We Are All Refugees Now
The sun is a dim red orb, hanging in the Oregon sky. It’s too early to feel like sunset but it does. This is what wildfire smoke does to a place.
It’s not possible to escape the smoke, not really. I’ve tried. One year when the smoke settled into the Bay Area I drove an hour south to breathe some fresh air at the beach. The following year that escape was gone; the smoke was everywhere, from Seattle to San Diego.
If not smoke, floods. If not floods, heat. If not heat, hurricanes. Climate change is upon us.
It no longer matters the reason for it. What matters now is surviving.
How does one survive a situation like this? It would seem possible, provided we are willing to trade-in some cultural assumptions.
First: to be tied to a “place” — a city, a community, even a nation-state — will become as much a liability as an asset. What value is there holding dear a place that is covered in smoke three months each year? Or battered by hurricanes regularly? Animals regularly migrate with the seasons, why don’t humans? What prevents us from doing so? And at what point will those benefits of staying put crumble in face of the costs?
Second: as ever, money and power triumph. To be able to move, adapt — most of all, to change — is the ultimate. Flexibility in all things — locations, jobs, communities — allows one to respond to what would appear to be quite nonlinear. Those who can afford to change will do so. Those who cannot willl be forced to.
Third, and perhaps most importantly: there will no longer be a class known as “refugees.” We are all refugees now. Political boundaries will be challenged, and challenged again, so many times they will break. Walls, fences, borders — what was strong enough to hold back millions will likely not be strong enough to hold back billions.
The question is: do we face this new normal openly, or do we resist?