Thursday's white-out yielded to a Friday with dry milky air, a suffocating haze. As people in the West stumble about, trying to grasp what appears to be our new reality, a kind of collective insanity is beginning to settle in.
Is this all really happening?
Virtually no one anticipated a pandemic save for the doomsayers. You could be forgiven now for saying they were right.
Until the Trump administration, almost no one predicted a presidency based on destroying our most precious freedoms, save the most paranoid of leftists. You could be forgiven for now saying they were right.
A substantial number of environmentalists predicted drastic climate change including devastating forest fires if we didn't heed the science and adjust our ways. We will never be forgiven for not listening to them.
The desperate reality of climate change became apparent to those paying attention to the science as early as 1974. Certain ecologists and science fiction authors had foreseen it earlier than that -- I'd read about it in books from the 50s. But all of the evidence was rejected by apologists for the fossil fuel industry and others with a stake in its destructive trajectory.
Some progress has been made in the intervening four-and-a-half decades to develop alternative, sustainable energy industries, but the entrenched special interests have fought it every inch of the way. Now it is too late to avoid some of the horrors that might have been prevented had we listened to the scientists who predicted this fate.
Now the only option remaining is mitigation and adaptation, and even those may prove inadequate to save the vitality of the planet for our grandchildren's generation.
I've never felt pessimistic about Covid-19. A treatment and a vaccine will ultimately be found, I'm sure.
I've never felt pessimistic about political change. Voters will do the right thing this November, I'm sure.
But I am not optimistic about our ability to avoid climate change. We waited too long, did too little, and held on to our self-destructive lifestyles too greedily.
The future has arrived. It is staring at us from a blood-red sky.
***
Perhaps there is solace in today's news? Good luck with that one. Although I do end this summary with a wonderful item about book-buying in Britain.
* I’ve Never Seen the American West in Such Deep Distress By Timothy Egan -- We’re choking on smoke and staring out at Martian-red skies in a world becoming uninhabitable. (NYT)
* GOP worries rise as Trump campaign pulls back from TV ads to save money (WashPo)
* If climate change was a somewhat abstract notion a decade ago, today it is all too real for Californians fleeing wildfires and smothered in a blanket of smoke, the worst year of fires on record. (NYT)
* There’s evidence that President Trump’s frequent warnings about mail voting are persuading members of his party to avoid it. But that could make it more difficult for those voters to cast ballots. (WashPo)
* Trump is destroying the Republican Party. Why won’t any of his peers speak up? (WashPo)
* By Thursday evening, the number of Oregon residents evacuated statewide because of fires had climbed to an estimated 10% of the state’s 4.2 million population. (AP)
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* In one of the nation’s sharpest clashes over school reopening, officials in Des Moines say Iowa’s Republican governor is pushing them to risk public safety.(NYT)
* Democrats build big edge in early voting -- Far more Democrats than Republicans are requesting mail ballots in key battleground states, including voters who didn't participate in 2016.(Politico)
* Trump keeps bragging about imaginary auto plants in swing states (Houston Chronicle)
* Biden is favored to win the election -- "We simulate the election 40,000 times to see who wins most often. The sample of 100 outcomes below gives you a good idea of the range of scenarios our model thinks is possible. Biden 75%, Trump 25%." (538)
* Booksellers up and down the UK are reporting a boom in sales since readers returned to bookshops after the lockdown, with the first avalanche of Christmas titles giving them their best first week of September since records began. (The Guardian)
***
Don't you understand, what I'm trying to say?
And can't you feel the fears I'm feeling today?
If the button is pushed, there's no running away,
There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave,
Take a look around you, boy, it's bound to scare you, boy,
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
--Barry McGuire
-30-
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