As Toxic Smoke Blankets California, Who Has the Ability to Escape?

There was a time, not so long ago, when one of the challenges faced by environmental activists was making the threat of climate change concrete. How do you convince the public that small changes in the atmosphere can have catastrophic consequences? The threat was real, but it was a threat that needed to be taught, a threat that required explanation, a threat that most people, in their daily lives, couldn’t feel or see.

The Golden Gate Bridge is obscured by smoke and
 haze from wildfires, November 16, 2018, in this
 view from Fort Baker near Sausalito, California. 

In California, those days are over. The Camp Fire in Butte County has become the most destructive wildfire in state history, at one point devouring a football field every second and largely erasing the town of Paradise, population 26,000. By Friday, the death toll from the fire had risen to 71, with more than 1,000 people now missing. (California’s second-most-deadly fire, the Griffith Park Fire in 1993, killed 29 people.) Down south, in Ventura and Los Angeles counties, the Woolsey Fire has consumed nearly 100,000 acres, destroyed more than 600 structures, and killed three people. The impact of the fires has spread well beyond the areas devastated by flames, with the sky turning a sickly grey from Sacramento to Los Angeles. In the past week, school closures caused by the fires resulted in the cancellation of classes for 1.1 million students, a number that amounted to 18 percent of the state’s public-school enrollment, a figure that doesn’t include parochial or private schools. Also closed were a number of colleges, including Stanford, UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and San Jose State University.

Read the story by Gabriel Thompson from The Nation - “As Toxic Smoke Blankets California, Who Has the Ability to Escape?”