CLIMATE CHANGE | SCIENCE | NATURE | CAPITALISM

The planet has a fever.

As with any other, this fever is a sign that something is wrong. It is the outward symptom of an illness, an infection that's been allowed to fester for far too long.

When humans have a fever, we pay attention. We track the temperature and we make every effort to keep it under control. We understand that if a fever spirals too high, it is a medical emergency.

We know full well that if we can't control the fever, we die.

If a doctor is aware that their patient has a high fever and they don't attempt to intervene, we would recognize it as medical malpractice. If the patient were at risk of dying and they stood by and did nothing, we would call it criminal negligence.

If parents or caretakers don't try to get their child help when they develop a high fever, we would call it abuse, and potentially negligent homicide if the little one doesn't make it.

What do we call it when the planet's caretakers not only refuse to help but keep actively cranking up the heat?

If you're paying attention to environmental news, it's virtually impossible to feel optimistic.

Everywhere I look, I'm inundated with reminders. It's wildfire season here in Canada, and the dread we're all feeling after the terror of the last few years is difficult to overstate.

Last year, we faced the very worst fire season we've ever had. We saw an area larger than the Maritime provinces completely burned out by the blaze, with thousands of people forced to flee their homes.

This year, we haven't seen quite the same bombastic start. But with drought ongoing in parts of the country and a vast swathe of wilderness full of dead-standing trees, things could still take a turn for the worst.

It was only a few years ago that the town of Lytton was scoured nearly off the map. A five-day extreme heatwave killed hundreds of people, and it triggered an uncontrollable firestorm that forced the rest to become refugees.

That heatwave reached temperatures previously unfathomable to Canadians. It reached the average temperature in Death Valley, California — one of the hottest places on Earth.

To say that we're scared would be an understatement. While I don't live in British Columbia, that did not save me from the risk of losing my life. Last year's wildfires blanketed the entire country, spreading from coast to coast.

There was a blaze only a short distance from my home, and it lasted for days. The air was full of smoke, leaving us hacking and coughing every time we went outside.

By some miracle, the wind carried it away. The sparks flew further down the coast, and the fire left our little patch of woodland virtually untouched.

I didn't lose any loved ones, and we kept our homes.

Others weren't so lucky. I don't know how much longer that luck is going to hold.

Elsewhere in the world, things aren't looking much better. Last year was the hottest year on record since we started tracking global temperature trends back in 1850.

That rise in temperature carries consequences.

People in Arizona were developing severe burns from coming into contact with concrete, as hot as a stove burner due to the searing power of the sun. The city of Phoenix reported 645 deaths due to heat sickness in 2023.

Much like Canada, Europe was on fire. With the worst of the blaze centered in Greece and the wider Mediterranean region, it threatened the surrounding countries that were facing dry weather and high winds.

Where was the rain? Don't worry, it showed up. It all turned up in France, where record-shattering rainfall left people abandoning their homes and running for high ground in hopes of escaping the flood.

The thing with climate change is that it's kind of a misnomer. It should be called climate chaos. Weather patterns around the world are highly dependent on the climate and predictable patterns of temperature. We've done away with that predictability now.

We're flying blind.

This year, we're looking at more of the same. It's already started; while the wildfire season here in Canada is starting a bit more slowly — thank goodness — Southeast Asia is getting their turn under the magnifying glass.

The heatwaves currently battering Southeast Asian countries are being likened to living in an oven, or, according to one memorable quote, a blast furnace.

And if you're hoping that you can turn to the scientific community to give you advice and a modicum of hope, don't bother. They've given up on limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, and they're now reporting that we're more likely to hit 2.5 or even 3 by the end of the century.

The reason? World governments and corporations are looking at the data, shrugging their shoulders, and continuing with business as usual.

Money talks. As usual, our lives are nothing more than externalities.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. You can go ahead and call me a climate change doomer.

It's not that the people in power don't know what's going on, they just don't care. They think their money will offer them protection, and allow them to skate through the coming calamities untouched and free.

The rest of us are on our own.

We keep producing more greenhouse gasses, we keep burning more oil, we keep pouring poison and salt into the earth and we keep expecting things to work out fine.

They won't.

We've hit too many tipping points. Every single fire that burns releases more of the carbon that is stored by the forest. Every single inch of permafrost that we lose to rising heat releases even more.

Every heat wave destroys more ocean life, bleaching coral and causing mass die-offs of entire ecosystems — the ones that produce most of the oxygen we breathe.

Even if we managed to completely stop all pollution, and all of our emissions and turned things around, it wouldn't stop it. Because the crap that's already in our atmosphere is more than enough to carry us across the threshold of disaster.

It would save us in the long run, but in the short term, we'd still be in trouble. And let's be real — we know this is a pipe dream.

So, what's the solution? I don't have one.

We don't have any brakes on this train. It wasn't cost-effective to install them. As such, we're left trying to brace for impact and make ourselves as comfortable as we can.

We can work together to build more sustainable communities, network with one another to establish plans for what to do in emergencies, and we can create incentives for everyone to participate.

We can learn to grow our own food, to gather, purify, and store water. We can choose renewable sources of energy if it's feasible, and we can try to reduce our household waste.

But whatever we do, it's going to be a tiny drop in a very large, corporate-branded bucket. Until they face consequences, we're shit out of luck.

This fever is just going to keep getting worse.

Solidarity wins.

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