Snowy Apple Blossoms? Evidence at the Climate Justice Tribunal

Today snow gathers in the apple blossoms. This means no apples in the fall. The apples bloomed two weeks early, and the bees didn’t get to chance to pollinate them. Now the snow ends the blossom’s fertility. This is Climate Change spoiling Vermont’s apple harvest.

Abnormally warm weather made the plants wake up too soon. The season is two weeks ahead. A month of abnormally warm weather tricked almost every plant into blooming early. Now it has snowed for a day, in typical late-April fashion. The fruit tree blossoms didn’t get pollinated because the honeybees weren’t out yet. So this fall there will be less fruit.

The apple harvest is always variable. If we get a wet patch when the trees bloom, much less fruit in the fall. If the weather is sunny and the bees can work, a big crop. Bees navigate by the sun.

But this spring has been weird. It started with a banging weekend of 80 degree weather and then it was warm for a month. Most plants begin spring growth based on temperature, though some a daylight/day-length sensitive. So most of the ecosystem is going for it. And today, snow. Many of the flowers will decay quickly after today’s rough weather.

I watched the early blossoms without seeing any honeybee pollinators and so I asked a beekeeper about it. Author of The Natural Beekeeper Ross Conrad wrote, “I suspect that you are not seeing the bees you expect because the mild winter and unusually warm weather during the past couple months has fooled the plants into blossoming much sooner than usual (everything seems to be about 2 weeks ahead of schedule). Now that the temperatures have returned to what is considered seasonably "normal" it is often too cold for the bees to fly.”

The snow on the apple blossoms is proof of the Climate Crisis. For too long, action on the Climate Crisis has been stagnated by this idiotic debate “does climate change exist?” In a well-documented plot, the Fossil Fuel industry has conspired to obscure the overwhelming scientific evidence. These dark conspiratorial propagandists should be put on trial at the upcoming International Climate Justice Tribunal.

Today’s ruined apple blossoms are just a mild beginning of a world wobbling off it’s axis. Imagine the major cities of Bolivia not having drinking water because glaciers have melted. Imagine runaway Climate Change turning our planet into Mars. This is really where we are headed, and unfortunately, most people don’t have the imaginative fortitude to bear witness to science-based projections of our shared future.

The Climate Crisis isn’t a mild disruption of our Earth, but rather an Apocalyptic Trail-of-Tears Death March into a Science Fiction-ish unraveled Ecosystem Planet Death. Mild ecosystem disruptions like today’s apple trees are just the tip of the melting iceberg.

We need a revolution against planet death, for a living healthy future. We need a citizen’s movement to push a government movement to solve the Climate Crisis.

Fortunately, there is indeed an emerging world citizen’s movement for Climate Justice. Last week in Cochabamba, Bolivia, there was the People’s World Summit on Climate Crisis and the Rights of Mother Earth. Democracy Now had exciting coverage last week. Naomi Klein writes, “When Morales invited “social movements and Mother Earth’s defenders... scientists, academics, lawyers and governments” to come to Cochabamba for a new kind of climate summit, it was a revolt against this experience of helplessness, an attempt to build a base of power behind the right to survive.”

The wisdom of Indigenous people’s entered the global discussion with passage of a Declaration of Rights of Mother Earth. In 2011, on the next Earth Day, there will be a Global Referendum on the Climate Crisis. Who knows what any of that will mean for saving the planet from fossil fuels, but it’s thrilling language that calls us in the right direction.

We have a right to survive on an Earth where the bees buzz in the apple blossoms at the right time to make fruit. And Mother Earth has the right for Her Spring Song to be in rhythm.