Today Is Tomorrow
I finally caught The Day After Tomorrow last weekend (thank God for cable). There really is nothing as visually entertaining as seeing Manhattan destroyed by a 50-foot sheet of ice and snow. It's schadenfreude but imagining the annihilation of Western civilization, with Americans pathetically fleeing the border into Mexico, is the kind of karmageddon they've been waiting for after half a millennium's worth of global rampage and rapine.
But of course the movie itself is still essentially self-centered. The fact is that climate change will harm the most vulnerable countries in the world, not the rich and developed Northern Hemisphere. While it's fun seeing the United States and Europe literally freeze to death (and Canada...but well, who really cares about them right?), it's much more likely that the ice caps will melt and erase Bangladesh from the map while reducing the Philippines from seven thousand islands to seven hundred. And we're not even talking about the Sahara Desert spreading yet.
I couldn't stop myself from relating it to the unseasonal weather over the past month. There are days - clear blue above, heat and light raining down on you in torrents - when it feels like Boracay in April, not Manila in September. Manila feels like a huge blast furnace in the afternoon, the city this sprawling concrete pancake where you can literally see the heat vaporizing moisture off the surfaces. My head feels like a cinder block being slowly roasted the whole day, activating my allergies and generally making life even more horrible than it already is with this unwanted summer.
Maybe I'm imagining all of this because I was too young to notice then, but I don't think it was ever this hot back in the Nineties. September used to mean typhoons and days off from school, a month for wearing raincoats and carrying around an umbrella. Now September means shorts and slippers and the kind of heat that makes you want to jump into the nearest swimming pool. Midnights used to be chilly and breezy; now it's sweltering and humid, and I feel the urge to take a cold shower just to relieve the oppresiveness of the weather.
So global warming is finally upon us; we might be the last generation which remembers being able to wear sweaters and jackets to the misa de gallo without sweating like pigs. Long summers, humid holidays and sando-shorts for everyone year-round (not a bad prospect, if we're talking about girls...hmm). But this is self-defeating and self-serving; since it's already happening, it absolves us of any responsibility for changing our lifestyles or habits. The world will go to hell whether or not we drive an Expedition to Punta Fuego.
It reminds me of this issue in the UK about climate porn, with the British media being accused of hyping up climate change to the point where it demoralizes people. Alarmist stories about massive hurricanes or flooding on the Thames gives the impression that climate change is a done deal, something we have to live with instead of fighting.
I don't know about everyone else, but the prospect of living the next sixty years of my life in this heat makes me want to buy a Prius and load it up with ethanol.
But of course the movie itself is still essentially self-centered. The fact is that climate change will harm the most vulnerable countries in the world, not the rich and developed Northern Hemisphere. While it's fun seeing the United States and Europe literally freeze to death (and Canada...but well, who really cares about them right?), it's much more likely that the ice caps will melt and erase Bangladesh from the map while reducing the Philippines from seven thousand islands to seven hundred. And we're not even talking about the Sahara Desert spreading yet.
I couldn't stop myself from relating it to the unseasonal weather over the past month. There are days - clear blue above, heat and light raining down on you in torrents - when it feels like Boracay in April, not Manila in September. Manila feels like a huge blast furnace in the afternoon, the city this sprawling concrete pancake where you can literally see the heat vaporizing moisture off the surfaces. My head feels like a cinder block being slowly roasted the whole day, activating my allergies and generally making life even more horrible than it already is with this unwanted summer.
Maybe I'm imagining all of this because I was too young to notice then, but I don't think it was ever this hot back in the Nineties. September used to mean typhoons and days off from school, a month for wearing raincoats and carrying around an umbrella. Now September means shorts and slippers and the kind of heat that makes you want to jump into the nearest swimming pool. Midnights used to be chilly and breezy; now it's sweltering and humid, and I feel the urge to take a cold shower just to relieve the oppresiveness of the weather.
So global warming is finally upon us; we might be the last generation which remembers being able to wear sweaters and jackets to the misa de gallo without sweating like pigs. Long summers, humid holidays and sando-shorts for everyone year-round (not a bad prospect, if we're talking about girls...hmm). But this is self-defeating and self-serving; since it's already happening, it absolves us of any responsibility for changing our lifestyles or habits. The world will go to hell whether or not we drive an Expedition to Punta Fuego.
It reminds me of this issue in the UK about climate porn, with the British media being accused of hyping up climate change to the point where it demoralizes people. Alarmist stories about massive hurricanes or flooding on the Thames gives the impression that climate change is a done deal, something we have to live with instead of fighting.
I don't know about everyone else, but the prospect of living the next sixty years of my life in this heat makes me want to buy a Prius and load it up with ethanol.