Bead 23: Fire, Water, and a Night at the Movies

Here in the Yosemite area, Hurricane Harvey never made landfall.  Not only were our small mountain communities nowhere near the path of the storm, but the news of its destruction was, for the most part, an occasional flicker on our screens.  Not real.  What was real was what was outside:  Dense smoke, falling ash, and the nightly orange glow from the hilltops above our heads. 

In July there was the Detwiler Fire, which led to the evacuation of two entire towns just a short drive up the road from me, and the loss of nearly 60 homes.  In August there were the South Fork and Empire Fires of southern Yosemite, which closed roads and trails, and emptied out the park community of Wawona.  

Then, over the past two weeks, there were four more local flare-ups:  the Peak Fire near Bootjack, the Cathedral Fire near Midpines, the Mission Fire near North Fork, and the Railroad Fire near a slew of small towns:  Fish Camp, Sugar Pine, Oakhurst, and Ahwahnee.  Collectively, these fires displaced hundreds, if not thousands, of my neighbors, and destroyed about a dozen homes.  Two of my coworkers were evacuated for two separate fires.  I worried about evacuation myself; one night there was scanner traffic about a spot fire about a mile away from me, and I packed the car.  The fire was never mentioned again, and it eventually seemed clear that the location had been misreported.  Still, I got out of town.  With my son and my dog, I headed to my grandmother's home in Palo Alto, where the air was safe the breathe.

This photo was taken by Elva Gurule, age 12, as she and her family fled their home during the Mission Fire.

The fires in the southern Sierra are only a sliver of the larger conflagration that is this summer's American West.  In Montana alone, there are currently 45 fires reported as "active" on the federal fire tracker website.  More than 1 million acres, or slightly over an acre per Montana resident, has burned.  The state has long since drained its $32.5 million fire account.

In Oregon and Washington, states people typically think of as wet, federal fire incidents have consumed more than 800,000 acres this year.  The Eagle Creek Fire has the mile-wide Columbia River for a firebreak, and has nevertheless managed to scorch more than 30,000 acres, not to mention drift across the river to the Washington side.  I've hiked in the Eagle Creek area before.  It is all waterfalls and ferns, a thick world of evergreen.  Not fire country.

If it were only the fires, it would be one thing.  But it's not.  First there was Harvey.  Then Irma.  Then Jose.  The devastation bundled into these three back-to-back storms is unprecedented.  A full two weeks after Harvey's passage, more than 50,000 Texas residents remain in temporary housing.  An estimated 126,000 homes in Houston were "severely impacted" by Harvey, many to the point of being uninhabitable.  Irma's march through the Caribbean destroyed ninety-five percent of the structures on the islands of Barbuda and St. Martin.  In Florida, thanks to Irma, as many as 15 million people are without electricity. 

Scene from St. Martin after Irma plowed through.  Photo credit Daily Mail (UK).

To some, this simultaneous scourge of fire and water is mere coincidence.  For as long as there has been nature, there have been natural disasters.  Although it is highly improbable that so many disasters would affect so many parts of North America at once, statistics work in mysterious ways.  Nothing more to look at here.

Or if there is something more to look at--say, in the perspective of Congressman Tom McClintock of California's 4th District--it certainly isn't human-caused climate change.  Technically speaking, McClintock doesn't deny climate change.  In fact, he likes to say that it was he, and not Al Gore, who "discovered" it while on a class field trip to the American Museum of Natural History in 1964.  The dinosaur exhibits made him acutely aware of the earth's fluctuating temperatures.  End of story.  According to McClintock, the earth is up to its usual antics, warming and cooling.  It might be a bit hotter than usual these days, but that is only because the sun is hotter than it used to be.

McClintock's views on climate change are nicely summarized in a speech he delivered to the Heartland Institute in 2009, entitled Inconvenient Questions.  But McClintock's version of climate change is anything but inconvenient.  How handy to have an explanation for what is happening on the planet today without having to actually make any changes.  How handy to be able to retain our age-old allegiance to the bottom line.  McClintock's "theories" grease the cogs of the machine that keeps him in office. 

But as Al Gore and 97 percent of the world's climate scientists have long known, it is not the sun that is driving up global temperatures and increasing the frequency of apocalyptic fires and hurricanes.  It is people.  If we wish to continue inhabiting our planet, then we need to get busy.

This summer, Al Gore released a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth, his 2006 cinematographic wake-up call.  An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power summarizes Gore's work in recent years, and offers reasons to be hopeful.  Compared to its predecessor, the sequel focuses less on climate change itself, and more on the movement that has grown around it.  We see Al Gore roaming the world and recruiting "climate champions" to do the good work.  We see what climate action looks like--who the leaders are, where they come from.  We are taken to Paris in December 2015, when 195 countries came together to adopt a global action plan known as the Paris Accord.  We are shown how the deal was reached, against the odds and with some crafty eleventh-hour assistance from Gore himself.  We are, of course, also shown the rise of Trump and its fallout.  But the resounding moral is:  The people are awake now, and fighting for the planet.

Another Mission Fire photo taken by Elva Gurule, once she and her family were safe at the mill site in North Fork.

We have a movie theater in Oakhurst.  Established in 1986, the Met Cinema has long served as a hub in a town that can otherwise feel like a commercial strip for Yosemite tourists.  In 2013, when the theater was purchased by three local entrepreneurs, it became even more of a community centerpiece.  Operated on a subscription basis, the theater's members, or "Met Heroes," may see as many movies as they want for the equivalent monthly cost of less than two Fandango tickets.  For a small additional cost, members can bring guests--which encourages friends and neighbors to gather at the movies, a la Americana.  The lobbies are set up like living rooms, inviting conversation on either side of showtime.  My son and I have been Met Heroes since the subscription program was launched.  Even though there are months when we don't make it to the Met, my recurring $28 always feels like money well spent.

The Met mostly airs big studio movies, but also has room for an independent film here and there.  Often, these trend Christian and/or politically conservative, as that is the bent of the theater's owners--and frankly, the community at large.  But theater insiders have told me that the management team is always open to suggestions.  In a nutshell, they will play what people want to see.

My local peace group put this to the test recently.  At our August meeting, we circulated a handwritten "petition" asking Matt Sconce, one of the owners, to bring An Inconvenient Sequel to the Met, and pledging to come see it when it aired.  We gathered 28 signatures.  Many were theater members.  A couple days later, I strolled into the theater, intending to deliver the signatures to Matt.  I was told by my buddy Micah, who works there, that the sure-fire way to reach Matt was not at the theater, but on social media.

Bingo.  I messaged Matt, and had a response from him within a couple of hours.  He appreciated knowing there were so many members who wanted to see An Inconvenient Sequel, he wanted to show it, and he would do everything he could to make that happen.

Matt messaged me updates over the next week.  Finally, just six days after our original communication, there was this:  "It is coming in Friday!  Please spread the word.  I am hoping the people who asked for it will help by telling others and showing up."

My group organized two viewings of An Inconvenient Sequel at the Met.  Both times, we made sure Met Heroes were in hefty supply; that way we could bring the others in as our guests.  My son and I went to the second viewing, and filed in with nine guests in tow.  All told, there were probably 30 peace group members there that night.

An Inconvenient Sequel:  Truth to Power wasn't exactly what I thought it would be.  I was expecting a lot more science, a lot more nature gone amok.  I was expecting to be shown what the earth had been up to since the first movie was released.  Instead, I was shown what people concerned about the earth had been up to.  That was disappointing at first.  I'm not sure how hard I would have lobbied for a documentary that was largely about Al Gore.  But by the end of the movie, and certainly in retrospect, I appreciated having learned about the movement.

And I appreciated the positive message.  If nothing else, the film is a rallying cry to people who accept the reality of human-caused climate change to get out there, to be the boots on the ground our planet needs.  According to Gore, we won't be moving to any other celestial bodies any time soon.  The earth is our only home, he says, and we'd best look after it.