I’m no stranger to wildfires.
Growing up in the Bay Area, they were a fact of life. Drought, smog, and sunshine painted the backdrop of my childhood, and even after transplanting to Oregon, I was surrounded by the reality of life in an overheated climate.
In 2020, when the Riverside fire broke out in Estacada, my family could see it from our back deck — deceptively small, flickering orange fingers crept over the green-black mountains south of our house in Happy Valley. We packed go bags, called family members, and rehearsed what we, like most Californians, learned at a young age: where to jump from the roof if the exits caught fire, what to grab, what to leave behind. Thankfully, the blaze never came much closer, but the ash did — great, billowing clouds of orange, toxic fumes, so thick we couldn’t even see our backyard.
That’s what I feel now, burning my eyes as I imagine what’s happened in Southern California: smoke, a suffocating reminder of the ruin these megafires leave behind.
Seasonal flares are not abnormal for the golden state.
What are, though, are firestorms in January. What isn’t normal is seeing 57,529 acres scorched in two weeks, eight months with just 0.29 inches of rain, or a handful of fires dealing as much as $275 billion in damage to people’s cities, families, homes, and lives.
It seems like a scene misplaced from a science fiction novel.
In reality, it’s a snapshot of the future we are plummeting towards.
Fueled by fierce Santa Ana winds and bone-dry conditions, the Palisades wildfire — along with several others, including the Eaton and Hughes fires — has decimated the Los Angeles area, killing at least 28 people and destroying over 16,255 structures. Photographs from family friends in California and footage from firefighters’ helicopters illustrate the apocalyptic scene these blazes have left behind: palm trees silhouetted against walls of flame, entire neighborhoods leveled, brick chimneys standing sentry over blackened homes.
Already among some of the most destructive in U.S. history, these catastrophic fires have been propelled by the fact that, in the late winter of 2023, an unusually high amount of rainfall caused an overgrowth of vegetation. Quickly following this downpour was the second driest period in the city’s recorded history, with under a third of an inch falling since May and record high temperatures stretching a summer drought well into January.
Dry grass. Parched trees. Desiccated undergrowth.
Trademark characteristics of California summer transformed into kindling, igniting an urban firestorm and pushing it beyond what would have been possible without the heat and drought of climate change.
According to an analysis done by scientists at UCLA, global warming contributed at least 25% to the lack of precipitation during this long dry period. Combined with the fact that 2024 was the hottest year on record — eclipsing the previous warmest, 2023 — the perfect storm was created, exacerbated by gale-force winds (which, though incredibly destructive, cannot be directly linked to global warming).
And this is far from the only event which has been driven out of proportion by manmade increases in temperatures.
Ash on the beaches of Hawaii. Hurricanes uprooting communities in the Carolinas. Biblical floods in Brazil, crippling heat waves across India and the Middle East, snowstorms in the United States’ south.
All of these natural disasters were impacted by climate change.
Now, fire is scorching the streets of Los Angeles, one of our most populated and symbolic cities, and no one should be surprised. I’m shocked, yes — heartbroken and devastated at the loss of life, the chaos, and the unprecedented amount of damage that has characterized this installment in the disastrous saga of global warming thus far.
But it’s just that: an installment.
This is not an isolated event, nor is it simply a symbol of the costs that come with living in an area as beautiful as SoCal.
It’s a representation of the climate disaster we are pushing ourselves toward.
It’s an indictment of our failure to change, revealing the world our reluctance — or outright refusal — to address the widespread causes of global warming is building, one charred cul-de-sac and ash-coated neighborhood at a time.
A little over 14 days after the first sparks of the Palisades fire combusted, President Donald J. Trump commemorated his Inauguration Day with a flurry of executive orders, several of which focused on the environment. However, far from strengthening the restrictions placed by previous administrations, his out-of-the-gate actions targeted the measures which are key to mitigating the impacts and extent of global warming, enabling increased pollution, emissions, and drilling of oil and gas.
The burning of these fossil fuels for infrastructure, industrial manufacturing, and transportation is responsible for 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions. These companies — which privately recognized the “potentially catastrophic events” their products could create as early as the 1970s — continually misled the public, politicians, and investors.
In order to address the fallout from the fires this month and the broader legacy of neglect they reflect, we have to face them.
As tempting as it is to look away when faced with the reality of global warming, in order to not only heal from the burn scars now etched in our communities, but limit them moving forward, conversation, along with action, is crucial.
Acknowledging the reality of global warming is scary.
It’s terrifying.
But the alternative — ignoring the stakes and stress of our current situation and cementing climate change through fear and inertia — is far worse. Rather than ignorance, we need decisive action from our political leaders, incentives for clean energy, and increased restrictions on offshore and inland drilling, along with ethical carbon capture programs.
Instead, our president is promoting the complete opposite.
In that regard, he is complicit in the ecological catastrophe we are not just barreling toward but already living in. By disregarding the consequences of our climate emergency, overriding environmental justice programs — which protect marginalized communities most at risk to pollution — dropping out of the Paris Climate Accord, and repealing regulations on energy efficiency, tailpipe emissions, and drilling in Alaska, Trump is not only refusing to tackle the proven causes of climate change.
He is compounding and accelerating them.
We owe it to the people who lost everything — their lives, homes, and communities — to the flames of inaction to not let his choices dictate our response to what is happening in LA or our actions going forward.
Because our future is already going up in smoke.
