The soil bursts into flame,
mercury rising
through fevered trends
to bring another kind
of heat;
a frenzied force
that shoots
to maim and kill.
Collars itching with intent
as triggered fingers
expose fault lines
in how we choose to live –
degrees of harm
unduly falling
on those
already branded
by our febrile,
fatal touch.
This poem is inspired by recent research, which has found that warm days are contributing to gun violence surges across the United States.
As of 2020, firearms are the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in the United States of America, accounting for 77% of all homicides. Similarly, for every individual who dies from an assault-related firearm injury, another 2 individuals survive with injuries requiring emergency department care, resulting in substantial emotional, physical, and economic pain. Given the scope of this public health crisis, it is therefore vital to better understand the causes that lead to such violent incidences, including the impact that increasing temperatures brought about by a warming climate may be having.
In this new study, researchers found a consistent relationship between higher temperatures and higher risk of shootings in 100 of the United States’ most populated cities. The study used data from the Gun Violence Archive to analyse daily temperatures and more than 116,000 shootings from 2015 to 2020. Considering both seasonality and regional climate differences, the researchers found that almost 8,000 shootings were attributable to above-average temperatures, i.e., nearly 7% of all shootings that took place. The researchers postulate that this correlation between heat and gun violence is likely caused by a combination of two factors. Heat stress making people more likely to use aggression, and the fact that people are more likely to get out on warmer days and have more interactions, thereby creating more opportunities for conflict and violence. As climate change threatens to raise daily temperatures even more, these findings underscore the need for ongoing policies that both acclimate communities to heat and also mitigate the risk of heat-attributable gun violence.
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this is a depressing topic but a beautiful poem.
I wish you a Merry Christmas,
Rolf
Thanks Rolf,
And to you. 🙂
FOGSCAPE
“This human-induced climate change and war against Ukraine have direct connections and the same roots: they are fossil fuels and humanity’s dependence on them.” –Svitlana Krakovska, Ukrainian climatologist
The sky of April has collapsed / a bombed overpass
sodden cement-gray clouds have fallen onto the city
Now fog drifts are driven across below tower windows
tattering / moving slowly by like exhausted refugees
past the still skeletal birches and maples in the park
no birds / only the tuneless sound-slush of traffic
and the polyphonic hollow whine of distant machines
between blank staring cliffs of high-rise apartments
Elsewhere more northern fog is seared by detonations
rocket-shriek tearing the faces off cities like this one
and the wind-dragons wreathing the globe twist and flail
as slow heat stifles the air with bloated swags of vapor
Far below them cars slide to and fro in their routine tracks
like the lies we are still told by the Tar God’s priesthood
the lies of day by day pretending / as our days diminish
as the futures we were promised dissolve and boil away
Adam Cornford
There are the additional factors of economic inequity. If you have enough money to have housing and to afford air conditioning (and heat this time of year), you are less likely to encounter death on the streets. Climate change impacts all levels of society. We can make changes on the local level as well as the global level to create a more hopeful future and a more survivable present. There is a thin veneer of circumstance that separates us. We need to change our perspective to save our home planet and to save our own humanity.