The summer of 2023, New York City woke up to a weird sight.
The sky, usually a bright blue canvas, had transformed into a foreboding shade of orange. It was a color more reminiscent of autumn leaves than the summer sky. The strange sky was not a local phenomenon but a distant one: wildfires raging across the forests of Canada. The wildfires had started in early June in Canada, heatwaves and dry conditions fostered forests of Quebec and Ontario. As the fires spread, they released tones of smoke that drifted southwards, carried by the wild winds. By mid-June, the smoke had traveled thousands of miles, reaching the northeastern United States and enveloping cities like New York.
I was caught off guard. The air, thick with particles and pollutants, created a haze that blurred the skyline. The air became very humid and my neighborhood seemed dulled, the orange skies felt more like a scene from a dystopian novel with its trees and pathways shrouded in a smoky veil. I had to continue to go to school even though the air quality was in bad condition. Walking outside I instantly felt shortness of breath, the air was so dense and thick taking deep breaths was the only way to not feel suffocated. Unfortunately I do have asthma, so as if breathing through a mask wasn’t hard enough wearing thick air through a mask was absolutely frightening.
While in school talk about the orange skies came up, as a class we realized that the wildfires were a part of a bigger crisis, that being climate change.
Fellow students pointed out that the wildfires were part of a larger pattern of extreme weather events exacerbated by global warming. They believed that urgent actions were needed to reduce carbon emissions and invest in sustainable practices to prevent future disasters.
After such a fascinating but scary time I realized that the world needs all the help it can get. From that moment on I have gone out of my way to contribute to as few pollutants as possible in hopes that by doing my part the air quality won’t hit as bad as it was.
Loraine Brown was a summer intern through Solar One’s Summer Youth Employment Program with Climate Generation during August, 2024. She is based in New York, and during her internship she studied activists and organizers her age who are taking action on climate change. She also reflected on her own experience through her climate story.