Greece’s wildfires are a reminder that the failure to act is first a failure of imagination

There Will Never Be a Perfect Moment to Act on Climate Change

 
Ash is settling across the Mediterranean, where wildfires have raged for the better part of August. As extreme heat scorched Europe, the mercury in some regions of Greece soared past 115 degrees—the country’s worst heat wave since 1987. Hundreds of fires broke out across the coastal nation, accelerated by strong winds and drought. Volunteers and authorities scrambled to fight the fires, evacuate locals, and protect heritage sites, amid flames estimated to have consumed up to 10 percent of Greece’s forests.

One photo, of an older woman standing in front of the flames, clutching her chest, her eyes closed and mouth open in what looks like grief, circled the globe. On the heels of yet another apocalyptic United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, the image “personified collective fear,” Washington Post art critic Philip Kennicott wrote. “What she is suffering, we will suffer; what she has lost, we will lose.” Or as one resident of northern Evia island, one of the areas hardest hit, told The New York Times: “We lived in paradise. Now it’s hell.”

It’s an understandable sentiment, but one that obscures a more complicated truth that might better serve this pivotal moment: Earth is neither heaven nor hell; it’s an ever-shifting middle ground and always has been. While many people are still looking for the ideal emotional or material conditions to take action, most of our biggest challenges will have no discernible start or stop, and they are always evolving. As such, they must be addressed in motion.

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Πηγή: newrepublic.com