Orange is the New Blue
As holidays go, normally it’s Christmas that arrives too early. But this year, the west coast decided to start dressing up for Halloween…in September.
Orange air — the result of thousands of wildfires burning from Washington State all the way to southern California — is forcing the country to have a climate change discussion in the middle of a pandemic, another life or death situation the government is struggling to address.
Breathing has been on my mind pretty regularly since March 2020. I’ve thought about aerosolized droplets, varying degrees of mask quality, and the distance I stand from people who aren’t “in my bubble.”
For more than 20 days, the San Lorenzo Valley where I live has experienced regularly unhealthy air quality as a result of the #CZULightningComplex fires first, before the subsequent fires burning around the state began to contribute to the west coast’s dilemma.
I am very aware of the air I’m breathing at all times. It makes my nose run and my chest feel tight, which are also Covid-19 symptoms so that’s cool.
Both climate change and our response to the pandemic are questions of whether individual people are willing to subjugate their own personal interests and needs to benefit the common good — and in both cases Americans could do more.
I don’t mean to suggest that we could solve global warming if we all just bought fuel-efficient vehicles or started taking the bus to work. The vast majority of emissions related to warming environments come from corporate polluters. Any personal choice I can make will be more than canceled out by companies like Amazon and Uber.
But if I am concerned enough to make personal changes in my own life to reduce my little carbon footprint, I’m probably concerned enough to vote for politicians and policies that will help protect our environment too.
The pandemic forced us to change our lifestyle to protect one another. For the most part, we’ve done that to varying degrees. We did that because it was clear that this disease had the capacity to take lives.
But what is more devastating than a fire; more complete in its wreckage than a tornado; more widespread in its damage than a hurricane? These events have the capacity to take lives too. When climate change leads to drought, and farmers lose crops, these events take lives too. When global warming heats the ocean and kills marine life, the fishing industry starves, and so do the people who rely on it. These events take lives too.
If the threat of a virus is enough to convince the majority of Americans to stay home and wear masks, what will it take for the majority of Americans to admit climate change is killing us and act accordingly?
