Things are breaking too easily, and in all the most predictable ways
Vanitas Still Life, n.d., Herman Henstenburgh
As the scope of the pandemic was becoming clear, Shamar Bibbins, a senior program officer at climate funder the Kresge Foundation, was on a call with a public health nonprofit they fund in California, going over the kinds of questions that everyone working on climate change is having to face, like whether climate action should be taking a back seat to the immediate health threat.
The grantee made it clear that these are not issues that can be separated and dealt with in isolation. Remember, they told Bibbins, “Wildfire season is just around the corner.”
When the $2 trillion stimulus package was being debated, I remember reading a NYT article that said something like, oh it’s not just oil companies with their hands out, environmentalists want a piece of the action too, which is just unbelievable that in 2020 climate change is still being framed as a special interest cause of environmental groups. There was some similar criticism early on that continuing to prioritize climate action now is somehow inappropriate or tone deaf.
The thought of wildfire smoke coupled with a deadly respiratory illness is especially chilling, but feel free to swap it out with run-of-the-mill industrial pollution, any extreme weather event, flooding, or an urban heat wave to visualize how climate change is not some pet issue to be put back on the shelf, but a problem that compounds all other problems, and will hammer the same systems being tested by the virus.
“We like to say that climate change is a threat multiplier, that it affects everything. Climate change is a public health issue, it’s an economic issue, it’s a poverty issue, it’s a social justice issue,” Bibbins said. “As this pandemic just keeps unfolding, we’re seeing the weaknesses and vulnerabilities in our systems.”
In other words, things are breaking too easily, and in all the most predictable ways.
I interviewed Bibbins for an article about the overlap between coronavirus and the shocks and stresses of climate change, and how we need to become more resilient to all kinds of severe impacts that may be on the horizon. That includes building resilience within communities, one of the big focuses of her work at Kresge, but also confronting the massive structural inequality and racism that ensures that every single time, whenever we face a crisis—flood, fire, storm, or outbreak—certain populations suffer the most. Here’s a little section from the article on that:
Just as climate change acts as a threat multiplier, straining every other system, COVID-19 has had similar cross-cutting impacts, and the weaknesses they exploit are often the same.
For example, Bibbins points out, populations hit hard by COVID-19 often overlap with populations already struggling with poverty, heat island effects, air and water pollution and pre-existing respiratory problems.
Indeed, a New York Times analysis found that low-income neighborhoods of New York City are being hit the hardest by the pandemic. Early data in other cities is showing that communities of color are experiencing alarmingly disproportionate numbers of cases and deaths from COVID-19. Research has found that respiratory viruses, asthma and air pollution can compound to increase the risk of serious symptoms, even among children. Meanwhile, the crisis has also shone a spotlight on weaknesses in the social safety net by exposing how people without access to healthcare and worker benefits are at greater risk.
Bibbins worries that once we get through the COVID-19 crisis, society will simply move on to the next threat that arises without examining the vulnerabilities that exacerbate these impacts.
“I just feel like it’s so critically important that we use this opportunity to really deepen our understanding of how the historical and institutional racism and inequity impact policy and planning across all levels,” she says.
“More than ever, we really need to acknowledge that, we need to address it, and we need to make sure our policies that we’re putting forth seek to correct those structural inequities that affect climate change, that affect COVID-19, and any other environment or public health crisis.”
Sadly, just as this article ran, a wave of additional news reinforcing these disparities surfaced, and a chorus is growing, pointing out that while we may all be in this together, some of us are clearly more in it than others.
In addition to the examples in the article, new research is showing that air pollution is linked to higher coronavirus death rates, and there’s longstanding data on low-income and communities of color being disproportionately exposed to industrial pollution. It’s becoming clear that coronavirus is killing Black Americans at starkly disproportionate rates—counties that are majority Black have six times the rate of death of majority-white counties. On the Navajo Nation, where many people rely on generators for power in their homes and have no running water, cases are surging.
It’s true that what we’re experiencing now is a new threat, not quite like anything we’ve experienced before. But in some ways, it’s a story we’ve watched countless times in the past, and without serious changes, the next version is right around the corner.
You can read the full article, including some hopeful news about community-driven resilience efforts: Lessons from the Intersection of Coronavirus and Climate Resilience
Links
- Republicans used a pandemic to disenfranchise voters in Wisconsin (and they’ll keep doing it elsewhere).
- Why are we at risk of more new viruses? A combination of global wildlife trade, deforestation, urbanization, and a hyper-connected human population.
- Four possible timelines for how the coronavirus outbreak ends (spoiler: in one, it doesn’t).
- Anxiety can be an advantage, say, when responding to a real threat.
- Cities are building makeshift hospitals and mortuaries in a matter of days.
- Coronavirus reminds us that transit isn’t meant to make money like a business. It’s a public service, and the way we fund it is a mess.
- The toilet paper shortage, it turns out, is more complex than just panic hoarding, although that is part of it.
- There’s a lot of this genre going around but someone who has been socially isolated for two years has advice: Make your home really nice and try to be more present.
- Will Covid-19 end white professional nonprofit culture?
- The underrated songwriting genius of Adam Schlesinger.
- Jason Isbell remembers John Prine.
- Need to slow things down? Listen to some slowed + reverb remixes, a hypnotic twist on chopped and screwed, paired with dreamy anime loops.
I Endorse
Pandemic Instagram. I’ve been looking at my phone way too much lately, sometimes for obsessive reasons but also because I’ve been looking at a lot of the same things and it’s nice to look at different things for a change. I’ve particularly enjoyed Instagram during quarantine, as some accounts have risen to the occasion and others have offered a welcome retreat. Here are some of my favorites lately:
Interior design accounts – I like to look at what it’s like to being inside other places. My two favorite accounts are @the_80s_interior and @kimcoolmon.
@lianafinck – Liana Finck is a New Yorker cartoonist but her best stuff is not there because it’s a lot weirder and darker than a typical gag strip. Her comics feel to me like what it’s like to be a person.
@aminatou – I mainly know Aminatou Sow from one of my favorite podcasts Call Your Girlfriend, but her Instagram stories are a world-class curation of memes.
@totalvibrationtapes – Lars Gotrich of NPR Music is their metal/punk/experimental correspondent and during quarantine he is going through his massive cassette collection. Unless you are extremely cool you won’t know the bands but the way he writes about music even in these little captions you can practically hear it. And it’s just nice to look at physical media.
@ig__bee – A photographer in Japan. Japan seems nice.
@douglascoupland – Douglas Coupland is one of my favorite novelists, and back in 2011 he did an art project called Slogans for the 21st Century, a series of funny and poignant statements on backgrounds of vivid color. On his Instagram, he has been resurfacing newly relevant originals, tweaking some for the moment, and I think writing some new ones.
Watching
I’ve been chipping away at a rewatch of The Sopranos, which is one of those shows I would look forward to watching all week when it first aired. I just wrapped season two and I would say it’s mostly holding up, maybe like 80%. One big difference is that, when I first watched I thought of it mostly in terms of commentary on the anxiety of modern life, but on rewatch, it’s hard to see it in any way other than, first and foremost, a sendup of patriarchy (although at times, it also glamorizes it). It’s a funhouse reflection of a world where dumb, violent assholes run everything and then their sons take over when they die.
What makes The Sopranos still great, when it’s at its best, is that it’s remarkably multi-layered, so it’s this rollicking mob story, family melodrama, comedy, and also a meditation on therapy and internal life. The scenes with Dr. Melfi get worse beyond season one, but what an odd thing for a TV show to air fictional, often realistic therapy sessions. It’s also still really funny on second viewing, a stream of subtle, smart jokes that will fly by you if you’re not paying attention, and Tony Soprano who is the undisputed king of dad jokes. The emphasis on how stupid some of the characters are always cracks me up too, like when Christopher thinks this guy Emil is named Email.
What also made the show special when it aired was that extra layer of symbolism, a not-quite magical realism that gave it this literary depth you rarely saw on television at the time (now it’s almost run-of-the-mill). The dream logic, the ducks, the Russian, the bear, all these off-kilter moments when things slipped just a little from straight realism. The tension between the family drama and the gangster stuff always got a lot of attention, but The Sopranos was at its worst when overindulged either genre. When it was at its best, it was a whole lot more than either.
Reading
Another old favorite I’ve been revisiting is Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, the 1986 classic that I first read probably as a freshman in college. I was blown away by it back then, the way it subverted a lot of the superhero books I was more into at the time, but now its gritty take is more or less the standard so I was wondering what it would be like to read it again.
This is you when you read this newsletter, information in its most concentrated form, the most sobering potion I know.
With greater distance from when it first published in 1986, it serves on one level as this twisted history of the Cold War-era, the volume turned all the way up. Watchmen has some clear anti-fascist messages, but it’s also very morally complicated, with each character’s philosophy casting its world in a very different light. (The excellent HBO show had all of that complexity, maybe more, and the Zack Snyder movie had none of it.) I have to admit, I found some elements, like the back matter and the pirate story to be kind of a drag this time around, maybe a glimpse of the overindulgent Alan Moore we’d see in later years.
But one thing that is really clear on reread is that Watchmen is masterful visual storytelling. It’s so economical in its use of every panel, with little visual gags and rhyming imagery and wordless plot developments throughout, and while it’s heavily goofing on superhero tropes, it’s also has some really good superhero action scenes! For a comic, it’s not a light read, but I think anyone who enjoyed the show would get a lot from the book.
So much media stuff this week if you can’t tell I’m watching, reading, and listening to a lot lately so you know most of my updates are coming in the form of what I’ve been consuming while sitting on the couch. Although earlier this week we had two days that got almost to 60 degrees and clear skies so we ate lunch in our little backyard. It felt like a luxurious getaway, definitely looking forward to getting back there again in the future. I also washed an unopened bottle of mezcal in the sink with hand soap so add that to the list of new experiences. The cat’s thyroid condition is getting better.
Take care of yourselves. Keep getting sad and angry about what’s happening out there, but give yourself moments of peace too. Listen to some old music that you love and haven’t heard in a while. Move some furniture around if you want. We just gotta ride this thing out you know.
Tate