New York chokes in bad air, Delhi gives survival tips

We may not need to go to Mars to set up a colony after all if Earth is destroyed. Instead, we can just adapt to Earth turning into Mars. We can already see it happening in a way that LOOKS like Mars. Just take a look at New York City or the northeastern part of the US and some parts of Canada. 

Photos of New York City blanketed in various hues of orange are going viral on social media. It almost looks like someone posted a picture of a regular NYC skyline with an orange filter on it. Except, it no filter, it's all real. 

Why? New York is suffering from bad air quality. When we hear of air quality, New York isn't a place that comes to mind instead cities mostly in South Asia and Asia are on the top like Delhi, Lahore, Beijing, etc.  But it seems like cities from the so-called developed countries have also joined the ranks and are even beating the Asian cities in the ranking. 

• Delhites on Twitter can't get enough of the news and are giving some survival tips, which is to just get used to it eventually.
• The running joke on Delhi air quality is that the lungs of Delhites are so used to breathing bad air, they become ill when they find fresh and clean air in the mountains during vacation. 

New York's air quality in the dumps

• On June 8, New York's air quality was the worst in the whole world. Yes, New York left behind some of the cities like Delhi and Beijing which have consistently bad air throughout the year. 

• Air Quality Index in New York City topped 342 on Thursday, in the "hazardous" category for all people. 
• Online, people are saying New York smells like a campfire and looks like Mars. 

• And it's not just New York, Washington DC announced Code Purple over the air quality, which also means that the air is bad for all people. And in at least 13 US states, the air is bad.

Why is the air bad?

• It has to do with US's neighbour Canada. 

• Canada's forests are on fire. Wildfires are raging in the east and west of the country. 
• Canada's PM Justin Trudeau says this season could be the worst season of wildfires. 

• Some have pointed out how Canada's wildfire season is also wayyyy ahead of schedule. 

But we haven't told the most important part of the whole story - it's just the beginning.

• Yes, the wildfire season in Canada has only begun now. And it's expected to go on till the winter months come, which is about 4-5 months away. 
• This also means that cities like New York and Toronto are going to be experiencing some bad air till the winter months. We will most likely be seeing the orange filter on the City of Dreams in the US several times over. 

Given the situation, the dystopian-looking and the I-can't-believe-they-would-make-this-unnecessary-product, Dyson air purifier with headphones face mask, doesn't seem too farfetched anymore. Who knows air purifier face masks could be the next big business buck. 

On the other hand, some might wonder that cities like NYC being impacted by bad air which has become quite normal in other parts of the world and some parts of the US, might make people take climate change more seriously.

But there are still groups of people mostly the climate change denialists who would rather believe in conspiracy theories than deal with the problem at hand. They believe the culprit to be anything from government-controlled arsonists, weaponising wildfires for climate lockdowns, pyrotechnic drones, and space lasers for Canada's wildfires and the subsequent bad air. 

But the truth is: Scientists recently found that millions of acres of land and forests scorched by wildfires in the western US and Canda could be traced back to pollution by some of the world's largest fossil fuel and cement companies. 

A study by the Union of Concerned Scientists published the research in the journal Environmental Research Letters earlier in May. They said that 37% of the area burned by wildfires since 1986 in the US and Canada could be blamed on pollution by 88 world's major fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers.