Life in A Sinking City

Is it better to live in a city that sinks or a city that shakes? A city that rains ash or acid? The past decade of my life has been lived in cities experiencing extreme climate crises and yet they are both perpetually summer with fresh fruit and veggies abundant. Faces are smiling and crowds of visitors and natives alike dot touristic streets. Los Angeles and Ho Chi Minh City are some of People’s favorites to visit and on opposite sides of the globe, both have swelling populations. For my birthday I had planned to visit Da Nang, a short jaunt up the coast, but it was hit by a typhoon and the wreckage is extensive. Because I do not want to be underwater, I will fly further North to Hanoi and visit Da Nang the following month instead. Life continues.

When I went to the Great Barrier Reef in 2011, I was participating in what is known as Disaster Tourism, though I didn’t know that phrase at the time. Disaster tourism is defined on wikipedia as, “the practice of visiting locations at which an environmental disaster, either natural or man-made, has occurred.” It is also typically defined as taking place after a single-large impact happening, such as a volcanic eruption. For myself, I would expand the definition to include anything you want to see before it’s gone - whether it’s because of a typhoon, tsunami, extreme heat or cold, it’s all going fast. If Bolsonaro wins and clears another section of the Amazon or a methane bubble kills a section of the ozone layer, to me those are qualifying events. My friend and I intentionally swam in the reef to see it in person before it died. Though sections have been restored, large swaths of this 8,000 year old organism that were alive a decade ago are no longer. One could see the past century for the Reef as a steep decline in the twilight of a long life. 

I fly to the places I visit. I take a ride share, typically a great distance to an airport and then I fly on a big plane. I almost always forget my water bottle and so I buy a plastic water bottle at the airport, being both fiscally and environmentally irresponsible. Sipping my $10 water, I hope the plane serves the tiny plastic packets of pretzels instead of peanuts. On the trip, because I am fussy and only like drinking out of specific shapes, I do not buy a reusable bottle and instead continue to buy plastic water bottles. I also always eat the local fare, typically meat, and then I often stay at a hotel which is sure to provide me with lots of individually packaged soaps and sometimes those disposable slippers, which I love. I do not wear these around the hotel room, I take them home with me. If there is no bathtub and the water is not hot enough, I am sad. I crank the AC to arctic levels at night, if there is a fan, I will use it and while I am sleeping, I charge my array of devices.

I more or less stopped the bulk of travel in 2014 after I’d moved to Los Angeles as I was beyond broke (not because I wanted personal improvement) and so instead focused my path of climate destruction there. Living in LA for nearly a decade, even vapid pop culture doesn’t let you forget that the next Big One is imminent with movies like San Andreas or similar coming out every few years, always mysteriously starring The Rock. In a recent LA Times article, we learn that a string of fault lines believed to be separate are actually all joined together and have the potential to cause a 7.8 quake in a place I love dearly. It was in LA I vowed to Do Better. No more plastic! Less meat! Less buying new! I became an estate sale fanatic. I never closed my windows and often left the front door open. Once, my roommate asked if we were living in the 1800’s because for a period of about a year I only used candle light past sundown. I hope the Environment appreciates my Changes, I say with my nose up. Then, as I was considering leaving the city, I went to a Bjork concert where for a brief moment, the performer introduced a photo of Greta Thunberg and a call for us all to Do Better. The crowd went wild with booing. The boo’s were loud and aggressive and constant. From friends who went to the event, I’m told it happened every night she played in LA, a liberal city. 

People are tired, I thought as I boarded my next plane across the world. In the future children might only know of one Amazon which sells its trees at the click of a button with same day shipping, and yet, I still choose to fly, drink out of plastic, and eat meat. Each year, the median fall of coastal cities in Southeast Asia is 0.6 inches per year. I am on a sinking ship here in Vietnam, and despite that, experiencing the world with freshness and hope for the future.

There’s a  temptation to throw your hands up and say, I can’t go on! And then a second, smaller thought, I’ll go on. We find ways to persevere and forge paths towards a viable future no matter how small. Today I will tend to my plants. Tomorrow I will buy less things. This week I will eat less meat. Truthfully, I am pessimistic about our global future, but while I am here, I will try to minimize the harm that I add. I wish that I could stop my travels as a disaster tourist, but it does make the present more precious. Just like you or I will die, so will swaths of the world as we know them, both a good and scary thing. When I visit Jakarta in the coming year, a quick flight away from Ho Chi Minh City, it will be in part because the capital city is sinking so fast that in the next twenty years, Indonesia has plans to move it entirely to a new location. Jakarta’s building’s will still be there, but a portion of its personality will move on. I would like to see both sides, the before and after. On this world tour over the course of a lifetime (sorry I am not giving up flying yet…) I hope to witness these changes objectively as nothing is static, good or bad, and in destruction there can be growth. 


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