LOS ANGELES IS BURNING

WILL MAINSTREAM MEDIA FINALLY CALL IT A CLIMATE EMERGENCY?

Love Note to Tomorrow #6 / 2019 / Mixed media painting / Russell C. Smith

Los Angeles is burning.

Los Angeles, California, and the United States are in the middle of a massive Climate Crisis catastrophe.

Luckily, for a few more days, there’s an administration in place that wouldn’t even think of withholding emergency disaster funds, or adding conditions to these emergency funds. The Biden-Harris administration enacted immediate emergency funding – dedicated to the ongoing response and recovery efforts for the Palisades fire, and multiple fires that’ve already burned up sections of LA equal in size to Manhattan. This ongoing firestorm’s victims are in a daily struggle to survive, find food, clothing, and shelter.

While this catastrophic series of fires in Los Angeles are still happening, the newly elected president, and members of his party have politicized this Climate-Emergency-created-disaster.

Let than sink in.

This is an awful time for a Climate Science denier, (who has picked Climate Science deniers to become part of his cabinet) to walk into the White House.

While Los Angeles is burning, the soon-to-be leader of the United States has spent his time calling the governor of California names, making up bizarre stories about what the California governor hasn’t done, based on an imaginary large faucet that hasn’t been turned on. Among several other delusions.

A few days from now, when he takes office, the next president will be able to slow down and withhold funding, for federal agencies and for citizens whose lives depend upon it. Threatening to withhold federal funding to people in the midst of a massive firestorm is unconscionable. If you don’t possess enough empathy to immediately send any and every form of help when people are in the middle of a devastating crisis, why are you even in politics?

For several more days, the Biden-Harris administration can continue implementing vital federal assistance for this Climate Emergency series of fires and firestorms destroying neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles.

It’s true that the weather in Los Angeles is unpredictable. It’s also true that this ongoing catastrophic fire has been heightened by the accelerating global Climate Emergency.

The Palisades Fire ramped up in a matter of hours, similar to how Hurricane Helene ramped up to a Category 4 superstorm within a matter of hours. Maybe, now, with these two only months apart Climate Crisis events, climate science can finally be easily understood by anyone.

If you have eyes, and a mobile phone, or a TV, you can see that we are in fact, living in times of Climate Crisis/Climate Emergency.

Calling it Global Warming is so retro. Not to mention, out of touch with everyday life. Same is true for referring to what is happening on a regular basis, as Climate Change. Seems this is why people think the words climate and weather are interchangeable. They’re not.

Words matter, as we’re reminded of daily by far-right politicians constantly spewing hate speech and lies from our devices and TV screens. Once more, accurate language matters. To speak with science-based knowledge and empathy during times of crisis is necessary.

The words around our Climate Crisis aren’t a matter of semantics. It’s about clearly understanding the science of what’s already been happening for many years, and will continue. We’ve got to call what’s currently happening in LA, and what’s happening planetwide, what it is. A Climate Emergency.

The first person I heard use the terms Climate Crisis and Climate Emergency was Danielle LaPorte, a Canadian author and philanthropist, based in Vancouver, B.C. I went to see her give a talk at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle, in 2019. She began by talking about how if we lived on planet earth, we were already in Climate Crisis/Climate Emergency mode. She had our attention.

To have the American media establishment, and many members of the Republican party act as if we aren’t already in Climate Crisis mode is bordering on insane.

Mainstream media, call it a Climate Emergency.

One political party supports a leader who considers the Climate Crisis a hoax, and the other political party takes it seriously.

It’s a stark difference.

A massive wildfire destroying Los Angles isn’t a political football to be kicked back and forth. It’s a time to save lives. And tell the truth.

We’re living in times of Climate Crisis/Climate Emergency.