Cory Doctorow: The Swerve

They add, “Besides, who’s to say we’ll fall off the cliff? Maybe we’ll be going so fast that we leap the canyon. Fonzie did it! Calm down. Hey! Keep your hands off the wheel? What are you, a terrorist? Don’t you dare do that again. Someone could get really badly hurt.”

The climate emergency is real and we are living through it. As I write this, I’ve emailed some writer friends in the southwest to ask if the fires threaten them or their homes. One hasn’t answered yet. The other wrote back to say they’re fine, but what about the wildfires near my house?

Oh, I wrote. We’re fine. So far. California is in for a hell of a wildfire season. It’s dry out there. It’s an emergency. Officially.

We’re not acting like it’s an emergency. In mid-May, The Guardian reported a bombshell: a series of planned “carbon bombs” – large-scale oil and gas projects that will “shatter the 1.5C climate goal.” The war in Ukraine has the world scrambling for winter heat – for sources of oil and gas, that is, not renewable alternatives.

Of course not. The only way for renewables to replace Russian oil and gas this coming winter is for Europe to have retooled around sustainable heating: a mix of beefed up insulation, heat pumps, and mass power short­age. Those are long projects. We knew we’d need them decades ago, but we kicked the can down the road, and further down the road, and further.

Leave a Comment