Greetings from sepia-toned Brooklyn, where the air is thick with smoke from the hundreds of miles on fire in Canada. I just wrote this entire newsletter (it would’ve won the Pulitzer Prize) but then it deleted itself—I was smote by a fiery G-d (Taylor Swift fans, did you do this? Because I said she sold her soul to the devil in exchange for lasting fame? Will you bully her into not using private jets instead?) so here’s an abridged version of thoughts about doomerism (to be continued) and some good links.
Cartoon from my book that depicts a dude saying “will you still suck me off?” in front of flames, with the caption “moments after an apocalyptic world event interrupted sex.” The answer is yes…she said yes!
Good Links:
Here are the Face Masks That Will Protect You From Wildfire Smoke
Jury selection in 2020 Oregon wildfire lawsuit against PacifiCorp begins Monday
How bad is the east coast air quality? (Heatmap)
Where Our New World Begins: Politics, power, and the Green New Deal (Harper’s)
Related Please Claps:
“As of Wednesday, nearly 2,300 wildfires have burned roughly 9.4 million acres, according to government data. That’s nearly 13 times more than the 10-year average for this time of year. In the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia, unusually intense blazes this year have already scorched more land than in the past 10 years combined,” the Washington Post reports.
Canada is on fire, but much of the U.S. is getting the smoke, as this picture I took near the Brooklyn Navy Yard earlier confirms: it’s orange as hell out there!
Flights at LaGuardia were paused as the visibility in many areas of the city is Confirmed Bad (I’m a scientist) and air advisory warnings have been put out (worst in the world right now) though anyone who has to work outside is still working without provided-for-protection and there has been no organized outreach for New Yorkers without homes. Meanwhile, Governor Kathy Hochul is pushing for Justin Driscoll to lead the New York Power Authority —a dude who has “spent his career profiting from the fossil fuel industry,” as socialist senator Jabari Brisport outlined in a statement earlier this week. In a huge surprise to everyone, Mayor Eric Adams has done precisely nothing, which is a remarkable departure from his Covid strategy (I kid.)
It is hard not to fall quickly into despair seeing the skies turn orange and elected officials do…that. It is startling! It is not the color the sky is supposed to be. It is a marked wrongness that makes it clear how much of the world is on fire. It is not theoretical, you can taste it on the tip of your tongue.
I am from California, where wildfire season is “part of life,” i.e. a component of climate change that many have “acclimated” to because it’s so common. It’s not especially hard to fall into this type of thinking either, especially given the way most mainstream media covers these events: often with little emphasis on the climate change part of it, and if mentioned, even less attention paid to the main drivers of climate change, instead often focusing on individual responsibility in the face of anthropogenic collapse.
New York is certainly not a climate haven (is there such a thing?) and is on a surefire track to sink, but there is something undeniably stark about getting wildfire smoke. That’s not our type of climate disaster! That’s an anywhere-but-here thing! But that’s the thing about climate change: you can kick the (figurative/mental) can down the road all you want, but we’ll always catch up to it. Or maybe we are the can? Yeah we’re the can being kicked, knocked around, rolled towards increasing apocalypse, while trying to drag our feet and pretend otherwise. Many parts of the world, namely the poorest and least responsible for global emissions, have long felt the visceral consequences of climate change. And so has everyone, even if they aren’t aware of it. Climate change has already been here, but the sun turning hellishly red reminds us all, grimly, we’re under the same sky, even (especially) as they darken.
It’s eerie to see the sky burning as we have “progressive” politicians who continue to embrace fossil fuels while the “other side” of politicians deny the existence of climate change as a driver of these events altogether, and the few that push for real change are labeled/treated as fringe outliers. It reminds me of what I wrote about chemtrails a few years ago, based on James Bridle’s writing.
“Chemtrails” are contrails, a mixture of vapor and CO2 and some other stuff. (If you want a better explainer check here.) But as Bridle explains in a long chapter about conspiracy, we are looking at something when we see these streaks in the sky, all of us, even if we interpret it differently. Conspiracy theories share a commonality, which is that there is a grain of truth in them—even the most seemingly absurd theories (to you, to someone) have a logic we can recognize, or can be linked to real discrepancies in power: our rapidly warming world, our decaying infrastructure and economy, the many well documented instances of the government spying on its citizens, the fact that it usually takes a whistleblower to reveal something of the sort. Chemtrails are man made. But why look to chemtrails when destruction is evidenced in the increasing severity of storms, the rampant wildfires that ravage the west coast, the worsening air quality and corresponding illnesses? Particularly in the U.S., climate change is a partisan issue—it is not simply looking at the burning world but who do we believe about why the world is burning.
It’s hard to ignore the sky being orange, however, but that shared visual reality does not confer immediate solidarity. This morning I watched (twitter) people from the West Coast seemed to look down upon New Yorkers as we were surprised by metallic-tasting skies and impossible to breathe air. “Welcome to our world!” and “we’re used to this!” is not an inspiring tactic, nor is it beneficial for anyone except the person loudly declaring they are familiar with disaster.
I also saw New Yorkers seem to begrudge their neighbors for taking precautions, as if this were either so brief an event as to not warrant protection (false) instead of the harkening of a new reality, in which we must adapt, and ideally, help others adapt too.
There’s a Very Online tendency about doom—both to sink into it, and also to assert your proximity to it, as some sort of calling card, or perhaps a testament to how much you know about this horrible incident directly. It is not limited to climate change, I see this thinking often in the disability world (and myself have oft dabbled in it [I remember when mainstream media started using the word “brain fog” and I felt this like, sinister ownership, finding it easier to be angry about the ubiquitousness of this thing I had long experienced instead of solidarity with people newly disabled like me] wherein claims to pain, grief, illness are used not as shared-but-varying experiences under which to unite us, but as a wedge to further segment and divide people based on the supposed severity of their specific situation, as judged by strangers, or as judged by themselves.
While this is a Very Online tendency, when extreme events—pandemic or smoke or what have you—force us even more online, and that becomes a main hub for thinking and reading about the present moment, I think it’s worth investigating.
Doom-Posting and Doom-Posturing: it is a counterproductive mode of thinking, and as I’ve observed, often seems to push people into a myopic spiral that perhaps feels progressive because it is focused on the worst possible outcomes but in truth seems to send a message of despondency that can give permission to opt out. Oh, we’re doomed, nothing matters, nihilism is the way, here we go.
Why are we in the doomer olympics? What is this instinct? And how does it prevent us from understanding ourselves as people in solidarity with others experiencing the same catastrophes, even if at different moments, or varying levels of severity? I’ve been thinking a lot about this —both my own desire to succumb to and struggle to resist doomerism, and also the pull into doom-one-upmanship, and thinking on what alternate methods exist to engage with the horrifying reality without downplaying it OR negating room for ANY hope, which is perhaps a more horrifying reality.
Anyways, I felt compelled to send out a mid-week missive. I’ll be back in your inboxes Friday for more, mask up, put some of those suckers outside if you have extra, here’s a playoff themed treat before you go: