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WRITING A COLUMN in 2023 is a peculiar privilege, in the sense that it feels a lot like chronicling the end of the world.
Global news this week was dominated by two stories that matched each other for their cinematic enormity, as well as their doom-laden significance.
The first: the destruction of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper River in a Russian-controlled area of Ukraine. The details of how the dam came to be destroyed remain unclear, but will doubtlessly be closely examined in the coming weeks by those with the expertise to do so.
What seems beyond argument however, is that this dam would not have been destroyed had Russia not commenced and committed to its entirely pointless and bloodthirsty invasion of Ukraine in February of last year.
Whether the destruction of the dam was rendered by explosives as part of a military strategy, or a result of disrepair brought about by being in the hands of forces whose purpose is not to diligently maintain the infrastructure of the territory they’ve invaded, is not what will be remembered in years to come.
Instead, it will be just another chapter of this strange volume in time, when a global climate crisis is shunted from view by the avaricious behaviour of bad actors.
Which brings us to our second story: historically bad wildfires in Canada producing enough smoke to block out the sun hundreds of miles away along the US eastern seaboard.
New Yorkers were warned to remain indoors or wear masks if travelling outside as the very atmosphere around them became toxic. Flights were downed, baseball games were cancelled and everything looked like it had been run through the filter that Hollywood films use when they want to evoke poverty.
Make no mistake. These are the starkest, most catastrophic images to come out of New York City since 11 September, 2001.
Over 10.6 million acres have already burned in Canada, roughly 15 times the annual average of the last ten years. These fires are attributed to the Arctic warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the world (and it’s not as if the rest of the world is warming slowly).
To put it mildly, neither event inspires confidence for the future of our planet, or our species. On the one hand, we have ecological disasters that are only becoming more frequent, more disruptive, and more deadly. On the other hand, we have the wanton lust for power, land and control that tempts world leaders into bloodletting and conquest.
And stuck in the middle is us — the people who don’t really feel like we can do anything about any of it.
I suppose it should be obvious by now that this will not be the kind of column where the author recounts amusing anecdotes from his weekly trip to the supermarket, or an interesting remark made by a colleague at a barbecue.
Reeling in the Years 2023 could well be replaced with an hour of climate-related catastrophe footage while that Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime song from the traumatic old road safety ads plays on a loop.
People who think of themselves as sensible tend to prefer sensible language. Language that warns people, that urges them to action, feels sensationalist to the “let’s just get on with it” demographic.
Unsurprisingly, these people also don’t like to panic. They certainly don’t like to be told that the world is ending, even as the walls close in more inevitably with each passing season.
Can we blame them? Acknowledging the reality of the world we inhabit is not easy. It’s frustrating, it’s frightening, and worst of all, it demands action. It demands that we cast aside our preferences as consumers, as air travellers, as motorists, as voters, and as peaceful people who would rather not spend our Saturdays taking to the streets and gluing ourselves to the gates of Leinster House and throwing soup over paintings in the National Gallery.
This week, the European Commissions’ Copernicus Emergency Management Service (EMS) issued a warning stating that Ireland is at an extreme risk of wildfires.
On Thursday, secretary general of the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organisation, Professor Petteri Taalas, said: “Thanks to an already high concentration of carbon dioxide, we have lost this glacier melting game and sea level rise game.”
As far as Taalas is concerned, there is no return to the relatively stable climate we enjoyed in the last century and the centuries before. It is a new world now. The day after tomorrow is here, and it’s unseasonably hot.
As global temperatures rise, wildfires will increase across all continents, the air will become harder to breathe, food will become harder to produce, life will become harder to manage.
It is simple common sense, and not pessimism, that tells so many of us that this state of affairs is guaranteed to get worse instead of better. Those who run the world, the kind of people who prioritise profit over planet, the kind of men whose greed bursts dams, might have some people fooled yet as to the nature of the future that faces us.
But everybody’s gotta learn some time.
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“To put it mildly, neither event inspires confidence for the future of our planet, or our species.”
What young Carl here fails to realise is that the planet will be just fine. It will adapt to whatever happens. It was around long before us and will be around long after us.
It’s us as a species which is endangered, not the planet. Millions of years ago, the planet was covered mostly in water save for a few volcanoes and had an atmosphere of mostly methane. But it was still earth, and it will still be earth when we’re gone.
@JedBartlett: yep, the planet will be just fine, we’re banjaxed at our own hands. The Planet and its biodiversity will do much better without us….
Man- made Climate change poses as much of an existential threat to us as Covid. Keep the fear and hyperbole going . After you drink your soya latte, you should look at the actual data and spend a day in the bog.
@Alan O’ Reilly: do you get your ‘data’ from Fox News or do you so your ‘research’ on YouTube? Clown.
@Bríann O Connor: Fair play to you Briann, you’ve put me in my place with your extremely witty response. I’m going to get a BLM tattoo on my way back from getting my booster. #followthe science
@Alan O’ Reilly: well it’s clear you tick a few very unsavoury boxes of thinking.
@Alan O’ Reilly: The bogs are nearly gone now
@Alan O’ Reilly: The actual data is pretty grim for both of those threats. But I’m sure you’ll prefer some comforting fable that they aren’t.
noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/climate/climate-change-impacts
ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-cumulative-economist-single-entity
@Alan O’ Reilly: https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/here-are-10-myths-about-climate-change#:~:text=The%20Earth’s%20climate%20has%20always,cycles%20of%20warming%20and%20cooling.
“These are the starkest, most catastrophic images to come out of New York since 9/11.”
Compare this is to Hurricane Sandy or the Covid Pandemic when people when people actually died in New York, and the images of the city were equally as shocking.
Absolute non-article.
People made climate change is partially responsible for the state of affairs we are in. Wildfires have always existed. Glacial melt has always existed. All we have done is just speed up the process a little.
Sure didn’t they find camp fires in parts of the North Sea known as Doggerland which was submerged thousands of years ago.
Who’s gonna tell you when it’s too late
“These are the starkest, most catastrophic images to come out of New York since 9/11.”
What are ye on about?
Compare this is to Hurricane Sandy or the Covid Pandemic when people when people actually died in New York, and the images of the city were equally as shocking.
Absolute non-article, written by someone who was born yesterday.
No argument with the overall tenor of the piece, but if you watched the mass burials on Hart Island in March 2020 you might think this was equally apocalyptic.
What about Hurricane Sandy or the Covid Pandemic?
Sorry to be pedantic but Reeling in the Years 2023 will never have “everybodys gotta learn sometime” played. The playlist is compiled from music released in said year. Pick a song from this year so far matching your narrative and edit!
@gary Merring please delete the repeats of the comments…nothing worse.
As for the article, I agree with @jedbartlett
Great article
Insane stuff altogether, even Greta in her wildest tantrum wouldn’t come up with something as deranged as this.
“entirely pointless and bloodthirsty invasion of Ukraine in February of last year”, this is just crude blatant propaganda.
“These are the starkest, most catastrophic images to come out of New York since 9/11.”
Compare this statement to Hurricane Sandy or the Covid Pandemic when people when peoples lives were lost in New York, and the images of the city were equally as shocking.
Please delete this article.
Just a heads up. The housing crisis would be more apt to write about
“These are the starkest, most catastrophic images to come out of New York since 9/11.”
What are ye on?
Compare this is to Hurricane Sandy or the Covid Pandemic when people when people actually died in New York, and the images of the city were equally as shocking.
Our sense of self importance withers in the face of Mother Nature’s obliviousness. If wee come to an end as a species then intelligence is an evolutionary dead end. Not entirely convinced this will happen anytime soon.
Watching way too many American movies. The world has gone crazy with fake news. No such thing as climate change. We’re going about like Muppets recycling and the like while China, America etc burn what they like into the atmosphere. Wars everywhere but yet there’s none. Who won the Syrian war?? Or is it still going on? Pure bs. Pleeeease
Sorry * @gary merrin
“These are the starkest, most catastrophic images to come out of New York since 9/11.”
Compare this is to Hurricane Sandy or the Covid Pandemic when people when people actually died in New York, and the images of the city were equally as shocking.
Absolute non-article. Please delete.
“These are the starkest, most catastrophic images to come out of New York since 9/11.”
Please delete this article.
Compare this article to Hurricane Sandy or the Covid Pandemic when people when peoples lives were lost in New York, and the images of the city were equally as shocking.
Please delete this article.
“These are the starkest, most catastrophic images to come out of New York since 9/11.”
Compare this is to Hurricane Sandy or the Covid Pandemic when people when people actually died in New York, and the images of the city were equally as shocking.
“These are the starkest, most catastrophic images to come out of New York since 9/11.”
What are ye on?
Compare this is to Hurricane Sandy or the Covid Pandemic when people when people actually died in New York, and the images of the city were equally as shocking.
Absolute non-article…
“These are the starkest, most catastrophic images to come out of New York since 9/11.”
What are ye on about?
Compare this is to Hurricane Sandy or the Covid Pandemic when people when people actually died in New York, and the images of the city were equally as shocking.
Absolute non-article…
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