Global warming is just starting
After weeks of depressingly bad air, the 160 AQI on a recent Thursday night magically dropped to 20 the next morning. My bike ride to work was thrilling – mask free!
Remember the movie “The Day After Tomorrow”? After the Earth is suddenly plunged into an Ice Age, Dennis Quaid snowshoes 40 miles into New York City to rescue a band of survivors, including Jake Gyllenhaal, proving his love for his formerly neglected son. Everyone smiles as the rescue helicopter heads back south. Their elation flying was my elation pedaling.
Until it hit me. The movie slaps this happy ending on an unimaginable disaster. Consider: half of all Americans (in the north) have frozen to death, and the other half, the “lucky” survivors will now starve to death. Wheat don’t grow on a glacier. Hollywood made half a billion on that movie, confirming their hunch that viewers wouldn’t think beyond the happy ending to the sobering one.
My happiness that morning came crashing down one block from home when it hit me: the clear skies weren’t the end of climate disaster. Fire season is not even half over. Global warming is just getting warmed up.
Bruce Ratcliffe, Fresno
https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article246162285.html
