New York Times: Wildfire Smoke is Erasing Progress on Clean Air
This article was written for the New York Times by Mira Rojanasakul in September. It is written in the wake of several years of bad wildfires around the world.
This headline is effectively a scapegoat. Wildfire smoke is being blamed for problems of air pollution without any mention of the causes of wildfires. Climate change, largely caused by big corporations and governments, is a massive contributor to the large wildfires we have seen all over the world in the last decade. The headline ignores the precursors and makes “wildfire smoke” the subject acting on “clean air.”
The article itself isn’t much more nuanced. Rojanasakul highlights the health effects of wildfire smoke in the air and links to another article that discusses more of the detrimental effects of wildfires. The article argues that wildfires are bad for people breathing in the air, but offers no solutions, no explanations for the cause, and no hope for the reader. The article would be so much stronger if it included a call to action for readers or an explanation of what must be done to reduce the effect of wildfires. Instead, it contributes to climate nihilism, an attitude that the climate is doomed beyond repair so we shouldn’t even try to fix it. Rojanasakul’s language is very scientific and not particularly negative at face value. The nihilism comes from what she leaves out of her writing.