{"id":1317681,"date":"2020-01-14T21:48:01","date_gmt":"2020-01-15T04:48:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/micek-column-talking-to-my-daughter-about-war-and-fires\/"},"modified":"2020-01-14T21:48:01","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T04:48:01","slug":"micek-column-talking-to-my-daughter-about-war-and-fires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/micek-column-talking-to-my-daughter-about-war-and-fires\/","title":{"rendered":"Micek column: Talking to my daughter about war and fires"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We were on the way to ballet rehearsal. It\u2019s my favorite 30 minutes of the day. It\u2019s a chance to break away from work, and to touch base with my only child. She\u2019s 14 now. And it won\u2019t be long before she\u2019s driving herself. I treasure these moments.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo,\u201d I asked her. \u201cHow was school today?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were arguing about whether we\u2019re more likely to die from World War III or climate change,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Her response stopped me cold, but I guess I shouldn\u2019t have been surprised.<\/p>\n

With the dogs of war straining at the leash, the missiles flying in Iran, and our bellicose and unstable commander-in-chief lurching from one scarcely believable justification to the next, the prospect of another American forever war on the other side of the globe didn\u2019t seem all that far-fetched.<\/p>\n

First up, I disabused her of the notion that any of her classmates might be drafted, reassuring her that there was no such movement afoot on Capitol Hill. Nor would there likely ever be one. The American military remains an all-volunteer force comprised not of the nation\u2019s elite, but of the sons and daughters of Main Street America. Trump\u2019s voters. Some of my daughter\u2019s classmates \u2014 if they ever heed the call to serve \u2014 may well be among them.<\/p>\n

She seemed relieved at that news. Talking to her about the threat of climate change was another matter entirely.<\/p>\n

It seemed to me there were decades remaining before the Earth might ever be rendered uninhabitable because of climate change, I offered. Which didn\u2019t mean that we shouldn\u2019t do all we can right now, I added.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Australia is burning,\u201d she countered, her brown eyes wide with alarm, anger creeping into the edges of her voice.<\/p>\n

She had me there. I\u2019d seen the photos of scorched koalas and dead kangaroos. The endless walls of flame. It\u2019s difficult to find the words to describe the scale, and the scope, of the ecological and human catastrophe that\u2019s unfolding on the other side of the world.<\/p>\n

As of this writing, NPR was reporting that a hellish \u201cmegafire\u201d comprising an unfathomable 1.5 million acres, an area three times larger than any known brush fire in California, had taken shape in New South Wales and Victoria, the country\u2019s most populous states.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s on top of the 135 bushfires in southeastern Australia that have left at least 26 people dead, killed more than 1 billion animals and damaged or destroyed nearly 3,000 homes.<\/p>\n

Writing in the New York Times, columnist Paul Krugman observed that, in a more rational time, the fires, which have been partially a result of climate change, \u201cwould have represented a turning point.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter all, it\u2019s exactly the kind of catastrophe climate scientists long warned us to expect if we didn\u2019t take action to limit greenhouse gas emissions,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIn fact, a 2008 report commissioned by the Australian government predicted that global warming would cause the nation\u2019s fire seasons to begin earlier, end later, and be more intense \u2014 starting around 2020.\u201d<\/p>\n

And all this got me to thinking about the world that we\u2019re bequeathing to my daughter and her classmates.<\/p>\n

While much is better about the planet, there\u2019s still much to be concerned about. And the threat of an uninhabitable globe should lead us to a united search for solutions, not juvenile taunts hurled at a teenager by one of the most powerful people on Earth. Even one dead child in an elementary school classroom should motivate us to find ways to reduce violence, not watch hopelessly as more bodies pile up.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still firm in my belief that it\u2019s not too late for us to shrug off all that divides us, and to work together to fight these existential threats.<\/p>\n

But that means having a nation that engages with the global community not denigrates it; one that rejects the false choice that less gun violence somehow means fewer rights; and one that doesn\u2019t stare each over the trenches, each irrevocably convinced that its way is the only way.<\/p>\n

My daughter \u2014 and all our children \u2014 deserve far better answers than the ones we\u2019ve been giving them.<\/p>\n

Email John L. Micek at jmicek@penncapital-star.com<\/a> and follow him on Twitter @ByJohnLMicek.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We were on the way to ballet rehearsal. It\u2019s my favorite 30 minutes of the day. It\u2019s a chance to break away from work, and to touch base with my only child. She\u2019s 14 now. And it won\u2019t be long before she\u2019s driving herself. I treasure these moments. \u201cSo,\u201d I asked her. \u201cHow was school […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1317681","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-09 21:51:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1317681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1317681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1317681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1317681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}