I warned you about the inevitable collapse of the Atlantic coast ecosystem in 2018, but you just had to book a premium eco-yurt.
I woke up this morning to frantic texts about the 4,000 people currently being evacuated from campsites around Lacanau, fleeing a historic, raging wall of flame on the French Atlantic coast. President Emmanuel Macron is calling it the “toughest” situation the country has faced since the Second World War. I, however, am calling it exactly what it is: the entirely predictable consequence of booking a summer holiday in a known combustion zone.
Every year, the European summer rolls around, and every year my inbox floods with panicked emails from former colleagues and distant relatives asking if it is “safe” to keep their August reservations in southern France or Spain. I usually tell them that safety is a bourgeois construct invented by the fossil fuel lobby, which rarely goes over well. But surely, at this late stage in our atmospheric decline, the sight of a hundred-foot wall of flame advancing on a holiday village should not come as a shock to anyone who reads the news.
It is frankly exhausting to be the only person who actually reads the IPCC reports. Just last month, I sat on a sustainability panel with the head of a major European travel syndicate, who assured me with a straight face that their scope-three emissions were fully offset by a grove of saplings they planted somewhere in the exact path of the current inferno. Instead of preparing for the transition, the tourism industry simply rebranded. They took campsites situated in the dead center of a historic drought, slapped the word “eco-resort” on the brochure, and sold the middle class on the idea that nature is a passive amenity that can be managed by a concierge.
Let that sink in. You flew on a budget airline emitting the carbon equivalent of a small war, arrived in a parched pine forest, pitched a highly flammable synthetic tent, and are now filing a customer service complaint because the wind shifted.
We kindly ask the fire to respect the perimeter of our premium wellness yurts, as our guests have already paid a mandatory carbon-offset fee at booking.
The sheer arrogance of the modern vacationer is breathtaking. People genuinely believe that because they use a bamboo toothbrush and once shared an infographic about the ozone layer, the laws of thermodynamics will grant them a bespoke, flame-free microclimate. I watched the televised evacuations this morning: thousands of people in linen shorts dragging wheeled suitcases through the ash, looking up at a sky the color of a bruised peach, completely baffled that the local authorities haven't simply turned the heat down.
And what of the political response? Macron says this is an unprecedented battle. True to form, the political class is treating this like a sudden invasion by a hostile foreign power, rather than the scheduled delivery of a bill we have been ignoring for forty years. You cannot subsidize a Big Oil earnings call every quarter and then act shocked when the resulting atmospheric soup decides to vaporize a coastal resort. The flames in Bordeaux and Spain are not anomalies; they are the new permanent residents of the region.
You cannot negotiate with a stranded asset, and right now, the entire concept of a relaxing July in southwestern Europe is a stranded asset. The era of the carefree summer holiday burned down while we were all debating whether paper straws were too soggy. If you are currently fleeing for your life toward Bordeaux, do not look to me for a comforting word. Just keep driving, and maybe next year, try vacationing in a nice, safe, climate-controlled subterranean bunker.