Late July, and the Okanagan has emerged from a two-week heat dome: afternoons hitting the high 30’s, nights only cooling down to the high 20’s. There is a straightforward meteorological explanation for this: our greenhouse gas emissions warm the atmosphere. The atmospheric warming slows the jet stream, resulting in stalled weather patterns. Warmer water temperatures increase ocean evaporation, which increases atmospheric humidity, which reduces nighttime cooling. A worldwide daily high temperature record was broken recently, and then broken again the day after. High temperatures dry out fuels and make fires burn hotter and spread more rapidly. Profound, and profoundly simple, science.

On the fire front, thus far this summer we are fortunate. We have had a few small fires and some smoky days, but so far no major conflagrations like other parts of Canada are experiencing. The Boreal forests were once our guardians, sequestering massive amounts of atmospheric carbon. Now with the advent of megafires, they are carbon emitters. We used to call forest fire release as “natural carbon,” but global warming has shifted the ownership of that carbon to us. 

Cars, gas stations, refineries, oil wells, streets and highways seem increasingly unnatural and threatening to me, since I know they are at the root of our existential problem. Now just the noise of passing cars can push me into momentary dystopia. Some part of me is revulsed by the fact that our culture and economy is centered around the private automobile, even though I own one and use it a couple of times a week. 

The evening news spews out division, autocracy, crime and violence. Violence both random and planned. The movies spew out much the same, along with alien invasions and apocalyptica. Plastics surround me; virtually all my purchased food comes in its requisite polyethylene container, either hard plastic, flexible plastic or styrofoam, and sometimes all three. Chinese consumer goods, and foods, also surround me; each item I buy supports autocracy, slave labor, enormous ocean freighters and marine microplastics. Up and down this Valley, developers are busy building monster homes and car-dependent spaghetti subdivisions on fire-prone hillsides. Local and regional governments bend over backwards to help out. For the few salmon that navigate the eight dams on the Columbia River and head up the Okanagan, The waters here are getting too warm to support the traditional spawning run.  On the other hand, luxury cruise ship and airplane travel is burgeoning.

What do I do, when the only pleasures left to me are found in the very small circle of family, gardening, friends, dogs, books, swimming, nature, food and wine? Even though I stay active politically, ride my bike and recycle obsessively, my super-rational inner voice tells me my individual subtractions from the global carbon sum are so infinitesimal that they simply don’t matter. Then my alternate inner voice says: yes, your individual subtractions are insignificant, but you are setting an example. To which the other voice replies: his neighbors all see him as a nerdy left-wing wacko, riding his Chinese-made bicycle to the recycling depot. 

So what is my next move? Should I go to a museum and throw paint on a famous portrait?  Start a naked sit-in on the steps of City Hall?

I think back to my highschool years, when the Cuban Missile Crisis put the world on the brink of nuclear war. I remember thinking at the time: it no longer matters what I do. I can study hard and work for good causes, or I can lay in bed reading comic books all day. Either way, what I do doesn’t matter. As a teenager with little yet at stake in the world, I found that attitude kind of liberating. Flash forward to the Now, and the knowledge that whatever I do or don’t do makes no difference makes me depressed, not liberated. 

Randomly, in the midst of this protracted negative frame of mind, a cool, sunny, smokeless morning inserts itself. The birds are active in the yard, flowers are blooming, tree leaves flutter in the breeze, and my frozen heart melts. I go for a guilty pleasure swim in unnaturally warm Okanagan Lake, and I experience the sensuous joy of full immersion. For a moment.