Apocalypse Now: Code Red for Climate Change

That wildfire soot blanketing the region this week blotted out the sun, burned eyes and throats, drove everyone from school children to pets indoors, had us all wearing masks again, canceled flights into Philly, and even scratched a Phillies game-- the first time a Phillies game was called off for smoke in 140 years of baseball. 

Our phones started beeping with Code Red alerts Tuesday night as the Air Quality Index measuring dangerous fine particles in the air soared past the Red danger zone into Purple-- Very Unhealthy. 

This should be a wake-up call on climate. But will it?

Katrina in 2005 could have been a wake-up call; so could 2012’s Sandy. Tropical Storm Isaias in 2020, not even a bona fide hurricane, gave us record rainfall while plunging 600,000 Philadelphians into darkness. More memorably, Hurricane Ian two years ago flooded the Vine Street Expressway, turning it into a roiling brown river while spawning tornadoes that touched down in several places, destroying homes in Mullica Hill. Any of these could have-- should have-- been a wake-up call too.

But none were.

Right now, hundreds of fires are raging uncontrollably across Canada, with Quebec’s burned acreage more than 500 times what might be “normal.” There is no normal anymore.

But you knew that.

And the smoke has drifted here so far south of Quebec because of a persistent blocking pattern of winds from the north funneling smoke to us, weather that has dried up the East while deluging the West. So it’s a one-two punch: climate-fueled wildfires create smoke that heads southward from climate-caused weather patterns.

Philadelphia has seen six of the wettest years on record since 1990. Storms are increasing in intensity; though one should see a 100-year storm only once in a century, we've weathered like 5 or 6 since 1990. The Delaware has risen already and will rise almost a full foot by the 2030s-- the river wards are in trouble. Nine of the world's 10 hottest years have occurred in the last decade. 

In short, Philly’s weather is getting hotter, wetter, weirder.

As an educator, for years as I’ve talked about climate change, I've been couching it as an issue that our children and grandchildren will have to wrestle with. Forget that. As The Philadelphia Inquirer offered in its editorial Thursday, ”There’s a bleak message written in Philly’s haze: climate change is at our doorstep.”

In short, it’s Apocalypse Now.

But now we're like a manic driver on a highway blowing through multiple traffic cones careening towards a cliff, with only moments left to apply the brake. Over the last 40 years, we’ve chosen to waffle, stall, look the other way, with too many of us sucked into a parallel universe of naysayers, trolls, and fossil fuel apologists. 

Fossil fuelish extremists are even now proclaiming that Canada’s fires were caused by eco-arsonists. Seriously.

So this blanket of soot is yet another Code Red alert on climate change. Will we pay attention this time?