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We Can’t Surrender to Climate Destruction

Politicians and pundits are telling us to accept the escalating breakdown of our planet. We have to fight back.

In July, Chicago’s air was so thick with smoke you could smell it and taste it and feel it in your throat. Health officials were telling us to stay inside as much as possible. People wandered around big-box stores looking for air purifiers. Parents shared tips on how best to protect their kids. The haze made the edges of buildings look less sharp and made your thoughts less sharp, too, as headaches and lightheadedness set in. There were also reports of increased hospital visits by people with conditions like asthma.

The situation in Chicago was caused by smoke from Canadian wildfires, which, science has made clear, are bigger and more catastrophic than ever because of human-made climate change. The fires spread destruction through Canada, with First Nations people bearing the worst, and along with wildfires in northern Minnesota, sent hazardous smoke into the United States from Minneapolis to New York. If summer is the season of splash pads and beaches and watermelon slices, it is also, increasingly, a time of mustard-tinted air, hiding in your home if you have one, and refreshing your air-quality-tracking app.

As the frequency of these apocalyptic scenes increases, regular people are scrambling—to get through their workday, to protect their loved ones, to figure out how to breathe cleaner air. Yet there is an astonishing lack of urgency among those actually in a position to do something about the climate crisis.

The message from our political and media class is unmistakable: Climate destruction, while perhaps not........

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