Even if we refuse to read the hands on the clock, the hour is striking the time for our extinction.

It's Canada's Victoria Day weekend, where passively- at least- Canadians celebrate a British Queen who was big on genocide, racism and unbridled capitalism.

The sun during this bank holiday has been as hot as a summer's day in July. It shouldn't be this humid in spring- yet it has become so anyway. It's climate change causing this rise in temperatures.

 Even if we refuse to read the hands on the clock, the hour is striking the time for our extinction.

Photo by Matt Palmer on Unsplash

Climate change is real and caused by the 1% who plunder the world's natural resources for wealth, political dominance and societal control.

Their lust for unlimited wealth has gotten so out of control the earth can't regulate its temperature.

Humanity's existence has never been this precarious for thousands of years. If we don't kill ourselves through climate change, we will die in nuclear wars because we gave up on any semblance of a rules-based order for world affairs. Today, Joe Biden denounced the International Criminal Court for daring to consider an arrest for Netanyahu for war crimes in Gaza. Biden is signalling that he is good for the current ethnic cleansing and genocide to continue until Gaza is rid of every Palestinian not prepared to live under the harsh yoke of Israeli apartheid.

 Politics and the environment are disintegrating in rapid motion. There are unprecedented apocalyptical floods in Brazil and Afghanistan. Forest Fires in North America began their conflagrations over the winter because of a diminished snowpack. Still, I see people on my Instagram feed blaming forest fires on arsonists rather than accepting it is climatic destruction caused by neoliberalism.

The summer heat that has come a season early to my region and Europe is not like the summer heat of my youth.

This is an altogether different phenomenon. This is a day-after-day- heat wave that is packed with the smog from forest fires burning a thousand kilometres away. This is the heat portrayed in the 1970s dystopian movie Soylent Green.

It is a heat you can't tolerate without an air conditioner as I am learning first hand.

My wall unit air conditioner, provided by the landlord as part of our lease agreement, stopped functioning last September. At the time, I filed the necessary paperwork for a replacement unit with my corporate landlord, who is worth well over a billion dollars. The request was ignored in hopes that I would either move or die before summer arrived again.

I reminded management about the broken air conditioner at the beginning of this month.  I spoke to them of the urgency of needing liveable temperatures in my apartment and that- without an AC- my living room can reach temperatures of over thirty Celsius. Management was polite, in a disinterested manner- the way a stranger's cat responds with a purr, a flick of its tail and saunters off, no matter whether you tell it that you have cancer or piles.

I am still waiting to hear from management if my air conditioner is on its way to me. But I am not hopeful, so I will become more forceful. However, there is always a risk in pushing our landlord too much to address your legitimate demands.. There is always the chance if you push things too far you will be reno-victed to living on the streets.

So for now, I wait in the heat with fans churning stale air. I wait- like soviet citizens once waited for their requests for shoes, cars or an apartment during the days of Brezhnev. The more capitalism evolves into pure neoliberalism, without even the semblance of competition. The more it resembles communist authoritarian Russia. Except it comes without the free holidays, free trips to a sanitorium, public healthcare, subsidised public transportation, public day-care, free university and a dacha plot to grow one's vegetables. The summer ahead I sense will probably be our last, where citizens still hope that their democracies can be fixed under neoliberalism.

Thanks for reading and supporting my Substack. Your support keeps me housed and also allows me to preserve the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith. A yearly subscriptions will cover much of next month’s rent. Your subscriptions are so important to my personal survival because like so many others who struggle to keep afloat, my survival is a precarious daily undertaking. The fight to keep going was made worse- thanks to getting cancer along with lung disease and other co- morbidities which makes life more difficult to combat in these cost of living crisis times. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. But if you can’t it all good too because I appreciate we are in the same boat. Take Care, John