Art isn't art if it doesn't make you work a bit. Here, the photograph's darkness works against recognition--if you want to understand what's here (and why the NY Times considered it one of the best photographs of 2023), you have to look closely. The little lights in the darkness are from something akin to old fashioned mining lamps, the kind miners wore on their heads (maybe they still do).
But we're not in a mine. This is open air, a place I could not have recognized if I hadn't read the caption. It's New Mexico, an onion field, at night. What's going on here is harvest. Farm workers are working at night to get the crop in. Why would they do such a thing? Because the heat of a July day is too intense for man or beast or onion.
Just yesterday, what loads of people felt was declared "official." CNN said it this way: "Global warming in 2023 hit 1.48 degrees Celsius, data published Tuesday shows, as the hottest year on record propelled the world just hundredths of a degree away from a critical climate threshold."
It's one thing to call 2023 the hottest year on record. There are plenty of hot-blooded Lone Star State conservatives who'd agree, but they'd walk out of the room if the phrase "climate change" arose, because when that phrase is mentioned you can just about smell a tree-hugger, someone who's got their eyes on my oil wells.
Odd thing happened in 2023, President Biden slowly and even a little surreptitiously lifted the lid on oil production, a move that, if widely publicized, would have put him at odds with a goodly chunk of his constituency--the tree huggers. Climate change runs on fuel oil, but the public seemed fixated on the believing the nation's was suffering a lousy economy--even if we weren't.
How did people get the idea that the economy was lousy? Easy. Just about every last American drives past a gas station once a day, and there in flashy, big letters was the story. It didn't take a genius to remember gas prices at about $2 a gallon during the Trump era. For most of Biden's term, those prices were about $3.50. And there's the numbers on your local Sinclair, in your face.
My guess is, in order to bring down those big prices, Biden turned on U. S. pumps again, thereby lowering prices (they're now $2.75 or so), which looks tons better on the nation's millions of gas stations, thereby making it harder to argue that the economy is tanking.
But, the open wells bring more carbon into the air. Hence, more heat. And just yesterday, those in the know made it clear that what you might have felt last summer--or even throughout the winter so far--was 2023 was the warmest/hottest year on record.
Climate change. Texas says no, but nobody had it worse last summer than Texas.
I am not as green as most of my friends, largely because I don't know as much as most of them. So I listen, and stand affirmatively with the tree huggers.
New Mexico farm workers harvesting onions in the middle of the night says it better than any story could--in 2023, more people shed more sweat than they normally do. Call it what you want, but it's hard to avoid those two dirty words--"global warming."
My guess is, in order to bring down those big prices, Biden turned on U. S. pumps again, thereby lowering prices (they're now $2.75 or so), which looks tons better on the nation's millions of gas stations, thereby making it harder to argue that the economy is tanking.
But, the open wells bring more carbon into the air. Hence, more heat. And just yesterday, those in the know made it clear that what you might have felt last summer--or even throughout the winter so far--was 2023 was the warmest/hottest year on record.
Climate change. Texas says no, but nobody had it worse last summer than Texas.
I am not as green as most of my friends, largely because I don't know as much as most of them. So I listen, and stand affirmatively with the tree huggers.
New Mexico farm workers harvesting onions in the middle of the night says it better than any story could--in 2023, more people shed more sweat than they normally do. Call it what you want, but it's hard to avoid those two dirty words--"global warming."
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