As I was taking my morning shower, climate change came to my mind one more time. What does it mean to me? More often than not, I forget about myself when I think about world affairs. I have been thinking for years about the impact of climate change on the human species. As of late, I am spending more and more of my time thinking about its impact on the community in which I live. Motovun is uppermost in my mind, as are the villages within sight of it. But I rarely, if ever, think about the impact of climate change on those closest to me and ultimately on myself. I have long noticed this fault of mine, but I have not yet managed to take care of it. The most concrete appears to be the most abstract to me. But the world is rapidly changing in my mind, and the only question I imagine pertinent in everyone’s mind is as simple as it can possibly be: “What does climate change mean to me?” In other words, this is not only my own question for my own self, but I am thinking about it as a universal one. The question, as it were. Everyone must ask himself or herself the very same question. And in earnest. It is the only question worth answering at this point in time. By the time I was finishing my morning ablutions, I almost burst out laughing at my thinking. Once again, I am having hard time answering the question in concrete terms. And there is nothing more concrete than survival.

Addendum (November 26, 2016)

It is clear by now that climate change will affect me in ways that appear to have little if anything to do with climate as such. Europe is under siege already, and most of the migrants at its borders come from countries in Asia and Africa devastated by climate change and the ensuing war. At the moment, there are millions of migrants in the Middle East and North Africa. They are doing their best to reach Europe. So far, only about a million of them have made it. Sooner or later, though, the pressure of the growing number of migrants will lead to war. In the meanwhile, Europe has been swept by nationalism, racism, and religious intolerance. Quite a few strands of fascism are brewing in many parts of the subcontinent. All this is affecting Croatia, as well. Migrants threaten the wobbly peace in the Balkans, and the peninsula may well return to war soon. There. This is what climate change means to me in the simplest possible words. The only remaining question is that of timing. At best, it is a question of a decade or at most two. Climate change in a nutshell.