 So, as many of you know, there are a lot of wildfires going on in Oregon and California. Basically, the entire West Coast is on fire and it's extremely horrifying. Now for those of you unaware, I took last week off and this was supposed to be a really nice break where, you know, I felt rejuvenated but unfortunately I live in the West Coast and I was worrying about these fires. Now thankfully I'm safe so you don't have to worry about that but one thing that's interesting about these fires is even if you're not part of the 10% of Oregonians who have been displaced and have had to evacuate, we have currently the worst air quality on the planet right now, the worst on the planet. And I was tweeting about this and people couldn't believe the numbers. Now currently there's still a warning when you check your weather app. It's going to tell you the air quality is hazardous. Now just to kind of put this in a perspective for people, the air quality index has six different levels of health concern. So if you are rated zero to 50, that's good air quality. They really don't start to get concerned until you get into, you know, levels 100 through 200, which is when people with, you know, medical conditions may experience illness because of air quality being poor. When you get to 200 to 300, that's when you really have to worry. So if your air quality, according to the air quality index is between two and 300, that is officially when they put you on alert. Everyone may experience more serious health effects. When you get past 300 health warnings of emergency conditions, the entire population is more likely to be affected. So at that point, it doesn't matter if, you know, you have asthma or not. Everyone is going to be affected. So stay indoors. Don't go outside. Otherwise, this is going to affect you. So currently, what is the air quality index? The highest I have seen it go has been over 500, 520. That's the highest I've seen it. Yeah. Remember, they stop registering after 300. That they just say everything above 300 is very, very dangerous. Currently, I'll look at the reading. I don't know what it is. I have been kind of checking it periodically. As of right now, air quality index. We are at 474. So the air is hazardous where I am currently. Yeah. And in case you're wondering, you can smell it in your home when it gets this bad, like I smell smoke currently. Basically, the smell has been burned into my nostrils. And in terms of, like, my health, I don't feel particularly bad because of it, but other people in certain areas who I've spoken to have said that, you know, it's giving them headaches. It's made them feel nauseous. I know when I let my dogs out to go use the bathroom, they come back with ash on them sometimes. When I open the door, it makes my nostrils burn. Your sinuses feel a little bit irritable because of it. Your eyes maybe itch a little bit. The situation is bad. It's really, really bad. I mean, to literally be stuck in the situation where you can't really go out in public places because you could catch a highly contagious virus from other people. And now you can't even really go outside if you're on the West Coast because the air quality is horrible. I mean, it truly feels like we are living in apocalyptic times and people were sharing photos of Oregon and California and comparing it to Blade Runner. That's accurate. Like for the past couple of days, it has been orange and hazy and it is extremely creepy. Like you wake up in the morning and it feels like it's late in the evening and there's like this ominous glow. And like if you open the door and you go outside, you hear nothing, no birds chirping, no dogs barking. You really don't hear cars driving by in my area at least. Nobody's outside. It feels like, you know, everyone has abandoned the town even though they're just staying in their houses and their apartments and it's just, it's weird. It's a weird feeling. And it kind of led me to this realization that we've already lost the battle when it comes to climate change. And you know, I was under this impression or I had this expectation rather that, you know, human beings, we're going to take action on climate change. Unfortunately, you know, developed countries are just going to have to experience it firsthand even though, you know, developing countries are already seeing the effects of it. You know, rising sea levels. We're just going to have to experience it here in order for us to take action. But this has made me realize that's kind of a privileged position to take because no, we're not. I mean, we already see the increased frequency and severity of hurricanes and we're not doing anything. The West Coast is on fire and there's no discussion from lawmakers currently about drafting legislation to do anything about climate change aside from what's already out there, such as the Green New Deal and whatnot. The president is not saying anything about taking action to mitigate climate change. So this has made me realize that it doesn't matter what the consequences of climate change are, how bad it gets, nothing is going to get bad enough to force the government to take action. I mean, look at what we're doing with the pandemic, nothing. People are losing their jobs. They are facing an eviction crisis. Now, Trump imposed a moratorium on evictions until December 31st, but when it's January 1st and you don't have months of rent to give to your landlord, what do you do? The answer is nothing. We are not going to do anything even if it affects us personally. Now, people on Twitter were saying, Mike, if it gets too bad, you've got to evacuate. But the question is, where do you go? Like, I can go to my mom's house where her air quality is slightly worse than where we're at currently. I can go to my niece's place, except she had to evacuate. I mean, there's nowhere to go. You risk making the situation worse. Like, I don't think you'd evacuate if the air quality got too bad, but I mean, there's nothing that you do. Like, you get in your car and then you just drive when you're probably exposing yourself to even more of it than if you just stayed home. I mean, there's nothing you can do. If the air is bad, if the air is hazardous and not breathable for extended periods of time, there's nothing you can do. You're just shit out of luck. And that kind of led me to this realization that climate change is already here. And if we were going to act based on it impacting us directly in the United States, we would have already done it, right? Hurricane Katrina would have been or should have been the straw that broke the camel's back. Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, like these things should have made us pay attention. The increased severity and frequency of wildfires should have already gotten people to take action legislatively. I mean, back in 2017, again, we had wildfires in Oregon and the worst that I saw the air quality index get was at 150, but now it's been at over 450 consistently for like the past week. And there's really no urgency that you can sense among lawmakers that we're gonna do anything because they're not gonna do anything. So this realization is a little bit depressing because what do we do with this information? Knowing that the government isn't going to do anything about climate change regardless of how bad it gets, regardless if we start seeing wars of water, wars over water and mass migration, regardless if our own citizens here at home are affected, is that going to encourage government to take action? Will there ever be a straw that breaks the camel's back? Will there ever be anything that we say enough is enough and actually take action? And I think the answer is no. I think the answer is no. So I don't know what to do. You can say well, maybe we just need mass civil disobedience, you know, protests, but ask yourself, have we seen any concrete steps taken to address the Black Lives Matter protests which have been going on now for months at the national level? No. We basically have a failed state. That's the conclusion, that's the takeaway. We have a failed state and knowing that we have a failed state, it gives us a sense of what we have to do, you know, how long the road ahead is to actually get action. It's not just a matter of saying these are the right courses of action and policy steps we have to do and take to make sure that we actually fight this. Like we don't have a function in government. Look at the way that we responded to COVID. Look at the lack of response or any attempt to address the concerns of the protests. There's just, there's nothing, there's no action. Our government is fundamentally incapable of meeting even basic needs of its citizens. So with this information, what we have to do is fix our government before we do anything. Like we need reforms. How do we get that? I have no idea because I don't know what's going to actually get them to listen to us. I mean, it seems like protests don't work. I just don't know. So I mean, there's no like takeaway that I have. Like there's no summary. There's no like call to action. It's just like a realization that I came to while living in this situation where I can't open my doors unless it's really quickly to let my dogs out to go potty unless I want to breathe in hazardous air. Now this will go away. We're expecting rain sometime this week. So hopefully that will stop all the wildfires. But I mean, there's going to become a time where climate change and the consequences of climate change become so horrible that we're going to expect the government to do something finally. But there may not be a time where they actually do that. I mean, look at Flint, they haven't had clean drinking water for over five years now. It's not like, oh, well, it has to happen to us here at home to get them to care. They don't care. Otherwise they would have done something about COVID-19 to address the economic issues that it's causing. So this is kind of a depressing conclusion, but I mean, you kind of go to dark places in your mind when you're stuck in the situation where there's a pandemic and you're not just that risk of getting exposed to it if you go to the store, but now you can't even go outside in general for who knows how long, maybe a week. Who knows if the rain, which is expected for a day, will even stop the wildfires. So we don't know how long the air quality along the West Coast and Oregon is going to be hazardous. But I mean, it leads you to conclude that the situation just feels so hopeless and I don't know what to do. So I mean, I took the week off last week as part of me trying to celebrate my third wedding anniversary and to get a little bit of a mental health break, but not feeling too optimistic or better about the situation if I'm being honest. So all you can do is just try to pretend like it's not happening, try to distract yourself, play video games, watch TV. I don't know, like what do you do in this situation? It's just we are in such a bizarre time. And the sad part is that even though these fires at this level, it hasn't happened in I think almost a hundred years in Oregon, it may be rare, but it will become more frequent because of climate change if we don't do anything. So it's just, it sucks. We are in a hole and we have to find some way to dig ourselves out of this hole. And when I say we, I mean we as a species, human beings. Mike is a total loser. So don't hit the subscribe button, okay? And whatever you do folks, do not hit the notification bell either. Mike treats me so unfairly.