Trouble in Paradise

The heat, the smoke, the fires threatening the town of Paradise--where as of this afternoon, a third of the residents have been evacuated--is the story of this immense state of California, top to bottom. Searing heat grips most of the state, while the farthest northern area is blanketed in Red Flag warnings for fire weather.

Even here on the North Coast, the temperature today is likely to break records, though nowhere near the 110+ breaking records east and south. Plus the air is tinged yellow with smoke from the hundreds of fires. For two nights now, the moon has been red.

Even this small local trouble suggests the complexities. We avoid driving to save on gas and to limit pollution, but the air quality is so bad that it's not so safe to walk.

Yet media coverage continues to be stupid or just clueless. Apparently the burning of our trees--which is double and triple trouble (sending carbon into the atmosphere, killing the trees that soak carbon in, further drying the landscape, not to mention destroying habitat of any number of species)--is not significant; only the houses of the mostly well-to-do are worth attention. And the heat locally is covered as an opportunity to go to the beach, not the health threat that is poses.

Take this as a small example of a general blindness. From Brian Urquhart's review of a book by UN humanitarian aid chief Jan Egeland in the New York Review of Books, June 26:

"At present, seven times more people are devastated by natural disasters than by war. Climate change may well mean that'once-in-a-generation' disasters will occur quite frequently. Hurricane Katrina, which overwhelmed local and national responses, showed how even the strongest industrialized nations can be vulnerable. The incidence of extreme droughts, hurricanes, tornados, cyclones and floods is increasing, and these are only the most observable effects of changing climate. The World Health Organization has estimated that the world annually suffers 150,000 climate-change-related deaths, and, according to Egeland, this number will double by 2020."