We have a Responsibility to Protect the Innocent…
Recovering we are. More rain is in the forecast for Vermont. Our worry is not over.
Travel has been limited. Cautious. Roads lined with orange flags signaling a single lane or workers ahead. Road closures are many. Electrical trucks traveling by the threes. Our landscape has changed. Our planet has changed…
I delivered a painting just 50 minutes north yesterday. Route 89 was easy, and we were meeting just off the exit. Small talk but all conversation led back to our heartbreak over the impact of the “thousand year” rainstorm. We shared a mutual worry for our neighbors and local businesses that sustain our remote communities.
Nearby a road had washed away. An explosion of pavement was all that was left. One of how many I wondered. Homes have been destroyed. A railroad bridge, gone. Businesses scrambling to salvage. Farmers with crops smothered by flooding waters. Boil water orders in place. Rescue missions continue. Our sister news station in Boston had loaned their helicopter to cover the damage. The images took my breath away. Our Green State now blanketed in brown water.
I drove down my street early this morning. An errand in neighboring NH. Fields ponded with standing water. I passed a neighboring house with many expansive pastures all outlined by white fences yet house no livestock. In a far pasture by a receding pool of water lay an animal. A deer soaked and still. Saturated. Dead. My eyes filled as this catastrophe is also tragic. I couldn’t help but wonder about the impact of global warming on the innocent. The wildlife that freely roam the Vermont hills and mountains. Are they adapting to the warming planet or dying because of it?
“The fact is that no species has ever had such wholesale control over everything on Earth, living or dead, as we now have. That lays upon us, whether we like it or not, an awesome responsibility. In our hands now lies not only our own future, but that of all other living creatures with whom we share the Earth.” –David Attenborough
