Los Angeles, the home of Hollywood glamour, reaps the burden of Earth’s raging climate crisis. Since elementary school, I’ve known late summer/early fall as “fire season,” one of the Bay Area’s most notable seasons in a state thought to not have any. Next to the Pacific Ocean, full of biodiversity, California is sensitive to most of the disasters the world may offer. Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcano eruption, wildfires. Coincidentally, ocean-adjacent California is perpetually in drought. As climate change has worsened, California has dried even more, and as it reaches its hottest temperature with every passing year, the wildfire issue looms. Now school continues during wildfire season and I am used to seeing the sky change its color to smoke. What I do not recall, is such an urgent and devastating fire persisting through the month of January, where rain should be expected.
Since elementary school, the right wing of politics has continued to radicalize concerningly. The country has become increasingly polarized, and our sense of the “United” States is being forgotten. A common sentiment the other states have about California is that we are the entitled state with the homelessness issue and who votes blue. As the earth grows warmer, the land becomes drier, and in California’s case, barren and hot. High winter winds only aggravate the susceptibility of an outburst of wildfires. We are desensitized to climate devastations as they become more common making us become less sympathetic towards those who are victim of these disasters. Even some are rejoicing in the demise of Hollywood and adjacent liberalism as it benefits the zeal of their own side.
Though California is it’s own state, a border is only a federal idea. California’s environmental crisis affects the entire country. Like how a month ago, there was a tsunami warning based off of an earthquake nearly two hundred miles away. Hundreds of miles away LA’s fires should remind Oakland how the worst case scenario is ongoing. Donald Trump’s first day back included withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, a global resolution to reduce climate emissions, and an agenda of drilling into the US for economic profit. His words in his inaugural address, “Drill, baby, drill.” On the topic of LA’s great wildfires, President Trump blames Governor Gavin Newsom for them and refuses to send aid while his own campaign pours millions into drilling into our land for money. This plan to harvest energy includes the side effect of driving our environment to tragedy. Without climate resistance in politics, those in power continue to burn our state and country into the ground. Though its true that there is little impact an individual can make, there is much we can do together to manipulate the way the environment is governed.
Isolating ourselves from Los Angeles’ ongoing wildfire because it is across the state will not deny what disasters our world is in for. This crisis is something you can deny, but not ignore. You will smell the smoke, feel its effects, and watch as those you know are displaced.