The situation evolved rapidly
About 15,000 households have been ordered to evacuate in Canada’s British Columbia, as firefighters battle raging wildfires that have set homes ablaze. Officials said a “significant” number of buildings caught fire in West Kelowna, a city of 36,000 people, and more than 2,400 homes were evacuated. A state of emergency has been declared for the entire province, where hundreds of separate fires are burning.
Meanwhile there are only about a thousand people left in Yellowknife.
In British Columbia, evacuation orders grew from covering 4,000 homes on Friday afternoon to about 15,000 in the space of an hour. Another 20,000 homes are under alert. Premier of the province, David Eby, said that evening that the situation had “evolved rapidly” and officials were braced for “an extremely challenging situation in the days ahead”.
“This year, we’re facing the worst #BCWildfire season ever,” Mr Eby wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Given these fast-moving conditions, we are declaring a provincial state of emergency.”
…
Canada is having its worst wildfire season on record, with at least 1,000 fires burning across the country, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC).
Experts say climate change increases the risk of the hot, dry weather that is likely to fuel wildfires. Extreme and long-lasting heat draws more and more moisture out of the ground – which can provide fuel for fires that can spread at an incredible speed, particularly if winds are strong.
We’re all living on a stovetop with all the burners on.
Terrible as this is it’s almost the best case scenario. The worst case scenario would be that the planet warms more or less uniformly with the tropics slowly becoming uninhabitable while the industrialised world looks on with much hand-wringing but precious little useful action. This way everyone is on notice that it’s their life or at least their property that is on the line.
Now, I’m not pretending that anyone is voluntarily going to give up their lives of consumption for the sake of consumption. The sense of entitlement is too deeply engrained in the wealthy and the wannabee wealthy. But we have an opportunity to make the worst of the destructive behaviours along with opposition to necessary change socially shameful. Unfortunately, it seems that the majority of climate activists are stuck in a mindset that has outlived its usefulness. What’s so shocking about dyeing the Trevi fountain black when the land is being burnt black? We know the problem. Stunts whose only effect are to publicise that there is a problem look, and are, self indulgent. And for that reason they backfire, badly.
I don’t want to do the “young people today” thing. It was people of my generation who created a world where performative narcissism is almost the only sane, or at least effective, strategy.But I suspect a little bit of genuinely subversive thought would go a long way. (I’m looking at you Penny, Maugham and Ince. The house of the self-regarding is getting crowded.) Of course, that requires actually thinking and who has time for that these days?
Did you mean “give up their lives of consumption for the sake of consumption” or was the second consumption meant to be something else?
I read the sentence as saying that people have lives of “consumption for the sake of consumption”, perhaps alternatively “consumption for its own sake”, doing things because we can, and that few are willing to give up that lifestyle. It seems a good point to me.
The whole comment is good, I want to gp it, I just want to make sure about that one word.
Not sure we’re prepared to give up anything we like.
16 February 1983, Ash Wednesday, some of Australia’s deadliest bushfires were raging. 47 died in Victoria and 28 in South Australia, 12 of whom died on the city fringe.
As the fires raged, Murray Nicoll, a journalist for a commercial radio station Radio Adelaide broadcast live, and this is part of what he said.
At the moment, I’m watching my house burn down. I’m sitting out on the road in front of my own house where I’ve lived for 13 or 14 years and it’s going down in front of me. And the flames are in the roof and—Oh, God damn it. It’s just beyond belief—my own house. And everything around it is black. There are fires burning all around me. All around me. And the front section of my house is blazing. The roof has fallen in. My water tanks are useless. There is absolutely nothing I can do about it.
Asked by the studio announcer “Are there any firemen there?” Nicol replied “I am a fireman and there is nothing I can do”*
At the time we thought that Nicoll and the others sheltering with him were about to die. Fortunately, they survived and Nicoll went on to win a Walkley Award (Australia’s award for excellence in journalism).
Here is the audio. Here is the original audio. His professionalism is stunning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP_n_EvACNM
Lessons were learned, laws were changed, and people swore to fireproof their houses.
Yeah. Right.
This is what the scene of that report looks like today, just waiting for another fire.
https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Yarrabee+Rd,+Greenhill+SA+5140/@-34.9504695,138.6897626,618m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x6ab0cb63a13d1e4f:0x3e1a26674661339b!8m2!3d-34.9497353!4d138.690102!16s%2Fg%2F1v_0jwtc?entry=ttu
Gotta build where the views are nice.
———————–
Tears welling in my eyes as I remember hearing this live.
We are fucking idiots!
Appreciated, Ophelia! I was trying to suggest something like “conspicuous consumption” but we’ve gone a long way beyond mere “conspicuous’. This is performative consumption – consuming to prove that you can, in order to prove in turn, that you’ve won.
Ohhh I see it now – there’s an ambiguity in the structure. Consumption for the sake of consumption; now I get it.
[…] a comment by Francis Boyle on The situation evolved […]
I think that people realize that reducing consumption would not only require us to live quite differently than we do (something wears out? buy a new one! or those clothes are so yesterday, time to shop! or Super Bowl’s coming up, time for a bigger tv!) but a reduction in consumption enough to hold back climate change would cause a massive global depression. Capitalism requires continual growth to sustain all the tendrils including credit, labor, inventories, raw materials, supply chain, and logistics.
I suspect this is at least a subconscious factor in denialism.