Because the city discusses how it can best solve the consequences of increasingly devastating natural disasters, the organizers hope to capture this moment.
The fire of Iton in the area of the Altaden County Los -Andgeles, California, January 8, 2025.
(Josh Edelson / Hetti)
When on January 7, Jackson Brooks forced the fire on January 7, and the 19 -year -old Nico Brooks to evacuate the house, they watched from afar when the fires swept throughout quarters.
“We felt very helpless because we felt we needed to return home, defending our home, defending our community because it collapsed before us,” Jackson said.
In the following days the brothers started Gofundme acquire water, clothes and other needs for people who have lost their homes and created Account on Instagram To organize volunteers in the main high school students from all over the Altaden-Passaden Kab to help clean and distribute donations to the victims.
Fire Iton shifted his understanding of the climatic crisis. “When I am honest, I never thought about climate change,” Jackson said. “Seeing the fires and everything that happened – as it arose over the whole southern California – just devastating,” he said. “That’s real. We have evidence of this. It’s here and it really affects everyone. “
“I used to go to the mountains that burned to the crunchy every weekend in high school,” Nika said.
For many residents, Los -Andgeles in January fires were the most direct experience with the consequences of climate change. Since the city discusses how it can best solve the consequences of increasingly devastating natural disasters, can fires become an galvanizing moment for climate movement in the Los?
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The role of climate change in reinforcing fires in California is well documented. Fifteen of the best 20 devastating fires in California’s history occurred in The last decade. Over the past two weeks Ionon and Palissades, only two of the many who have devastated the Los -Andgeles region destroyed over 12,000 structures and The displacement of hundreds of families.
The current La Wildfire crisis is partly the result of fever across the state and minimal precipitation since July 2024. “In fact, in our region there is a liar between years of extreme precipitation and years of extreme drought.” said Olivia Sanderfoot, doctoral studies in UCLA, who studies how the smoke of the fire affects birds and other wildlife. While the wet years encourage the growth of vegetation, the drought periods dry the vegetation – creating the conditions for the fire to spread at the deadly pace.
Southern California-personal La, surrounded on both sides by mountains-always considered prone to fire and with The fire season From June to October, reaching the maximum in the summer. But climate change can send Los -Angeles to eternal fire. “It is unprecedented in the winter time in California to see such,” said Sanderfoot, “to see one mega -general of this size and this destructive force, and even more so.”
Kevin J. A fodder, the founder of the environmental organization led by the youth, oneupaction, grew in the South Central La and the non -alien effect of climatic changes. “There are many injustice that occur with our community that have factories, refineries, lack of green spaces; we have an area that suffers from air pollution.” said the pan. “And in my sixth grade it was directly affected. I had a heartbeat, so I spent most of my sixth, seventh and eighth years in the hospital and abroad.”
When the fires broke out in the Los -Engeles, the pan had to be evacuated into the Gulf. Although he was not in the evacuation zone, the air quality deteriorated his pre -conditions health conditions. “If we look at the consequences that go forward, we must really realize that although more affluent communities have influenced forest fires, you also have to see how it affects.” Many such communities are not prepared with air purifiers and N95 masks ” .
Isaiaz Hernandez, who advocates environmental problems on his platform, Queer -korichnaya veganGrowing up in Silmar, California – on the site of Herst fire, one of the many burning in the Los -Angeles last week. When the fire began, Hernandez helped evacuate his elderly parents to a brother’s house in North Hollywood. This was not for the first time evacuated from forest fires in the Los -Angeles. “When I was in high school (2008), there was a fire, and I will always remember that the whole sky was black and there was a smog,” Hernandez recalled. “There was lunch time, and I ate this cheese pizza, and black ashes fell on a pizza. I remember looking at the sky and saw these great tones of black ash that just fall from the sky, and our teachers are like” getting inside “.
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Hernandez recalls the fear of the parents, hearing the rumors that the ice agents are in the shelter zones. For him, the fire of Sir helped to arrange his own interest in environmental problems, especially in how they intersect with racial and political problems. However, it is skeptical that the current La Wildfire crisis may evaluate others. “I believe that more and more people are moving their values to conservatism, as well as accusing and distributing misinformation on issues rather than considering the issue as an environmental crisis.”
For Nicole Keristan, a third -year student in the UCLA, “nothing was as bright as these fires, causing the moment that climate change is here.” Keristan hopes that the fire crisis can help overestimate the climatic movement. “Our generation specifically, we only came to our school years in early Friday for future climatic strikes when we enter the second Trump administration,” Keris said.
Professor Shannon Gibson, who teaches environmental research, political science and international relations at the University of Southern California is not so sure. “Social movements and frontline communities should function in a system where cards are invested against them. They do not have financial resources that have other subjects such as governments and big businesses, but what they have and what they have and what We always depended on mobilizing around the problems that they care so deeply, and they are so deeply provided, ”Gibson said. “But in long battles like these, it is required. If I see that you know, the catastrophe after the disaster that has got into our already marginalized communities, I worry for this mental fee.”
And in this prolonged battle, the climatic movement will fight a familiar obstacle: President Trump. Even as some of the most popular cities in the country, such as Los Angeles, have encountered a rigid weather disaster due to climate change, Trump, who called climate change as “hoaxes”, twice promised to transfer fossil fuel production.
Already – Attracting Executive Orders that Trump signed a few hours after the inauguration – Trump pulled the US The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and signed an order called “The solution of American energy“This, among other provisions, eliminates the incentives to produce electric cars and” encourages energy and production “on federal lands. Trump has also announced”an emergency“Thanks to the executive orders, calling for an increase in the country’s energy production – a demand that responded to the call of an inaugural speech to” Drill, Baby, Drill “, in an inaugural speech.
Looking forward to climate activists can turn to Los Angeles quickly mobilized at this time a lot of need to take care of each other, organizing a society that went beyond raising awareness on Earth and reliable mutual assistance.
But at first, Keristan emphasizes that significant propaganda over climate change must require confirmation of the destruction and loss of communities around Los -Andgeles in recent weeks: in order for collective actions, there must first be a collective healing.
“There was so much destruction and just violence in the environmental sense that happened so closely to where we go to school (and) for many people, their houses,” Keristan said. “I think it will actually need a moment, hopefully a long time of collective healing and finding a way to come together and take care of each other, finding hope in the collective sense, going forward.”
More than Nation
The media does not warn us about the scale of the disaster that is ahead. In Los -egeles, like everywhere, we need more than liberal technocratic settings.
The California Insurance Department worked on repairing a broken insurance system, but La Fire threatens to cancel the progress that has reached the state.
Even when the La fires are still burning, most journalism does not represent how the climatic crisis is moving more frequent and severe extreme weather.
A Los Angeles Catastrophe is a call for awakening: Our Fire Book was written for a world that no longer exists. We need a new approach and we need it now.
