Conflagration in a Time of COVID

 If the year 2020 wasn't already bad enough, some parts of the country (the US, specifically) are burning up.  There are massive infernos from southern California right up to the Canadian border.

So, yes, it's a climate emergency.  The pictures are certainly dramatic enough.  Scenes from cities bathed in an orange glow and very limited visibility.  Flames everywhere.

Some of the impact has been lost because so many people are preoccupied by the COVID thing, but there are fires, lots of them, and it's just another example of something that has been predicted that we, as a society, have managed to ignore.  Until now.

There are many accounts of what's going on.  

This one looks at the link between the fires and climate change.  What's behind the 'unprecedented' wildfires ravaging California

CNN has this story:  California's wildfires show how climate change is making forced evacuations and power shut-offs the norm

Thick Wildfire Smoke Blocks Sun, Turns Bay Area Sky Orange.

West Coast fires: Hundreds of homes burned to ground, Oregon governor says

And some state politicians have been fighting back, particularly against Trump who, they say, has failed to fight climate change.

So basically, it's pretty desperate down there.  Today, we here in southern BC have very smoky fires as the smoke drifts north.  It's not as bad (yet) as it was during the summers of 2017 and 2018, but it's pretty bad.  I hate to think of the hell that exists in California, Oregon and Washington.

So even though COVID seems to have taken up all our energies, remember that there is an even larger crisis that has not gone away.