Barcelona smells the horror of the climate crisis

2023-08-05 08:56:53

We had been thinking for days why are we the exceptionWhy, despite the torrid temperatures and the drought that has us in an emergency, fires do not hit us. Greece, Turkey, Italy, Algeria… like a spreading pandemic, so the tongue of fire has traveled the coast that licks the sea.

It is first big forest fire in Catalonia lIt arrived on the first Friday of August, when many begin their vacations and rest from their hustle and bustle or simply stop to get fresh air for the weekend. He leaves us images and testimonials that we have seen before: confinements, tourists trapped in sports centers, where they can spend the night in makeshift camps. Stories of families fleeing to the beach, before that immense mass of salt water, so welcoming in summer, so hopeful in the event of a rescue by boat. We saw it in Australia just three years ago, in the serious fires that devoured millions of hectares and they confined thousands of people on the country’s beaches, where they were rescued by Army naval vessels. We saw it just a few days ago just a few miles away, in the Greek islands, with hundreds of active fires and ferries and boats evacuating visitors and neighbors.

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We see, we learn, we copy. We are not going so fast in seeing, learning and copying in the face of the climate emergency, perhaps because it still seems like a phantom threat, of doomsayers, that limits so many rights that we enjoy, unlimited drinking water, air conditioning night and day. Or even worse, because We think that it is inevitable, and that as long as it does not touch us, we have to live to the fullest and enjoy the gifts we have. Do we open the tap and water comes out? They’ll cut it off for us. But we have already woken up one Saturday morning in Barcelona and the smell of smoke brought by the wind has made us feel that we are on the brink of a catastrophe, in the midst of global boiling. And if we don’t want to be like that frog in the saying, getting a little hotter in a pot of water, we have to react.