Three ways California can fight climate chaos after the wildfires

OPINION – The fires that scorched Southern California last month were the opposite of a “natural” disaster. They were driven by the fossil fuels we burn around the clock. California styles itself as a bastion of progressive thought, but how progressive can we be if we fail to meet this moment with urgent, necessary actions that are well within reach?

Wetter years produce vegetation; drier years turn it into kindling. “Climate chaos” is a better name for this than climate change or global warming. A 2021 study, reconfirmed recently, showed that burning fossil fuels has caused hotter temperatures, longer droughts, and made the atmosphere “thirstier”, driving the increase in wildfires beyond any other factor. Regardless of federal intransigence, state and local policy makers must move forward with aggressive climate emergency actions.

The enormity of this crisis can generate hopelessness. But the costs of inaction, in premature deaths, respiratory illness, and hospital visits, are too great: a recent study put the annual U.S. health costs of fossil fuels and climate change beyond $1 trillion. The California Air Resources Board estimates that exposure to particulate pollution alone causes over 9,000 deaths in California each year.

Meanwhile, the vulnerable communities that these costs and deaths hit the hardest continue to fight oil and gas companies for an end to the entire life cycle of fossil fuels. The plans are on the table. Let’s take a look.

Leave the oil in the ground: Los Angeles is home to the largest urban oil field in the United States, emitting immense amounts of pollution during production. According to South Coast Air Quality Management District records, oil companies used more than 49,000 tons of toxic chemicals in Los Angeles County between 2013 and 2017. Years of protest won a local ban and phase-out order. A judge overturned it, but a 2024 state law cleared the way forward. It’s time for L.A. city leaders to reinstate the oil drilling ban and adopt the most aggressive phase-out timeline possible for all existing oil production.

Clean up our ports: Together, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are the single largest fixed source of air pollution in Southern California, responsible for more than 100 tons of smog and particulate pollution every day. Both cities should implement the South Coast AQMD’s Indirect Source Rule to reduce toxic and climate pollution at the ports and move towards a zero-emission port.

Build resilience everywhere: Some effects of climate chaos, from ever-larger wildfires to hotter summers, are inevitable, so let’s double down on local resiliency. L.A. City’s underfunded Climate Emergency Mobilization Office (CEMO) is designed to track common threats like extreme heat, coordinate emergency responses and address the socially unequal distribution of climate harms. A doubly- or triply-funded climate resiliency effort can make parks and libraries intro year-round assets that spring into action as life-saving resilience centers when the need for them spikes, whether in the summer heat or the next fire.

As important as funding those centers is engaging community members in their design. Organized communities are resilient communities. Connected and resourced, they spring to one another’s aid when disaster strikes.

The fires have illustrated both the need and the potential for this. People who never thought of themselves as climate activists fear both worse wildfires and their kids breathing in pollution on the soccer field. As hungry today for practical solutions as they are for hope, Californians want a recovery to both restore their neighbors’ lost homes and make their region and state healthier for all.

The people whose neighborhoods burned in these fires, and the communities who have supported them, have all demonstrated immense strength and connectedness. This can power the movement for a resilient future beyond carbon.

The answers are in front of us. Let’s demand them from our leaders together.

Angelo Logan is currently the Senior Director for Environmental and Climate Justice at the Liberty Hill Foundation and has worked in the environmental and climate justice fields for the last 25 years, including serving on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.