The LA conflagration: It is now painfully clear what matters

The LA conflagration: It is now painfully clear what matters
The wildfires in Los Angeles are a harbinger of our doom — yet ultimately leave me with hope

By Brian Karem
White House columnist
Published January 13, 2025 6:00AM (EST)


(Salon) The helicopter blades beat through the smoldering air no more than a couple hundred feet above my head. At ground level, the scent of fire brings back memories of fire pits I’d seen at “Cement City” during the Gulf War. As the helicopter passes overhead on the way to the nearby fire, my middle son, his wife, their son and daughter, hurry to pack the car and leave their home near West Hills, California, after the outbreak of the Kenneth Fire. Neighbors were packing up and moving out as well. Traffic in the area was backed up and at a standstill.

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That has not stopped idle speculation that the Palisades had been targeted by arsonists to bring down the area’s richest neighborhoods, or that angry arsonists had started all the fires. Rumors are thick and furious, with some claiming they saw undocumented immigrants with blow torches, and even President-elect Donald Trump claiming that Governor Gavin Newsom is somehow omnipotent, or an arsonist, and is responsible for the fires.

“It’s too perfect. It’s like someone’s following a script,” Tony, a baseball coach at a local community college, told me. “It’s too much of a coincidence, fires don’t just start like that spontaneously.” Actually, they can and do.

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The fires in LA this week have highlighted the best and the worst of us. How little do you think of yourself and other people to walk through a disaster zone and steal from people who’ve lost their homes and perhaps loved ones? Then again, you can be brought to tears watching ordinary citizens of different races, creeds, political persuasions and religions join with police and firefighters, including currently incarcerated inmates, to help people they don’t know.

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Make no mistake; this was a natural disaster. But there is a huge human component. It wasn’t Gavin Newsom’s fault. It isn’t Joe Biden’s and it isn’t Donald Trump’s. It is the industrial revolution that led to climate change, the oligarchs who do not care if in pursuit of fistfuls of sweaty cash they rape the planet and the average person who denies the science and reality. Climate extremes which include stronger hurricanes, more intense winter and summer storms, horrifying wildfires, droughts and floods were all predicted 30 years ago by scientists. Some of the results have come later than predicted and some sooner than predicted. .................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/01/13/the-la-conflagration-it-is-now-painfully-clear-what-matters/