Not with a bang — that is, a sudden, universal catastrophe — but with a series of smaller, more local catastrophes that keep getting bigger and more widespread.
I’ve been seeing a surprising number of complaints about the amount of media space devoted to New York’s orange skies and red alerts.
The recent intensified problem of wildfire pollution in the Western United States, by contrast, was indeed a harbinger of coming climate-related disaster, and should have been seen as such.
The problem, however, isn’t that the air quality disaster in New York (and much of the Eastern United States) is receiving too much attention, but that its predecessors received too little.
Yes, it’s unfair that smoke-filled skies in New York, still the center of the media universe, get noticed in a way that comparable crises elsewhere don’t.
Persons:
I’ve, James Fallows
Organizations:
The, Western, Eastern
Locations:
Pacific, Western United States, New York, Eastern United States