As the West is consumed by fire, as predicted for so long, it is time to bow to my past which no longer exists.
Fueled by corrupt oil and gas utilities, and the climate crisis Frankenstein they helped create, much of the California I called home — or home away from home, a philosophy that succinctly describes what it means to be Californian — is gone for good.
The forests, the snow, everywhere I go.
That includes the once-pristine Lake Tahoe, a capitalist fantasyland straddling two state borders. A glittering, natural wonder, California’s greatest, finest lake, like the casinos and mansions that line its shores, is no longer living on borrowed time.
Time has come for it at last.
It is no anomaly. From north to south, California is succumbing to its inherent vulnerabilities. Unsustainable sprawl, borrowed water, vanishing snowpack, geological instability, and the political and economic singularities these once diminishing resources offered.
Unless something more singular occurs in our wider, underwhelming national and international strategies to (actually) address the climate crisis, our efforts to solarize and microgrid California’s incendiary infrastructure, and decelerate its impossibly wasteful production and consumption, will be unable to stop the climate emergency’s exponential march of time.
And fire, which I have covered at length, as a journalist and a resident. We best get moving, while we’ve still got trees that grow, and water that falls.
Zoonosis: Climate Crisis and Coronavirus
Dead Zone Slows, But Does Not Stop
Unhappy Earth Day: The Seas Still Rise
Chasing Ice And Coral, Running Out of Time
Firestorms and Deep Freeze: Climate Change Will Bring Both
Ten Global Warming Policies For the Obama Administration
US Residential Solar Market Hits Record High
Free Energy, Courtesy Of Tesla
Microgrids 101, In Three Parts
