Air conditioning should be a novelty
Here at home in the Pacific Northwest, the arid, but mercifully temperate summer is going to be shut out by the first Pineapple Express of the fall/winter rainy season. Warm rain is better than no rain. The end of fire season in the era of climate chaos is something to be relieved and grateful for. But that sense of relief is likely to be short lived. As Phillip Kennicot describes for The Washington Post, among the other luxuries developed at the intersection of capital and technology in the 20th century, air conditioning started out as a novelty, and as the planet has dangerously warmed, has become a necessity.
You could say the same about automobiles, cell phones, electricity, computers–but as Kennicot points out, as the legitimate need for A/C increases, so does the rate by which greenhouse gases will warm the planet. As I clack away on this laptop’s keyboard in an air-conditioned university library, it makes me wonder if this summer may be looked back upon as the coolest of the next 50.
Pacific salmon may not be burdened in their minds by fretting over what their world may look like in half a century. Yet according to a study published by NOAA in April of this year, salmon are already responding in unpredictable ways to a changing climate. Ominously, the study’s authors note that no adaptation to changing ocean conditions in the adult, ocean-going phase of the salmon life-cycle was discernible in the data they collected. Ocean conditions, as the summer turns to fall, are deteriorating for salmon, as the blob returns, as does El Nino conditions, perhaps meaning a drier, warmer set of winters ahead.
As Wendell Berry advises, do not tax yourself with the forethought of grief. The sun feels good this afternoon, as does the anticipation of the first big rains of the fall. Be well.
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