6.62607015 x 10⁻³⁴ J Hz⁻¹

“It’s summer now, and you’re craving a simpler existence. You want to read. You want to write. You want to meet strangers for dinner, and not refuse another drink at another bar. You want to dance. You want to find yourself in a basement, neck loose, bobbing your head as a group of musicians play, not because they should, but because they must. It’s summer now, and you’re looking forward to worrying less. You’re looking forward to longer nights and shorter days. You’re looking forward to gathering in back gardens and watching meat sputter on an open barbecue. You’re looking forward to laughing so hard your chest hurts and you feel light-headed. You’re looking forward to the safety in pleasure. You’re looking forward to forgetting, albeit briefly, the existential dread which plagues you, which tightens your chest, which pains your left side. You’re looking forward to forgetting that, leaving the house, you might not return intact. You’re looking forward to freedom, even if it is short, even if it might not last. You’re looking forward.”

“Maybe it was the smell of ripe tomatoes, or the oriole singing, or that certain slant of light on a yellow afternoon and the beans hanging thick around me. It just came to me in a wash of happiness that made me laugh out loud, startling the chickadees who were picking at the sunflowers, raining black and white hulls on the ground. I knew it with a certainty as warm and clear as the September sunshine. The land loves us back. She loves us with beans and tomatoes, with roasting ears and blackberries and birdsongs. By a shower of gifts and a heavy rain of lessons. She provides for us and teaches us to provide for ourselves. That’s what good mothers do.”

Why did our ruling class not invest in decarbonising faster to avoid this acceleration in deadly heatwaves that scientists warned would come? Because of the capitalist law of value. Capital invests in what is most profitable to capital, rather than what is most necessary for humanity, so our ruling class keeps ploughing investment into fossil fuels and SUVs, while we get far too little in renewables and public transit, even while the world burns around us. We have more than enough capacity (labour, factories, technology) to address the climate crisis, but as long as capital controls investment and production we are prevented from doing it. We are trapped by the capitalist law of value, living in a miserable shadow of the world we could have.