Intoxicating Emissions

Drunken Trees

• strange, I don’t recall their being Svedka deposits discovered in the subarctic
• but we have these drunken trees nonetheless
• calling a tree drunk simply means that it is growing in a non-vertical fashion
• growing in an irregular alignment
• what is really causing this strange phenomenon is global warming
• green house gas rather than alcohol is the poison that causes this arboreal tipsiness
• as a result of steadily increasing global temperatures
• the permafrost (the layer of soil that remains frozen year round in polar regions like the Arctic and Antarctic)
• is beginning to melt

• in case you haven’t been keeping score
• global temperatures have increased by about 1.5 degrees Celsius over the course of the last hundred years
• and the effects of this increase are rearing their ugly heads in the higher altitudes
• when permafrost melts
• it causes erosion
• and without proper soil support, the trees can no longer stand up straight
• so across forests in places like Alaska and Finland
• trees are leaning at all sorts of odd angles
• and this does not only affect trees
• melting permafrost can cause damage to human infrastructure
• the shifting earth can create cracks in pavement, break pipes, and compromise the safety of housing foundations

Trees tilt and tumble and fall into lakes made by the mass melting and so do human homes. Global warming poses risks to all creatures on this planet. Even though you may not be able to see its effects in your own back yard, that does not make them any less real. If we wait for the visible effects to migrate to the lower 48 our window for impact reductive action will already have passed.