Insert Foot vs. climate change.

During one unfortunate 10-minute period early as I drove to the gym this week–mistakenly believing there was a still a future for which to get in shape–I heard two stories on news radio that made me want to turn around, drive back home, climb back into bed and start drinking.

The first was about San Francisco officials contemplating raising the Ferry Building seven feet and building a new sea wall, because the bay is coming to swallow us all.

Huh … that’s a pretty big building. Seven feet looks like a lot of vertical real estate, at least on NBA players. I have no idea how someone would do such a thing–a big lever?–but it sounds … expensive. And desperate. Which might actually be a good thing, my growing panic notwithstanding.

The next story (or maybe it was the first; terror affects my memory) was about some very smart people at Lawrence Berkeley Lab saying if we keep ignoring climate change like the cousin who drinks too much over the holidays and talks to the cat, the Sierra snowpack could stop existing in 25 years… when I plan to still be alive.

Now, I don’t necessarily like snow, unless I’m looking at it from a hot tub or under a blanket in a well-heated building because, you know, it’s cold. And skiing always seemed like a lot of work. But it turns out snow melts and turns into water, which we kind of need, especially for those who enjoy peanut butter.

Last year, wildfires and a lack of rain dried California’s ground so badly that the land sucked down just about the entire snowpack, instead of it flowing into our reservoirs. Snow accounts for about 30 percent of California’s water.

So, basically there’s going to be too much water on one side of the state, and not early enough on the other.

This was no way to start the weekend.

But the problem is, it’s true. And hiding, drinking, shopping, voting for Donald Trump, staring at Netflix, banning history books, or any other way we distract ourselves from reality won’t change that truth.

I covered this ground with a friend last night. She’s about my age and shares many of my beliefs about our impending doom, and not in some far-flung apocalyptic scenario. At one point, I said “It’s already happening,” to which she said “I know.” Then we didn’t say anything, real quietlike, like we had to sit there and calmly soak it in.

Then I thought “screw this.” I have kids. I’ll be dead by the time the ocean boils, but my kids might not be. And I’ve spent way too much money on them this Christmas for their lives to end in a disaster movie without my taking another swing at human stupidity.

I complain about this in print all the time, so sorry not sorry for the background noise. But shutting up doesn’t help.

If we have money to shoot Michael Strahan and 390-year-old William Shatner into space, we can stop pretending oil and coal is the future. We can find better ways to not make plastic–which lasts longer than the new West Side Story–our container of choice. We can stop turning our land over to billions of cows (and their water, and the water for their food) so they can blast fart holes into the atmosphere (look it up). I mean, Jimmy Dean just came up with a meat substitute that, for the first time ever, is actually better than the original meat. Someone even found a way to make fake meatloaf taste good, which isn’t even possible with meat meatloaf.

We have the tools and we have the talent. Maybe threatening to take the wealthy’s ski slopes away will help. The disaster movie has started, and way too many people don’t know it yet. Nothing is more important and turning off the news won’t make it go away.

Follow music critic Tony Hicks at Twitter.com/TonyBaloney1967.