It’s the summer of the great American road trip, back with a vengeance after a year of pandemic isolation. Campgrounds are overrun, quiet highways are clogged with traffic, and you need a reservation to get into some national parks. But the promise of a memorable trip to scenic America is becoming a hellish descent into the heat and smoke of an environmental hellfire.
Case in point, yesterday I photographed the Military Vehicle Preservation Association’s historic convoy along the Yellowstone Trail to their annual convention. These convoys don’t happen every year, and after last years cancellation for many of the vets this is the trip of a lifetime. These folks value authenticy, so their restored military vehicles don’t have air conditioning, and they suffered through triple digit heat indexes on the first day of the convoy Wednesday. Thursday brought relief from the heat but smoke so thick they couldn’t see the whole 40 odd vehicle convoy stretched out along the old Yellowstone Trail while throats and lungs suffered too.
This wasn’t ordinary heat and forest fires, records for heat and drought going back over a century are now being broken daily- We have so thoroughly trashed our protective atmosphere by fossil fuel burning that all climate bets are off. Millions of ordinary Americans are seeing their summer vacations trashed by climate change and are now open to our persuasion- Just don’t go full Tesla evangelist on them and scare them off! Overcoming fossil fuel addiction like any other addiction is a series of small steps, the size of the step is less important than the fact that it’s taken… Let’s gently help our friends and family off fossil fuels and towards a sustainable future.
Sassy Democrat 