On Stephen Markley’s 'The Deluge'

I STAYED UP late during the lockdown. I sat on my couch, phone in hand, the television on but nothing important flickering from the screen. Comforting. Those first few weeks were about finding solace and routine. It was something we all needed but didn’t really know how to reconstruct. Our lives upended in a way that only seemed possible in fiction. A global shutdown. An unknown and unthinkable virus.

My daily routine revolved around keeping my two small children busy while my wife worked. At night, I found solace in the quiet moments after the three of them went to bed. Sometimes my nerves eased—the only light in the house the low glow of warm yellow from lamps beside the couch—though at some point the relaxation gave way to the fear of imminent death. I read the news on my phone: The Guardian, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, CNN. Each night, another disaster, another storm forming. Another death blow to humanity. On more than one occasion, I texted a group chat that we called “The Cell”: “The world is burning.” It seemed like it then. It still seems like it.

According to Scientific American, 2020 was the year with the most named storms on record—30. Storms get named when their wind speeds reach tropical storm velocity, 39 to 73 miles per hour. It was the fifth consecutive year that a Category 5 storm formed in the ocean. At the same time, the western United States continued to burn—more than 4.3 million acres in California alone. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there were 22 weather and climate disasters across the United States that caused more than a billion dollars’ worth of destruction, six more than the previous record of 16, which occurred in both 2017 and 2011. These were only the events that cost more than a billion dollars; this accounting doesn’t include the slightly smaller ones that seemed to happen every week.

My fear ratcheted up as I read. I became uneasy and started to wonder if it was a good idea to have children. Why did we do this? Why have we saddled them with this burning world? Is there any hope? It didn’t feel like it.