The Fires This Time
The Left Coast is burning. So far, the death toll is 35, with dozens missing. When disaster specialists investigate, they are likely to find hundreds of people who couldn’t get out, or wouldn’t get out. Meanwhile, tens of thousands did make it to safety, only to be confronted with deadly smoke inhalation.
Air Quality Disappears, North to South
Air Quality Index monitors have shot through the ceiling, registering scores that are unique. Just now, residents of Eugene, Oregon, are viewing an eye-popping index of 516, which is classified as “very hazardous.” Oakland, California, has an index of 191, only “unhealthy.” For comparison, New York City has an index of 35, that’s “good air quality.”
Everyone with respiratory problems is looking back at the good-old-days of the covid quarantines, when at least, it was safe to go for walks. Now, if anyone ventures outside in smokey areas, they may end up with a visit to a hospital.
Fires on the Left Coast began in August, then intensified to hundreds of fires that have been blazing since around Labor Day. It is no longer possible to deny the link to global warming. Not when the temperature rises to 121 degrees Fahrenheit in Woodland Hills, a suburb of Los Angeles, or when normally wet areas like the Pacific Northwest endure a long drought coupled with high winds.
The worst is yet to come. According to a federal agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), “The area burned (by fires) is projected to at least double for every degree of warming.”
If you live on the East Coast of North America, or in Europe, you might hear a few seconds of news about our fires. Unfortuately, this is a worldwide problem. Other fires, which you may not have heard about at all, burned in New Sourth Wales, Australia from July 2019 until January 2020. In the Amazon forest, often called the lungs of the earth, millions of people have suffered ill effects in 2019 when thousands of fires were set in order to deforest our lungs. More fires are springing up in record numbers wherever there are forests.
——————click on chart, below, for more information:
The Whole World is Burning
There are even fires north of the Arctic Circle, which has lately become a temperate zone. In 2019, Arctic fires released 181 megatons (a megaton is a million tons) of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But 2020 has been worse. So far this year, fires in the Arctic have thrown up 244 megatons into our air.
This is nothing compared to what we will face if the permafrost melts. It shelters between 1,460 billion to 1,600 billion metric tons of carbon, or more than twice the amount of carbon already in the atmosphere. The repercussions of this much carbon being added to the atmosphere are mind-boggling.
The impact of fires worldwide may overwhelm all our efforts to reduce greenhouse emission by other means. Our only hope may to work with all countries through the United Nations on coordinated worldwide programs.
What Can We Do to Prevent Our Own Extinction?
Here at home in the Left Coast, we need to get the Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), investor-owned company, under control. The Northern California utility was responsible for huge amounts of fire damage in 2019 due to above-ground high-tension wires and lax maintainence. Sewer lines, gas lines and water lines are all underground. While it will be costly putting the electric lines underground, it will pale in comparison to the loss of life and property damage that these man-made fire-starters have caused in recent years.
The Board of Directors seems to regard the PG&E, not as a public service, but as a cash cow. As a matter of California (national) security, let’s demand that Governor Gavin Newson use his power of imminent domain to make PG&E a state agency.
The first order of business should be getting those power lines underground.
We need to build many more Lookout Towers in fire-prone areas. Advances in tech, including wireless phones, drones and hi-res cameras can stop fires before they become a menace.
Let’s plant half a trillion trees in North America, and ask the rest of the world to plant two and a half trillion, with our help.
With government subsidies, let’s get solar panels on every house, office and apartment building.
Everyone with a pollution-spewing car or truck should get it converted to electric (more on this later) or purchase an electric vehicle, if a car is needed. Otherwise, free transit, an electric or mechanical bike, or some new Dr. Scholl’s inserts might do.
Most people are not consuming as much in the Time of Coronavirus as they in the before time (2019). Let’s keep it that way, and modify our economy to fit.
Let’s make a list, a mile long, of all the things we can do to save ourselves.
_____________________________________
Our goal at The Left Coast is to try to raise the level of dialog and understanding on the many issues in we’re confronted by in these difficult times. If you agree with all, or part, of this and other articles (www.theleftcoast.org) please kick in a measly $5 a month, so we can continue our work and bring you more outstanding working-class writers and help make this a better world.
–Editor, James R Smith_____________________________________
Fire and Ice
By Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice._____________________________________