Welcome to the Future -- Thoughts and Prayers for Those in Dorian's Path

Today weather.com reported "This is the strongest hurricane to ever go through the NW Bahamas, right now 180 miles an hour maximum sustained winds with gusts to up to 220 miles an hour." Democracy Now! has this Sept. 6 update.

In more bad news, according to Scott Sistek, KOMONews.com Meteorologist, "'The Blob' is back in the Pacific Ocean, but what does it mean?"

Dahr Jamail wrote this update on the global state of climate at truthout.org: "Alaska’s Sea Ice Completely Melted for First Time in Recorded History."

I read Jonathan Franzen's New Yorker article "What If We Stopped Pretending?" with interest. While I strongly disagree with his statement "In the long run, it probably makes no difference how badly we overshoot two degrees," I like his focus on individual and community preparation.  Look, every human life saved, every species saved in land, sea, and sky matters.  Gaia Vince wrote in The Guardian May 18, 2019 "Climate models predict we’re currently on track for a heating of somewhere between 3C and 4C for 2100 [. . . .] A 4C rise in global average temperatures would force humans away from equatorial regions [. . . .] 'We will have lost all the reefs decades before 2100 – at somewhere between 2C and 4C,' says Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany [ . . . .] Higher sea levels will make today’s low-lying islands and many coastal regions, where nearly half the global population live, uninhabitable, generating an estimated 2 billion refugees by 2100 [ . . . .] Rockström doesn’t like our chances. 'It’s difficult to see how we could accommodate a billion people or even half of that,' he says." Update: The Guardian, at Rockström's request, changed the quote for a 4 C world to "It’s difficult to see how we could accommodate eight billion people or maybe even half of that."

My two questions are: 1) What would city planning, agriculture, wilderness preservation, transportation, and colleges look like if our leaders told us this truth? and  2) What potential does humanity have if we stop playing this game of musical chairs with our and nonhuman survival?