OPINION: Chris Kelly Opinion: Where there's fire...
Jun. 11—"The planet isn't going anywhere. We are!"
— the late, great George Carlin on climate change
As a pack-a-day smoker, I found the poor air quality of the past week challenging, to say the least. It was tough to puff between huffs.
I've tried and failed to kick the butts innumerable times using a plethora of methods. Nicotine gum. Lozenges. Patches. Chantix, acupuncture — even hypnosis. The Marlboro monkey still straddles my back.
I stay sober from alcohol one day at a time. I commit time-lapse suicide one coffin nail at a time. I had a wisp of hope that the toxic fog of the Canadian wildfires that draped the northeast in a thick haze might inspire me to try again.
Nope. But being so directly and stubbornly affected by events transpiring thousands of miles away was a humbling reminder that all known life is limited to this planet. We are all neighbors, no matter how much we war over property lines, porous borders, partisan politics and other exclusively human considerations that are meaningless in the face of prevailing winds.
"We are all connected," said Dr. Erica Smithwick, a professor of geology and director of the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute at Penn State University. She said the intensity of the Canadian fires' effects on air quality in Pennsylvania and its neighbors was stunning "even for me, who has studied wildfires all my career."
Smithwick specializes in forest ecosystems and the essential role fire plays in their natural cycles of reclamation and renewal. Smithwick's work takes her around the globe, granting her an expert perspective on the caustic and curative effects of fire.
"We've lost touch with our relationship with fire," Smithwick said. Fire is nature's housekeeper, particularly in the forest. It clears away dead wood, enriches the soil and opens space for new growth. The seed cones of some trees open only when exposed to extreme heat, Smithwick said.
Here in the east, our increasingly wetter climate drives a focus on flooding, she said. The acrid smoke and ash the California wildfires of the past few years spread across the northwest seemed distant until now.
"We looked at the people out west and said, 'Poor them,'" Smithwick said. "Floods are a bigger threat in the east. The east is getting wetter. Why would we worry about fire?"
The air quality alerts of the past week answer that bluntly. Schools dismissed early. Garbage pickup and other municipal services were postponed. School and professional sporting events were postponed or canceled. When I spoke with Smithwick, she had just learned that Special Olympics Pennsylvania canceled its Summer Games in University Park.
"I always thought Pennsylvania was the safest place," Smithwick said with a chuckle. She's not just a professor and climate expert. She's a mother of three and a "Science Mom." The group describes itself as "climate scientists and mothers working to give our children the planet they deserve." Learn more at sciencemoms.com.
Moms whose children can't play outside because the air is toxic make natural activists, Smithwick said. I pointed out that many Americans still scoff at the notion that human beings have any serious impact on the climate. She responded like any mom would.
"You can still act without being a believer in climate change," she said.
That's true, but also unlikely in our cloudy cultural and political environment. Most of us seem much too distracted by exclusively human considerations to think or act in the interest of the ecosystem we all call home. The planet will continue its housekeeping with or without us.
I began with the Carlin quote because — like so many of his "brain droppings" — it's so apt for the moment. Late-career Carlin was too cynical about humanity for my taste, but his razor-sharp point — that the earth was here long before us and will remain long after we're gone — merits attention as the smoke clears.
"We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either," Carlin mused way back in 1992. "Maybe a little Styrofoam ... The planet will be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas."
Have a great day. Neighbor.
CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, is bound for the forest. Read his award-winning blog at timestribuneblogs.com/kelly. Contact the writer: kellysworld@timesshamrock.com; @cjkink on Twitter; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook.
