October 31, 2022 10:39 AM UTC

BOO! Climate Change is Coming for Your Pumpkin Pie

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• by: PKolbenschlag

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Halloween week has brought lots of scary news for the climate. Two new reports show that the climate emergency is here, the pollution driving it and its impacts are both growing rapidly, and nations all across the world are failing badly to meet the goals necessary to avert worsening disaster, which they themselves set only a few years ago.

A raft of other recent studies and reports has shown that the planet’s vital ecological and other life-sustaining systems may be nearing critical “tipping points” beyond which climate catastrophes spiral even further out of control – shifting ocean currents, plunging some regions into deep freezes and turning others into deserts, dooming millions of species, and pushing parts of the globe past human habitability.

Sure, that all sounds scary you may think. But consider this: Climate change is also coming for your pumpkin pie.  

Pumpkins are a type of winter squash that like to be grown at between 75 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Rising temperatures could result in less production, threatening holiday tables, farmers’ businesses, and raising more alarms with another victim prey to climate change.

And as to all those spices to make pumpkin pie, faddish and too ubiquitous this season each year, they are not to be taken trivially.

All are important commodities deeply rooted in global cultures, and foundational to the world’s varied cuisines. The nutmeg, allspice, ginger, and cinnamon: spices are also facing the brunt of climate change.  

Global heating is already affecting us and impacts will only grow: From the foods we eat, to our time outdoors and soon to all aspects of our lives. Science is unequivocal that to prevent the effects of climate change from getting ever and much worse, we must end our use of fossil-fuels, the burning of which is driving this frightshow of an emergency. 

Another detailed study shows that current technologies and practices exist to slash emissions by 50% or more by the end of this decade. However, this reassuring news is hostage to the study’s nightmarish reveal that intentional disinformation pumped out by Big Oil and other “vested interests,” far worse than any made-up Hollywood villains, is strangling action. And this threatens a real planetary horror-show. So, pumpkin pie and 🎃 jack-o-lanterns, chocolate, and even weather changes impacting little treat-seeking goblins, are not the scariest climate impacts stalking their future. 

The impacts from climate change are, and will be, severe. Increasingly so with each moment of inaction. But for an added 😱 fright, consider the real possibility that U.S. politics may not act as boldly as needed, and more scary yet could stall or even move backward.

Nefariously animated zombie projects may soon be given new life, and vampire dirty power may get resurrected. Tormented schemes from centuries-past could soon appear, to once more haunt the West.  

Horror films are often just repurposed morality tales, and it is usually the choices of the protagonists that bring them to, or spare them from, a frightening end.

Climate change is here. The future if we do not quickly act and urgently to alter our course is truly terrifying.

But the worst parts of this horror-house future is still just a scary telling, a dark prophecy of what best science tells us will come without bold action now. And that’s not just a Halloween fright-tale. Election day is November 8th. Ballots have been mailed. Choose wisely.