Another summer day, stolen
What are we still waiting to learn?
I said I’d be taking a break from writing this week. Well, the universe clearly has other plans, as I am trapped inside because the air is poison. All there is to do is ruminate.
What’s that viral quote again? “Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it.” The original author apparently wrote that sentence while sitting on the toilet during an unprecedented 2022 wildfire, a fitting nod to our current diarrhea parasite-ridden reality. (Also a climate story, by the way).
I am so tired of this cycle. The idea of writing another article about “why this is climate change” or “how the Trump administration is making this worse” or “what you can do to make a difference” makes me nauseous with boredom and resentment. I’ve done it. I’ve done it repeatedly. I’ve poured everything I have into it every single time.
The torture of climate obstruction is that it exists to trap us in the cycle of explanation and debate forever. Polluters and their cronies are not trying to win the climate argument, merely to prolong it in perpetuity so there’s never enough public consensus for action. Obstructionists always say they’re just “asking questions.” But year after year, the questions and the answers are the same. And god forbid you get too tired or frustrated to keep explaining the nuances, or at least to do it with a smile. Then you’re a shithead who doesn’t want to engage.
One of the most excruciating versions of this cycles is the climate-change-versus-forest-management trap. The number of Republican lawmakers screaming “aCtuaLLy, iT’s FoReSt mAnAgEmeNt, NoT cLiMatE ChaNgE,” is enough to make me pop a blood vessel. Yes, it’s true! Forest management plays a role! It is not enough to manage away the hotter, drier conditions that have turned fires into continent-spanning hellscape smoke events. We have talked to an endless number of ecologists, fire management experts, and climate scientists about this. Maybe stop getting all your information from fossil fuel bootlickers and you will begin to understand.
We are given only a limited number of truly perfect summer days in our time on Earth. One of the more insidious cruelties of fossil fuel greed is how it slowly strips those days from us, more and more throughout our lifetimes, perhaps without us even realizing what we have lost. On a normal summer day like today, it might be pretty hot and maybe even a little hazy—but we might still be able to go for a bike ride or watch the dogs play at the park or stroll to the thrift store to terrorize our roommates with another stupid piece of home decor.
Instead, we are trapped inside, afraid to breathe, because a small, powerful group of polluting industries and their political allies spent decades lying about the problem and are still working, right now, to reverse what little progress has been made.
How many more summer days have to be stolen before we stop pretending this is natural? How many unprecedented disasters must be explained before the explanation is allowed to stick? How many times must scientists establish the same basic facts before we stop tiptoeing around the problem? What, exactly, are we still waiting to learn?
Anyway, just had to let some of the bitterness out—it’s the only way, in my experience, to be able to move forward. Feel free to let any of your own out in the comments.
“Climate disinformation does not need to convince everyone to be effective. It only needs to create enough confusion, at the wrong moment, to interfere with decisions.” - Climate Action Against Disinformation
Final note: The newsletter is, as I explained earlier this week, in the middle of our annual churn—aka, the time of year when we see the biggest drop in revenue. We’re already about 50 percent of the way to the goal that will help us maintain our revenue base, which is awesome! We just need about 50 more people to step up and support HEATED.
That may sound like a lot, but it is an extremely tiny fraction of the 140,000 people who read this newsletter. And every new paid subscription helps keep HEATED independent, accessible, and free from ads, sponsors, corporate owners, and wealthy donors deciding what climate stories are worth telling.
Annual subscriptions are currently 20 percent off for the first year—just $5 a month to help keep unbought, unbossed climate reporting and analysis (and rants like this) alive.
And to add insult to injury, our governor’s administration in Michigan just granted permits to Enbridge for a tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac - infrastructure whose purpose is to perpetuate the use of fossil fuels for another 99 years. She ignored the science, 70,000 public comments from her citizens, trod over indigenous treaty rights, went back on her own promise that helped get her elected, … either because she was bought off or she has higher political ambitions and this was the way to go not to ruffle major donors. It makes you sick, especially when we are already sick from the smoke from a burning planet.
Eloquently ranted! I feel the same. Looking at pics of northern Ontario ablaze reminds me of driving out west in 1988; my first year tree planting. I learned about the mountain pine beetle outbreak that summer…and the reasons this endemic beetle’s numbers exploded.
It was my first summer job in university…taking environmental studies…writing letters, occupying politician’s offices, blockading forestry roads, learning about Indigenous Peoples’ rights and history, joining more protests, “acting locally”, “being the change you want to see”, getting solar panels, eventually an EV, making the “lifestyle changes”, “being FOR things rather than always against…”, “investing for good”, etc. etc. And I can only conclude: it has made no notable dent in our trajectory. Now I and my co-strugglers are trying to stop a friggin’ GENOCIDE being live streamed every day and even that is considered by the average person “too political”. FFS, is ranting all we have left???
😤😤