In yesterday’s N Y Times 1/10/25
—- I believe the real story is the power over the political system that the fossil fuels industry holds. No most notably, the Republican Party’s Trump, who has repeatedly claimed that global warming is a “hoax” and that the US must “drill, baby, drill.
As a Climate Scientist, I Knew It Was Time to Leave Los Angeles
“No place is truly safe anymore. A few months ago, Hurricane Helene pummeled the western part of my new state and the city of Asheville, which many once considered a climate haven. The Pacific Northwest seemed safe until the 2021 heat dome. Hawaii seemed safe until the deadly fires on Maui in 2023.
For those who have lost everything in climate disasters, the apocalypse has already arrived. And as the planet gets hotter, climate disasters will get more frequent and more intense. The cost of these fires will be immense, and they will affect the insurance industry and the housing market.
How bad things get depends on how long we let the fossil fuel industry continue to call the shots. The oil, gas and coal corporations have known for half a century that they were causing irreversible climate chaos, and their executives, lobbyists and lawyers chose to spread disinformation and block the transition to cleaner energy. In 2021, testifying in front of Congress, several C.E.O.s refused to end efforts to block climate action or take responsibility for their disinformation. They use their wealth to control our politicians.
We need to build bridges to people on all sides of the political spectrum who are waking up as climate chaos worsens, despite the gross falsehoods from many Republican leaders.
Nothing will change until our anger gets powerful enough. But once you accept the truth of loss, and the truth of who perpetrated and profited from that loss, the anger comes rushing in, as fierce as the Santa Ana winds.
I am utterly devastated by the Los Angeles wildfires, shaking with rage and grief. The Altadena community near Pasadena, where the Eaton fire has damaged or destroyed at least 5,000 structures, was my home for 14 years.
I moved my family away two years ago because, as California’s climate kept growing drier, hotter and more fiery, I feared that our neighborhood would burn.
One lesson climate change teaches us again and again is that bad things can happen ahead of schedule. Model predictions for climate impacts have tended to be optimistically biased. But now, unfortunately, the heating is accelerating, outpacing scientists’ expectations.
We must face the fact that no one is coming to save us, especially in disaster-prone places such as Los Angeles, where the risk of catastrophic wildfire has been clear for years. And so many of us face a real choice — to stay or to leave. I chose to leave.
By Peter Kalmus
Dr. Kalmus is a climate scientist in Chapel Hill, N. C., studying future extreme heat impacts on human health and ecosystems.
