The damage from this week’s fires has been difficult to process from afar. It's hard to register the scale of destruction in LA or really understand what it means to lose everything without experiencing it yourself.
This was the first time I used TikTok to follow what was happening, which offered more of a front-row seat. It was also the first time a disaster impacted a friend. My friend Sam Rich lost everything in the Eaton fire, which is hard to believe.
After absorbing a week of news surrounding these fires, many stories unfolded, highlighting our society, the disparity, the connection between us and our environment, and the good in humankind.
This is a newsletter about food and climate, and beyond the human stories of what has happened, it is a climate story. As the world heats up, no one is protected from a climate disaster.
From this week of watching LA burn, here are five things I noticed:
The Fires Are Connected to Climate Change
While LA was burning, the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Climate Change Service released a report that 2024 was the first year global mean temperatures exceeded pre-industrial levels by 1.6°C. This blows past the benchmark established by the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, which sought to limit future warming to well below 2°C in the 21st century, with a preferred target no higher than 1.5°C.
I have read many articles about how these fires are connected to climate change. There are various theories, including the one that makes sense to me, which is that the “whiplash” of decades of drought in the region, followed by two years of intense rain, led to a surge of plant growth. Then, another dry year caused all that extra plant material to be dry and ready to burn. That combination of heat and dryness created the ideal conditions for an urban firestorm.
“Wintertime fires in Southern California require a lot of extreme climate and weather events to occur at once,” said Park Williams, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “And the warmer the temperatures, the more intense the fires.”
Climate Disasters Have No Borders.
One of the most powerful images I saw was a group of firefighters crossing from Mexico to help. That image turned out to be fake, but Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum really did send firefighters to support. We can build walls and fences, but they won't separate us in the face of a natural disaster.
Water Management is a Serious Problem
You’ve likely seen the headlines that some of the hydrants had no water and that the lack of access to water was a serious issue for firefighters. There have been political spats on X about whose fault this is, and stories about the wealthiest couple in the state have emerged. Lynda and Stewart Resnick are pistachio farmers who use water to irrigate about 300 square miles of land spread around the Central Valley. That’s ten times the size of Manhattan. (sourced from
)Some of the viral videos blame this couple for the lack of water across the state.
, who is coming out with a documentary about the couple, wrote a nuanced piece about the real issues with California water management and the “larger political-technological machine that both LA and the Resnicks are plugged into.”Land Management is Essential
Many Indigenous groups have practices of “good fire” to help manage and protect the land from destructive fires like this one. I now understand from this article that early European settlers who arrived in California saw tribes setting fire to the land and regarded it as primitive. In 1850, California passed the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, which outlawed intentional burning in the newly formed state.
I stumbled upon a piece from
on Colonialism and Fire Management in California:“Climate change and capitalism play an important and interlinked role when fires are able to spread like this. But we should also explicitly name colonialism, and call out the Western framework that throws "nature" into a binary: either a resource to be extracted or an "untamed, untouched" wilderness. Untouched wilderness has never existed. Indigenous peoples always managed our environments and had an intimate, scientific and cultural connection to the land. Indigenous fire management can help prevent devastating fires like the one in California.”
Find the whole piece here.
Humans are Decent
With every natural disaster come the feel-good stories of neighbors helping each other and the community being the only thing that matters in an emergency. This story from NPR about undocumented immigrants showing up to literally hose down strangers' houses did it for me.
How to Support
So many people are struggling right now to adapt to their new reality and have lost everything. The mutual LA group has a comprehensive list of organizations raising money or offering ways to help. If you are looking for a suggestion, this GoFundMe for the Black families of the Altadena neighborhood or this fund supporting the incarcerated firefighters are great places to start.
Also, a group called NYlovesLA is selling this t-shirt to raise money
5 Things I Ate ✨
No matter what, we will always need to eat.
My love for microgreens has exploded. Trying to eat lettuce in the morning can be challenging, but toast covered with Meredith’s cheese, pickled onion, and broccoli microgreens from Aerofarms is my new breakfast.
Pickled Red Onions - speaking of pickled onions, this is absolutely something you can make. You really just need a mandoline to cut them thin enough, in my opinion, and a jar. I use this ratio and then eat them on everything.
I made a cake. This is an expensive hobby, I have to say. I now own a cake turntable, piping tips, and a cake transportation container. It’s a lot, but I guess that means I love it. Yesterday, I cleared the day to try a buttercream recipe from the class I took with Sweethaze that uses maple syrup instead of sugar and practiced buttercream roses.
Bean Shakshuka - Just add beans to any shakshuka recipe in the tomato sauce. I will be filming a recipe video next week because the first one my egg broke.
The winter farmer’s market is still popping! I trekked to Tompkins Square Park last weekend for the farmer’s market and left with a dusty bag of winter vegetables, which transformed into this bowl of nutrients. Yellow Beets, Sweet Potato, and Miso Kale Bowl - my friend grew this kale in her backyard this month!
Thanks for the link to that t-shirt fundraiser!