“Climate change is the greatest existential threat of our lifetimes, with harrowing consequences; some that are massive and result in illness, death, and displacement, and some that are smaller, like the loss of a perfect summer day, but a loss all the same.” (Photo: NASA)
By Lana Schwartz | lana.schwartz925@gmail.com
The way most people feel about winter — so put off by the cold and short days that the term Seasonal Affective Disorder had to be invented in order to explain the depression that descends en masse — is how I feel about summers. The days are too long, there’s too much pressure to be up to something all the time, to make the most of your summer, and it feels as though everyone else is having more fun than you. There’s an inescapable ennui I feel; a searching for more.
By the time August rolls around, I’m over it. I’m ready for that first fall chill, for an excuse to stay inside and know that everyone else is inside, too. But this summer, I don’t really feel that same level of yearning, like I’m in search of the Best Summer Ever, because more days than not, it’s been impractical at best and dangerous at worst to leave your home. Flash floods, wildfire smoke, extreme heat, poisoned lettuce (I know you have to eat the lettuce for it to poison you, but given the frenzy around cyclospora, it sounds as though the lettuce is going to find a way to get you, whether you eat it or not). I haven’t done the math, but when all is said and done, I feel confident saying that there will only have been a handful of summer days — summer weekend days in particular — ready and available for enjoyment.
I may not like summer all that much, but I am selfless enough to put my own dislike of the season aside for the greater good of the planet. (Not all heroes wear capes, as they say.) With each passing year, the number of tenable summer days — the number of tenable days year-round, period — will shrink to fewer and fewer. Climate change is the greatest existential threat of our lifetimes, with harrowing consequences; some that are massive and result in illness, death, and displacement, and some that are smaller, like the loss of a perfect summer day, but a loss all the same.
For many years, I worked at a very prominent environmental non-profit. One of my first bosses there told me that raising money to curb climate change was particularly difficult, given that, perhaps even more so at the time, it was hard to sell people on donating to a concept. If you fund a new program at Yale University, Yale will name a building after you. There are no such rewards in climate philanthropy.
I don’t know what kind of thinking it’ll take to make every single person understand that climate change is strangling our planet, that we must S.O.S. (Save Our Summer). Bake sales. Car washes. 5ks. Maybe people don’t understand sea level rise, but they certainly understand the importance of H.A.G.S. (Having a Good Summer). As a summer-hater, I know this better than anyone.
Lana Schwartz is a writer who was born and raised in Queens and today lives in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared on The New Yorker, The Onion, McSweeney’s, and more. She is the author of the books “Build Your Own Romantic Comedy” and “Set Piece.”
