The wildfires in Los Angeles left me completely devastated, shaking with rage and sadness. The Eaton Fire damaged or destroyed at least 5,000 buildings in the Altadena community near Pasadena, my home for 14 years.
I moved my family away two years ago because as California’s climate became drier, hotter, and hotter, I feared our community would burn to the ground. But even I didn’t think a fire of this size and severity would level it and other large swaths of the city so quickly. Yet this week’s images of Altadena offer a hellish landscape, like the landscape in Octavia Butler’s prescient climate novel “Parable of the Sower.
One lesson climate change has taught us time and time again is that bad things can happen sooner. Model projections of climate impacts often have optimistic biases. But unfortunately, warming is now accelerating faster than scientists expected.
We have to face the fact that no one is coming to save us, especially in disaster-prone areas like Los Angeles, where the risk of catastrophic wildfires has been apparent for years. Many of us face a real choice – stay or leave. I chose to leave.
Often called Los Angeles’ “best kept secret,” Altadena is a quirky little village nestled in the foothills, far from the traffic jams of the city and where everyone seems to know everyone. I came here with my family in 2008 to start a postdoc in astrophysics. It felt like I was in heaven: a giant avocado tree in the backyard with unlimited guacamole; flocks of green parrots squawking overhead; even in January, Caltech Pasadena’s immaculate lawn Perfect for laying on with my kids.
I started worrying about climate change in 2006 while in graduate school. In 2012, unable to look away, I pivoted my career from gravity waves to climate science, landing a job at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I also started raising chickens and bees (like many of my neighbors), volunteered for local climate groups, and rode my bike around town giving climate talks.
But the climate crisis continues to get worse year after year. I want to scream from the rooftops that global warming is an urgent threat. I write articles and tweets with vitriolic language and co-founded nonprofits for a climate app and a climate media group.
Then, in September 2020, I experienced my first heat stroke during an intense heat wave. The next day, the Bobcat Fire ignited high in the Altadena foothills a few miles from our community. In Los Angeles, communities near mountains and wilderness are at greater risk from wildfires. We prepared to evacuate, but unlike the fires raging now, the fires were mostly contained to wilderness areas. Still, for weeks, my family and I were shrouded in smoke. My lungs burned and my fingers continued to sting.
Los Angeles no longer feels safe after Bobcat Fire. I worry about my family’s health and I wonder how we will evacuate if the immediate area starts to catch fire. In 2022, my wife got a job in Durham, NC and we moved.
I’ve been watching this tragedy unfold from a distance, piecing together the story through local news reports and text messages and videos from friends, some of whom lost their homes, trying to figure out what burned and what didn’t. Our dog’s pet hospital is gone. The church where our boys had their string recitals has disappeared. That weird rabbit museum I would ride my bike to while waiting at traffic lights; the friendly hardware store I’d been to a hundred times; the coffee shop where I met friends and climate activists; all gone.
My ex-neighbor texted me on Thursday to say that our little cul-de-sac had burned down and that his house, our house, and all of our neighbors’ houses had burned down except for one. The beautiful house where we raised our children was gone; my tears finally came.
No place is truly safe anymore. A few months ago, Hurricane Helene hit my western part of New South Wales and the city of Asheville, which many thought was a climate paradise. The Pacific Northwest appears to be safe until the 2021 heat dome arrives. Hawaii seemed safe until deadly fires in Maui in 2023.
For those who have lost everything in the climate catastrophe, the end of the world has arrived. As the Earth gets hotter, climate disasters will become more frequent and severe. The costs of these fires will be significant and will impact the insurance industry and the real estate market.
How bad things get depends on how long we let the fossil fuel industry continue to call the shots. Oil, gas and coal companies have known for half a century that they are causing irreversible climate chaos, and their executives, lobbyists and lawyers have chosen to spread disinformation and block the transition to clean energy. In 2021, several CEOs testified before Congress and refused to stop efforts to block climate action or take responsibility for their disinformation. They use their wealth to control our politicians.
We need to build bridges with people across the political spectrum who are waking up as climate chaos worsens, despite the egregious lies told by many Republican leaders.
Unless our anger becomes strong enough, nothing will change. But once you accept the truth of the loss, and the truth of who caused it and profited from it, the anger comes as hard as the Santa Ana wind.
Peter Kalmus is a climate scientist in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and the author of “Change: Living Well and Sparking the Climate Revolution.”
The Times is committed to publishing variety of letters To the editor. We’d like to hear your thoughts on this or any of our articles. here are some tip. This is our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow the New York Times’ comments section Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, WhatsApp, X and Number of execution threads.
