And the Good News Is…
Anyone who knows me knows fireworks are a pet peeve. So here we are again this year painfully witnessing the advent of the insufferably annoying snap, crackle and pop of the July 4th extravaganza.
Where we live it begins about now and lasts two weeks or more. Or maybe it actually never ended from last year; it’s kind of hard to tell. Complaints about illegal fireworks remain at an all time high.
This diatribe then is my Annual July 4th Hollerday Buzzkill about fireworks, but with an even more pervasive tinge of moral superiority than usual. (Wait for it; it’s coming in just a couple of paragraphs.)
Because it’s not just about the noise, air, ground and water pollution that assault us from fireworks. The toxic metal salts, perchlorates, CO2, ozone, particulate and other assorted filthy debris spewed out and raining down are bad enough. Fine particulate levels alone in cities increase by as much as 50% from holiday fireworks displays, and fine particulate makes asthma sufferers miserable.
It’s also the havoc fireworks wreak on people with PTSD, dogs and other animals, as well as the disfiguring injuries and brushfires caused by the cute festivities’ inevitable mishaps. The extent that civic authorities like police, fire and EMS are called upon to respond to this idiocy is a monumental waste of taxpayer dollars, and these important people should certainly be doing more critical things.
But here’s the thing that struck me recently when I was listening to a spontaneous smoky symphony of moronic fiery flatulence floating menacingly over the neighborhood: isn’t this penchant for short term joy and exhilaration regardless of ultimate consequences exactly why we are in the climate crisis we are in?
Sending legal and illegal fireworks aloft and exploding them dangerously on the ground seem like the perfect symbolic acts that exemplify the relationship many of us have with the natural environment. We live in it, consume it, have fun in it, and then leave our droppings and detritus indiscriminately behind, no matter how filthy or toxic they may be.
I recall recently reading about an island in Lake Erie without a centralized sanitation system whose groundwater was now polluted from the boom of housing development and its ineffective septic systems. How quintessentially disrespectful of the earth and each other is it that we blithely foul our own nest? You would be hard pressed to find a similar example in the natural world. Only humans are this foolish, and crudely unaware, despite our big brains.
We have the freedom to do stuff in the ecosystem that is utterly selfish, cavalier and hedonistic that produces short-term glee, and ignores the longer-term effects to our biological home that are not immediately visible to us, but ultimately will threaten our very existence.
This is why we have felt empowered to use the global ecosystem for a chemical sewer for the last several hundred years. “Dilution is the solution to pollution,” we thought, until it isn’t. (And it no longer is.) One very simple thing I learned in my career in the chemical waste industry about pollution is this: if you can see it, if you can smell it and especially if you can taste it or feel it on your skin, it’s definitely not a good thing.
Nonetheless, we are allowed to be, and we vigorously protect our right to be, ignorant, irrational and adolescently narcissistic to pursue the things that we enjoy and that give us comfort, regardless of the nastiness of what we tend to leave behind in the air, in the water and on the land. We’ll just keep crapping into and on the ecosystem until its carrying capacity collapses, like that island in Lake Erie. That’s just who we are.
And that’s why we love fireworks!
It’s like an addiction that feels good at the time and that will ultimately destroy us. Alcohol, tobacco products, drugs, unhealthy food, gambling…we do what we want to, what feels good and what we enjoy, until there are consequences. And the consequences most certainly come, eventually now, don’t they?
But, interestingly, it’s not who all of us are. I don’t know anyone that’s really into fireworks in a big way or sets them off illegally. I don’t really know anyone that vigorously defends their display. People I know all kind of think they’re pretty and festive, but seem to intuitively understand that they’re kind of a bad idea and unnecessary.
It seems like if people really think seriously about the absolute effects beyond the sugar high of the visual display and the auditory cacophony, they easily grasp the downsides. So maybe, just maybe then, fireworks displays are favored by less than the majority, much like most people understand now that the climate crisis is a really, really bad thing.
But still, elected representatives of a minority of the people prevent us from doing anything about the climate crisis humans precipitated, even after decades of knowing full well that a grim reckoning was coming. Now the grim reckoning is upon us, and still the will of the people is stymied by a privileged and powerful few at the top of the social and political pyramid.
But I thought this was a democracy? Yeah, me too.
Of course we haven’t even thought of tackling something as mundane as fireworks, have we? Because there are much bigger issues to address. Like the climate crisis, and gun violence, and systemic racism, and income inequality, and a livable wage, and affordable healthcare, and oh, yeah, now voting rights again, of all things.
But we keep getting held back on tackling all this critically and existentially important stuff. Held back by a minority of the population with power-hungry political advocates who have manipulated our government to favor a greedy, privileged few.
Something is terrifying wrong with this picture. Just when will we finally do something about it?
Not ‘till after the fireworks, I imagine.
(Photo by J.E. Hargate)
