Six years ago on Medium, I wrote the following:
The Republicans have systematically turned climate change into a partisan issue, you know, like abortion, and have done so to manipulate their gullible electorate into believing the lie that there is no such thing as man-made climate change. They spew the dumbo rhetoric any time they can, that “oh the weather changes all the time.” Or “I don’t believe climate change is real — even if the planet is warming, it isn’t our fault.”
Yeah, it is. You dig up fossil fuels and you burn them, that warms the planet. They were buried for millions of years which, in turn, cooled the planet, making it an ideal atmosphere for all kinds of different forms of life, including us. What’s coming next is uncharted territory for humanity. We have no idea how bad it’s going to get. We just know it WILL be bad.
I was not only furious with rage, but I was quick to blame the other side for deliberately sabotaging our noble efforts to stop the warming of the planet, as though we ourselves were not contributing to it. We acted like we could buy a hybrid here, go vegan there, recycle our plastic, and be absolved from contributing to this existential crisis we all now must face.
It isn’t that I don’t believe the planet is warming, or that sea level won’t rise, or that it is directly the fault of so many people on the planet. What has changed is that I no longer blame the other side, and I no longer see my former side as the good guys in the fight. No, I see them as hypocrites. I was a hypocrite too.
I’d been in a bubble for much of my adult life because I lived online, in virtual spaces. Yes, I was raising my daughter in public schools, but those were a bubble too. We all belonged inside the same utopia. We read the same articles. We watched the same news. Our worries were the same worries. We spoke the same language, and all of us shared the belief that the biggest threat we faced was climate change and that the biggest obstacle we faced was the Republicans.
And then, my daughter moved across the country, and I got a couple of dogs. Rather than fly and leave my dogs at home, I began driving across the country. Those drives changed everything for me, not just how I saw climate change but how I saw my fellow Americans. This was how people actually lived, not how we did, inside our haze of paper straws and cotton diapers.
I saw the trucks driving on the interstates to deliver food and goods, the many hotels that require air conditioning and heating, the slaughterhouse trucks providing food for so many in this country, and the tiny houses in the middle of the desert with one embattled air conditioner sticking out of the window.
Looking at all of this, all of these places, and all of these businesses, it was easy to see that there was no turning this thing around. There is no way to convince every state and citizen to hop aboard what is an existential crisis for the upper class. Life just isn’t like that.
Everyone wants things that work, cars that run, planes that fly. They want washing machines, dishwashers, flat-screen TVs, office buildings, emergency rooms, and new computers and tech support lines, to buy groceries they can afford, to get fruit in the middle of winter, to watch movies and doom scroll social media — and “every Tweet warms the planet,” as Roy Scranton once wrote.
Even if we could convince every single American to accept our fixes, what would we do about Russia, India, or China? We seemed to have gone all in on fantasy but we’re disconnected from reality.
What we believe on the Left, or at least we used to, was climate change was Armageddon, doomsday, the end of everything. Therefore, what mattered to us isn’t so much that we solve the problems to survive climate change, but that we convert everyone else to our way of thinking. If we could do that, we believed, we could start making the big changes to our country and world.
The Left is still haunted by the ghosts of the past, back when we really did have the power and the opportunity to make real change. We squandered that power, and then we blamed the other side. In so doing, we could wash our hands of real solutions, whether it was gun violence, poverty, failing schools, floods, fires, or hurricanes.
And now, in the perfect cocktail of high Santa Ana winds, no rain for months, and a city caught off guard, the fires rampaged through the beaches of the Pacific Palisades and Malibu and the mountains of Alta Dena and continue to burn.
There were rumors of not enough water, not enough firefighters, and no way to control the speed of the flames as they ripped through the dry brush, burning one house after another as we watched the tragedy unfold on live television or YouTube.
This time, the narrative swirled around California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and the Los Angeles Mayor, Karen Bass, newly elected in 2022 as the first female and second Black person to serve. Bass had left the country in January, known as the last month of the Santa Ana cycle that comes every Fall.
From the University of California:
The region sees about 10 Santa Ana wind events a year on average, typically occurring from fall into January. When conditions are dry, as they are right now, these winds can become a severe fire hazard.
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