Blurred Life
“This planet definitely wants to kill us. I am sympathetic, but not supportive.”
– Jackie Kashian in her special, Stay-Kashian
The South Africa and India Test series has just kicked off in Kolkata, and boy is it hazy. I am guessing they have not yet developed AI tools to clean up the frames of live sport in real time, to sharpen the blurred edges that even high-definition cameras cannot smooth (and to trick us further into rejecting our everyday reality). Aside from the dulled color of life itself, the ever-present smog is a blunt reminder of our disregard for the seriousness of ongoing climate catastrophe.
If you have never been to India, you may not know how unbelievably polluted its urban areas are. The majority of pictures that I have from my visits there, just like any remaining memories of my childhood, seem as though they have been put through an unflattering filter. Much of the nation is permanently caked in unsafe levels of particulate matter, ensuring that nearly half a billion people living across its metropolises predispose themselves to debilitating health conditions.
Vehicle emissions, industrial pollution, dust from desertified and arid landscapes, crop burning and traditional fuel use (burning of wood, coal and dung) in rural communities all lead to air that is unbreathable. Unacceptable yet accepted. Moreover, exacerbated by the priorities of those with money and power.
The World Health Organization’s “safe limit” of PM2.5 levels is 15 µg/m³ (micrograms per cubic meter). Here is how the organization describes PM2.5 impacts:
“Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) can penetrate through the lungs and further enter the body through the blood stream, affecting all major organs.
Exposure to PM2.5 can cause diseases both to our cardiovascular and respiratory system, provoking, for example stroke, lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
New research has also shown an association between prenatal exposure to high levels of air pollution and developmental delay at age three, as well as psychological and behavioural problems later on, including symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety and depression.”
In addition to the above, we know how smog contributes to cognitive difficulties and decline, whether exposure is limited or persistent. The largest Indian cities are regularly at 100 µg/m³ or above for most of the year. The government even has its own ways of distorting the severity of the problem through national regulations that avoid reporting pollution readings above arbitrarily introduced caps.
This air—my past—is our future. No one on this globe can escape the propagation of haze. Smoke hardly respects national borders. And no matter how fluid, adaptive or dynamic our atmospheric habitat is, it cannot escape universal constraints. The more carbon compounds we dig up from our planet’s crust and the more greenhouse gases we expand into our shared, limited air, the shorter our runway is as a viable species.
Here in B.C., the haze visits us each year during the summer months. In the form of wildfire smoke, its grey specter blurs life, shields sunlight, and depresses our collective wellbeing. For an instance, we can experience an environment that represents the norm across swathes of global industrial centers. Those instances will only become more frequent for us too, until they blur together into a new, seamless reality. We can look forward to a future when the haze never leaves.
Civilizations are built and fall on their embrace or rejection of science-backed policy, respectively. Our collective addiction to fossil fuels, in conjunction with increasing their production and in the face of incontrovertible evidence advocating for cessation of their use, does not bode well.
This past week, the federal government here in Canada made some telling announcements as part of its Major Projects initiative. For those not following Canadian politics, a quick primer—the governing Liberals are attempting to attract private capital for what they are calling “nation-building projects” through establishment of a federal Major Projects Office. The office is being equipped to facilitate red-tape reduction and faster review processes for development of said projects. They have quickly passed legislation to support these efforts, which in effect would allow the government to ignore certain regulations for projects designated as in the “national interest.” Though the government has not quite deployed the new legislation, the mechanisms are now in law should they require them to override objections—say by environmental or Indigenous groups—or disregard established environmental protection measures.
Projects that the government has announced their backing for through this Major Projects initiative include large liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and export facilities. The latest is Ksi Lisims LNG, which is a good case study for how oil and gas industry propaganda has somehow become mainstream in federal and provincial government messaging, and convinced some Indigenous leaders to back further fossil fuel development:
“Clean LNG” is, simply put, science denial.
To add to the video above, the billions in GDP growth and revenue promised by oil, gas and other fossil fuel projects will be offset by public subsidies offered to private interests to spur investment, and public spending on disaster relief, healthcare and infrastructure needed to accommodate these projects (or associated with their impacts). As an example, LNG Canada is estimated to contribute $23 billion to Canadian GDP over the next 40 years (pdf source). For what it is worth, B.C. alone spent $5B on disaster relief, response and recover efforts from wildfire, floods and landslides between 2013-2023. That price tag was higher than the 19 previous years combined and is sure to grow substantially over the next four decades. The known health effects and many more that remain unknown, of fracking and other extraction, are also enough to warrant a pause on new developments. And these are costs that only one province faces.
Multi-faceted causes of disasters and health conditions aside, there is a direct line between investments in fossil fuel extraction and exponential impacts to the public purse. Our health, economic and otherwise, depends on curtailment and reduction of emissions. Too many of us await that radical rethink—one that considers “nation-building” in more equitable terms.
Not to mention that most of what is being taken from the ground through LNG Canada and Ksi Lisims LNG will be sent to Asia. We export gas and import an imperative to degrade our environment, alongside risking our wellbeing and state of our future habitat.
Furthermore, these LNG facilities are only few of the dozens of potential fossil fuel-centric pitches being made to the feds. While development of communities around these large projects should be welcomed, it does not need to accompany investments in super-emitting, cancerous ventures.
There is an appetite in Canada to pivot away from the U.S. and think more radically about how our economy is structured and who it serves. We could be using this momentum to feed into truly transformational initiatives at all levels of government, like investing heavily in renewables coast to coast to coast, fast-tracking building of climate-resilient infrastructure, investing in a national grid and telecommunication services that extend to rural and remote communities, prioritizing the right to housing over its financialization, densifying urban centers, and significantly developing public transit and active transportation infrastructure.
Pick one, or two, or three. Create the SMART objectives for national implementation and get going already. Someone, please. Political ambitions in the age of anthropogenic climate change cannot remain so parochial. Instead, we are doubling down on polluting industries. Like attempting to escape quicksand by moving faster.
I struggle to understand it all through vision that is becoming increasingly blurred. The haze grows unless it is addressed, until it becomes impossible to see through.