Smoke: as the world burns

A guy waits outside the bus terminal in Jackson Heights; another hangs in the village.

Canadian wildfires are draping a gray-orange haze over broad swaths of the eastern half of the US. The old and young are most vulnerable to serious health impacts, as are those with certain medical conditions. The privileged and the house-bound can stay inside, but others, as during Covid, have jobs and lives that require them to expose themselves—this time to hazardous smoke rather than viral infection.

So here we are, facing more, more varied, and more serious consequences of climate change; some beyond the point of no return.

But on the upside, people can now get some use from all those N95 masks sitting in a draw. We should have known they’d come in handy again.

June 8, 2023