I am a SF Bay Area native, the child of a solidly middle-class family, college-educated with a loving and supportive network of friends and relatives. I am also a climate refugee.
The Sierra wildfires of 2015, the Tubbs fire which ravaged Santa Rosa in 2017, the Carr and Camp fires of 2018, sensitized my already somewhat delicate system …
I am a SF Bay Area native, the child of a solidly middle-class family, college-educated with a loving and supportive network of friends and relatives. I am also a climate refugee.
The Sierra wildfires of 2015, the Tubbs fire which ravaged Santa Rosa in 2017, the Carr and Camp fires of 2018, sensitized my already somewhat delicate system to smoke and the fumes of burning fires. I developed asthma. I can no longer tolerate the gas stove in our kitchen. Last year I had to leave in midsummer to spend four months in the Oregon coastal mountains where the air is cleaner; the smoke followed, but not the NOx compounds that make me particularly ill. A year from now, I will be preparing to move to that house in the mountains permanently, far away from the house I grew up in, which I had always assumed I would retire in. Far away from friends, and familiar landmarks. An exile from home.
I am exceptionally fortunate to have a house owned by family in such a remote place, one which is in desperate need of a caretaker (it has been neglected, though not abandoned, for fifteen years). We can fix each other up, the house and I, and I hope to regain a great deal of the health I have lost in recent years. But the climate-fueled wildfires have left their mark on me, and I must do my best to protect my new home from that one dangerous spark at the wrong time. Oregon is grappling with the terrifying reality California has had to confront these last five years, of whole forests and cities on fire, year after year. None of us are immune. That is the impact climate change has had on my life.
I am a SF Bay Area native, the child of a solidly middle-class family, college-educated with a loving and supportive network of friends and relatives. I am also a climate refugee.
The Sierra wildfires of 2015, the Tubbs fire which ravaged Santa Rosa in 2017, the Carr and Camp fires of 2018, sensitized my already somewhat delicate system to smoke and the fumes of burning fires. I developed asthma. I can no longer tolerate the gas stove in our kitchen. Last year I had to leave in midsummer to spend four months in the Oregon coastal mountains where the air is cleaner; the smoke followed, but not the NOx compounds that make me particularly ill. A year from now, I will be preparing to move to that house in the mountains permanently, far away from the house I grew up in, which I had always assumed I would retire in. Far away from friends, and familiar landmarks. An exile from home.
I am exceptionally fortunate to have a house owned by family in such a remote place, one which is in desperate need of a caretaker (it has been neglected, though not abandoned, for fifteen years). We can fix each other up, the house and I, and I hope to regain a great deal of the health I have lost in recent years. But the climate-fueled wildfires have left their mark on me, and I must do my best to protect my new home from that one dangerous spark at the wrong time. Oregon is grappling with the terrifying reality California has had to confront these last five years, of whole forests and cities on fire, year after year. None of us are immune. That is the impact climate change has had on my life.