I keep thinking it can鈥檛 get any harder to breathe, and somehow it still does.
This week on the West Coast feels like something out of a dystopian novel. Old-growth forests and entire towns are burned over. Mill City, Oregon, is ash, as is Malden, Washington, and the fires are still growing and moving. The winds are high, and the relative humidity is low. This morning it took way too long for the sun to come up at my home in Seattle.
I have lived somewhere close to the edge of an area ravaged by wildfire听for nearly听all of my adult life, and yet听the听violence and speed of such occurrences听still shock me every summer. It鈥檚 easy to misremember last year鈥檚 blazes, or, like so many point-source environmental disasters, to avoid thinking about it until it鈥檚 once again in your face. To ignore the threat until it ignites.
This听feels like a too obvious reckoning, the exact way we were told , flipping into disaster so fast.
If you are not under that currently stretches the length of the West Coast, the photos probably seem surreal, and the high-speed destruction might be hard to fathom. Maybe if you鈥檙e not directly impacted by the burns, it can seem like the late-summer听news out of California is always about fire,听and that this year isn鈥檛 much different. But it is.
The 2020听fire season is unprecedented, and it鈥檚 just getting started. California has already broken its record for the total number of acres burned听in the state, and according to the听, six of the twenty听largest wildfires in the state鈥檚 history have occurred since January 1.听Oregon governor Kate Brown recently said that this cycle of fire could cause the greatest loss of human life and property from wildfires ever seen in her state.
On Wednesday night, as the sky here in Seattle hung thick and gray-green with distant smoke, I sat balled up on the couch texting friends and family in Oregon, taking in the pictures they sent of听the eerie orange sky, trying to keep track as the fire nearest them听changed their evacuation plans from 鈥済et ready鈥 to 鈥済o now.鈥
鈥淪hould they all just come here?鈥 my boyfriend asked frantically at one point, looking around our tiny apartment as the evacuation zone engulfed his brother鈥檚 house in Clackamas County and headed toward his parents鈥 place.
Should they? What are our options when we鈥檙e trying to pivot in the middle of panic? And even if they should come鈥攅ven if they wanted to鈥攊t鈥檚 unclear whether听they actually could. Sections of many听major highways in the Northwest听have听been closed by fire at some point in the past week. Evacuees are , and hotels are clogged and crammed despite the still present threat of COVID-19. This year has felt like a battle to make smartish decisions in the face of unclear, very bad consequences.听I am constantly wondering if the tightness in my chest is panic or rage or virus or smoke.
That red-dotted highway map of traffic jams听feels like a climate metaphor, too, like we鈥檙e in a narrowing funnel of choice and our pathways are closing down. Like every summer we have fewer options and the consequences keep getting worse.
If you love forests or rangy grasslands, if you鈥檙e the kind of person who wants to be outside, you have to love fire, too, or at least understand that it鈥檚 natural听and appreciate how it keeps a landscape healthy. But that doesn鈥檛 mean this current level of destruction is normal or tenable or, most important, fully unavoidable.听These past few years of rampant, 听are a clear example of how human choices鈥攁nd the way America is particularly bad at the听 environmental problems require鈥攈ave听pushed the natural functions of our听lands into disaster.
All of these听fires听come from a legacy of , failures of and a . It鈥檚 the rate in which听people are , thereby putting themselves in the line of risk听and having听to prevent听their property from听progressing through natural fire cycles. It鈥檚 a negligence of indigenous . It鈥檚 also stupid human decisions, like and flaming cigarette butts and , which ignite flames.
But more broadly, it鈥檚 the result of how fossil-fuel-driven climate change has led to fire conditions, and the way decades of passing the buck is now coming around.
听and our continuous use of fossil fuels, summer days in California听are more than a degree hotter than the historical average, Oregon is in the midst of its , and much of the rest of the West is and drought, too, drying out forests.
Like any kind of climate-related change, it鈥檚 too late to stop the train of warming that鈥檚 already moving forward. Things will likely get worse鈥攐r at least stay just as bad鈥攁nd it will probably require听. But it really depends on what we decide to do now about curbing fossil-fuel use to lessen听even more warming.
Whatever we do, one thing is certain: our climate-change future is here.