As The World Burns

Wired:

Here's a sentence for you: The Arctic is burning. Yes, that Arctic - the traditionally cold and wet one, large swaths of which are being consumed by an astonishing number of wildfires, from Russia to Greenland to Alaska.

“Arctic fires - the combination of these two words is still an unusual term in my field of fire science,” says Guillermo Rein of Imperial College London. “Arctic fires are rare, but they're not unprecedented. What is unprecedented is the number of fires that are happening. Never before have satellites around the planet seen this level of activity.”

Unprecedented, yes, but not unexplained. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, leading to the desiccation of vegetation, which fuels huge blazes. Fortunately for us, these wildfires typically threaten remote, sparsely populated areas. But unfortunately for the whole of humanity, so far this year Arctic fires have released some 121 megatonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, more than what Belgium emits annually. That beats the previous Arctic record of 110 megatonnes of CO2, set in 2004—and we’re only in June.
This came onto my Twitter feed, and one of the replies - from a denier, of course - was "Don't pretend this is the first time it's happened".

I say "of course" because it's a very familiar theme - "It's happened before. Global warming and climate change and all that hippy dippy shit is happening now because it's always happened and you're just trying to fuck me out of enjoying my freedom and blah blah blah."  

What isn't as obvious is the invited inference that we're supposed to be calmed somehow by the knowledge that the world has fucked us over before and there's nothing we can do about it, so we might as well relax and have some fun as we wait and watch and make bets on how long it'll take before we all choke to death because of our own stupid complacency.

And it's a theme that fits with a kind of nihilistic overview I see in way too many people.

The emotional and intellectual heavy lifting required to deal with some of these problems is just too much for a lot of folks.

So we get The Prom Committee Effect. A dozen or so kids do all the work, while everybody else concentrates on getting a date, buying something cool to wear, and boosting their own expectations so they can bitch about it at the after-party.

'Twas ever thus, and ever thus 'twill be.

But this ain't the fuckin' prom, kids - this shit's gonna kill us.