{"id":26879,"date":"2023-06-09T12:44:37","date_gmt":"2023-06-09T19:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=26879"},"modified":"2023-06-09T12:44:38","modified_gmt":"2023-06-09T19:44:38","slug":"through-the-smoky-haze-can-we-see-clearly-now-the-climate-emergency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/06\/09\/through-the-smoky-haze-can-we-see-clearly-now-the-climate-emergency\/","title":{"rendered":"Through the Smoky Haze, Can We See Clearly Now the Climate Emergency?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Smoke<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A person looks out at the New York City skyline as it’s covered with haze and smoke from Canada wildfires on June 7, 2023 in Weehawken, New Jersey. Air pollution alerts were issued across the United States due to smoke from wildfires that have been burning in Canada for weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0(Photo by Eduardo Munoz Alvarez\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today is our chance to understand what it really feels like every day on a fossil-fueled planet, for the billions of people unlucky enough to really bear the brunt. My eyes are stinging a bit from the smoke, but I\u2019ve never seen more clearly.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

BILL MCKIBBEN<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jun 08, 2023The Crucial Years<\/a> (CommonDreams.org)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I live in Vermont, where the scent of woodsmoke on a late fall afternoon is an iconic smell. It was not like that here Wednesday\u2014it was more like sitting on the side of the campfire where the wind is blowing, but without any of the benefits of the blaze. The air was a dull gray, and the sunshine through it looked and felt diminished, as if from a different star circling a different planet. My chest was tight, and I kept bringing up phlegm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I\u2019m lucky. The air was worse in New York and in D.C.\u2014indeed, across the east cities are breaking all-time pollution records. <\/a>(I imagine it was smokier back in the early Industrial Revolution, but we weren\u2019t measuring it).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And we\u2019re all lucky. Because this is what a huge percentage of the world\u2019s people breathe every single day of their lives. <\/strong>In fact, we should probably\u2014in our hearts if not our lungs\u2014be grateful for a few days like this. They bring us much much closer to the lived experience of billions of our brothers and sisters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the case of the eastern U.S. this week, the smoke\u2014and the dangerous particulates it carries\u2014comes from Canadian wildfires. They are a result of the hot dry weather that climate change has made more likely. It began out west earlier in the spring, as parts of Alberta turned into an inferno. And then, as the go-to meteorologists Bob Henson and Jeff Masters reported today,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

By late May and early June, the dangerous fire weather extended into the moister climates of Ontario and Quebec \u2014 and even the Canadian Maritimes \u2014 as lush trees and grasses became tinder-dry amid severe drought and heat.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just Canada, of course. A new analysis released<\/a> last week by Climate Central analyzed the fifty-year shift towards more severe fire seasons<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cSouthern California, Texas, and New Mexico have experienced some of the greatest increases in fire weather days each year, with some areas now seeing around two more months of fire weather compared to a half-century ago,\u201d the report noted. It added: \u201cEven small increases in fire weather in the East, which has nearly 28 million homes located in zones prone to burn, puts more people at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/strong><\/em>But here\u2019s the thing. There\u2019s nothing particularly special about wildfire smoke. Vermont on Wednesday felt like a hundred days I\u2019ve spent in New Delhi, in Shanghai, in Beijing, in Ahmedabad. Many of those were much worse: I\u2019ve stood on Connaught Place and not been able to see the giant Indian flag flapping in Delhi\u2019s Central Park, even though I knew if was a few hundred feet away at most.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That smoke doesn\u2019t come from forest fires. It comes mostly from burning fossil fuels. But it\u2019s all combustion<\/strong>, and it all does the same thing to your lungs. There are four and a half million children in New Delhi, and the estimate<\/a> is that half of them have irreversible lung damage<\/strong> from breathing the air. Around the world, nine million deaths<\/a> a year\u2014one death in five\u2014<\/strong>comes from breathing the combustion byproducts of fossil fuel. About a third of all deaths in Asia<\/a><\/strong> come from breathing fossil fuel pollution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the climate crisis is the great existential crisis on our earth, then smoke is the great daily crisis.<\/strong><\/em> Happily, they\u2019re both caused by the same thing: burning coal and gas and oil. And even more happily, we know how to end it. We just stop burning stuff, and rely instead on the fact that there\u2019s a large ball of burning gas at a safe 93-million-mile distance. We get all the fire we could ever want, and none of the smoke.<\/strong> Call it \u201cexternal combustion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is entirely doable\u2014solar power is the cheapest way to make energy on earth. If someone tells you they don\u2019t want to look at a solar panel, or that mining required for a wind turbine does environmental damage, it\u2019s fine to see their point. But everything is relative. This is our chance to understand what it really feels like every day on a fossil-fueled planet, for the billions of people unlucky enough to really bear the brunt. My eyes stung a bit from the smoke, but I\u2019ve never seen more clearly. Everything is in perspective, even\u2014especially\u2014through the haze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what it looked like in Burlington Vermont on Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Eventually the wind will shift and it will clear. But it will look like this most days in most Asian cities this year and every year, until we beat the fossil fuel lobby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a9 2022 Bill McKibben<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BILL MCKIBBEN<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and co-founder of 350.org and ThirdAct.org. His most recent book is “Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?.” He also authored “The End of Nature,” “Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet,” and “Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full Bio ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A person looks out at the New York City skyline as it’s covered with haze and smoke from Canada wildfires on June 7, 2023 in Weehawken, New Jersey. Air pollution alerts were issued across the United States due to smoke from wildfires that have been burning in Canada for weeks…. Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16,668],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26879"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26880,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26879\/revisions\/26880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}