Photo by Elena Koycheva on Unsplash

At a public event where she’s the invited guest, the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about extinction, written a decade ago, wonders whether she’s had any impact. I remember devouring the book. It inspired me to write a short play that went on to be performed a hundred times in a dozen countries. And yet, the question is familiar – I struggle with it almost every day. Am I having an impact? Is any of us? Will we witness, in my lifetime, the results of our collective efforts to set the world on the right path?

A YEAR-LONG CREATIVE EXPLORATION OF THE CLIMATE THROUGH 100-WORD STORIES • WEEK 37

Photo courtesy of Walthery, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Spotted lanternflies were on Broadway this summer.
But they received no applause, no standing ovation.
Instead,
we were asked to kill them.
They’re an invasive species,
you see,
so we, New Yorkers,
were counted on to do our civic duty.

I squashed one under my foot
on West 46th Street
in front of the Richard Rodgers Theatre
where Hamilton is playing.
Months later,
I still feel guilty about it.
After all,
it’s through no fault of theirs
that the spotted lanternflies got introduced to the wrong habitat.
So why should they be the ones to pay the price?

A YEAR-LONG CREATIVE EXPLORATION OF THE CLIMATE THROUGH 100-WORD STORIES • WEEK 36

Photo by Chantal Bilodeau

The song, released in 1978 by Earth, Wind & Fire, is a joyful remembrance of a love that budded during the titular month, “changin’ the minds of pretenders / while chasin’ the clouds away.”

Ba-dee-ya, say, do you remember?
Ba-dee-ya, dancin' in September
Ba-dee-ya, never was a cloudy day

This year, however, things were not so joyful. September was the fourth month in a row of record-warm global temperatures and the warmest September on record, unleashing extreme weather events across the globe. Has 21st-century budding love lost its power? Can it still chase the clouds (and perhaps the heat) away?

A YEAR-LONG CREATIVE EXPLORATION OF THE CLIMATE THROUGH 100-WORD STORIES • WEEK 35