Well, I just got the water supply reconnected to MJ's house. Two nights of 18 or 19 will cause a few problems. Unfortunately, once I got the water back on, I found that the pipes to the the solar water heater/backup water heater had busted. Water, water everywhere, and still no drop to drink. I know what I will be doing tomorrow.
In the last two days I have have been to three hardware/plumbing stores. The clerks were slammed. The shelves were bare of anything to do with broken water pipes. And one of the Pro-desk people I know at Home Depot said 95% of their business in the last two days has been from people fixing broken pipes. That maybe an exaggeration, but the plumbing isle was packed.
A neighbor asked if I was dealing with the chaos of Global Warming, and I said that I didn't know.
A lot of people think these unusual climate events of the last few years and months (blizzards, floods, heat waves, sudden deep freezes) are examples of what is better called Global Climate Disruption. But this cold snap isn't even the coldest Tucson has experienced in the last 130 years, let alone in human history.
Is this an example of serious problems ahead? I suspect so, but that isn't really the point.
The real point is that we aren't ready for the unexpected. That's the real message of the last two days. We are not prepared for what happens, if its different that what we are used to.
We have created a world, and all of its parts, that can't withstand the unexpected. We don't have reserves of things that we need in an emergency; we have a just-in-time society. But if something goes wrong, we have a day late and a dollar short society.
The real world doesn't always work as planned. We need to rethink our culture, our economy, and our lives, and start to be prepared for the unexpected. We need to be able to do more things for ourselves. We need to be able to rely on each other, so that we aren't on our own when something goes wrong.
We need to become more Resilient and Self-reliant.
