Irish Examiner view: Earth is becoming a globe of flames

The polluting consequences of wildfires can be seen across the world on almost any day of the year.

Sat, 10 Jun, 2023 - 02:40

It wasn’t just dramatic timing that the warning given to a University College Cork conference by former US vice president Al Gore that the atmosphere is being treated “like an open sewer” was marked by a miasma of eerie orange haze over New York City. The polluting consequences of wildfires can be witnessed somewhere around the globe on almost any day of the year.

Last weekend, the European Commission announced a doubling of its aerial firefighting fleet following devastating 2022 conflagrations in France, Spain, Germany, and Slovenia. Nearly 450 emergency workers have been pre-positioned on the ground for 2023. Significant outbreaks around Valencia with further fires in Asturias and Cantabria have already taken place in March.

Readers will recall huge fires in Washington State and the Pacific northwest last summer and autumn. This time it was the turn of the eastern seaboard.

The Big Apple, for a time, carried the unenviable title of the city with the highest level of air pollution in the world. All outdoor activities at public schools were suspended, vulnerable New Yorkers were told to wear masks and stay indoors, baseball matches were postponed.

The New York Times rolled out consumer checks to discover the best domestic air purifier ($230 — roughly €214 — from Amazon if you want the model in white). Performances of Hamilton and Camelot were cancelled on Broadway and actress Jodie Comer had to end one of her debut season performances after 10 minutes following a coughing fit and telling the stage manager: “I can’t breathe in this air.”

CLIMATE & SUSTAINABILITY HUB

Changes in patterns such as the El Niño ocean warming cycle used to be the province of specialists and meteorologists. Now they are subjects in which everyone has a stake. Maynooth University’s climate change expert, Peter Thorne, has warned that its return will help to break the 2016 record as the hottest year in recorded history.

In Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 Pulitzer prize-winning eco thriller The Road, we never learn what the extinction event is that leads to the collapse of society, leaving the US ash-covered, dangerous, and forlorn.

But there is a terrifying quote fully applicable to events this week: “By day the banished sun circles the Earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.”

Al Gore tells Cork conference: This decade the most decisive for climate and biodiversity