Thread by @dwallacewells

“In Glasgow over the past few weeks, we were treated to one vision of the climate future: halting, inadequate policy progress coupled with ever-rising hyperbole and rhetorical alarm. In British Columbia, right now, a different vision is unfolding.” (1/x) nymag.com/intelligencer/…

“That is: one climate emergency following in the wake of another, indeed made possible by the previous disaster, and in a prosperous, modern, well-governed part of the globe, absolutely overwhelming local infrastructure and the capacity of public officials to manage the crisis.”

“In June, the Pacific ‘heat dome’ shattered temperature records in BC, forcing climate scientists to reconsider their models and killing hundreds of humans and more than a billion marine animals, along with harvests of whole regions of farmland—‘the cherries roasting on trees.’”

“The wildfire season overall burned more than 3,000 square miles this year, an area of land about the size of Puerto Rico, releasing probably a hundred million tons of carbon into the atmosphere and destroying the city of Lytton.”

“And now, a ‘storm of the century’ powered by an ‘atmospheric river’ has hit mountains totally stripped of tree protection, producing mudslides and rockslides and landslides, trapping hundreds of cars on roads suddenly piled with debris.”

“The storm closed major highways, downed power lines, forced the evacuation of thousands, shut down two of the country’s biggest railroad lines and its largest container port, and literally washed away parts of the region’s chief east-west roadway, the Trans-Canada Highway.”

“A thousand train cars carrying grain are currently idling, and it’s estimated that the railroads won’t reopen for weeks. Some of the highways may take longer. Farmers have been ‘trying to save their livestock by towing them in boats in water that was five feet deep.’”

“Others have been herding cattle by Jet Ski.”

“The storm itself was historic, but the impacts would have been impossible had the prior destruction not paved the way for these climate cascades.”

“This is Canada. We aren’t just failing to address the growing climate crisis to come; we’re unprepared even for the impacts already here—in part because they keep surprising us with their intensity and in part because we can’t seem to fathom our genuine vulnerability.” (X/x)