It’s Burning and It’s Urgent

Have you seen the montage from last week, in which photos of San Francisco’s orange skies were juxtaposed with scenes from Denis Villeneuve’s film, “Blade Runner 2049?”

Or you may have seen the video of the smoky city which went viral, accompanied by the soundtrack of the same movie?

It is terribly disturbing — the montages, but also the paradox they raise.

The film is a work of science fiction, and the fires in California are grounded in our present-day reality and have everything to do with … science!

In California, the planning and management of the affected area and ravaged forests were among the causes of the disaster. Nonetheless, this terrible calamity is closely linked to climate change, according to a majority of scientists. The same can be said of the other recent destructive fires in this state (and those in western Canada).

There is a comprehensive list of reasons why the risk of fires and their potential intensity increase as the planet gets warmer.

Rising temperatures, actually. We seem to have broken records this summer in California. The accompanying drought. The overabundance of insects that make trees vulnerable. And in this instance, we must add the lightning that struck the state with unusual frequency.

Americans are becoming increasingly less shy about calling a spade a spade in the public sphere, despite the handful of die-hard Republican politicians who live in denial.

Proof: The Los Angeles Times front page last Sunday. The headline of the prestigious U.S. West Coast daily read: “California’s climate apocalypse.” This is a far cry from when American media used to give the floor to climate denialists in order to balance the warnings of scientists who demystified the climate emergency.

There has been criticism of the absence of firm action in the fight against climate change, but there is one thing we do not take into sufficient consideration: The phenomenon is incredibly abstract.

Especially here. For the majority of Quebecers — and North Americans, for that matter — the impending catastrophe is still theoretical. We are a long way from the Solomon Islands, Fiji and other archipelagos whose very existence is threatened.

Think about it: We are told about the urgent need to act like there is no tomorrow … to prevent the Earth from warming by two degrees Celsius over the next 80 years! Is that why Greta Thunberg has accused us of stealing her dreams? Really?

Yes, really. And it is quite a challenge to the imagination.

American journalist David Wallace-Wells hit the nail on the head. “These numbers are so low that we tend to downplay them,” he wrote in the essay “The Uninhabitable Earth,” published last year.* “Human experience and memory offer no good analogy for how we should think of those thresholds,” he added.

He is absolutely right.

But our experience is ever-changing and fluid. This is the case even in North America. We have seen this with the floods in Quebec in the past few years. And the fires currently ravaging California have dramatically proven this.

In the space of a few weeks, the state has been affected by six of the largest fires in modern history. And the fire season is far from over. All disasters combined, this is perhaps the most striking example on our continent of the fact that climate change should worry us more.

California has long been the birthplace of trends. What happens in that state often ends up happening elsewhere in the United States, and around the world.

In the context of climate change, it is more of a whistle-blower state. All too unwillingly, this charming state finds itself playing the role of the canary in the coal mine in the matter of climate change. The one who is warning us that we are in danger and that we need to act. It’s urgent!

Over the next few weeks, both in Quebec City and in Ottawa, we will have the opportunity to see whether our elected officials will finally decide to take action commensurate with the recommendations of scientists, both in terms of decarbonizing our economy and adapting to climate change.

California is proving to us that history will not look kindly on those who confuse science and fiction for too long.

*Editor’s Note: This quotation, although accurately translated, could not be verified.