The fires in California are unimaginably bad–just like the floods in North Carolina or the hurricanes in Florida or whatever the next climate disaster will be in the next state. Hamilton Nolan’s newsletter yesterday spelled out the likely future and it’s bleak:
Either you allow a few people to get very rich and let them hire their own private protection and build their mansions on hills or on stilts or behind big walls, and buy themselves estates in New Zealand to escape to, and rockets to blast off in if necessary—or, or, you take the other path. You say, “all humans are together on this planet and we are all equal and we will face this collectively and we will take care of the most vulnerable first and we will demand the most sacrifice from those who have the most to give.” It is a stunning thing that the first choice has somehow become the default, the legal and most likely path for the world’s richest nation, and the second choice has become an object of mockery, something to be dismissed as utopian.
[…] There is the all-encompassing question of evolving our entire world to try to head off the progress of climate change, but we do not need to solve the entire crisis in every conversation. At this moment, it is enough to say, “we need to make some reasonable rules about how we are going to get everyone through the disasters, because we are all in this together.” This low bar, I promise, is too much to expect from the federal government that is set to come to power. We will watch them hand out oil drilling permits and pass bills to protect gas stoves and swagger around in big trucks and pose in campaign ads with guns and banners that say “Come and Take It” and go on hunting trips with lobbyists from the American Petroleum Institute. These are the villains. There they are. They will help your house burn down and send cops to crack your head if you get angry about it and then ask you to vote for them. They have a lifeboat. You can’t get on. They’re sure they will get away with it.