The White Sox were on a roll, then the fire hit.
It wasn’t the Canadian wildfire itself — more than 400 fires all over Canada, actually — that paused the team. It was the smoke.
The Sox’ game Wednesday against the Yankees in New York was postponed because a pall of wildfire smoke had settled over much of the East Coast and parts of the Midwest.
New York City got hit hard. Schools there were closed. Horse races at Belmont Park were canceled. Even Broadway shows were canceled — one, ‘‘Prima Facie,’’ in mid-performance when the show’s star said she couldn’t breathe.
Smoke doesn’t stay where it’s created. And when part of the world is on fire, the rest of the world breathes it.
This reminds me of those old smoking sections on airplanes. The airline would say: ‘‘Don’t worry, Mr. Telander, you’re in Row 27. The smoking section stops at Row 26.’’ Nobody informed the smoke.
The air wasn’t healthy even here in Chicago last week.
And note this: In many ways, wood smoke is the same as cigarette smoke in how it damages the lungs, heart and brain.
Indeed, a 2013 study by the California South Coast Air Quality Management District stated that the smoke from one of the many beach-fire rings from Huntington Beach and south had the equivalent amount of benzene, formaldehyde and ultrafine particles as the secondhand smoke from 800 cigarettes.
Next time you’re around 40 packs of smoldering Winstons, let me know.
Northwestern states have gotten the smoke treatment for years from wildfires, with the irony being that deep wilderness areas where one would — and should — expect blue skies and sweet air can be as polluted as Beijing on its worst day.
The great majority of this is the result of human carbon-dioxide emission. A heated world changes everything, from ocean height to plant die-off to the health of bumblebees. Because of climate change, pesticides and other manmade messes, those sweet little buzzers have gone extinct in eight states, from Maine to Oregon.
Fires in wilderness areas are one thing, easy to dismiss. Unseen, who cares? Same with fires sweeping through Malibu and Hollywood Hills. Some movie swells lost their gardens? Ha-ha.
But when the smoke hits New York and millions of people are warned to stay inside, that might get more attention.
That’s what you wonder about: When is enough enough? When do we realize that climate change is real, dangerous, that we did it to ourselves and now must do everything to stop it?
The last eight years have been the hottest on record. The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now is the highest since the Pliocene Era 4.5 million years ago. Back then, the ocean was 78 feet higher, the temperature 7 degrees hotter and forests covered the arctic.
That’s from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. You might not trust the U.S. government and might detest former Vice President Al Gore, but he said it best when he titled his 2006 climate-change documentary ‘‘An Inconvenient Truth.’’
Stopping carbon emissions is inconvenient. It’s how we humans built our society, after all, with carbon-dioxide-spewing machines. But doing inconvenient things is part of being good stewards of our species. Nobody said life is always easy.
Yet reason didn’t stop right-wing backlash to Gore’s message, with fossil-fuel-backed Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe (now retired) even comparing the film to Hitler’s ‘‘Mein Kampf.’’
In Montana, 16 young plaintiffs and their attorneys have sued the state government over the smoke, heat, drought and water-level depletion in local rivers, noting the state’s constitution requires officials to maintain a ‘‘clean and healthful environment.”
The suit is the first of its kind. We’ll see where it goes. Likely not far if economist Terry Anderson, a witness for the oil-friendly state, leads the way.
Anderson said that Montana policies have ‘‘virtually no effect on global or local climate change’’ and that an impending global heat wave actually might benefit Montana by giving it a longer growing season, allowing it to grow more valuable crops.
Such as bananas, one supposes.
Such insanity must go. The time is here.
Just know there’s a new scientific name being adopted for our time: the Pyrocene Era. Fire age.
When sports are stopped and kids are forced to come in from the playgrounds and play video games because it’s healthier for them, it’s for sure something huge is aflame.
