“Climate inaction in the rich world was never really about denial. Belgians and Germans knew climate change was real; they just thought poorer countries would bear the brunt of it. And up until recently, they were right.”

And so goes Naomi Klein as she explains how even people in wealthy countries are running out of places to hide. It’s a great 5-minute read, highly recommended!

Some more quotes from her article:

“As for the idea that Californians should move north to escape fire, that dream has obviously gone up in flames. Last summer, deadly wildfires forced evacuations just east of Portland, Oregon, and as I write, smoke from the state’s Bootleg fire is contributing to the plume that blotted out the sun as far away as New York City. So, no, Oregon is not safe. New York is not safe. Germany is not safe. Nowhere that imagined itself safe is safe.”
“…something dramatic is changing in public perception: a dropping away of the fantasy of safety in the wealthier parts of the world, as well as the beginnings of cracks in the faith that money and technology will find solutions just in the nick of time.”
“As water scientist Peter Gleick recently wrote, we are seeing the emergence of “two classes of refugees: those with the freedom and financial resources to try, for a while at least, to flee from growing threats in advance, and those who will be left behind to suffer the consequences in the form of illness, death and destruction.”
“In this summer of fires and floods, it appears to be dawning on many that even this sinister form of climate apartheid is likely an illusion for all but the ultra-rich […] As the New York Times echoed in an ominous headline overlaid on a photograph of a burning building: “No one is safe.” We are all trapped in this crisis — whether under that relentless pall of smoke, or in a heat that hits like a physical wall, or under rains and winds that will not stop.”

There’s no beating about the burning bush with Naomi.

[Cover photo: A helicopter prepares to make a water drop as smoke billows along the Fraser River Valley near Lytton, British Columbia, Canada, on July 2, 2021. Photo: James MacDonald/Bloomberg via Getty Images]