The Day After Next Week

Most climate modeling — and it has gotten much better with AI — says that there is a point where natural feedbacks take over warming and mere human mortals no longer have agency.

In May, Apple+ TV began running The Day After Tomorrow in its streaming lineup. I had not watched it since its release twenty years ago, but I spent two hours and 4 minutes going back over that “changed reality.” Those were the words in the dialogue used by the Cheney-like President of the United States to describe his surroundings in Mexico City after half of North America evacuated southward.

“Not only Americans, but people all around the globe are now guests in nations we once called the Third World. In our time of need they have taken us in and sheltered us, and I am deeply grateful for their hospitality.”

I am sitting in quiet contemplation staring at my coffee. The roasted beans, from a small women’s cooperative in Tepotzlan, Mexico, were brought to me three weeks ago by a friend of 30 years. She passed quietly in her sleep a few nights after she left here.

At my age, you become inured to death. It feels like nearly every week another old companion sheds his or her mortal coil. I told my friend (who was only a month older than…