OtherWords
Alliyah Lusuegro
06/28/2023
Not long ago, I couldn’t step outside my home without pulling on my KN95 mask.
As smoke from wildfires in Canada sweeps in waves across the U.S., tens of millions of Americans from the East Coast to the Midwest find themselves living under severe air quality advisories. Phones buzz with warnings as wildfire haze clouds our skylines and concerts and baseball games are canceled or postponed.
A few weeks ago was the first time I experienced a Code Purple or Code Maroon — and the first time I understood what an Air Quality Index (AQI) of over 300 truly means as my eyes stung from the charred air. It’s unlikely to be the last.
With the wildfire season still only just beginning, heat waves rolling across the country, and hurricane season looming, we haven’t seen the last disruption to our lives this year. And it’s becoming abundantly clear that we simply aren’t prepared for climate disasters.
Most of us understand that we urgently need to transition away from fossil fuels. But what many Americans don’t realize is that a huge share of our tax dollars are actually funding the most carbon-intensive institution on the planet: the U.S. military.
