The Hottest August

t is, it seems, the End of the World as We Know It. Forty-two years after R.E.M. wrote the West’s definitive apocalypse-now anthem, the song’s essentially optimistic subtext has become even more sharply doubleedged: its parenthetical proviso can be interpreted as much as a sign of denial as resignation, a means of keeping any anticipatory psychic torment at bay. This may be why those most convinced of the existence and impending effects of climate change can sound as cozily disengaged as the ones who laugh or scoff it off, if not even more so. If we take the scriptures (via Morrissey) at their word that in the midst of life, we are in death, et cetera, then a failure to fully acknowledge—and, accordingly, to act—on all those highly