A Cuyahoga Moment
When proof is visible, environmentalists must act.
By Safina Center Writer-in-Residence Paul Greenberg
The One World Trade Center, or Freedom Tower, awash in an orange haze from Canadian forest fires. Built on the wreckage of the 9/11 attacks, the Freedom Tower symbolizes New York’s resilience. In the wake of another brutal reckoning with the consequences of climate change, can we rebuild an ethic of environmental stewardship amidst the rubble? Photo ©Cesar Kastoun.
On the morning of June 22nd, 1969, a slick of oil floating atop a notoriously polluted Ohio river called the Cuyahoga, burst into flames and burned for half an hour. In the end the blaze was extinguished and caused about $50,000 in damage. Though the fire was, from an economic point of view, not particularly harmful, the image of something so illogically toxic, the image of water on fire, burned itself into the retina of the American public.
Within a year the image of a river in flames became a key fulcrum for political action, spurring the suite of laws that helped make the United States a global beacon for environmental reform: The Clean Air Act of 1970, the Clean Water Act of 1972, the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and a federal Environmental Protection Agency to put it all into action.
With the Mars-ification of New York City’s air this week from climate-change-enabled wildfires, we at last have an iconic image of the extreme peril into which this generation of lawmakers have plunged us. The smoky, orange haze has literally draped us in mourning — mourning for the lost clean air that we were privileged to breath since the Clean Air Act was passed; mourning for the birds and other wildlife that cannot go indoors and escape the asphyxiating cloud; mourning for the precious time we’ve lost battling ignorant indifference to scientific fact.
How ironic that this terrifying image should come after a Supreme Court majority, put in place by a minority of American voters, should effectively defang the Environmental Protection Agency not once but twice. First by ruling a year ago that the EPA literally had no agency to place limits on carbon dioxide emissions. Second, this very year, by invalidating a broad swath of the Clean Water Act that promises to do to our waters what the present wildfires are doing to our air.
In our present distracted media moment, words and verbal sparring can only go so far. It is in specious, whataboutist rhetoric that climate change denialism has found its most fertile ground. “What about the normal cycles of the planet that have dropped and raised temperatures over the millennia?” “What about last winter’s polar vortx that brought a passing cold snap to the backyards of the Carolinas?” the denialists moan. These are the stale, distorted gaslights that the intentionally blindfolded use to hold on to more than their fair share of sway in this country’s politics. These are the “opinions” that resulted in a Supreme Court that actively seeks the unraveling of all the good intentions the Cuyahoga River fire spawned.
We now have a Cuyahoga moment for the new millennium. We have a “Freedom” Tower bathed in Martian smoke, radiating to the world the punishment that freedom from regulation brings.
Now is the time for every citizen who understands the horror this image portends to crush the denialist whataboutism under their marching heels.
We have our signifier. Let’s make it significant.