Here in Seattle, people always joke that maybe climate change wouldn’t be so bad. We wouldn’t mind a little extra warm weather in the summer, thank you very much!

Well, here’s what that looks like.

Thanks to smoke from wildfires burning in Canada, Eastern Washington, Oregon, and California, the air quality has degraded to dangerous levels around here. It gets especially bad when our handy-dandy oceanic air conditioner turns off, like it did on Sunday.

Now we can’t go outside. Our home is hot, and getting hotter, and we can’t cool it off because we can’t open the windows. I can’t commute home by bike, let alone keep training, because I can’t breathe — it hurts eyes, nose, and throat to be outside any extended period of time (like more than 10 minutes), and goodness only knows the long-term impact to our lungs. We all feel low-grade sick, with runny noses, sore throats, and coughing.

Here’s what that looks like on the ground. Unhealthy Air: Vanishing Seattle Unhealthy Air: Orange Sunrise Unhealthy Air: No Olympics Unhealthy Air: No South Sound Unhealthy Air: No Mt. Rainier

This is what climate change looks like in the Pacific Northwest. Now tell me that we should consider cutting the Clean Air Act, vehicle fuel standards, and other environmental protections designed to combat climate change.

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