Lights out. Listen, I’m really not trying to stress you out, but the west coast is presently one meth addict’s cigarette away from megafire, and Gavin Newsom thinks that this is something we should just accept — meth addicts and megafire, I mean, certainly not tobacco. One problem we’re facing is it really is getting hot out there. The land is thirsty, folks. But far more important, a well-meaning strategy of fire prevention with too-infrequent controlled burning has built up a few hundred years of unspent fuel in a state where wildfire has been a natural part of the ecology for tens of thousands of years. As if in twisted response to the fact, as if truly their goal was to kill people, politicians in our densest cities, especially throughout Northern California, have effectively frozen construction and forced new development into what are basically death zones. Meanwhile, back east, the lights have once again gone out in New York City, a now recurring summer tradition. And the ocean? After a pipeline burst off the coast of Mexico, oops!, it’s on fire.

All of these disasters have been attributed, in one way or another, to climate change, as political leaders around the country argue the world teeters on the brink of apocalypse — explicitly, a climate-induced extinction-level event in our lifetime. In 2019, fan favorite Ocasio-Cortez insisted we have 12 years to live. Anyone out there just graduating from high school? Sorry, kids, the United States Congress regrets to inform you your ten-year reunion has been canceled on account of the world is ending. In California, Newsom tweets about global warming almost every week, typically in the context of wildfire. But an ocean in flames was a moment too shocking not to immediately politicize. Behold, Tweedledee, who truly no one asked, on the Mexican pipeline: