What is a Polar Vortex and Why is it a Form of Capital Punishment?

In a culture where our range of sight is often no bigger and no further away than the screens on our cell phone, it can be easy to forget that we are a species of inadequately clawed mammals that lives on a warm, wet rock that’s hurtling through space at 67,000 mph in what seems to be an infinite swirl of lost rocks, quantum forces, chemical elements, and incomprehensible nothingness.

But we are.

And this dizzy little pebble were flying through space on is as dynamic as the space it’s travelling through. Humans have just barely scratched the surface when it comes to understanding it, and the things we thought we once understood are beginning to change in ways we still haven’t figured out. Climate change, or atmospheric destabilization, has dramatically shifted the ways our planet functions as well as our ability to understand it.

For example, it may seem counterintuitive to think that the cold snap that recently struck the nation could be caused by something called “global warming,” but there is a strong chance that the two are interrelated. The freezing temperatures that have led countless people to take the Boiling Water challenge, share photos of ice hardened hair, and rename the Windy City “Chiberia” were caused by a natural event responding to unnatural changes in the atmosphere caused by climate change.

The record-breaking cold temperatures that brought almost half the nation to a standstill was caused by the northern “polar vortex.” Polar vortices are located at both the North and South Poles. They are large spinning masses of low pressure and cold air that surround the poles year-round, but they are stronger in the winter and weaker in the summer.

During the winter, the northern polar vortex shifts and expands bringing cold air into areas of North America, Europe, and Asia. This is a normal and expected occurrence. What is less natural is the instability caused when the air surrounding the vortex increases in temperature and the pressure between the warm air and cold vortex destabilizes. As this pressure destabilizes, so does the shape of the vortex. With a weakened and wavy barrier, long tendrils of cold air can extend passed their usual boundaries and pieces of the spinning arctic air mass can break off and ride the jet stream towards land masses much farther south.

In other words, climate change doesn’t cause the polar vortices, but it does change the shape and range of impact of these swirling masses of icy air.

Similarly, the historic cold snap that brought Hoth-like conditions to the mid-west did not cause people to be unable to access the shelter and warmth necessary to survive sub-zero conditions — it has just highlighted the devastation caused when people can’t afford to stay warm.

America may be the land of the free, but it isn’t a nation of free land.

Where once humans we able to live off the land, landowners now use the land to live off of the people. There are very few spaces that can be found today that are free to the public and even fewer that are indoors and adequately heated. Increasingly, security is used as a tool to prevent poor people and people of color from existing in spaces the more privileged care not to share. And policy is used to punish people for existing while poor and homeless.

In the most progressive cities, laws targeting homeless people have been passed to punish them for sitting and sleeping on sidewalks. Spikes and the elimination of public benches also serve as deterrents to visible poverty. Security guards and managers are used to prevent people without money from spending time in places like cafes and malls. Parks and libraries have curfews. Cafes make you pay $5.00 for a latte. Busses and trains require a user-pass or a few dollars. And no matter where you go, the risk that someone that feels “threatened” by the sight of a poor or homeless person is going to call the police is ever-present. This is especially true if you are a visibly impoverished person of color.

So, what happens during the winter? People die.

People die. They get sick. They are injured. They miss work. They become unemployed. They get frostbite. They become disabled. They can’t afford food. They become malnourished. They can’t get to the pharmacy to get their meds. They can’t find shelters that will take them. They can’t sleep in doorways or the park.

While the warm and housed take the boiling water challenge, curl up with an oversized blanket, and binge on Netflix until the ice thaws — poor people are crawling into subway tunnels, freezing in bus stations, and dying in abandoned buildings. There are very few free, warm indoor spaces for people to go when temperatures become deadly. There are very few outstretched hands and open doors. So, people die.

Homeless and inadequately housed people are being given death sentences for being poor during the winter. It is cruel and unusual punishment. It is torture. It is social cleansing.

And as carbon continues to destabilize the atmosphere, and the stretch of the polar vortex becomes less predictable each winter — more and more homeless and inadequately sheltered people are going to lose their lives to cold weather. Not because there aren’t enough warm spaces for them to seek shelter in, but because people won’t allow them into those spaces for the simple fact that they don’t have enough money.

And until we rethink and rehabilitate the relationship between housing, public space, climate change, and poverty — these death sentences will continue to be carried out in public every winter. Until adequate housing becomes a right for all Americans and not just an enterprise for property owners, there will always be a price to live and breath on American soil. And for those that can’t afford it, they will continue to pay with their lives.

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