Imagine one day that you’ve amassed a great amount of wealth, but the air in your environment is unhealthy to breathe. You might realize that even when you had less money, if you had clean air to breathe, you had wealth that money could not buy.

Our planet has delivered striking reminders that its climate is changing. In recent years, that reminder has consistently appeared for me in the shock of breathing toxic air.

Wildfire smoke has followed me around North America from Los Angeles, to New York, and now to Mexico City. Masking up and sheltering in place has become routine. It appears that this is the norm of life in the twenty-first century.

Moving to California in 2018, I quickly became familiar with the state’s autumn “wildfire season.” The wildfire season of 2018 was particularly vicious, burning the city of Paradise, California to the ground, and blanketing cities across the state in hazardous smoke, including Los Angeles where I resided.

After a Saturday of sitting inside, sheltering from the smoke, I ventured out to the park to read a book and get some “fresh air”. While sitting on a bench in Norma Houston Park, I noticed a woman’s car stalled out on La Brea Avenue.

I jogged out to the road to assist the woman in getting her car out of traffic, and was joined by a young man with a bandana covering his face. He pushed the car from the passenger side door while I crouched behind the bumper, driving forward through my squatted legs. We got the car moving and ran it to the next street where she could turn off of the main road and away from oncoming traffic.

Afterwards, the woman expressed her thanks. “I work at the Dollar General at the bottom of the hill. Stop by sometime and I’ll take care of you,” she said.

Once I returned to my book at the park bench, I noticed my chest was heavy, and my breathing labored. I then understood the news alerts instructing the public to avoid strenuous exercise outdoors. This smoke wasn’t to be played with.

I thought I would leave wildfire smoke behind when leaving the West Coast and moving to New York, but climate change had different plans.

In June 2023, the woodlands of northern Quebec were ablaze. One afternoon while returning from a lunch break at work, I saw the skies tinted an otherworldly orange. Smoke from Quebec’s fires had drifted south and engulfed New York City in an ominous haze.

“This smoke came from Canada,” announced Mayor Eric Adams, apparently now realizing that we inhabit one planet with a single atmosphere, and that political borders are not recognized by nature. The mayor claimed it was an “unprecedented event”, but my experience suggests otherwise.

Meanwhile on a Manhattan rooftop, business carried on as usual at a finance industry mixer despite the hazardous conditions. “This is nothing. New Delhi is way worse,” gloated a man of Indian descent.

Will, my friend and fellow Georgia native later confided, “If New York is gonna be like New Delhi, I’m getting the fuck out of here."

Fast forward a year to 2024. “Extremely poor” reads the air quality measure on Apple’s weather app. The map of Mexico City and surrounding areas is covered in purple, denoting the worst extreme on the air quality scale.

“Is there some sort of dust in the air?” said James Blake during a break between songs before a crowd of 15,000 music fest attendees.

“Look at this white man complaining about the air quality,” joked a fellow attendee, adopting a British accent. "'You all breathe this shit every day!?"

I thought that my breathing issues were only due to the dust kicked up by thousands of people moving about the park at the music festival, however in the next few days, my breathing continued to be labored. Even walking down the block was exhausting, causing me to pause and catch my breath at every corner. No amount of Vicks vaporub seemed to help.

It turns out that it wasn’t just the dust that was settling in my respiratory system. There were multiple wildfires occurring in the Valley of Mexico. It was “fine particulate matter” from the wildfire blaze filling the air that was causing my symptoms.

The air quality index said the current levels of fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, was four times the World Health Organization’s guideline for safe air quality. This was the cause of my wheezing lungs and shortness of breath.

Back in my apartment, the windows mistakenly remained open as I lay about on the couch wheezing helplessly. I coughed and hacked but nothing came up. My breath was short. Panic set in. What if I passed out here in this penthouse apartment, with the door locked? I felt that my life was under threat.

I retreated to the bedroom and locked myself inside with a fan blowing on me seeking to create a breathable environment. While this coping strategy worked to ease my symptoms, the combined shock from this episode and others throughout the years remains.

I lay there thinking back to the view of the blotted out sun from the streets of Manhattan, or the congested lanes of I-10 West toward Santa Monica. Perhaps this life of hazardous air is the new normal in the 21st century.

In that hypothetical future of abundant capital and unhealthy air, one might think to the “before times” and realize that they were rich already.