Vicki Larson: We are living in the worst-case scenario

Years ago my older son got a copy of “The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook” for his birthday, full of handy tips on how to jump from a building into a Dumpster, escape from quicksand, survive an avalanche, deliver a baby in a taxicab and other essential life advice.

Thankfully, he hasn’t had to put any of that knowledge into action, but he’s just in his early 30s — things can still happen!

It was a perfect book for us because I come from a family of anticipators. If something could go wrong, my parents had already anticipated it and they were ready. We’d arrive at the airport hours earlier than we needed to be, way before 9/11 made it a requirement, in case there was an accident or road work on the highway. My dad would turn off the water on the washing machine when it wasn’t in use in case it started leaking and flooded the floor (this happens more often than you might realize). Our basement was filled with canned goods that he dated and rotated in case of a nuclear apocalypse, and not just during the Cold War.

You get the idea.

All of that anticipation led to a lot of worry even though none of those disasters ever came to fruition (thankfully). They worried, but they were also prepared.

Watching what’s happening across the United States and the world —unbearable heat that’s melting airport runways and buckling roads and railroad tracks, wildfires and extreme weather of all kinds — I find myself wishing more people were like my parents. It feels like it’s time to worry because we didn’t anticipate and we surely aren’t prepared.

Not that we didn’t have a chance.

Earth Day began in 1970 after we saw photos of our tiny fragile planet — Spaceship Earth — taken by Apollo 11 astronauts, but scientists first began to be concerned about climate change as early as the late 1950s. They amped it up in the 1980s, calling for action, but fossil fuel companies fought back and people like the Koch Brothers threw millions at groups bent on undermining any government action on climate change. Even today, when we are at a crisis point, we have people like Sen. Joe Manchin and the entire GOP doing the same.

So here we are; the disasters are coming to fruition. We are living in the worst-case scenario. Unfortunately, how to survive climate change is not in my son’s handbook.

It’s not just climate change, of course. We’re three years into a global pandemic that doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon. Virologists were warning about such things for decades. As “virus hunter” Nathan Wolfe told me, “There were people who were listening. They needed to listen more.”

Marin’s world-renowned epidemiologist Dr. Larry Brilliant, who was instrumental in eradicating smallpox, warned, “If 80% of people wore a mask 80% of the time, COVID would go away.” Instead, masks are mostly off, vaccines are still being rejected (they reduce one’s chance of death, not necessarily infections, and the impacts on an already strained health care system and the chances of getting long COVID, so back off you antivaxxers, OK?) and all along we’ve been dealing with a rapidly mutating and increasingly transmissible virus.

And now, monkeypox. Marin has two probable cases as Bay Area infections grow. Young children are particularly at risk and the U.S. has its first child cases. At least one doctor predicts monkeypox, which the World Health Organization just declared a global health emergency, will transmit through daycares and schools. Once again, scientists were warning of growing monkeypox epidemics back in 1988.

We didn’t listen. And so we’re not prepared.

Marin is dipping its toes into it.

Corte Madera just decided to look for a full-time climate planning coordinator. San Anselmo will now require all-electric utilities in new residential buildings, something the county’s Civil Grand Jury is urging all local governments to enact, not only for residences but also for businesses. The state just gave Marin millions to address the recurring flooding on Highway 37, the Novato Creek Bridge and on Highway 101 near Marin City.

“Living here in Marin we already know what our future looks like with the climate crisis. Marin County is home to some of the most vulnerable highway corridors in the state,” state Sen. Mike McGuire said when the money was approved.

Except it’s not “our future,” it’s our now. It’s just going to get worse in the future.

And then there’s our threatened democracy, trampled-on rights and the disturbing rise of right-wing militias and gun violence. They, too, demand our attention and action.

All my life I have resisted as best I can my family’s penchant for worry, although my kids may beg to differ. But I admit, I do worry for them. They’ll (hopefully) be on this Earth a lot longer than I will. “Worse” is their future.

There’s an old saying about people who plant trees under whose shade they’ll never sit, a selfless act for a future they’ll never experience. We needed to act decisively years ago but it’s not too late — yet. It will be soon. Very soon.

We can be worried. But what we really need is to be prepared. For my parents’ sake.

Vicki Larson’s So It Goes opinion column runs every other week. Contact her at vlarson@marinij.com and follow her on Twitter at OMG Chronicles