The haze is unsettling. The sun is trying to shine through and the room is filled with this eerie red light. I remember the first time this happened, after the big fires. The air quality was terrible for days. I wondered if the sky would ever return, or if this was my new normal. Eventually, the sky turned blue again, I rejoiced, and promptly forgot about it.

But here it is again, and it’s clear that this is the new normal. California is burning. A whole city has been razed. The residents are climate refugees, even if that terminology hasn’t entered the popular lexicon. Puerto Rico and other islands in the gulf were smashed by a hurricane.

I predicted this, but I thought that these changes would happen on a longer time scale. We talk about climate change as if it’s this future disaster we must save our descendants even though it’s happening right now. We’re already living through the apocalypse. Already, some changes are irreversible, locked in. The best we can do is hope to avoid even worse disaster, but the time horizon for political change is too long, exceeding the time we have left. We no longer have decades.

How can I not feel despair? How can I not choke on this air and think anything but that humanity is truly fucked?