Scorched Earth

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It didn’t rain in October. 

For the entire month, not a single drop of precipitation fell into the entire city of New York: not on a roof in Brooklyn or a leaf in Manhattan or a car in the Bronx or a playground in Queens or a ferry en route to Staten Island. For 31 days and beyond, bone dry. Then by early November, a fire right here in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Acres burned in the city’s sacred green space. On November 10, 2024, the first measurable rainfall since September, like manna from heaven.

Four days before our wedding in June 2023, the entire city sky turned orange from wildfire smoke blown down from Canada. Later that year, water from Tropical Storm Ophelia enveloped cars parked two avenues away from our apartment. I half expected to see an ark when I peered outside.

Now as I sit here writing in 2025, I hear the wind whip viciously outside. The wind didn’t used to be like this. The climate has changed, and we’ve been forced to change with it.

The new year has been on fire since day one: First with the planned explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, and continuing through this week with catastrophic, historic, devastating wildfires in Southern California. If this is a metaphor, it’s not subtle.

I was going to publish a story about something else, but all I could think about were the fires. Every bit of quiet dread I’d felt coming into this year has literally burst into flames, endangering the lives of people I love and strangers alike. I sit here paralyzed across the country with nothing to do besides Venmo mutual aid organizers on the ground. The fear is contagious, and I worry that in checking on my friends, I’m making it worse. We are so fragile.

Meanwhile the president-elect watches the world burn with a sneer and a smile, reminding us that he finds pleasure in destruction–especially when a majority of the places burning are owned by his perceived political enemies. I’ve never understood this impulse, neither from someone as powerful as him or a random person on social media. No one is exempt from caring, nor are they immune.

While it’s undoubtedly true that poorer areas are more prone to climate disasters and the unhoused and poor in Southern California are victims of mass destruction, the fires are a reminder that a planet decimated by human greed and indulgence doesn’t care about your net worth. You can’t speak to the weather’s manager. Mother Nature has no concierge. Your investment portfolio will not halt an inferno. A college degree won’t tame the blaze. In the way we all inhabit the same Earth, we are all made of blood and flesh that burns the same. Each one of us could be carried away by the wind.

This point was made clear by a Twitter plea on Tuesday from a millionaire CEO named Keith Wasserman whose home was in danger of burning down. “Does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home in Pacific Palisades? Need to act fast here. All neighbors houses burning. Will pay any amount. Thank you.” 

I’m not naive enough to believe there isn’t some conceivable way for the wealthiest among us to buy additional firefighting services. We have private security guards and contractors, after all. It’s easy to imagine that in the immediate future, it will be a lucrative business. Even still, there’s only so much humans can do under direct attack by a furious climate. The time to act, to invest, to prepare is long before the flames are melting your Ring camera. 

Wasserman ironically tweeted back in 2022, “Make money in tech, preserve wealth in real estate.” This week he and many others learned there are few ways to preserve wealth when the entire planet is on fire. And for so many, owning a home is much more than preserving wealth. It can be a sign of overcoming generational poverty, a source of extreme pride, or at the most basic, a safe place. For so many who lost their homes in Southern California this week, they lost much more than a house; they lost a home. 

Elsewhere, other landscapes lay barren. As we approach an administration so openly hostile to journalism that incoming members have openly called for jailing reporters, major media brands like The Washington Post, Huffpost and Vox.com announced massive layoffs to their editorial workforces. And on social media, disinformation about the fires runs rampant, all in the wake of Mark Zuckerberg announcing that Meta (the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Threads) would cease fact-checking posts. Today, as always, is the most depressing day in media since yesterday.

As the planet continues to literally burn, the monied few controlling the purse strings are diminishing the number of people paid to cover it and access to reliable information about it. You may have heard, for example, that LA Mayor Karen Bass cut the Fire Department budget by $23 million which explains the inability to contain the fire; this is demonstrably untrue, but it won’t stop people like Elon Musk from repeating it. 

It’s difficult to believe the degradation of our information systems is by accident. If we’re unable to accurately report how and why we’re in this disaster, the people mainly responsible won’t be held accountable. Their net worth continues to increase exponentially at the same clip as public ignorance. While we may say the system is broken, it’s working perfectly for them. But there’s only so long they can outrun it. Zuckerberg could flee to his Hawaii compound right now, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be a day–perhaps a day soon—when flames swallow it whole. 

It’s been difficult this week for me to deal in the concrete, and I’ve found myself drifting towards the existential. 

“A certain helplessness attends these unfolding disasters, even as you make sure you have the emergency supply kit, pet carrier, face masks, and other necessities ready to go should the worst come any closer,” my dear friend Miles Klee wrote for Rolling Stone from his home in Los Angeles. “And what if it does? Time will rapidly accelerate, short-circuiting any rational response — it feels impossible to say what instincts might kick in.”

Right now for many, for me, the instinct is survival. But you never know when Mother Nature has other plans.

If you’re looking for ways to help people impacted by the wildfires, here’s a comprehensive list of people and organizations on the ground providing resources that you can support.

And to everyone in Southern California, my heart is with you.