Putting your own mask on before assisting others was only supposed to be a safety instruction on an airplane, but it has applied to everyday life in the urban corridor from Washington, DC, to Boston where, for the second time in four years, smoke from wildfires in Canada turned skies an eerie shade of sepia.
The air smelled like smoke, even hundreds of miles downwind from the blazes. Sunsets were transformed into an ethereal red, while the sun was barely visible at noon through the pollution in Boston, New York and Washington. Midwestern cities suffered too: Chicago and Detroit had some of the worst air quality in the entire world. At one point last week, at least 120 million Americans from Minnesota to Massachusetts were under air quality warnings due to the wildfire smoke.
For decades, scientists have been warning us about the calamitous consequences of climate change. These warnings have often come in scientific studies using seemingly far-off years such as 2050 and 2100.
But this summer proves we don’t have to wait until the future for climate change to smack us in the face. From torrid heat waves, to deadly flash floods, to raging wildfires and their associated acrid smoke — the signs are all around us, right now.
