On Broadway, ten minutes into her solo performance, an actor coughs. Then she holds her throat. "I can't breathe," Jodie Comer cries out, before being hurried offstage and replaced by her understudy.

Outside, yellow fog creeps in like a nuclear winter. On the street, throats are burning, eyes are itching, and passers-by squint through the thick, murky gloom trying to find their way home.

New Yorkers have entered a new dystopianRelating to an imagined society where there is great suffering or injustice.  reality. Wildfires in Canada sent biliousSickening. smoke down the East Coast, swallowing skylines and halting travel. Within hours, NYC had gained the dubious accolade of worst air quality in the world, worse even than DelhiThe capital of India. By some estimates, Delhi is the second-largest city in the world., where air pollution is the fifth largest cause of death.

More than 100 million US citizens were alerted to the "very unhealthy" or even "hazardous" air quality in major cities, including in Philadelphia and Jersey City.

Amid code red alerts, cancelled school days and urgent warnings to stay home and only venture outside with a mask on, many are left harrowed by this brutal awakening to the dangers of climate change.

It is a dark signature of our past - the industrial 19th Century, for example, when Charles DickensThe Victorian novelist is credited with inventing Christmas as we know it today through the warm descriptions of it in his books. wrote that "animate London, with smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheezing and choking; inanimate London was a sooty spectre, divided in purpose between being visible and invisible, and so being wholly neither".

But experts say it is also a prophecy of our future. As one writer put it: "We are going to be burning for this entire century." And though the number of wildfires is not increasing, they are becoming less predictable, and therefore less manageable, as a result of climate change.¹

To make it even more frightening, we know more about the dangers posed by air pollution now. It is thought to be responsible for 10 million deaths annually, and is a key factor in causing not only respiratory and cardiacRelating to the heart. disease, but also Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, dementiaA syndrome associated with memory loss and other declining brain functions. , cancer, mental health issues and miscarriages.

Humans have created air pollution for as long as we could. In ancient Rome, clouds of smog were referred to as gravioris caeli, or "heavy heaven".

But now, foul air is mostly the hallmark of a growing industrial society, and something that in this century Western countries have mostly viewed from afar as it plagued cities like Beijing, Mumbai and Karachi.

Fire has changed that. The unpleasant effects of air pollution can no longer be "outsourced" to developing countries.

Hellish bushfires in Australia, forest fires in Siberia and Bolivia, raging summer fires in Serbia - the 21st Century has offered up a rich array of catastrophes which have clogged the air with carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and damaging particulate matter.

Some think that this is the new reality. In highly polluted cities like Shanghai and Beijing, a wealthy elite pays for fresh air to be shipped from the British or Canadian countryside; meanwhile, poorer people swelter under masks.

But others urge us to recognise that we still have a choice. Halting or even reversing global warming is the only way we can mitigate these polluting wildfires - otherwise, expect to see all of our skies turning yellow.

Yes: Climate change has already created devastating conditions that may be irreversible. Clean air will be one of the first things to go - the process has already started.

No: The smogA kind of toxic fog caused by high levels of air pollution. is expected to migrate within a few days, and everything will go back to normal. It is ridiculous to speculate that none of us will have clean air from this incident alone.

Or... Fire is a part of nature - many creatures and even whole ecosystems rely on it to build their habitats. So air pollution has also always been a part of the way we live.

Dystopian - Relating to an imagined society where there is great suffering or injustice. 

Bilious - Sickening.

Delhi - The capital of India. By some estimates, Delhi is the second-largest city in the world.

Charles Dickens - The Victorian novelist is credited with inventing Christmas as we know it today through the warm descriptions of it in his books.

Cardiac - Relating to the heart.

Dementia - A syndrome associated with memory loss and other declining brain functions. 

Smog - A kind of toxic fog caused by high levels of air pollution.