Breathing in our summer of fire and smoke
“I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.”
— Greta Thunberg, “Our House Is On Fire” speech, World Economic Forum, 2019
A few weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night with a sense of deep unease. As I surfaced, I realized that I am smelling wildfire smoke. The unease I felt were soon joined by a sense of deep sadness, sadness about how fire is devouring our planetary house.
As we moved through June and into July, eastern Canada has joined the long list of places that have experienced the devastating effects of out of control wildfires over the last few years: Australia, California, British Columbia and Alberta (Canada), Greece, Portugal, Spain (southern Europe) … the list just goes on and on.
This is indeed Canada's worst wildfire season. The statistics are mind-numbing. But what really helps bring home how bad things are, is the interactive map on the website of the Canadian Wild Fire Information System. If you choose (on the right side of the map) to overlay active fires on the map, the scale of the issue becomes highlighted in a very visual way.
The closest fires to where I live – Toronto – are hundreds of miles away, in Quebec and northern Ontario. The effects, though, are very present in the city – from the smoky smell in the air, the haze in the sky, to all the ways in which we need to adjust how we do life - changing exercise routines, indoor recess for kids, cancelled outdoor events. As so, as I’m writing this on the Canada Day weekend of 2023, the usual outdoor bent of the summer is tempered, not just for this weekend but for the summer weeks ahead.
One of the most striking features of this summer of fire and smoke in eastern Canada is how far and wide these effects spread. Large parts of the USA are affected quite dramatically in terms of smoky skies and air quality.
In a visceral way our current season of fire and smoke brings home just how much we are all interconnected. When fires fill the air with smoke, that smoke will travel far and wide – without any regard to borders and boundaries.There are no “us” and “them” when it comes to the air we breathe. We breathe the same air. What happens to my air affects you, and what happens to your air affects me. At this basic level we are interconnected, despite all the differences that consume so much of our attention and energy.
The media did a great job at highlighting the impact of the situation, and also at giving voice to the strong scientific consensus that this is likely what future summers will be like. Sadly, it is increasingly clear that this is not a single, contained event that will be over and done with at some point. Rather, we are experiencing a shift towards a very different future, where past bets about summers are off.
In a somewhat paradoxical way, I think there is something hopefully in this particular climate crisis flare up and the response to it. Yes, I hear the dread and desperation in some of the conversations around me. I hear that some people are still surprised that this is happening at all. But I also hear a growing sense of urgency that we collectively need to act. This sense of urgency might, just might, start matching the increasing urgency expressed by climate scientists.
What to do? That, of course, is the literal life and death question, for us as individuals as well as for the collective. There are answers, but no simple, one-dimensional answer. What is clear, though, is that this is a challenge that will require enormous ingenuity and courageous effort from us all.
The one ingredient that I believe is vital in taking on this challenge is hope – not soft, soothing hope that things will turn out OK. What we need is the kind of robust hope that is willing to admit that we do not know if we can do it, that acknowledges that there is a possibility that we have left it too late, that there is indeed no guarantee for a good outcome. And then, having taken an honest look at reality, this kind of robust hope turns to informed action guided by our best human creativity, fueled by deep compassion for humanity and all life forms, and bolstered by courage to do what we can to protect that which we deeply love about our planet.
About the image at the top of the article: I painted this in early June, as a response to my personal angst about how fire is literally and metaphorically burning down our world. After I finished the painting, I remembered Greta Thurnberg’s 2019 2019 speech. It expresses perfectly in words what I am trying to express visually.
© Melinda Sinclair 2023
