Pollution in the Air and Body Politic

What messages are those who pollute our planet and society sending? Must we pay attention?

Orange sky. Orange man. (Photos via Getty Images)

The smoky orange sky of New York City last week reminded many people of the dystopian vision of Blade Runner or an apocalyptic picture of Mars where breathing is not possible. I suspect many of those same people never gave a thought to how they and their health were at the mercy of the fossil fuel industry or how extreme wildfires in Canada could make their air hard to tolerate from hundreds of miles away.

That’s the thing about climate change. Until it affects you directly, it can be easy to ignore its reality and the scale of danger it poses now and portends for the future.

For those who are quick to deny what’s happening—that Canada’s most severe wildfire season on record illustrates that climate change leads to hotter, drier conditions with longer, more intense fire seasons—the 400 fires can be dismissed as nature just doing what it does, regardless of man-made impact. But for those of us who’ve devoted a good bit of time reflecting on the climate crisis and its globally interconnected environmental impacts, New York’s status as the city with the worst air quality on the planet last Wednesday was not a surprise.

While many people responded to the visual and respiratory experience by explaining that it evoked thoughts of the apocalypse—a thoroughly reasonable response—that suggested to me that this experience was new to them; it made the effect (at least for the day) quite heavy, even overwhelming. Of course, anyone living in California or other parts of the western United States already know too well how the smoke from massive wildfires can travel hundreds and even thousands of miles.

If you haven’t witnessed with your own eyes or otherwise paid attention to the increasing frequency of these extreme events, exacerbated by climate-related rising temperatures, you are likely to assume that it’s just a matter of time before things get back to normal. I suspect more than a few people who witnessed blue skies last Thursday not only breathed a sigh of relief, they imagined this episode was now behind them (or would be soon). In other words, the climate crisis would once again not be their problem and could quickly be forgotten.

I am involved in various human-centric storytelling projects—involving sound recording, theater performance and film as well as more traditionally journalistic efforts—that attempt to give readers, viewers and listeners an opportunity to think about and care about the reality of climate change and provide not just a reason to be alarmed but some insight into what can be done. This work is based on the assumption that the only way we can confront this existential threat is by increasing empathy and a sense of urgency. Because if the problem doesn’t enter their field of vision, many people will just ignore it.

I recently sought story submissions for an online series on how climate change had personally touched peoples’ lives. Usually, when my Transformations team and I seek submissions for what we call “snapshot” essays, we’ll get 50 or 75 submissions. For this topic, we got a paltry eight. My conclusion: People remain reluctant to engage the issue.

Maybe the smoky skies of New York will change that, maybe more people will reflect on how the climate crisis is altering life as we have known it, but I’m clear the effort must find new ways to motivate people to pay attention and respond to what’s happening around them—in their own neighborhood or in the wider ecosystems they inhabit.

And then there’s Donald J. Trump, a polluter on a scale so massive it’s almost impossible to imagine how one person can emit so much toxic waste. We know that his malignant spewing inspires many of his cultists, providing them an overcooked perspective of grievance to confront the world and identify the guilty targets to blame.

But his industrial-scale polluting also may convince many others to ignore him; it’s too much, they say, too ugly and foolish; I don’t have to pay attention to that poison. Besides, they may think, if I share this pollution with others, then I’ll be expanding the cloud of poison.

That’s understandable. I often ask myself whether it’s a good or bad idea to amplify the deranged ranting. But like those who choose to ignore the dire dangers of climate change, this reluctance to pay attention can enable the apocalyptic-minded polluter to keep going or, worse, go farther.

Exhibit A: Trump’s response to the federal indictment in the classified documents case. I’m deciding not to look away:

• "The Marxists and Fascists in the DOJ & FBI are going after me at a level and speed never seen before in our Country, and I did nothing wrong.” (Truth Social)

• “HOW CAN DOJ POSSIBLY CHARGE ME, WHO DID NOTHING WRONG, WHEN NO OTHER PRESIDENT’S WERE CHARGED…THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!” (Truth Social)

• THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION IS TOTALLY CORRUPT. THIS IS ELECTION INTERFERENCE & A CONTINUATION OF THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME.” (Truth Social)

• “The ridiculous and baseless indictment of me by the Biden administration’s weaponized department of injustice will go down as among the most horrific abuses of power in the history of our country,” he said at his campaign rally Saturday in Georgia.

You get the idea. The manic bombast has the odor of a desperate man determined to SAY ANYTHING as loud as he can to avoid responsibility, fuel his cult and distract from the serious questions around his criminal behavior. In other words, send out as much pollution as possible so that no one—at least no one among his cult—can think soberly.

And his defenders are already in high gear—obfuscating, engaging in “whataboutism” and lying about, as Jack Smith put it, the “scope and gravity” of the crimes.

“It is unconscionable for a President to indict the leading candidate opposing him,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said the day the indictment was announced. “Joe Biden kept classified documents for decades. I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice.”

“He said he declassified this material,” said Jim Jordan, GOP chair of the House judicial committee and Trump sycophant. “He can put it wherever he wants and handle it however he wants.”

Worse is the dangerous rhetoric of people like Arizona’s losing candidate for governor. “I have a message tonight for Merrick Garland and Jack Smith and Joe Biden—and the guys back there in the fake news media,” Kari Lake said at Trump’s rally in Georgia. “If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.”

Anyone who actually reads the plainly written indictment can grasp the reckless, willful behavior and see that Trump is in serious legal jeopardy. To be clear, anyone insisting he did nothing wrong or this indictment is an attack on the rule of law is not a serious person and lying to defend him.

We may hope that a return to normal is a possibility. But as I noted not just after the 2016 election, “The normal human instinct is to adapt to reality. It will take constant vigilance to avoid normalizing Trump.”

Put another way, adapting in hopes that we will eventually return to normal can lead to accepting extreme conditions in order to survive. But if the climate crisis and the Trump years have taught us anything, it’s that their poisonous effects—including the ways they metastasize with the backing of bad actors—require confronting these dangers and not looking away. Only by confronting them do we have a chance to overcome this toxic trajectory and make life better.

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