The Metamorphosis Files

Short of a comet or asteroid impact, what could actually kill we humans off, as a species? Certainly slow climate change won’t do that. Or could it? No, we're too smart. We’ll adapt, even if seas rise, deserts form, and giant storms lash us harder.

    My wife Mil and I walked out along the bog this past autumn. A shaft of light lit up an incandescent cloud of gnats, hovering in what looked like mindless flight above the orangish dirt of the path.
    "Once I was sitting in the Duke Gardens by myself, and I witnessed a metaorganism," I said to her.
She urged me to continue, so I did. "Just like that cloud there, they were just flying around. But then they grouped themselves, within about a second, into three perfect hovering columns." I gestured with my hands. "About three feet tall and ten inches wide. Like perfect geometric cylinders."

Watching the Tom Foley escapade unravel the Republicans as their stitchwork elsewhere submerges Iraq under bloody waves of civil war is bad enough. Worse, ultimately, as harbingers go, my beloved New Hampshire autumn feels tropical this year. It seems the entire world just can’t cool off. The Dust Bowl of the Tens (remember the Dust Bowl of the Thirties?) is tightening its climatological grip on America’s breadbasket. Global Warming. Relatives of mine just moved to Arizona. I don’t know what to think. If glaciers worldwide are melting, and snow pack is dwindling just about everywhere, the Sierra’s can’t be far behind. The Canadians, who have the largest supply of good fresh water in the world, are already passing laws preventing the US from getting any of it.