. To me that demonstrates structural Republican weakness in an environment where they seem to have many advantages.
Unusual and not-so-unusual 2024 Election scenarios
The probability of each outcome below, according to our simulations.
| Biden wins an Electoral College landslide (350+ electoral votes) | 22 out of 100 |
| Trump wins an Electoral College landslide (350+ electoral votes) | 12 out of 100 |
| Biden wins the Electoral College with <350 electoral votes | 27 out of 100 |
| Trump wins the Electoral College with <350 electoral votes | 36 out of 100 |
| Biden wins the national popular vote | 63 out of 100 |
| Trump wins the national popular vote | 37 out of 100 |
| Biden wins a majority of the national popular vote | 30 out of 100 |
| Trump wins a majority of the national popular vote | 12 out of 100 |
| Biden wins the national popular vote by 10+ percentage points | 14 out of 100 |
| Trump wins the national popular vote by 10+ percentage points | 4 out of 100 |
| Biden wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College | 13 out of 100 |
| Trump wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College | <1 out of 100 |
| No candidate wins a majority of Electoral College votes | <1 out of 100 |
| Every state votes for the same candidate that it did in 2020 | <1 out of 100 |
| Election is decided by a recount (winner's margin is <0.5% in a decisive state) | 6 out of 100 |
| Election is decided by a smaller margin than the vote share for third-party candidates | 60 out of 100 |
| Biden wins at least one state he didn't win in 2020 | 51 out of 100 |
| Trump wins at least one state he didn't win in 2020 | 80 out of 100 |
Who Is Favored To Win The 2024 Presidential Election?
Courtesy 538.com
As I have mentioned previously, the stars indicate that both parties are set to underperform in this election. It's an open question if both candidates make it through the election.
I fearlessly predict that whoever wins will be sorry they did before their term of office is over.
For individuals, the succession of Jupiter/Saturn Squares will create restlessness and a feeling of persistent, nagging unresolved tension in regard to our plans, our goals, our mental maps of the world, our group affiliations, and even our moral and ethical orientation.
It is clear that tremendous changes are taking place, and that it is necessary to adjust our own individual paths to more closely harmonize with newly evolving social, environmental, political and economic conditions.
In this case, it's usually best to take a breath, skip a beat and just settle in with the uncomfortable reality of inevitable change. If you can stay calm, centered, grounded, focused and attentive, you will certainly obtain the intuitive guidance you need to make all the needed adjustments.
Jane and I send you love and light, and we affirm that we all receive the grace and guidance we require to achieve our loftiest material and spiritual goals!
Jane and Curtis Selfie, Reynolda Gardens, Wakeforest University, Winston Salem, NC
Be strong. Stay loving. Keep up the good work.
And always remember what Terence McKenna said, "The apocalypse is not something which is coming. The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet and it’s only because we live within a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse.”
Be grateful. Jane and I certainly give thanks each and every day. We are especially grateful for our Satya Center community! Thanks to each and every one of you!
Our task, as human beings with a conscious awareness of the climate catastrophe, is to take responsibility for our part in causing this global transformation, to witness this transformation as it unfolds, and perhaps to take some small steps to mitigate the vast, unfathomable suffering unleashed upon the myriads of sentient beings now alive on planet Earth.
Meditation Moment: The Earthlings Arrived Unannounced, by Matthew Olzmann
The Earthlings arrived unannounced, entered
without knocking, removed their shoes
and began clipping their toenails.
They let the clippings fall wherever.
They sighed loudly as if inconvenienced.
We were patient. We knew our guests
were in an unfamiliar environment; they needed
time to adjust. For dinner, we prepared
turkey meatloaf with a side of cauliflower.
This is too dry, they said.
This is not like what our mothers made.
We wanted to offer a tour of our world,
demonstrate how we freed ourselves
from the prisons of linear time.
But the Earthlings were already spelunking
our closets, prying tools
from their containers and holding them
to the light. What’s this? they demanded.
What’s this? What’s this? And what’s this?
That’s a Quantum Annihilator; put that down.
That’s a Particle Grinder; please put that down.
We could show you how to heal the sick, we said.
We could help you feed every nation, commune
with the all-seeing sentient energy that palpitates
through all known forms of matter.
Nah! they said. Teach us to vaporize a mountain!
Teach us to turn the moon into revenue!
Then the Earthlings
left a faucet running and flooded our basement. 
Matthew Olzmann is the author of Constellation Route (Alice James Books, 2022) and Contradictions in the Design (Alice James Books, 2016), among other titles. The recipient of fellowships from the Kresge Arts Foundation, Kundiman, and other organizations, he teaches at Dartmouth College and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.