Finding the Lead Lining

Archived from Jun 08, 2023:

Last week I was melting, this week I’m coughing. I’ve had a headache for two days from the northern Ontario smoke settling into the city, and I feel like everything is fuzzy. My cat has been sleeping with her paw over her nose. I wore a mask on my walk outside, not just when I went inside the pharmacy today, picking up lozenges and more advil.

Several thousand fires have caused tens of thousands millions of acres in Canada to catch fire already this year, 13 times more than average and the skies are turning red. The smoke is making its way down the coast into the United States, a high and low pressure system working in tandem to create an omega block, driving the smoke straight south. Millions of people are living under weather advisements as air quality plummets. Now, I would like to acknowledge that wild fires are both natural and necessary, but the sheer volume and destruction we have seen ramp up over the last 5 years alone is clearly a symptom of climate change caused by humans. I know here I’m preaching to the choir, it is an accepted scientific fact that fossil fuels are a massive drive in climate change and yet we, as a culture, are not for want of weird pundits who will write articles about how this is actually very normal, and actually the oil and gas industry is suffering and under attack. Lookin’ at you Rex. If I ever need a grim laugh, I always look up his fun takes on what oil and gas looks like in Canada; the drama, the cruelty, the war being carried out! He seems to have missed the memo regarding the massive taxpayer subsidies as well as his own payments from fossil fuel companies. Good one, Rex! It is exhausting to think about, and the weight of it only looms larger and heavier when the air becomes literally thick with consequence.

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I have spent my entire life surrounded by propaganda that tells us it’s not so bad, it’s natural, actually, that environments are always changing. These tactics clearly worked for a while, as infrastructure designed for cars continued to dominate, as the sector expanded and wars were waged in the name of imagined weapons of mass destruction, when really they wanted the oil. While persistent, it becomes harder every year to take these shills seriously. The campaign started well before I was born, and despite the obvious facade, it seems that there is no intention of stopping. These messages vary from “it’s not so bad, actually” all the way to “it’s not happening at all” and honestly, I’m not sure which one feels more insidious and exhausting. Many of the deniers are people like your Steven Crowders and other pundits who will publicly say anything for engagement, and blatantly manipulate charts and numbers as means of sowing discord, even though they privately know they’re full of shit. For an excellent breakdown of this, I strongly recommend “Climate Denial: A Measured Response”. It is infuriating how simple the whole thing is, all it takes is a glimpse at where the money is to understand who benefits in the short term from the catastrophe. It is exhausting to think about how the wealthy are touted as clever, successful, intelligent and innovative when in reality they are so shortsighted that they are willing to burn down our only planet for immediate profits. They have no future vision, no compassion, no care. I refuse to acknowledge these people as anything other than greedy.

Climate change and environmental collapse has tinged a lot of these. I’ve written about hyperobjects and consumerism; it is something I think about very regularly but today was more intense than usual. Certainly, news articles, posts and talks with friends about the smoke contributed to that, but the smoke itself has permeated. Climate change is no longer only in my brain and environment, but my lungs, my blood, my bones. I am saturated. I am tired.

I have a pounding headache from the unfortunate combination of a 100 year old house and the smoke, so the rest of this week is going to be quotes and links to things that I think are worth reading related to the climate crisis, how we respond emotionally and what we can do materially.

Shelby Lorman of Please Clap has written on doomerism for several years now, and she reiterated a lot of her ideas in yesterday’s newsletter:

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. Please ClapDoomer OlympicsGreetings 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…Read more2 years ago · 6 likes · awards for good boys

While I and other urbanites can seal up our windows and hunker down, thousands of rural and Indigenous communities have been displaced this week. I would strongly encourage you to donate to grassroots fundraisers, particularly local ones to help support these communities. Year round you can donate to land defenders and the people who fight for our world on the front lines.

Finally, I also suggest Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of the World by Daniel Sherrell.

But even as I experienced it — even as the force of it made me sit down and slump against the fence — a part of me was already bored with my grief. It felt repetitive and dull an exact replay of my reaction to Melancholia and to Hurricane Sandy and to all the other moments when the weight of the hyperobject had ruptured the strength of my resolve. It was like the Problem had placed my emotions on an endless tape loop, and they were going to keep playing back at me forever, in the same notes, the same sequence.

It is a book not about solving climate change, but about how we live with the weight of it. It’s less heady than Morton’s Hyperobjects and a good and important work to sit with, but maybe that is a bit too immersive this week.

As ever, thank you for joining me friends. It seems like we are at the beginning of a tumultuous season. I hope cool breezes and clear wind find you and offer some respite. I don’t know if next week will continue in the vein of summer, weather and burden, but in the mean time, please feel free to comment and share if you think you may know someone who would enjoy the noise. Also, the title was a bonus for the two Midnight Burger fans who read this, specifically Know Your Enemy. Leif is my favourite but we all know if I were to take a MB Buzzfeed quiz, I’m absolutely a Casper.