Bad Air

Day 310: I'm roughly 150 miles from the fires in Kelowna (British Columbia), but the smoke from them drifted in here overnight, and the Air Quality Index now stands at 170 (unhealthy) for my location. The Mountain has disappeared from view and although the hills behind this tree line were faintly visible an hour ago, they are now also occluded by thick smoke. I'd hoped we were going to get through this summer without a smoke event: an unreasonable expectation given the way climate change is progressing. That leads me to the subject of today's post.

You might think that the prevalence of bad behaviour in modern times is due to the political scenario, but it's my opinion that it's driven by the awareness, conscious or unconscious, that our planet is slowly dying, and that we have no one to blame but ourselves. Climate-change deniers can spout the party line all they like, but they are not fooling me. Their greed and lust for power comes from a deeply rooted self-preservation instinct and, whether they want to admit it or not, the evidence in wildfires, strong storms, rising ocean temperatures and such plays on their minds subliminally. As a drowning man would push another under to grasp at a straw, so do the climate-change deniers shove others aside so that they can grab the biggest, the best, the most in the hopes of saving their own hides. But in a dog-eat-dog world, the last dog standing is doomed to starvation regardless. Humanity, my friends, is on its way out.