Global Warming – Hard to Ignore

It’s the end of January and two months early the daffodils are about to bloom in my front yard. If I lived in Miami I might not be surprised, but here in the triangle of North Carolina those bulbs should not sprout so soon. It made me consider why the current President does not believe in global warming, which to my eyes is evident in my front yard. The man has always lived in New York City or in Miami. What could he possibly know about gardening? Well, he also has a house in New Jersey, the garden state, but I seriously doubt he has ever done any actual gardening.
When you live in a climate-controlled high rise of course it would be easy to scoff at “global warming” especially if any action to do anything about it might hurt you economically. But hurt us it all will. Daffodils coming up in January, perhaps to only be killed by fluctuating winter temps that are sure to come, are not a huge knock on the economy, unless you are a bulb importer. I am not sure it is worth my time or money to plant any more bulbs, which may or may not make it in a year. But most of our food comes from farmers who grow it and these wide swinging temperatures hurt the growing season.
Imagine you are a peach grower. If we have a long warm spell in January it causes your peach trees to bud. Then a cold snap comes, as it should in February and all the buds on your trees are killed. There is not enough time for that tree to recover and produce a full trees amount of buds, the necessary flowers to make fruit.
It might pay us to require all Presidents to do a stint as a farmer for one whole year so they can understand the connection between weather and livelihood. Being a farmer can be heart breaking because there are so many variables you cannot control. But having global warming deniers in power is a slap in the face.
Perhaps the President’s New York view of agriculture are the tulip beds on Park Ave. that are carefully replanted each fall with new and big tulip bulbs, carefully watered, fertilized and tended to ensure perfection and paid for by The Fund For Park Ave. Sorry Mr. President, that million dollars spent every year on 32 blocks of park strip is not the way most of America grows things. Most of us are dependent on the real weather, that means temperature and rain. Maybe if the sea levels rise up high enough to engulf Mar-a-lago you will believe that we should listen to actual scientists.