Drowning in Heat: The Learned Ignorance of Climate Change
Written by Gray W.
In his essay “Come Heat and High Water,” featured in The Best American Essays of 2019, Mario Alejandro Ariza, a Dominican immigrant journalist in Miami Florida, uses his experiences with discrimination to demonstrate how low-income families in Miami are disproportionately affected by climate change. By interviewing residents affected by climate change, Ariza examines how the resulting issues have long affected people with lower socioeconomic status but have come into broad focus as global warming extends to wealthy, air-conditioned, white neighborhoods of Miami. This essay is a reflection of the “beatings that stayed with [Ariza] for life,” (23) and how said beatings shaped Ariza’s view of the people of Miami suffering under a different kind of beating: a warming earth. Using his own experiences coiled with stories of stakeholders in the situation, Ariza crafts an argument that extends beyond Miami’s climate victims and is a wake-up call to all American readers in 2023 of how, five years later, economic situations still change the degree to which a warming earth affects us.
Employing a braided essay structure, Ariza uses the introduction about his personal abuse — which may not seem related at first — as a thread to weave into the larger story of those governed by climate change in Miami, revealing his relationship with the disenfranchised of Florida. Ariza’s experiences at a homogeneous private school where he was ‘othered’ because of his socioeconomic background forced him to develop skills for survival. He illustrates a school where his beatings were obscured both by a “no snitch policy” (23) and, more importantly, his personal principle of “resilience” (24) to withstand the abuse and succeed. Ariza was an immigrant who had suffered in a white school system that ignored his bruising and scars. Ariza compares his own hidden physical beatings with the poor who suffer most from climate change, with their issues often being put off as minute by the rich inhabitants of Miami who may remark about how ‘inconvenient’ the heat is.
By analogizing his own bullies with the local government, Ariza’s belief that resilience is necessary to survive changes throughout the essay. He states, “[Miami’s] affair should not be confused with resilience” (32). He learns that resilience has limits when it comes to the harsh realities of the heat, a reevaluation that he hopes readers will also take. Ariza comes to understand that his life story of bullying applies to the disenfranchised, but he begins to see that resilience is not what the people in Miami need to survive. For example, he changes the austerity of his subheadings, progressing from “get over it” (23) to a more descriptive reality of climate change, “disappearing flats” (38). How long can the immigrants of Miami “get over it” before the asphalt beneath their feet melts to tar? The combined force of the environmental destruction of rising oceans and the gentrification caused by government protocols cannot be solved with resilience. No, this is a disappearing world. No, an entire city cannot afford negligence in exchange for building a resilient American state, which Ariza describes as the “policy equivalent of palliative hospice care” (35). Climate change must be tackled by provocative means. While it might not affect the rich white populace of Miami to the same severity, those affected by the climate should not be expected to use their values to ignore a vanishing world.
Ariza’s conclusion is not a positive one. Our current government structures, plans for climate change, and ignorance of the issue might give hope for the future, but for some, the future is now. The socioeconomic status of fellow citizens should not be a determining factor for solving climate change, but instead, be the motivator. Ariza’s essay has resonated with me because it is a reminder of the privilege I have in a climate-driven world: I complain about the heat and turn on my AC or commute by cab instead of walking. Climate change may affect me; however, Ariza argues that those who have accessible means to avoid the detriments of a warming earth, rising ocean, or decaying land around them must have a level of ignorance toward the distress that others who do not have the luxury to ignore are experiencing. Despite being written years before, this essay is still more relevant now than ever. As climate change continues to be ignored and exchanged for government-sponsored resilience policy, it is time to abandon “pull[ing] yourself up by your bootstraps” and instead check up on the “folk who don't have any bootstraps” (25).
If you’d like to read the original essay that Gray responds to here, please click here.
