by Hadley O’Bryan
The Climate Clock counts down to the point where we reach irreversible damage.
Five years remain. How can it get worse than this? You spend the morning of February 16th contacting loved ones to see if they and their homes survived the disaster. This has become commonplace for you. You did it after the historic 2021 tornadoes, then the “once-in-a-lifetime” floods in 2022, then the unprecedented hurricane Helene, and for what feels like a million more times. You contact loved ones while the world moves on.
This is not their fault. It is easy to become desensitized. Tragedy is on the rise. Every time you open your phone, there’s another disaster. Seventy-six percent of Americans get their news from social media, scrolling through floods, wildfires, and shootings sandwiched between ads for Korean skincare and untested weight loss drugs. 2023 alone saw 28 climate disasters in the U.S. The 1990s saw a yearly average of 5.6.
There are five years left on the climate clock and climate disasters are on the rise. You call your loved ones and then you, too, move on. You can’t linger long. You can only wait for the next to come.
Recycle, vote, and take personal responsibility for not doing enough. This is easier than fixing the systemic failures that got you here, right? Seventy-one percent of industrial greenhouse gas emissions are released by 100 companies. At Starbucks you use a paper straw. Voting is the last stand for the American people.
The president jokes that climate change will create, “more oceanfront property.” On Instagram, you watch kids from your high school clean mud out of your favorite Mexican restaurant with shovels.
The president fires 800 staff from the National Weather Service. Eleven out of 38 offices report being critically understaffed. On the list is Jackson, Kentucky.
Your mom tells you that your cousin (who you can’t quite remember how you’re related to) is from Jackson. Pinned to the top of his Facebook account is a video of his house floating down the river with a caption to pray for the devastation in Jackson. Under that is a post blaming this all on the government weather machine. At least he acknowledges that this isn’t normal.
An unwarned tornado kills a kid in Michigan. You Google if Michigan was always prone to tornadoes. You see a map of the new Tornado Alley with a red circle over your hometown and an explanation of how Tornado Alley has shifted due to climate change. Do you shelter in the basement to avoid the tornadoes and risk the floods?
Your youth pastor drowns in her attic. A man on TikTok tells you these people deserve to die as a political consequence. The president takes laps around the Daytona 500 on taxpayer money. A senator from some New England state you’ve never been to uses it as a gotcha on Twitter.
You Google search why Appalachia floods so much now. Learn that strip mining permanently destroyed the region. Ask your dad. “It was the only work they had,” he says. Learn how they made you reliant, then abandoned you.
Remember that Asheville is 232 miles from the coast. Do you have to worry about hurricanes too? Think no, but then remember your family friend who moved off to Asheville and never thought she would either.
Pictures flood your feed of red skies over Texas. Dust storms or wildfires this time? Both, it’s always both now. Try not to choke on fresh air. Tell yourself forest fires are a thing of the West, even as the smoke rolls in from Canada and North Carolina. You Google search the best masks for wildfire smoke. Your leftover N95s work just fine.
Google search safety kits.
Google search doomsday prep.
Google search is this the end?
Google search does anyone care?
Google search what can I do?
Vote.
Is it too late?
There are five years left on the climate clock. There is not one big world-ending disaster, no moment where the waters rise in seconds and wipe out the coasts. Just more of this, building and building, forever.
No one calls it the end. Just another disaster.
So we brace for the next one. Call your loved ones. Learn how to bake casserole for the family down the street. Scrub grime off the church walls. Learn to love those cheesy Hobby Lobby signs. Laugh when you can. Cry when you have to. Love often and with all your heart. Count to five. And when the time is up, know that you will survive this too—just like all the others before it.