Someone who is suffering from seasonal allergies may be less able to exercise, more vulnerable to infection, less productive at work (if not actually absent), more likely to require treatment in an emergency room. Seasonal allergies have been linked to an increase in both the prevalence and severity of asthma, which is particularly worrisome for children.
None of this is surprising to anyone who’s paying attention to the way the changing climate affects everything nowadays. Wherever you live, even if you aren’t evacuating to avoid a hurricane, or keeping a go bag by the door in case of a wildfire, or wondering if it’s time to move to higher ground, climate change is now affecting your daily life. It’s making wine taste different, sleep more fitful, air travel more turbulent. It’s making the very air harder to breathe.
Meanwhile, the planet will continue to warm, and plants will continue to produce more pollen, and in more concentrated doses, for a longer period of time each year. People who suffer from seasonal allergies will feel worse, and people who aren’t currently troubled by allergy symptoms may yet find themselves sneezing and rubbing their eyes. As Ms. Tayag points out in her Atlantic article, “At this point, not much can be done to stop it.”
That’s true, but a lot can be done to keep it from getting incomprehensibly worse. In the doom versus optimism debate about the climate, much of the optimism lies in the way technology, shored up by policy and legislation, is rising to the challenge faster and more effectively than we ever imagined it could. “Stunning, record-breaking gains in wind and solar power around the world,” David Geddes of The Times writes, means that “a full 30 percent of global electricity was generated by renewables last year.” The time we have left to change our climate’s devastating trajectory is dwindling, but we are finally beginning to take the steps necessary to change it.
But we are only beginning, and beginnings can be snuffed out. At his Mar-a-Lago resort last month, Donald Trump told a group of oil executives and lobbyists that they should donate $1 billion to his campaign because he plans to reverse Joe Biden’s clean energy policies, among other environmental protections opposed by Big Oil, if he is returned to the White House.
Margaret Renkl, a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of the books “The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year,” “Graceland, at Last” and “Late Migrations.”
