We were warned; but again, there wasn’t much we could do.

There’s a parking lot in downtown Montpelier that sits a few feet lower than State Street. It floods almost routinely, and it’s always intriguing to see how many people leave their cars there in spite of warnings. There’s also a high water mark well up on the wall of the vestibule of the Episcopal church next to the parking lot to show the curious how devastating the famous Flood of 1927 must have been. And who of us can forget Tropical Storm Irene, only twelve years ago? Its effects were somewhat localized; but where they were focused, they were devastating.

Which leads us to our most recent flooding. Here on the hills above our little capital city, the damage has been bad enough – driveways and dirt roads rutted or washed out, some basements needing sump pumps and dehumidifiers, and noticeable disruptions in delivery of packages, mail, and newspapers. Downtown is a different story. Great dumpsterloads of soaked rubbish, cardboard, and furniture attest to the devastation behind the quiet muddy storefronts.

The national media, of course, swooped in – there’s rarely been a calamity that they haven’t pounced on, like a cat upon a mouse – and milked for all it was worth. I wish I could personally thank each editor (with a raspberry) for each pile of emails from friends asking if I was all right in the midst of such destruction. As usual, the national media, unlike our local newscasters, were ham-handed in their coverage. This has led to unrealistic perceptions of our plight. As one “survivor” of Irene, a second-grader, said at the time, “Since Vermont got hit by the storm, people think we couldn’t, but we do.” Every machine shed seemed to have a front-end loader inside; dumpsters now line the main streets; local residents in rubber boots, gloves, and masks cart unrecoverables from soaked interiors. The attitude seems to be, “Well, what else would we do?”

Meanwhile, much greater and deadlier threats rumble not far away. Do you remember scary movies from the 1950s? The white explorers or prospectors suddenly hear the sound of distant drums, unseen in the Stygian darkness of the otherwise eerily silent jungle, and stare uneasily at each other. This is sort of what we’re doing in New England at the moment. The drums have been beating, since well before Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth or Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature. Al Gore, unfortunately, has a preachy manner of speaking that has earned him ridicule. Bill McKibben is more convincing, but rather like Saint Paul: Everybody says they agree with him, but active converts seem to be few so far. This is a shame, because until there’s a serious groundswell of public activism, little is likely to divert the only people who can significantly help, and are unlikely to turn their attention away from arguments about abortion, domestic and military; election districts; and the proscription of dangerous books like Huckleberry Finn and The Bluest Eye.

Consider Florida, bouncing from destructive hurricanes to furnace-like heat (should the heat get you down, just take an ocean dip. The water’s only 97º). Or California, currently breaking records for scorching heat. Or Canada, fighting (at the moment) about four hundred fires in parched, tinder-dry forests. Or Texas, its needs for air-conditioning about to fracture again the electrical grid that let it down during the recent unprecedented cold weather. That problem is sidelined by arguments about immigration, mass shootings, and women’s rights. Or Utah, whose famous salt lake is disappearing. Or Arizona, about to experience temperatures beyond human tolerance fueled by an aggressive El Niño. Or the East Coast, crossing its fingers that the recent significant rise in the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean will somehow magically guide the expected more violent hurricanes toward Cuba, Louisiana, and the Mid-South.

If, like me, you exercise small disciplines to reduce your fossil footprint – cook on an induction coil, drive a hybrid, forego air conditioning, turn off unnecessary lights – you probably also, like me, feel frustrated that in spite of your efforts, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to rise alarmingly. There is no doubt any more that, even if we reduce drastically our heat-trapping emissions today, the warming and melting and sea level rise will continue for at least two more generations. The distant unseen drums are no longer distant; we are already irrevocably locked into an ever more destructive series of climate-induced calamities. Probably the worst stocks to invest in today are ski resorts and insurance companies.

We little folks can do almost nothing singly. My induction coil cooker’s effect is indistinguishable, and writing to a congressperson is as futile as dropping a stone into a dry well and expecting a splash. We need a large single-issue voting bloc that will hold candidates’ feet to the fire and insist upon action. I know there are lots of other important issues. But can you think of another one more important? How many more floods, broken roads, and main streets lined with rubbish will it take to wake us up and pull us together?