This is not the new normal, this is the old normal.
This is not the new normal, this is the old normal. Charles Mudede

The local and popular weatherperson Cliff Mass said something that's really twisted on the Ron and Don Show. He claimed that all of this smoke is actually more normal than no smoke at all. Why? Because back in the day, 100 years or so ago, when cars did not dominate the culture and petrol corporations didn't rule the economy, lots of smoke was the usual state of things. "If you are... 120 years old," begins Mass at 2:50, "this would not be a big event to you." Yes, those words came out of his professorial mouth. And that's not all: "There used to be large number of fires in the early part of the 20th century and before that. People do not realize this used to be a very smokey place." So, bring Chief Sealth back from the dead, let him see this city of smoke, and he will say: "Yes. Feels just like home. Just like it should be. Just like it has always been. White man is doing it right, finally."




Fine. So, what happened? Why is there all of this smoke now? Mass provides the beloved explanation of all Pacific Northwest climate deniers: We repressed fires for so long that we began to see the absence of smoke as normal. The flaw in this much-repeated piece of thinking is that it cannot answer an important and revealing question: Why are the fires coming back, if we are so good at repressing them?

Why did the repression work so well for 100 years? Why is it not working so well anymore? Cliff Mass is, of course, a "scientist." He is not, as far as I can tell, much of a thinker. According to the logic he presented on the radio: There was lots of fire before; there was no fire for so long because it was unwisely repressed; but now things are going back to normal because there was lots fire and smoke before.

As you can see, something major is missing in the structure (particularly the third movement) of his "scientific" reasoning. Without this missing element (of course, global warming), this thinking makes sense only in its circularity. Indeed, within Mass's locked logic, the forests appear to have a psychology. They are like an ex-convict who has entered a whorehouse after 25 years in the slammer. For far too long, the forests were repressed; now, they are raging. The fires have returned because humans must pay for not letting them do like they did in those happy, golden, olden times. This is pretty twisted. But it's how Mass is presenting the city of smoke.

It's not your cars, not the unchecked burning of fossil fuels, the huge amounts of energy wasted in industrial packaging and processes, a financial system that's totally de-linked from the ecology and its limits, not a warming world. No. It is the orgasmic release of so much pent-up emotions. Look out your window, Seattle, things are normal again.