Burning In The Dark

“The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain.” Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Parts of California are burning again, and here on the coast it’s nearly 90 degrees at the tail end of October. A few days ago local residents were advised to prepare to be without power for 24 to 48 hours as Southern California Edison planned to shut down its transmission lines to prevent potential fire danger, much as beleaguered Pacific Gas and Electric had already done up north. Both utilities are desperate to avoid further liability. Stock up on batteries, bottled water, canned food, fill the gas tank in the car. As I write this, half a million people in Sonoma County are without power. 

SCE and PG&E are loathe, as is most of corporate America, to connect the dots between climate change, prolonged drought and deadly wildfires, but their silence can’t change the reality that climate change is already impacting our lives, and most thinking people know this is just the beginning. California is drier and wildfires burn hotter and longer. I don’t know if shutting down power lines is useful except as a way of limiting corporate liability. 

I’m reading American War by Omar El Akkad, a novel that imagines an America at war with itself in the year 2075, when most of Louisiana is submerged by water, and the capital of the north has relocated from storm-battered Washington D.C to Columbus, Ohio. Mexico has reclaimed most of the territory it lost to the United States in the 19th century. A few southern states have banded together, not because of slavery this time, but because they refuse to stop using fossil fuels. The entire state of South Carolina is under quarantine, completely walled off due to a virus so virulent it killed 110 million people. The world’s superpowers are now China and a conglomeration of former Middle Eastern countries called the Bouazizi empire, who provide basic material aid to war-torn America. Mighty no more is America, either militarily or economically, hopelessly divided against itself, and dependent on the generosity of other countries.   

American War is a depressing read because, like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, it feels plausible, particularly at the speed we are moving toward climate catastrophe. I’ve never been able to re-read The Road; once was enough. The novel terrified me, probably because when I read it my son was five or six years old. In the years since, we’ve moved nearer to McCarthy’s dark vision. When the imbecile who occupies the White House isn’t stoking the fires of division and hatred, he’s doing everything he can to make life easier for fossil fuel extractors and polluters. The very wealthy in this country seem to believe they can sidestep the climate bullet. Perhaps they will, for a while, but even if they buy a little time, the degradation of our air, soil, water, and infrastructure will ensnare them eventually. 

Meanwhile, the Kincade Fire has scorched 20,000 acres. Here in Santa Barbara the air outside feels reminiscent of fires past -- the Tea, Gap and Thomas. I keep waiting for a plume of smoke to rise from behind our mountains. It’s not windy now, but later in the afternoon the wind will likely pick up, adding to the danger.