Reflections on the end of the world

"She closed the door again and sat down to wait for the end. The disintegration went on, accompanied by horrible cracks and rumbling. The valves that restrained the Medical Apparatus must have weakened, for it ruptured and hung hideously from the ceiling. The floor heaved and fell and flung her from the chair. A tube oozed towards her serpent fashion. And at last the final horror approached - light began to ebb, and she knew that civilization's long day was closing." 

- E. M. Forster,  The Machine Stops

I'm resting my head on the air conditioning machine as I write these words. Inside it's a tolerable 65 degrees. The machine emits a constant hum, the settings on "cool" and "high." With these machines I can shape the tiny bubble around me.

Outside it's a more stupefying 95. Thursday it will be 97. I'm told in bright orange characters of an excessive heat warning for the Los Angeles area. "Impacts," the warning reads, include "potential for serious heat-related illnesses, especially for the young and elderly, those performing outdoor activities, as well as those without access to air conditioning. Increased potential for power outages."

I immediately think of the air conditioning, of Ashanti from the mind of E.M. Forster. 

"O Machine!" she murmured, and caressed her Book, and was comforted."

Yesterday I went for a walk. I was sweating after about ten minutes, though the walk took me through a quite residential area shaded by looming trees. I happened to glance down and catch a glimpse of the day's paper left on a porch stoop. Fire, it screams; everything is on fire.

It certainly seems that way.

From the pages of the Independent: "This summer, the arctic burned. Boreal forests, usually caked in ice, were charred. Further south, from Quebec to Japan, hundreds of people dropped like scorched flies in the heat, as though under a giant magnifying glass. Across Europe, the same: deaths, drought, and crop failure."

From Reuters: "California’s biggest wildfire on record was expected to burn for the rest of the month, fire officials said on Tuesday, as hot and windy conditions challenged thousands of fire crews battling eight major blazes burning out of control across the state."

Richard Seymour writes: "There will be more, much more of this. In the UK alone, it is estimated that there will be 7,000 heat-related deaths a year by 2050. Globally, it is estimated that heat-related deaths will treble by 2080. The droughts will become, are becoming, hotter and more lethal. The extinction of species will accelerate. The combination of heat and acidification will destroy the few remaining ocean wilderness, and submarine cities, thus endangering the global supply of oxygen."

There's something about Los Angeles - the heat, lines of cars, smog, and concrete river - that creates a certain mood. Doomsday? End Times? But mine are the eyes of a newcomer, a foreigner in these lands. I too go about my day like Ashanti, paying no mind to the creeping catastrophe. And then it's too late.

"As he spoke, the whole city was broken like a honeycomb. An air-ship had sailed in through the vomitory into a ruined wharf. It crashed downwards, exploding as it went, rending gallery after gallery with its wings of steel. For a moment they saw the nations of the dead, and, before they joined them, scraps of the untainted sky."