Column: That Stench is Climate Denial

There are no climate havens.
There is no time left.

Peter Sinclair in the Midland Daily News:

In the summer of 2026, Climate Denial has passed its sell-by date and is starting to stink.

From choking smoke to tropical parasites and odiferous raw sewage, the climate change impacts that many folks thought they could pass off to their children are assaulting their senses, their health, and their pocketbooks, today.

As of this writing more than 5000 Michiganders have been stricken with explosive diarrhea from an organism usually associated with the tropics.
Experts say warming temperatures are making tropical organisms like this one more common in temperate zones

The bug, known as Cyclospora, “used to be a South American problem” food safety expert Bill Marler told CBS, “Now, it’s a U.S. problem.”

University of California San Francisco infectious diseases specialist Dr. Peter Chin-Hong told an interviewer “You need heat to make the parasite infectious,.. as some places that were not as hot become hot, you may see cyclospora cases popping up in places that typically didn’t have it before.”

In the midwest, rain has been coming in heavier, more intense events that have overwhelmed storm and sewage systems.
Michigan had its wettest spring in history this year, and in the north country, the beautiful lakes that have attracted new residents, and more septic systems, are now being degraded as those systems are overloaded and spilling waste into waterways.
At Black Lake near Onaway, beaches were still closed in mid-June as a precaution against contamination.
1.3 million septic systems serve roughly half of Michigan’s population, yet it is the only state without a septic code.

Between 20% and 30% of those systems, an estimated 330,000, are failing, releasing untreated wastewater into Michigan’s surface, drinking and groundwater.
Climate powered rains are further straining them, threatening some of the state’s most beloved lakes, like Higgins and Houghton.
Yet the cost of replacing those systems is beyond the means of many homeowners, who are left, increasingly, with nasty smells and the threat of contamination and disease.

In nearby Chicago, recent heavy rains have washed so much sewer water into holding reservoirs, that residents in surrounding neighborhoods have been assaulted with a “brutal” smell, that is clearing restaurants and keeping people indoors.  

Those reservoirs, part of an elaborate stormwater system, can no longer keep up with increasingly severe storms, which scientists say will only increase.  There are solutions in the works, but all of them involve heavy costs with the city budget already bursting.

This week, Michigan and the entire Northeastern US, are reeling from the world’s worst air quality, a product of wildfires in Canada’s Boreal forest.

A recent study determined that although the total area burned has been declining globally, the most extreme fires increased by 2.2-fold from 2003 to 2023. In addition, the authors wrote that
“fire behaviour is worsening in several regions—particularly the boreal and temperate conifer biomes” – in other words, places like Canada.
While it is fair to assign some blame to faulty forestry practices, scientists point out that wildfires are increasing even in arctic regions like Greenland, where there are no forests, only scrubby tundra vegetation, that is now becoming warm and dry enough that increased lightning storms, also due to climate change, are able to spark more fires.

Predictably, politicians that have traditionally been in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, and mouthpieces for climate denial talking points, are unwilling to own up to their responsibilities in this rolling disaster, and instead taking up a “Blame Canada” banner.
This week several Michigan Republicans wrote to the Prime Minister of Canada complaining about Canada’s fire suppression efforts, but that bluster seems hollow as hundreds of fires burn out of control in every quarter of the US as well.

Air Quality Indexes are jumping off the scale in parts of Michigan that residents have perennially thought of as “God’s Country” – places of respite, peace, serenity, and invigorating air. Now, that air is literally life-threatening, and the future does not look encouraging.

Last summer, my son and I found time for a rare getaway in one of those places, a wilderness area on Lake Michigan, but our camping trip coincided with a smoke wave.
Although we toughed it out and enjoyed the solitude, the emotions we felt were mostly anger, and the deepest grief, for the loss of the sacred places where our hearts learned to connect with the natural world.
The Michigan we grew up in and love will not return in my lifetime, but there is a chance, over time, future generations could bring it back.
But without a swift transition to zero carbon energy, that Michigan, and much, much more, will be gone forever.