22 | New Scientist | 26 September 2020
O
UTSIDE my window,
the skies are brown
and the sun is a deep
reddish-orange. Unfortunately,
that isn’t because I’ve moved
off-world to a beautiful alien
planet orbiting a red dwarf star.
This is simply what “outside”
looks like in San Francisco when
vast swathes of the western US
are on fire. Even the light itself
is alarming. Its Mordor-esque
gloom makes everything seem
like it is the wrong colour. (For
a striking image of California’s
Bidwell Bar Bridge against the
backdrop of the state’s wildfires,
see page 24.)
It has been a bad year for
California. After years of drought,
we started getting record high
temperatures that were coupled
with fierce winds.
Back in 2018, our doddering
old power lines, mismanaged
and neglected, sparked a deadly
fire that was supposed to be a
once-in-a-lifetime Armageddon.
It turns out that was merely a
beta test.
This year, the southern
California desert reached 54.4°C.
If verified, this is the hottest
temperature ever reliably recorded
on Earth. Then a rare lightning
storm zapped the coast. The
resulting wildfires have already
burned more land than they did
in all of 2018 – and the fire season
has only just started.
All this devastation comes on
top of the coronavirus pandemic,
which means that people fleeing
the heat and fires can’t huddle
in shelters together without
risking a superspreader event.
So, the future here is looking
a little uncertain.
At times like this, I find myself
contemplating something I
call a hope horizon, or how
many years it might take before
everything becomes alright again.My definition is deliberately
open-ended. It raises questions
like “What is ‘alright’?” and “What
do you mean by ‘everything’?”
That’s the point. Teasing out
the answers reminds us of two
important facts. The first is that
nothing is ever “alright” for
everyone. The second is that
“everything” is actually a bunch
of unrelated stuff, some of which
matters to you and some of which
matters to me, and the sum of
which cannot be fixed by either
of us, ever.
It is a useful way to put our
problems into perspective and it
is also a good method for figuringout what to tackle next. For
example, looking into the
hellish light of my smoky city,
my hope horizon is set at roughly
10,000 years. That’s because
I’m thinking about climate
change and how long it might
take before we see an end to
these intense heatwaves and
lightning storms.
At the same time, I see another
hope horizon of 10 to 20 years,
which is about how long I think it
will take for California to deploy
fire-reduction strategies like
controlled burns and housing
codes that mandate firebreaks
around cities and houses.
That’s something policy-makers
could actually work on right now,
and fixing it will help to improve
the outlook on the 10,000-year
problem too. Which brings me
to a more important question:
“Alright for whom?”
Plenty of people have neverbeen “alright”, if by that we mean
having some meaningful degree
of autonomy and control over
their lives. Maybe they grew
up in war-torn regions or in
devastatingly poor families. Or
perhaps their futures have been
blighted by systemic prejudice,
xenophobia or genocide. We can
imagine a million reasons – some
of them political, some of them
personal – why one person’s
idea of “alright” might be the
opposite of another’s.
As we face a terrifying future,
we have to keep in mind that
our problems won’t be solved
all at once. We might stabilise
our imperilled democracies
just in time to watch places like
California burn so catastrophically
that it is no longer possible for
people to live in them anymore.
Or we might finally have
enough tests and protective
equipment to cope with the
next coronavirus pandemic,
but only because we are vastly
underpaying the workers who
make all of that stuff. What good
is a face mask if you cannot
actually afford to buy one?
The best strategy is to pick
the problems whose hope
horizons are within reach,
while also keeping the rudder
steering us towards those distant
millennia when humans might be
able to bring our planet’s runaway
carbon cycle back under control.
Most importantly, we need to
remember who could be harmed
by such efforts as well as who
they could benefit.
Every single catastrophe I am
watching unfold in front of my
eyes was caused by a combination
of natural disaster and political
failure. That’s why we are going
to need more than science and
technology to fix this. We are
going to need better political
systems, too. ❚This column appears
monthly. Up next week:
James Wong“ I’m contemplating
something I call a hope
horizon, or how many
years it might take
before everything
becomes alright again”California’s burning With wildfires raging, the outlook looks
bleak from San Francisco. Thinking about the future in terms
of “hope horizons” can help, writes Annalee NewitzThis changes everything
What I’m reading
The Hidden Persuaders,
a 1950s book by Vance
Packard about subliminal
advertising that feels
strangely relevant in
our social media world.What I’m watching
Lovecraft Country, a
series about how sci-fi
nerds fight monsters
and white supremacy.What I’m working on
A podcast about how
we’ll survive climate
change (or not).Annalee’s week
Annalee Newitz is a science
journalist and author. Their
latest novel is The Future of
Another Timeline and they
are the co-host of the
Hugo-nominated podcast
Our Opinions Are Correct.
You can follow them
@annaleen and their website
is techsploitation.comViews Columnist