Keep telling yourself that. Naomi Klein on our climate crisis and the wildfires engulfing the north of the continent.

For millions of people from California to Greenland, Oregon to Portugal, British Columbia to Montana, Siberia to South Africa, the summer of 2017 has been the summer of fire. And more than anything else, it's been the summer of ubiquitous, inescapable smoke.

For years, climate scientists have warned us that a warming world is an extreme world, in which humanity is buffeted by both brutalizing excesses and stifling absences of the core elements that have kept fragile life in equilibrium for millennia. At the end of the summer of 2017 -- with major cities submerged in water and others licked by flames -- we are currently living through Exhibit A of this extreme world, one in which natural extremes come head-to-head with social, racial, and economic ones.

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Worse, in true shock doctrine form, some extractive industries are actively using the fiery state of emergency to get stuff done that was impossible during normal times. For instance, Taseko Mines has been fighting for years to build a highly contentious, open pit gold and copper mine in one of the parts of British Columbia hit hardest by the fires. Fierce opposition among the Tsilhqot'in First Nation has so far successfully fended off the toxic project, resulting in several key regulatory victories.

But this July, with several of the impacted Tsilhqot'in communities under evacuation order or holding their ground to fight the fires themselves, the outgoing British Columbia government -- notorious as a "wild west" of political payola -- did something extraordinary. In its last week in office after suffering a humiliating election defeat, the government handed Taseko a raft of permits to move ahead with exploration. "It defies compassion that while our people are fighting for our homes and lives, B.C. issues permits that will destroy more of our land beyond repair," said Russell Myers Ross, a Tsilhqot'in chief. A representative of the outgoing government responded: "I appreciate this may come at a difficult time for you given the wildfire situation affecting some of your communities."