Los Angeles Fires Force Us to Confront Our Dystopian Present

We live in a dystopian climate thriller. It’s time to rewrite the ending

-Z Peter H. Gleick edited Daniel Vergano

The bleak vision of a dystopian future offered by science fiction writers, TV shows and Hollywood disaster movies is no longer fiction. Real floods, droughts, Firefighters and Coastal storms it’s happening now catastrophic fires Those who have destroyed Los Angeles, this is a stark wake-up call. Our aggressive phasing out of greenhouse gas emissions is not a problem for the distant future; It has become today’s reality.

It’s time to accelerate climate denial and build disaster resilience in our cities and homes.

It’s not like we weren’t warned. They have been climate scientists alarm sound About growing climate risks For decades. Despite repeated warnings, we have not been able to adequately mitigate or adapt to climate change. As the popular meme goes, “I told you so” in the history of the world.

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It was written by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1969 On these risks President Nixon, warning of a “Goodbye New York” sea level rise of 10 meters. But he left. In 1977 Frank Press, Science Advisor to President Carter, wrote the scale and speed of speed Change the climate: “The potential environmental impact of a climate change of this magnitude could be catastrophic and impact on unprecedented importance and difficulty.”

In 2007, in the release of the fourth panel on Climate Change (IPCC), summarizing the state of knowledge of climate science, Harvard’s John Holden (who later became science adviser to Barack Obama), please: “Essentially we have three options: mitigation, adaptation and suffering. We will do each of them. The question is what the mix will be. The greater the mitigation, the less adaptation will be needed and the less suffering there will be.”

Perhaps, like me, you are a fan of many futuristic movies and films that involve aliens, extreme geophysical events or other catastrophes wreaking havoc on cities, societies or the planet as a whole. Los Angeles is a popular destination for many of these films because of its iconic status and probably because the entertainment industry is centered there. The city is leveled in the 1974 film EarthquakeStarring Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner. Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche walk around LA as it goes up in flames in 1997 volcano. Tornadoes build the iconic Hollywood sign and the Capitol records the global climate disasters of 2004 The day after tomorrow. In the end Blade Runner 2049 and the Syfy network series the extentAlso, the massive seabirds try to protect future Los Angeles and New York City from sea level rise caused by climate change.

Whether the politicians admit it or not, the scenes we witness in the real life show are now living in a Dystopian science fiction movie.

Incredibly, the main policy makers and tip Continue to deny scientific reality. In 2020, after a series of devastating fires, President Donald Trump Released concerns Over climate change, telling a California official “I don’t know if science knows” about global warming. “It’ll start in the fridge, you just see.” Five increasingly hot years later, Trump continues to ignore science in the Los Angeles disaster, preferring California’s water policy, diversity and inclusion efforts, endangered fish and political opponents. Its main campaign also includes Elon Musk weigh Critical opinions dismissing the role of climate change.

They are wrong, and it is our responsibility to tell scientists so. These the fires were not affected by human influence but by climate change. Global temperatures are accelerating upwards; 2024 was the hottest year in recorded historyand all 10 of the warmest years have been in the last decade, consecutively Century long warming trend. Extreme hydrological events, including floods and droughts, are accelerating and Southern California is becoming severely dry. Los Angeles has received essentially no precipitation in 10 months, The dry season begins with the rainy season In the log, soils and vegetation are matched and the phase of extreme winds to increase and spread fires.

Acceptance of the role of climate change must be refused. It hinders efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing harmful emissions. It contributes to failures to strengthen the ability to adapt to those impacts that we can no longer avoid. And it massively worsens the human suffering it causes accelerating disasters.

We know what’s out there, but we know what to do. In addition rapidly accelerating the energy transition Away from fossil fuels, Changing individual behavior and Reducing carbon emissions from other sourcesWe need to expand our efforts to build resilience to inevitable impacts.

This means strategies improving the resilience of firefighters land management and policy reforms, for example Building fire resistant materials and designsreducing vegetation around houses and reducing development in high-risk areas. Communities need to toughen up Water systems By modernizing the infrastructure, diversifying the water supply and strengthening the fight against fires. Coastal properties are at risk Rising sea levels and increased storm surges will require protection, relocation or abandonment. New construction in dangerous areas should stop, despite pressure from developers to build in those areas, and rebuilds should be of higher and safer standards and designs.

It’s time to listen to the science, listen to the contractions and work to make our dystopian future, once again to make fiction.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily Scientific American