By Jonathan Thompson WRITERS ON THE RANGE
In the time of coronavirus, I headed to southern Utah’s
remote canyon country to do some extreme social distancing.
All I knew when I emerged a few days later in western Colorado
was that the world was confusing. I half-expected to find empty highways and
shuttered businesses. What I witnessed was an armada of black SUVs, loaded down
with passengers and skis, all headed to the resort town of Telluride. This was
mid-March.
Clearly, a lot of folks were determined not to let a deadly
pandemic get in the way of their ski vacation. It occurred to me then that
perhaps things weren’t so bad, after all. If that many people were still headed
for the slopes, the crowded restaurants, bars and supersized petri dishes—er,
hot tubs—then surely the danger of the virus had passed, right? Wrong.
What I was witnessing was just one instance of an ad hoc,
failed response to a crisis. It resembled a magnified version of the global
response to climate change in which half the population is in panic mode, while
the other half insists on life as usual.
I saw this play out in even starker relief in the
supermarket in Montrose, which serves as a supply town for mountain towns to
the south, including Telluride. The parking lot was packed, and at first glance
things inside seemed fairly typical for a ski season Saturday. The avocados and
bell peppers were stacked high in the produce section, and the fancy cheese bin
was overflowing. Then I noticed the potatoes were all gone.
I hurried back to the rice and beans aisle only to find what
I ascertained to be high-risk folks—older, frail-looking—staring at empty
shelves. It was the same with the dried pasta section, where all that remained
were a few boxes of gluten-free stuff. I grabbed them and anything else that
would give me sustenance for the next week or so while I lived and worked out
of my car.
Back out in the parking lot a massive Cadillac Escalade and
a handful of Chevy Suburbans were lined up in front of the liquor store. One woman
told her companion to move the car closer because “we’ve got way too much to
carry.”
Then it felt like a cascade: Meetings were cancelled, my
kids were being ordered to vacate their college dorms immediately, giving them
little choice but to get on planes and fly across the ocean back to Bulgaria,
where I live. Restaurants were shutting down. Meanwhile, the ski vacationers
were stocking up on booze. Did they think they were immune? Or did they believe
President Trump when he first downplayed the virus, even calling it a hoax?
It’s tempting simply to roll one’s eyes: They’ll get what
they deserve, while those who hole up in their houses and try to do their part
to mitigate the virus’s spread will stay healthy.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. By continuing on
with their lives, the vacationers could negate the efforts of the conscientious
crowd, and likely spread the virus to the people working in the restaurants,
hotels and shops.
Climate change is no different. It does little good for one
person to reduce their carbon footprint if all around them everyone else—with
the encouragement of the federal government—drills for oil, burns natural gas
or coal and consumes without limits, as if the climate catastrophe were just
another media fixation.
What we need to battle both this virus and climate change is
a coordinated, society-wide response. We need leaders who aren’t afraid of
taking bold, decisive action, regardless of how it might impact the stock
market or the bottom line of political donors. It truly is a matter of life and
death.
That same day, March 14, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis took
decisive action: He ordered every ski area in the state to shut down and then
imposed restrictions on public gathering places. San Juan County, home of
Telluride, went farther: mandatory lock down, shelter in place, all tourists
and non-residents must leave, and mandatory testing of the entire population by
a private company.
Now we just need the same kind of resolve to tackle the
climate crisis.
Jonathan Thompson is a contributor to WritersontheRange.org, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about Western issues. He is a freelance writer and author of the forthcoming novel, “Behind the Slickrock Curtain.”
