A Blog of Flashbacks

Climate Defense Is National Defense

February 2025

Climate Defense is national defense, and national defense is national security. This has now become an urgent point for all countries to address. All countries, especially the industrialized ones, must address this in today’s world. Not tomorrow’s world, but today’s. Tomorrow may well be too late.

The recent Palisades and Eaton fires in California destroyed by the Eaton fire: 6,500. The Palisades fire: 4,000. Those numbers are “at least”. As I look at the pictures, they remind me of photos of World War II, present-day Ukraine, or Gaza. The difference is that no country attacked Los Angeles. No country attacked Asheville, North Carolina. If one had, we would now have a call to arms.

We have a call to arms.

It’s not the call we are used to. It’s not rifle fire, a machine gun, bomb, drone, or missile. It’s a call to keep us from global suicide by drought, flood, heat, increasing and increasingly strong storms. It seems we don’t know how to respond to it.

With today’s call we must arm ourselves against global warming, climate change, call it what you will. It’s the same thing. We are at war, a war against a warming climate. It started with the nineteenth century Industrial Revolution. We thought that revolution spoke to the benefit of human life. Now, almost 200 years later, instead of farming by hand, we farm with machines. Instead of weaving and knitting at home, we mass-produce cloth by machines. Instead of cooking soup or stews at home, we buy them in plastic wraps or containers at the supermarket.

Therein lies the problem. This not a war fought with tanks, missiles, drones, planes and ships. This will be a war fought with admission of the problem using the skills of scientists, with NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), universities, and publicly and privately funded research projects. In May 2024, Florida’s governor DeSantis signed a bill that deleted most mentions of climate change from state law. I guess he and the Florida legislators thought that would stop climate change. It will not.

The rise in ocean levels means that Floridians now dig their heads in their coastal sand and do not see the water rising. It means they fail to see beaches where ocean waves have washed away light-colored sand and replaced it with the black rocks that lay beneath. How much more sand needs to wash away? How many hurricanes do they need? How many more homes need not to be able to get insurance?

Eight years ago, I drove with a friend who lives in Florida. We drove through water a foot deep as the sea rises to meet the green lawns of the suburban homes on the other side of the road. She acted as if it were normal. I thought it an example of homes in danger. They’re not in danger today or tomorrow, but in ten years? Fifty years?

Do we even know we are at war? With whom? Not with China or Russia, Madagascar, or the Marshall Islands. We are at war with The Climate. There will be no negotiations. There will be no peace treaty. The climate is not going to negotiate. It’s not a question if we give you this, will you give us that. There’s no discussion of the way the table is arranged for talks because there will be no talks. We are like the Russians during World War I who fought with cavalry units against an army of tanks. Imagine charging with your sword high against a tank that can and will blow you and your horse and all the troops you lead to pieces. Again, there will be no negotiations. Climate is not going to say if you do this, then we will concede and withdraw the rise of ocean levels. Climate is not going to say if you do this, then we will concede and lower temperatures. No, we are the ones who must concede. We must act. We must act now.

How many hurricanes and floods does it take for people to realize their homes and lives are in danger? How many fires does it take for people to realize their homes and lives are in danger? I hear people say they’ll be dead before their lifestyle is destroyed. Do they care nothing about their children? Their grandchildren? How much does it take for us to realize that we have less to offer our grandchildren? How do we answer these young adults when they ask what we did to make their lives safer to live.

I’ve thought about what I would save from my house if it were close to flood, fire, earthquake, tornado and I had time to escape. The people in it. The painting of my great-great grandmother, who was the granddaughter of two of this country’s founders. The handsewn quilt with its octagonal star my grandmother made. My great-grandfather’s watch chain, the camel pendant my husband brought me back from Desert Storm, and the earrings I bought in Edinburgh. If I had time and room, I’d save a painting of me and two drawings my artist first husband did. I’d probably grab some strange thing like one of my teapots, a teacup, and tea—so replaceable. Wise would be to save my computer and iPad and as many notebooks of charts of inner behaviors (thoughts, feelings, and urges) as I could grab.

Most important, most valuable, though, are my husband, son, his partner, my grandchildren. Most important is my planet.

Pete Seeger wrote a song about a woman who chained herself to a fence at a nuclear power plant. When asked why she did it, she gave a clear answer. Her parents lived in Germany during World War II. After the war, they immigrated to the US. People asked them what they did to protest the Nazis. They had to answer “Nothing.” She did not want to tell her children and her grandchildren she did nothing to protest the use of nuclear power. What will I tell my grandchildren when they ask what I did to protest the increased use of fossil fuels and plastics that damage our climate and their futures?

I read that others say they saved the photo albums. What is more important—my photo albums or the forest of trees I now view on the mountains behind Juneau? Or the forest where I live in Gustavus? Or the stately Ponderosas of southeastern Oregon?

I think of the ocean, the desert, the land that supports the life of insects, fish, animals, people, birds…all the life forms that make this a healthy planet. Will we work to save and nurture all of them?

An Alaska sunset over the ocean

An Oregon forest

An Alaska forest

Part of my 2006 hiking trail

Campbell Lake, 2006 before the 2021 Bootleg Fire. Taken on my solo hike in the Fremont Winema National Forest, Oregon.

The area near Campbell Lake after the 2021 Bootleg fire. I’ve not been back to Campbell Lake since the fire, but I saw a picture of its forest burned to the water.