I want to place here some articles that are emblematic of this moment — meditating on what we’re losing, visiting things we won’t be able to visit again in the same way.

Truthout, “Alaska Is Already Irreparably Changed by Climate Disruption,” December 9, 2019. Dahr Jamail visits Alaska and hikes to an old haunt on Chugach Mountains for what may be the last time.

Delicate pastel blues and soft buttery yellows illuminated the sky ahead as the lazy winter sun rose. While snow still covered the tops of the surrounding mountains, lower down the colors on them faded from bright whites to browns and greens — hardly a surprise, since temperatures here have been so warm and snow so scarce in this year’s disrupted lead-up to winter. I passed several areas where, in the mid-1990s, I would already have been ice-climbing atop frozen waterfalls at this time of year. Now, they were visibly bone dry with temperatures too warm for ice to form…

New York Times, “Tears for the Magnificent and Shrinking Everglades, a River of Grass,” January 27, 2020. Nina Burleigh notes that there have been both tears and mitigation efforts for the Everglades for a century, but the web of threats are all connected now by the slow rise of water levels. “Knowing all that,” she concludes at the end of this long article,

Wired, “Not to Ruin the Super Bowl, but the Sea Is Consuming Miami,” January 31, 2020. The title reveals what we may remember as a characteristic if snarky complaint of our time: can’t we be allowed to enjoy anything anymore? And indeed this article is something of a masterpiece of the moment: a pre-apocalyptic catalogue of all the cataclysms that the water rise have in store for our southernmost metropolis — while insisting all along that there’s no reason not to enjoy the Big Game. Because in 2019, what good would that do… right? 

By all means, dear reader, do have a good time!