Orange Sky

We woke up to that orange sky in Northern California that made national news. We are in far Northern California so our experience was somewhat different than the news. Two days of strong winds had blown all the smoke away and we had breathe-deep clear skies. Particulate matter counts were around 15. (Above 100 is moderately unhealthy and above 200 is unhealthy. Some of the areas around the Bay Area were registering 500 or higher.)

I woke up and went out the back door and became confused. To the south, a high plume of brown filled the southern sky. But the air smelled clear and I had fine visibility of the trees on the distant ridge. And the air was cold. We had been in a several-day heat wave (highs around 105˚F) and now the morning air was chilly. There was no wind. There was no sound of bombers or helicopters flying to a nearby fire. The only possible sign of a fire was the brown to the south but maybe it was a smoke-tinged rain cloud (a weather change would explain the chilly air). The weather report was for hot and clear skies. The brown crept overhead but the air quality measurements continued to be an incredibly clean 6.

As the main mass of smoke moved overhead, its bottom drew closer to the ground. The particulate matter measurement started going up and we have spent all the time since in air of between 150-250.

What was most striking for me was the chilliness of the air. The sun’s heat couldn’t get down through the smoke. Alysia said her seedlings weren’t growing; not enough sun and heat. The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia put so much ash in the upper atmosphere that 1816 is known as the Year Without a Summer. Wide-scale crop failures led to starvation, riots, migrations. The news focuses on the wildfires’ destruction of acreage, structures, lives, and the health effects of the smoky air. Later on, will we be learning of reduced agricultural productivity in the Central Valley?

Donella Meadows, writing about climate change more than thirty years ago, stressed the importance of navigating by leading causes, not trailing effects. The leading cause was rising CO₂ levels in the atmosphere. That was well-documented when she was writing. The temperatures were just beginning to rise. Don’t wait for the temperatures to rise. Navigate by the leading causes! And now the dry forests are burning, putting more CO₂ into the atmosphere.

The ice storm damage two years ago that was probably an example of climate change required more than a half-year of Alysia and my life energy to get out from underneath. Now there are these fires and tens of thousands of people are homeless. FEMA money will be used up. More of the government’s funding is going to response rather than prescient prevention. We don’t understand how change can snowball. Change is accelerating; coming at us faster than we are prepared. And there was not one single question about climate change in the three 2016 corporate-sponsored presidential debates. Not one. We can use the organizational structures we have created in the past but we can’t look to them for leadership. They will only follow with too little too late. We must build a new model of civilization.

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