It has been a week since Los Angeles’ devastating wildfires began, driven by powerful winds that have made the blazes highly difficult to fight.

More than 40,000 acres have already burned, with at least 24 deaths; by comparison, the entirety of Washington, DC, is 43,000 acres. More than 12,300 structures have been destroyed, and at least 90,000 people are without power. Disinformation is skyrocketing as influencers peddle questionable products, right-wing commentators blame the devastation on ‘wokeness,’ and landlords look to profit. AccuWeather estimates the total damages and economic losses at more than $250 billion.

President Biden has promised six months of full federal funding for California’s efforts to combat the fires, while top-level Republicans continue to discuss placing “conditions” on federal aid to California. The Trump administration has a history of withholding aid in disasters, and Trump was quick to cast blame on California Gov. Gavin Newsom (and a fish). 

Observers across party lines have criticized Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass over the crisis, some critiquing Bass’ presence in Ghana on an official trip for the inauguration of its new president John Dramani Mahama on the first day of the fires. Others, like Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia and city fire chief Kristin Crowley, have criticized the city government’s recent $17.6 million budget cuts to the Los Angeles Fire Department, which led to the loss of 61 positions as calls for service went up.

Meanwhile, more than 22,000 emergency personnel have been activated to fight the fires, including more than 900 incarcerated firefighters working for for barely $10 a day.

California’s recruitment of wildland firefighters from prisons has faced sharp criticism in the past week, despite Californians’ rejection of a November ballot measure that would have banned all prison labor, including firefighting. Many incarcerated and formerly incarcerated firefighters have spoken positively about the program. Others point out that it’s simply better than being in California prisons.

Officials expect the true death toll to exceed the two dozen fatalities, a figure that inclues multiple disabled residents, documented so far. United Nations research shows that disasters kill disabled people at a rate two to four times that of the general population.

What actually sparked each of the three fires is under investigation; while misinformation about arsonists spreads online, experts are investigating the role of power lines and embers from fireworks.

But the fuel—including strong Santa Ana winds, low rainfall, and climate change—is undeniable. There’s “no question…that climate change is exacerbating our fire regime and affecting fires,” Jon Keeley, a fire ecologist with the US Geological Survey and adjunct professor at University of California, Los Angeles, told Mother Jones‘ Jackie Flynn Mogensen last week.

Of the three active fires in Los Angeles, the Hurst Fire in San Fernando is 97 percent contained, at 799 acres; the Palisades Fire, which has gotten attention for devouring celebrity homes in particular, is just 17 percent contained, and has already burned more than 23,000 acres, making it the most destructive to ever hit Los Angeles County. 

Finally, the Eaton fire, which has burned over 14,000 acres in and around the city of Altadena, is 35 percent contained. As the Civil Rights Movement chipped at pervasive redlining in the Los Angeles area in the middle of the 20th century, Altadena became known as a place where Black residents faced fewer obstacles to homeownership. Today, the Black homeownership rate in the city is higher than 80 percent, almost double the national average among Black households. Multigenerational family homes have been lost, and a coalition of Black organizers has raised over $10 million to support displaced Black families from the area.

A prominent resident of Altadena was MacArthur “Genius” grant–winning science fiction author Octavia Butler, who wrote an eerily prescient novel in 1993, The Parable of the Sower, that predicted massive wildfires in Los Angeles—including Altadena—in 2025, alongside the rise of a far-right president with the catchphrase “Make America Great Again.”

In an essay titled “A Few Rules For Predicting The Future,” Butler wrote that a student had asked her whether she believed they were in for the futureshe’d predicted. “I didn’t make up the problems,” she replied. “All I did was look around at the problems we’re neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters.”

Butler was laid to rest in 2006 in Altadena’s Mountain View Cemetery, which caught fire last week.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Kristin Crowley was appointed Los Angeles fire chief in 2022 at a time of turmoil in a department consumed by complaints of rampant hazing, harassment, and discrimination among its 3,400-member ranks.

She was portrayed by then mayor Eric Garcetti as a stabilizing force, a trailblazer, and the most qualified person. “I look for who’s best, not just who makes history, because the protection of our city first and foremost has to go to the human being who is best prepared to lead. But let me be clear, that is Kristin Crowley,” he said.

Crowley, a 22-year veteran at the time, had proved herself in the field. During the Woolsey fire of late 2018, she and wife Hollyn Bullock, also a firefighter, had dropped their three kids off at school, pulled some old personal protective equipment from their car, and set about saving Bullock’s mother’s home and eight other houses in Malibu over the course of 16 hours.

“We only lost one home,” Crowley later told the Malibu Times, “because it had no water supply. Neither of us had fought a brush fire for at least five years, but we went back to our training on how to protect a structure from a brush fire, and were using only garden hoses and buckets.”

“The fire chief and I are focused on fighting these fires and saving lives, and any differences that we might have will be worked out in private,” said LA Mayor Karen Bass.

But now, six years since that incident and three since Crowley was appointed to lead the LA fire department, the mood between Crowley and Garcetti’s successor is different. Two Los Angeles neighborhoods have been leveled by wind-driven fires, and others are under threat.

The most destructive event in the city’s history has put civic and political leaders on the defensive. Recriminations are flying, and Crowley is in a public spat with Mayor Karen Bass over a lack of resources, including personnel and equipment, that the fire department desperately needed when the infernos ignited last Tuesday.

Crowley publicly criticized the city on Friday for budget cuts that she said had made it harder for firefighters to do their jobs at a time when they are seeing more calls. She also cast blame on the city for water running out on Tuesday when about 20 percent of the hydrants tapped to fight the Palisades fire went dry.

“I’m not a politician, I’m a public servant. It’s my job as the fire chief for Los Angeles city fire department to make sure our firefighters have exactly what they need to do their jobs,” she told CNN.

But in public city budget hearings last year, Crowley asked the city for an increase of 159 personnel. Instead, Bass and the city council cut 61 fire department positions despite calls for service increasing 55 percent since 2010.

Crowley warned that budget cuts could hamper the department’s ability to respond to emergencies, including wildfires. Cuts in overtime limited the department’s ability to prepare and train for “large scale emergencies,” she said, and the department had also lost mechanics, leading to delays in repairing the vehicle fleet. “This service delivery model is no longer sustainable,” she said, adding that more complex emergencies and the growth of the community “demand an expansion of our life-safety service capabilities.”

Crowley’s comments and perceived falling-out with Bass—who maintains the fire department has the resources needed to do its job and will address specifics once the crisis subsides—has prompted so much speculation about her job security that the union issued a statement on Friday assuring rank-and-file members that she had not been fired.

On Saturday, the mayor invited Crowley to stand beside her during a news conference in a public—and perhaps forced—show of unity. “Let me be clear about something: the fire chief and I are focused on fighting these fires and saving lives, and any differences that we might have will be worked out in private,” Bass said, adding: “Our first and most important obligation to Angelenos is to get through this crisis.”

But Crowley and Bass are now swept into the national political fray over diversity, equity and inclusion policies that conservatives believe have gone too far in US institutions. Crowley, the city’s first female fire chief, made diversifying the overwhelmingly male department a priority.

There’s no evidence that Crowley’s efforts to diversify the department have hampered the fight against the fires, but that’s not how right-leaning pundits see it. “What we are seeing [was] largely preventable,” the conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly charged. “LA’s fire chief has made not filling the fire hydrants top priority, but diversity.”

The Los Angeles department of water and power, and not the fire department, is in charge of providing water for the hydrants, and its leaders have said they were overwhelmed by the intense demand on a municipal system not designed to fight wildfires, particularly when firefighting aircraft were grounded by the Santa Ana winds.

Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered an investigation into what happened, and Crowley herself added to the criticism. “When a firefighter comes up to a hydrant, we expect there’s going to be water,” she said during a local news interview.

Adam Thiel, who previously served as Philadelphia’s fire commissioner, suggested that people reserve judgment until the fires can be investigated. He noted that firefighters cannot control the weather, a key factor in battling wildfires.

“Firefighting, to a regular person, probably appears to be a relatively simple process of putting water on a fire,” Thiel said. “In reality every firefighting operation, in any environment, is inherently volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.”

Crowley was appointed to the job amid complaints about a frat-house culture in the department that was sometimes hostile to women and minorities. Several lawsuits alleged hazing and harassment, and federal investigators found evidence of discrimination.

At the time Crowley was sworn in, women accounted for just 3.5 percent of the uniformed membership, a figure that’s not unusual for a fire department. A survey found that half the uniformed women in the department—along with 40 percent of Black people, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders—felt harassment was a problem.

Crowley, who has served as a fire marshal, engineer and battalion chief, told the Los Angeles Times in 2022 that she planned to ensure all employees “come to work and feel safe and feel heard.”

Crowley, who grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, came to firefighting after what she called “a really unique journey.” A high school and college athlete, she studied biology at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, with plans to become an orthopedic surgeon. Two weeks after graduation, she moved to California.

A stint as a paramedic changed her career path. She did an internship with the fire department and was hooked. “Within a few seconds of me entering into the fire station, it was just such a wonderful connection to what I had being a student-athlete for the majority of my life, and I tell you, it was a perfect fit,” she told WBAY-TV in Green Bay in 2022.

Associated Press contributed reporting.

Ketan Joshi did not mean to become the manager of all things climate on Bluesky, the fast-growing social media platform that’s trying to compete directly with Twitter.

GreenSky was designed to be this overarching, overall thing that encompassed all the communities. I see that emerging through the GreenSky feed, because you see people from very disparate communities talking to each other.

The 39-year-old Australian expat who now lives in Oslo, Norway has spent his career writing about green energy as a communications specialist for renewable energy companies and author of Windfall: Unlocking a Fossil-Free Future, but found it especially hard to share climate information on platforms like Instagram and Twitter. Those sites seemed built toward sowing discord and had secret rules about what posts would do well. Immediately, he noticed that Bluesky was different.

Built as an open-source decentralized network, Bluesky’s architects, which included Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, wanted to create something that was user-led rather than company-led. (Dorsey is no longer involved and the project is led by Jay Graeber, who promises to “billionaire proof” the site.) What it means is that Bluesky has no all-powerful algorithm directing content. Instead of trusting a privately-owned, sometimes-biased, often-inflammatory and increasingly misinformed system, users can choose multiple feeds from thousands of mini-algorithms built by users. Or make their own.

Early on in the project Dorsey, who is no longer involved, stated: “Existing social media incentives frequently lead to attention being focused on content and conversation that sparks controversy and outrage, rather than conversation which informs and promotes health.” Bluesky’s goal was to change that.

The appeal seems to be working. The platform now has 25 million users, and counting. In the days following Donald Trump’s re-election in a campaign that was supercharged by Elon Musk, who owns Twitter , over 1 million new users joined the site.

Joshi has been on Bluesky for a while–since the site had less than 100,000 users. He built up his climate community on Bluesky by searching manually for folks involved in climate change work. He followed and added their names to spreadsheet to keep track

At first the spreadsheet was just for Joshi, but quickly there was interest from those in his network, so he shared it widely. 

(Nowadays, Bluesky has improved on the spreadsheet sharing with a function where users can curate lists of other users called Starterpacks with the option to “follow” or “block” all of them.)

Joshi also created a feed that congregated all the posts from users on his climate list. It, like many other early Bluesky feeds, like Blacksky and BookSky, combined a keyword with sky—”GreenSky”—each varying in capitalization. The result was a unique space where everyone was talking about the environment. 

GreenSky is a “Top-50” feed with near-constant engagement and frequent debates as those in different climate camps come face off on policy disagreements in real time. In early January, in the midst of devastating fires in Los Angeles, posters used the feed to stay up to date, grapple with how climate led to their ferocity, and sift through misinformation. Top climate voices, like energy transition engineer Jesse Jenkins and Farhana Sultana, author of Confronting Climate Coloniality, are members and frequent posters.

Mother Jones spoke to Joshi about the unique climate dialogues emerging on BlueSky, facilitated by GreekSky, how he is trying to manage it, and the role that social media plays in climate engagement broadly.

How has GreenSky changed since the early days, beyond sheer growth?

I added a keyword filter which limits posts to [77] climate keywords only. But Bluesky is such a flexible, open platform, so I created a second version that is just the unfiltered thoughts of everybody on that list, if you desire to have it that way. And then, a friend on Bluesky decided that he liked green sky, but wanted a different filtering on it, so he created a version that not only filters for the keywords, but also filters for sort of popularity and engagement. 

It’s a basic thing that people can riff off. They can make their own version. I think that’s really quite wonderful. 

You have a presence on several social media platforms, and seem to be in the habit of making a climate community on each one. How did that experience translate into managing climate posting on Bluesky?

The key thing that I find on the other sites, very consistently, is that in the process of trying to find your people and then communicate with your people, you’re kind of swimming against the tide.

Instagram is a nice example where there’s a sort of this behavioral culture of people trying to act and speak and present their content in a way that pleases a secret formula. And I’ve done that. I’m there googling the type of thumbnail to use and the type of description to use and the perfect length to please the sort of secret algorithms.

So Bluesky is quite different?

One thing I have noticed is people are very quickly unlearning the habits of trying to please the algorithm. Other websites down rank hyperlinks because they don’t want people leaving the website. They don’t want the eyeballs of the people going away from the website and away from advertisers. That doesn’t happen on Bluesky unless somebody makes a feed that has the formula inside it. But no one’s going to subscribe to that feed because we all love seeing each other’s work. That really stands out to me, where there’s a lot of sharing of work, there’s a lot of sharing of reports, people link to other places on the internet. Bluesky is a conduit.

Bluesky gets the critique of being an echo chamber a lot, but I’ve noticed a huge diversity of opinions in the climate side of Bluesky. What are your observations?

The climate community has its own bubbles: climate science and ecological sciences, energy technology and investment innovation, indigenous rights. I don’t wring my hands about [this]. You see this anxiety about cross chatter between communities and or even Bluesky being a silo but it’s just, it’s simply not the case? That’s not how communities form on a well designed social media site. What you get is people cluster with topics they want to hear from and people they want to hear from, and then they sort of cross through each other, sometimes often in bad ways, often in good ways.

GreenSky was designed to be this overarching, overall thing that encompassed all the communities. I see that emerging through the GreenSky feed, because you see people from very disparate communities talking to each other.

What do those debates look like on Greensky?

I very intentionally designed it so that replies show up in the feed so people are replying to each other. I want it to be a little bit noisy. I want it to be a little bit overwhelming. 

I’ve seen debates occur in very refreshing and unique ways that are passionate, but they never default to hate and personal invective. You can tell that the blood pressure is high and that people feel strongly when they’re replying. It’s not dispassionate or boring. But, I have not seen it sort of like falling to insults or to snide, snippyness, like we have seen on other sites.

It’s a nice style of interaction, because it’s a fight. It’s a proper fight, people mean it, but at the same time, they’re not full of hate or developing beef. 

People who have been on X for a while now, they’ve been subject to the design of the website, which is obviously encouraging conflict as much as possible as a way to keep people on there. 

I’m sure there are many examples of actual, proper, personal, interpersonal hate on arguments in Bluesky and even in the climate space. But I would say, as a general thing, it feels like an improvement.

What are some of the biggest debates on GreenSky right now?

Permitting reform, the abundance agenda, gas terminals, Biden’s overall agenda. 

A big one is how to deploy clean energy in the US. On one side, you’ve kind of got the people who say wind power and solar power should be somewhat deregulated and rolled out in a faster way to achieve quicker, deeper emissions reductions. It’s justified on the grounds of: this is an urgent problem, and when you have too much process, then you end up with people like blockers and NIMBYs, and they sort of block like wind funds and solar farms. 

And then the other side, which I’m a little bit more aligned with is like: “Yes, permitting needs to be reformed, but it should be reformed in a way that encourages more community engagement and community benefit sharing, because that will actually result in the quicker roll out.” 

These two sides of the debate are like red hot right now, because the political change was so clearly stressful on a lot of people who are allies but have a different idea about how to reach the same goal, and so the intensity of these debates has increased. 

What about management? How have you handled the influx of billions people onto Bluesky and thousands of people to your feed?

This is something that I’m a little daunted by because my criteria when I first started making this list, was literally “climate people,” and that can mean quite a lot of things. It can mean somebody who doesn’t work in any professional sense in climate, but is extremely interested in it. I always told myself that the keyword filtering will do the job. 

I actually haven’t updated it with the new opt-in requests from the great surge of earlier, so it’s going to get a lot noisier in the next couple of weeks. It’s probably going to double in size or so. 

I monitor the feed pretty closely to see who’s posting in it and what type of topics get filtered through the keyword filter. It seems okay so far. 

One thing I really want to try and preserve is how diverse the climate community is across those different groups, while at the same time sort of acknowledging who’s missing. There’s quite a few groups missing, and it’s because they haven’t really joined Bluesky yet. Climate activists who rely very much on strong preexisting networks. They can’t just quit their network and then just hope that everybody else will run behind them. That’s going to take longer, but the clusters of people will expand pretty significantly over the next year or so. 

What about moderating bad stuff?

One day somebody’s going to request to join, who is, for instance, sailing close to the wind of being a climate denier or a delayer.

The initial policy that I had on GreenSky was “no dickheads,” which is an Australian term. I will only kick somebody off the list if they’re either abusive, if they’re breaching any of Bluesky’s basic moderation rules, or if it’s a pretty cut and dried case of mis- or disinformation spreading.

The feed is probably going to grow. It’s going to need to have a lot more transparency around how I deal with a lot of those questions. I am thinking about a log of content that has been flagged.

I guess that makes me a forum moderator type due, and that is not something I’ve ever done before. That’s the only thing I wish I had prepared for, but I’m lucky. I’ve got access to a huge community of people who will offer good advice.

What is the future of climate online, Bluesky or otherwise?

I’ve spoken to climate activists about the social media they’re using and what they prefer and what they and what they’re interested in. I think someone once jokingly referred to it as a millennial retirement home when it was first set up. That just cut deep out of its sheer truthfulness. 

Something that occurred to me when they told me about that is that they don’t need to join Bluesky. This is an open protocol. It should hypothetically, eventually be such that it would be incredibly easy to set up your own [social] server. 

Some people really need video. Some people really need a network that is secure and can’t be taken down by an authoritarian regime. 

I’m imagining a future for different climate communities where it’s not about Bluesky or GreenSky, but the protocol that enables interconnectedness between different purposes and needs for the community.

This story was originally published by Atlas Obscura and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Sado Island perches like a butterfly with its wings outstretched just off the curved west coast of Japan. Yet this land mass is better known as the home of another winged creature: the crested ibis, called toki in Japanese.

Hop on a shinkansen (a high-speed train) from Tokyo to Niigata, then board a ferry, and you will arrive at the port of Ryotsu, where a Welcome to Sado sign awaits above a larger-than-life photo of a toki mid-flight. Wander through the souvenir shops adjacent to the ferry terminal and you will see this bird again and again—printed on postcards, stitched onto t-shirts, frosted onto elaborate pastries, and carved into hashioki (chopsticks rests). You might even bump into a huggable, human-sized plush mascot.

Once you have seen a toki, there’s no mistaking this bird for any other. With its expressive eyes, its bright red mask-like face framed by feathers that drape down its neck like a mane of wild hair, its white slender body, pink underwings, hooked black beak, and red lanky legs, it is almost easier to envision this bird strutting on a historic Noh theater stage than through a field.

About 350 rice producers have obtained toki-to-kurasu-sato, or “ibis-friendly farming,” certification.

It is actually unlikely that you will happen across a crested ibis in the wild. The native toki of Sado went extinct over four decades ago. But through a community-driven and internationally supported initiative, they have returned for an encore.

While toki once thrived on Sado, populations began to decline in the 19th century as they were hunted for meat and feathers. Ultimately, though, it was the introduction of modern agricultural practices that led to their demise. To understand the impact of farming on the crested ibis population, it’s important to know that both the birds and the people of Sado rely heavily on one crop: rice.

Mako Igarashi, promotions manager in the Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries Department of Sado City Hall, estimates there are about 8,000 rice farms on the island, which itself is only approximately 330 square miles. In mountainous areas, most farms cover less than two acres and are cultivated for personal use, while farms in the plains tend to grow rice for sale on slightly larger plots.

“As a Japanese person, rice is, of course, a staple food and an indispensable item. In Sado, many people are involved in rice farming,” says Ken Hirashima, President and CEO of Obata Sake Brewery. Their facility is located on the island and they locally source two types of sake rice, Gohyakumangoku and Echitanrei. This petite patch of Japanese land has, however, gained national acclaim for another rice variety—its namesake Sado Koshihikari rice, which is best suited to sushi.

Sado-based chef Saori Aoki uses this rice at her restaurant Ogiya to make dishes like nameshi (rice with leafy greens) and oshizushi (sushi pressed into bite-sized squares, rather than rolls). “It has a pleasant fragrance and a sweet taste, and becomes even sweeter when cooled,” says Aoki.

Aoki sources her rice from a nearby cooperative. “I think the idea of ‘local production for local consumption’ is important,” says Aoki. Due to Sado’s small size and the islanders’ big appetite for this grain, almost all Sado Koshihikari rice is consumed by its residents. If you want to try it, you have to go there, which has been the case for over 400 years. “Since the Edo period [1603-1868], the population has increased due to the prosperity of the gold mines. Many rice fields developed,” explains Hirashima. “As production increased, rice terraces were established not only in the plains, but also in the mountains, creating a beautiful rural landscape. The scenery is something the islanders treasure.”

While rice is a primary form of sustenance and income for Sado residents, the waterlogged fields are an essential habitat for toki, who depend on a diet of fish, frogs, and other small aquatic creatures. In the 20th century, farmers began spraying their paddies with pesticides and chemical fertilizers to increase crop yields. These substances, however, can be lethal for the inhabitants of delicate wetland environments. As their food sources disappeared, local Japanese crested ibis populations—believed to be the last living anywhere in the wild—plummeted. In 1981, the few surviving birds were taken into captivity at the newly established Sado Japanese Crested Ibis Conservation Center.

Fortunately, that same year, seven of these rare birds were discovered in China. Soon after, Chinese and Japanese scientists formed a partnership to breed future generations. Those leading the initiative on Sado also founded an educational conservation space called Toki Forest Park so that visitors could see the crested ibises that remained.

The process of breeding toki in captivity, however, was slow and uncertain. Two decades passed and still only a few birds survived. It took another significant loss for more locals to join together to restore the bird’s natural place on the island. In 2004, a typhoon ripped through the Sea of Japan and destroyed Sado’s entire rice harvest. As farmers reflected on the economic and cultural value of this grain, their thoughts also returned to the crested ibis and the importance of making the entire expanse of the island hospitable again to these cherished members of their community.

In 2008, the Sado Agricultural Cooperative launched the toki-to-kurasu-sato program, a crop certification that functions similarly to an “organic” label, but with a highly specific purpose—it verifies that a rice farm is a safe haven for toki. “Many of the islanders have long had a fondness for this bird,” says Hirashima.“I believe it was precisely because of this love that we cooperated in reducing the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers by more than 50 percent compared to conventional farming methods.” That same year, the Sado Japanese Crested Ibis Conservation Center released 10 toki to roam the island freely, for the first time in 27 years.

Three years later, the UN recognized Sado as one of the world’s first “Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems,” highlighting the island as a perfect example of satoyama, which it defines as “societies in harmony with nature.” In Japanese, the term refers more specifically to the liminal spaces where humans and wildlife meet, often in agricultural land between villages and wilderness. The UN chose to celebrate Sado for its traditional rice cultivation, which represents a “dynamic mosaic of various socio-ecological systems” where people and toki thrive together.

About 350 rice producers have obtained toki-to-kurasu-sato, or “ibis-friendly farming,” certification. Currently, it’s available only for rice farming, though Sado farmers also famously cultivate other crops, including Okesa persimmons, nashi (Asian pears), as well as cattle raised for high-quality beef and milk. But even with these other agricultural activities, rice and toki play a part. Cartons of local milk portray a charming cartoonish image of the crested ibis, and the cows are fed with the discarded stalks and leaves of the rice plants.

Today, over 500 crested ibises are at home in the rice fields of Sado. On a five-day visit to the island, just before the 2024 rice harvest, I observed the land closely, hoping to spot one, without any luck. But Hirashima, who first encountered a toki in 2009, now sees them almost daily. For Sado’s nearly 50,000 residents—and, perhaps, the occasional lucky visitor—this fantastical creature has resumed its place in reality, restoring a sense of harmony to this unique island, where people, birds, and rice are inextricably connected.

This story was originally published by Vox.com and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Multiple major wildfires, fanned by unusually strong seasonal winds, have been burning through the Los Angeles area, leaving devastation in their wake.

Thus far, those fires have led to at least 11 fatalities, massive evacuations, and the destruction of at least 10,000 properties, according to official reports.

Though destructive fire seasons have become increasingly common in California, it’s still relatively rare to see a major urban area facing fires in the way Los Angeles now is. But as populations have grown in communities that are close to vegetation and open space, experts told Vox, the risks of wildfires moving into denser, urban areas has increased. That dynamic is compounded by climate change, which has fueled extreme heat and parched the landscape in regions like Southern California that are already susceptible to wildfires.

Collectively, these factors mean that wildfires may become more frequent in urban areas—and while cities do have some safeguards in place against these natural disasters, there are dangerous sources of fuel in them, too.

Urban fires “have become more common and severe,” says fire historian and Arizona State University professor emeritus Steve Pyne. “A problem that we thought we had fixed has returned.”

For places that are located near vegetation, as many parts of Los Angeles are, the fire risk can be high.

“In the Southern California urban areas…we see a highly dense, large urban area butting right up to highly flammable shrub ecosystems,” says Mark Schwartz, a University of California Davis conservation scientist.

These cities have sections that exist in what researchers call the wildland-urban interface, or WUI, where human development meets “undeveloped wildland” and vegetation. That means these populated areas are close to or intersect with natural ones like forests and grasslands.

Such adjacency to vegetation—especially in regions like the arid Western US, which is prone to fires—directly increases a city’s risk because blazes that typically begin in brush and shrubbery can move quickly through abundant fuel sources.

That danger is especially acute for Los Angeles right now, as Santa Ana wind gusts hit nearly 100 miles per hour—potentially carrying flames rapidly from where they begin.

In general, more people have also been moving into wildland-urban interface spaces, increasing the population and activity in these areas, says Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist at Stanford University. That means more risk to humans living there, and also more potential for fires to start. While lightning strikes can and often do spark wildfires, most blazes are caused by people; past conflagrations have started because of campfires, an irresponsibly discarded cigarette, or downed power lines.

“Where there are humans, there’s plentiful sources of ignition, and where those sources of ignition are near vegetation that can burn, that elevates the risk,” Diffenbaugh said.

Climate change only amplifies such hazards: The clearest signal that climate change is influencing the severity of fires is the rising temperatures, which lead to more fuels, such as dry vegetation, that are primed to burn.

Cities that are more “hardscaped” (comprised of materials like concrete and metal) and farther from sources of vegetation have lower fire risk. Those that have greenery can also make themselves more fire resistant with mitigation practices like prescribed burns (controlled fires meant to simultaneously reduce fire risk and promote healthy vegetation growth), more native plants, and less vegetation near structures.

Homes, as well as vegetation, can serve as fuel for fires. Other structures like natural gas tanks and fuel depots can exacerbate blazes if they catch on fire, says Stephanie Pincetl, a University of California Los Angeles professor of environment and sustainability.

According to Schwartz, “Once a fire moves into an urban area, house to house ignitions becomes the biggest concern.” Homes built of wood can be flammable, and embers can also be blown into structures via vents and windows, so a house can catch fire and burn from the inside, even if the exterior is fire-proof. Free-standing single-family homes—compared to row homes, which often share walls with neighboring buildings—can be especially vulnerable to fires because of how many exterior-facing walls they have and the number of different points where a fire can catch, Pincetl notes.

In cities like Los Angeles, drier vegetation like palm trees can also provide fuel for wildfires.

The Camp Fire, which took place in northern central California in 2018, is the deadliest in state history. It caused 85 fatalities, destroyed more than 18,000 structures—including burning almost completely through the town of Paradise, California—and burned over 153,000 acres.

It was so destructive due to similar conditions we’re witnessing in Los Angeles County this week: “High winds piled on top of dry fuels,” Schwartz said, emphasizing that the wind played a particularly significant role in spreading the flames. As Wired’s Matt Simon explained, the wind during the Camp Fire helped carry “billions” of embers, which started a number of small fires farther from the front lines of the main blaze. Those embers ignited homes and other structures across Paradise—making the fire tougher to contain.

Many homes within Paradise were also more vulnerable to fire. Almost all the homes in town had been built prior to 2008, when California imposed a new fire-safe building code that requires the use of certain materials for building exteriors and roofs, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The leveling of Paradise was devastating: Before the fire, around 27,000 people lived in the community. As of 2023, its population was fewer than 10,000 (though it has continued to rebound since the fire). The fires burning in Los Angeles County threaten a far denser urban area: Today, almost 10 million people live in Los Angeles County.

Both wind and ample dry vegetation have also contributed to the growth of the recent Los Angeles fires, which have spread as the area has experienced both moderate drought conditions and a massive windstorm.

Experts say it’s “unlikely” that the current wildfires could damage all of Los Angeles due to both the diversity of landscapes in the city and the precautions that it—and other cities—have taken to strengthen firefighting forces and use more fire-resistant building materials such as plaster and concrete. “Cities used to be very, very flammable,” Pincetl said. “Over the decades, we have learned to build cities that are far less vulnerable to catching on fire.”

“It used to be back in the late 1800s, for example, that entire cities would be lost because everything was made out of the same wood material,” Tim Brown, a researcher at the Desert Research Institute, told Vox. “In today’s built environment, there are varying building materials, especially in urban and commercial centers, that would allow for much easier fire control.”

This story was originally published by Atlas Obscura and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Sado Island perches like a butterfly with its wings outstretched just off the curved west coast of Japan. Yet this land mass is better known as the home of another winged creature: the crested ibis, called toki in Japanese.

Hop on a shinkansen (a high-speed train) from Tokyo to Niigata, then board a ferry, and you will arrive at the port of Ryotsu, where a Welcome to Sado sign awaits above a larger-than-life photo of a toki mid-flight. Wander through the souvenir shops adjacent to the ferry terminal and you will see this bird again and again—printed on postcards, stitched onto t-shirts, frosted onto elaborate pastries, and carved into hashioki (chopsticks rests). You might even bump into a huggable, human-sized plush mascot.

Once you have seen a toki, there’s no mistaking this bird for any other. With its expressive eyes, its bright red mask-like face framed by feathers that drape down its neck like a mane of wild hair, its white slender body, pink underwings, hooked black beak, and red lanky legs, it is almost easier to envision this bird strutting on a historic Noh theater stage than through a field.

About 350 rice producers have obtained toki-to-kurasu-sato, or “ibis-friendly farming,” certification.

It is actually unlikely that you will happen across a crested ibis in the wild. The native toki of Sado went extinct over four decades ago. But through a community-driven and internationally supported initiative, they have returned for an encore.

While toki once thrived on Sado, populations began to decline in the 19th century as they were hunted for meat and feathers. Ultimately, though, it was the introduction of modern agricultural practices that led to their demise. To understand the impact of farming on the crested ibis population, it’s important to know that both the birds and the people of Sado rely heavily on one crop: rice.

Mako Igarashi, promotions manager in the Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries Department of Sado City Hall, estimates there are about 8,000 rice farms on the island, which itself is only approximately 330 square miles. In mountainous areas, most farms cover less than two acres and are cultivated for personal use, while farms in the plains tend to grow rice for sale on slightly larger plots.

“As a Japanese person, rice is, of course, a staple food and an indispensable item. In Sado, many people are involved in rice farming,” says Ken Hirashima, President and CEO of Obata Sake Brewery. Their facility is located on the island and they locally source two types of sake rice, Gohyakumangoku and Echitanrei. This petite patch of Japanese land has, however, gained national acclaim for another rice variety—its namesake Sado Koshihikari rice, which is best suited to sushi.

Sado-based chef Saori Aoki uses this rice at her restaurant Ogiya to make dishes like nameshi (rice with leafy greens) and oshizushi (sushi pressed into bite-sized squares, rather than rolls). “It has a pleasant fragrance and a sweet taste, and becomes even sweeter when cooled,” says Aoki.

Aoki sources her rice from a nearby cooperative. “I think the idea of ‘local production for local consumption’ is important,” says Aoki. Due to Sado’s small size and the islanders’ big appetite for this grain, almost all Sado Koshihikari rice is consumed by its residents. If you want to try it, you have to go there, which has been the case for over 400 years. “Since the Edo period [1603-1868], the population has increased due to the prosperity of the gold mines. Many rice fields developed,” explains Hirashima. “As production increased, rice terraces were established not only in the plains, but also in the mountains, creating a beautiful rural landscape. The scenery is something the islanders treasure.”

While rice is a primary form of sustenance and income for Sado residents, the waterlogged fields are an essential habitat for toki, who depend on a diet of fish, frogs, and other small aquatic creatures. In the 20th century, farmers began spraying their paddies with pesticides and chemical fertilizers to increase crop yields. These substances, however, can be lethal for the inhabitants of delicate wetland environments. As their food sources disappeared, local Japanese crested ibis populations—believed to be the last living anywhere in the wild—plummeted. In 1981, the few surviving birds were taken into captivity at the newly established Sado Japanese Crested Ibis Conservation Center.

Fortunately, that same year, seven of these rare birds were discovered in China. Soon after, Chinese and Japanese scientists formed a partnership to breed future generations. Those leading the initiative on Sado also founded an educational conservation space called Toki Forest Park so that visitors could see the crested ibises that remained.

The process of breeding toki in captivity, however, was slow and uncertain. Two decades passed and still only a few birds survived. It took another significant loss for more locals to join together to restore the bird’s natural place on the island. In 2004, a typhoon ripped through the Sea of Japan and destroyed Sado’s entire rice harvest. As farmers reflected on the economic and cultural value of this grain, their thoughts also returned to the crested ibis and the importance of making the entire expanse of the island hospitable again to these cherished members of their community.

In 2008, the Sado Agricultural Cooperative launched the toki-to-kurasu-sato program, a crop certification that functions similarly to an “organic” label, but with a highly specific purpose—it verifies that a rice farm is a safe haven for toki. “Many of the islanders have long had a fondness for this bird,” says Hirashima.“I believe it was precisely because of this love that we cooperated in reducing the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers by more than 50 percent compared to conventional farming methods.” That same year, the Sado Japanese Crested Ibis Conservation Center released 10 toki to roam the island freely, for the first time in 27 years.

Three years later, the UN recognized Sado as one of the world’s first “Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems,” highlighting the island as a perfect example of satoyama, which it defines as “societies in harmony with nature.” In Japanese, the term refers more specifically to the liminal spaces where humans and wildlife meet, often in agricultural land between villages and wilderness. The UN chose to celebrate Sado for its traditional rice cultivation, which represents a “dynamic mosaic of various socio-ecological systems” where people and toki thrive together.

About 350 rice producers have obtained toki-to-kurasu-sato, or “ibis-friendly farming,” certification. Currently, it’s available only for rice farming, though Sado farmers also famously cultivate other crops, including Okesa persimmons, nashi (Asian pears), as well as cattle raised for high-quality beef and milk. But even with these other agricultural activities, rice and toki play a part. Cartons of local milk portray a charming cartoonish image of the crested ibis, and the cows are fed with the discarded stalks and leaves of the rice plants.

Today, over 500 crested ibises are at home in the rice fields of Sado. On a five-day visit to the island, just before the 2024 rice harvest, I observed the land closely, hoping to spot one, without any luck. But Hirashima, who first encountered a toki in 2009, now sees them almost daily. For Sado’s nearly 50,000 residents—and, perhaps, the occasional lucky visitor—this fantastical creature has resumed its place in reality, restoring a sense of harmony to this unique island, where people, birds, and rice are inextricably connected.

This story was originally published by Vox.com and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Multiple major wildfires, fanned by unusually strong seasonal winds, have been burning through the Los Angeles area, leaving devastation in their wake.

Thus far, those fires have led to at least 11 fatalities, massive evacuations, and the destruction of at least 10,000 properties, according to official reports.

Though destructive fire seasons have become increasingly common in California, it’s still relatively rare to see a major urban area facing fires in the way Los Angeles now is. But as populations have grown in communities that are close to vegetation and open space, experts told Vox, the risks of wildfires moving into denser, urban areas has increased. That dynamic is compounded by climate change, which has fueled extreme heat and parched the landscape in regions like Southern California that are already susceptible to wildfires.

Collectively, these factors mean that wildfires may become more frequent in urban areas—and while cities do have some safeguards in place against these natural disasters, there are dangerous sources of fuel in them, too.

Urban fires “have become more common and severe,” says fire historian and Arizona State University professor emeritus Steve Pyne. “A problem that we thought we had fixed has returned.”

For places that are located near vegetation, as many parts of Los Angeles are, the fire risk can be high.

“In the Southern California urban areas…we see a highly dense, large urban area butting right up to highly flammable shrub ecosystems,” says Mark Schwartz, a University of California Davis conservation scientist.

These cities have sections that exist in what researchers call the wildland-urban interface, or WUI, where human development meets “undeveloped wildland” and vegetation. That means these populated areas are close to or intersect with natural ones like forests and grasslands.

Such adjacency to vegetation—especially in regions like the arid Western US, which is prone to fires—directly increases a city’s risk because blazes that typically begin in brush and shrubbery can move quickly through abundant fuel sources.

That danger is especially acute for Los Angeles right now, as Santa Ana wind gusts hit nearly 100 miles per hour—potentially carrying flames rapidly from where they begin.

In general, more people have also been moving into wildland-urban interface spaces, increasing the population and activity in these areas, says Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist at Stanford University. That means more risk to humans living there, and also more potential for fires to start. While lightning strikes can and often do spark wildfires, most blazes are caused by people; past conflagrations have started because of campfires, an irresponsibly discarded cigarette, or downed power lines.

“Where there are humans, there’s plentiful sources of ignition, and where those sources of ignition are near vegetation that can burn, that elevates the risk,” Diffenbaugh said.

Climate change only amplifies such hazards: The clearest signal that climate change is influencing the severity of fires is the rising temperatures, which lead to more fuels, such as dry vegetation, that are primed to burn.

Cities that are more “hardscaped” (comprised of materials like concrete and metal) and farther from sources of vegetation have lower fire risk. Those that have greenery can also make themselves more fire resistant with mitigation practices like prescribed burns (controlled fires meant to simultaneously reduce fire risk and promote healthy vegetation growth), more native plants, and less vegetation near structures.

Homes, as well as vegetation, can serve as fuel for fires. Other structures like natural gas tanks and fuel depots can exacerbate blazes if they catch on fire, says Stephanie Pincetl, a University of California Los Angeles professor of environment and sustainability.

According to Schwartz, “Once a fire moves into an urban area, house to house ignitions becomes the biggest concern.” Homes built of wood can be flammable, and embers can also be blown into structures via vents and windows, so a house can catch fire and burn from the inside, even if the exterior is fire-proof. Free-standing single-family homes—compared to row homes, which often share walls with neighboring buildings—can be especially vulnerable to fires because of how many exterior-facing walls they have and the number of different points where a fire can catch, Pincetl notes.

In cities like Los Angeles, drier vegetation like palm trees can also provide fuel for wildfires.

The Camp Fire, which took place in northern central California in 2018, is the deadliest in state history. It caused 85 fatalities, destroyed more than 18,000 structures—including burning almost completely through the town of Paradise, California—and burned over 153,000 acres.

It was so destructive due to similar conditions we’re witnessing in Los Angeles County this week: “High winds piled on top of dry fuels,” Schwartz said, emphasizing that the wind played a particularly significant role in spreading the flames. As Wired’s Matt Simon explained, the wind during the Camp Fire helped carry “billions” of embers, which started a number of small fires farther from the front lines of the main blaze. Those embers ignited homes and other structures across Paradise—making the fire tougher to contain.

Many homes within Paradise were also more vulnerable to fire. Almost all the homes in town had been built prior to 2008, when California imposed a new fire-safe building code that requires the use of certain materials for building exteriors and roofs, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The leveling of Paradise was devastating: Before the fire, around 27,000 people lived in the community. As of 2023, its population was fewer than 10,000 (though it has continued to rebound since the fire). The fires burning in Los Angeles County threaten a far denser urban area: Today, almost 10 million people live in Los Angeles County.

Both wind and ample dry vegetation have also contributed to the growth of the recent Los Angeles fires, which have spread as the area has experienced both moderate drought conditions and a massive windstorm.

Experts say it’s “unlikely” that the current wildfires could damage all of Los Angeles due to both the diversity of landscapes in the city and the precautions that it—and other cities—have taken to strengthen firefighting forces and use more fire-resistant building materials such as plaster and concrete. “Cities used to be very, very flammable,” Pincetl said. “Over the decades, we have learned to build cities that are far less vulnerable to catching on fire.”

“It used to be back in the late 1800s, for example, that entire cities would be lost because everything was made out of the same wood material,” Tim Brown, a researcher at the Desert Research Institute, told Vox. “In today’s built environment, there are varying building materials, especially in urban and commercial centers, that would allow for much easier fire control.”

Lynn Levin-Guzman spent her Tuesday night within spitting distance of SUV-sized flames, trying to salvage her 90-year-old parents’ home with a mere garden hose. As the Eaton Fire devastated the Hastings Ranch neighborhood in Pasadena, California, the family seemed especially screwed: Their insurance provider had recently canceled their fire coverage.

“I know I’m not supposed to be here, but this is my parents’ home,” Levin-Guzman, an emergency room nurse, told a local ABC News station reporter, explaining why she’d chosen to defy evacuation orders. “Send me to jail.”

It’s unclear which carrier dropped the family, but their plight appears similar to that of the 30,000 California residents who saw their State Farm home insurance coverage revoked in 2024. More than 1,500 of the homes that lost coverage were in the Pacific Palisades area, which—like Hastings Ranch—has been decimated by one of the five fires that have so far scorched 29,000-plus combined California acres this week.

Faced with arcane regulatory rules and increasingly frequent and intense disasters—fueled by climate change and other factors—at least seven of the top 12 insurance companies in California have paused or restricted writing new home insurance policies since 2022. The upheaval mirrors troubling trends in Florida and Louisiana, where premiums are rising precipitously and carriers are closing shop.

Unable to get a policy on the open market, customers are flocking to their state-facilitated “insurers of last resort.” In California, that body is called Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR), and it insured $458 billion worth of California property as of its last filing—more than double its 2020 portfolio. While it’s better than nothing, FAIR is far from ideal: It offers less coverage than traditional policies.

Still, the massive fires ravaging Los Angeles right now will test FAIR’s solvency, and that of the broader industry. The roughly $2.5 billion that FAIR said it had lined up for quick claim fulfillment in 2024, for example, is not even half of its nearly $6 billion exposure in the now-charred Palisades. On Thursday, JP Morgan estimated the losses from this week’s fire could exceed $20 billion, 60 percent more than the $12.5 billion lost in the then-record setting 2018 Camp Fire in Northern California.

“I think it’s very likely that we will see losses that exceed the existing reserves,” says Benjamin Collier, a Temple University business school professor whose research focuses on how firms manage climate risk.

This is not just a climate problem or an insurance one, but a burgeoning housing crisis, too: The vast majority of homebuyers need mortgages. Mortgage lenders require home insurance to protect the value of the property securing these loans. What happens when the math of providing home insurance to immense stretches of densely populated communities no longer computes?

“If you look into the future,” Collier says, “we will continue to see really horrible, severe events, and that will create more challenges for homeowners and insurance markets.”

FAIR was created by lawmakers in 1968, but it isn’t funded by the state. Instead, it is underwritten by the pool of private insurance carriers licensed to sell policies in the state. When disaster strikes, FAIR will first use its reserves from premiums customers have paid into it. If it runs out of funds due to a wide-scale catastrophe, the state’s private insurers are expected to contribute money towards an emergency assessment. But that funding scheme presents a problem. As private insurance companies reduce or eliminate their marketshare in California, FAIR has fewer insurers to pay into those assessments.

They have fair reason to flee. Nationally, large insurance companies net an average profit of 4.2 percent on insurance transactions. In California, they lose more than 6 percent. Collier says the difference partially lies in California restricting insurers from raising premiums in a timely manner. “They’re limited in their ability to charge a rate that would be sustainable for them, and so many have left the market,” he explains. That’s thanks to Proposition 103, a ballot measure designed to protect consumers from arbitrary rate hikes that narrowly passed in the 1980s.

New regulatory changes, released in December, give insurers a little more leash. They will now be able to include the cost of reinsurance (essentially, insurance for insurers) in their premium prices. Carriers can also begin to factor in climate change concerns when calculating rates. In exchange for this new revenue, insurers will have to start increasing their coverage in high-risk areas, which will decrease the proportion of Californians forced to turn to FAIR.

Regardless, the changes didn’t come in time to reduce the heavy load on FAIR. In the immediate future, that means private insurers in California will likely look to raise rates on many of their customers to make up for the large assessment and increased reinsurance costs surely around the corner. Communities and buildings won’t be the only things that require rebuilding when the smoke eventually clears—the state’s insurance market will need restoration, too.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The sun glared red as it sank into the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday, casting an orange hue over the carnage smoldering on the southern Californian coast. It will be a day not soon forgotten in Los Angeles, which by evening was flanked by catastrophic wildfires in nearly all directions.

It’s too early to determine the full extent of the destruction caused by the blazes, but in the neighborhoods bordering the Palisades fire it was clear the impact was enormous.

Throughout the day, cellphones of residents in nearby communities sounded warnings when mandatory evacuation lines were extended as the wind-fueled fires continued to spread. Exhausted residents, including some who already had experienced frantic escapes, raced to again escape the danger.

One man, taking refuge in an upscale Brentwood eatery, called the signal “the soundtrack of the week.” He’d just learned his home was among those that had been lost in the Palisades fire, still raging through the canyons above Santa Monica and Malibu. Many others will receive the same news in the coming days.

Firefighters refueling their trucks and stocking up on snacks on Wednesday afternoon—a short reprieve from their around-the-clock battles in the dangerous conditions—said the destruction was unlike any they had seen in their decades-long careers.

Unauthorized to speak on record, they shared anecdotal intel from the fiery frontline: by one firefighter’s estimates only about one out of every five homes had been spared in the charred canyons left by the sprawling fire.

The world-famous stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway—a picturesque beachside road between Santa Monica and Malibu has been left in ruin. Still-smoldering structures that line the highway in the slopes above and against the sea spat flames and smoke into the evening night sky on Wednesday as blackened palm trees heaved in the unyielding winds.

The region has been hammered by catastrophic fires before—and not that long ago. Hundreds of homes were lost in the Mountain fire that burned to the north in November, followed by dozens more in the Franklin fire that scorched Malibu last month. In the weeks since, hoped-for rains never came and thirsty landscapes continued to dry. Strong wind events that are typical for this time of year only added chaos to the fire-primed conditions, causing blazes to quickly spread.

The Palisades fire pushed deeper into the densely covered dry hillsides, closing in on communities and homes that dot the picturesque area overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

As the black smoke billowed over the mountains and flames flickered on the ridge on Wednesday morning, many residents in Topanga Canyon, an artistic and rural enclave that is familiar with navigating chaotic fires had already evacuated. The roads winding through the canyon were empty save for the remaining few that chose to stay and those on their way out. Small groups paused at overlooks to watch as the fire ripped through the area from which they had just fled.

Among them, Matt and Joseph Brown, father and son, who had collectively spent several decades living in the area. In the past 24 hours, Joseph had been part of a frantic and chaotic evacuation out of the Palisades when the fire first erupted. He then helped Matt and his family as they rushed to gather up animals—horses, dogs, and mini donkey—before the flames reached them. Chickens and bunnies in a coop, Matt said, had to be left behind.

Neighbors who stayed, protected by privately hired fire crews, gave him the news shortly after that the coop and its inhabitants along with their guest house was consumed by the fire.

Farther down the road, Jane Connelly was still working to save her horse Louie who had been so frightened in the chaos he’d refused to get into a trailer. She decided to walk him out on a lead instead. “I had to get the dogs, cats, and child out first,” she said, breathing heavily as she quickly walked along the side of the sloping road. After 15 years in this area, this was a sad first.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles County caught fire. Driven by unusually strong Santa Ana winds, as my colleagues report, five fires have ignited some 27,000 acres of land (and counting), and forced state officials to issue evacuation orders for more than 100,000 residents. Five people have already died in the fires, authorities say.

The Palisades Fire, in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, and the Eaton Fire, impacting Altadena and Pasadena to the east, are the largest. While it’s unclear how exactly the fires started, experts point to a combination of factors that have made conditions ripe for disaster. The entire region has seen extremely low autumn and winter rainfall, with downtown Los Angeles, the LA Times reports, seeing less than a quarter of an inch of rain since October 1—compared to an average 4.64 inches in a typical season.

“You combine that with the high winds, and you really have the perfect storm in terms of a big fire event,” said Jon Keeley, a research scientist with the US Geological Survey and an adjunct professor in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

To better understand how this happened and what anyone can do about it, I spoke to Keeley, who explained what the Santa Ana winds are, how climate change comes into play, what homeowners can do to protect themselves, and how goats—yes, goats—can help.

What’s going on with the Santa Ana winds? Why are they so strong?

When you get high pressure in the east, and low pressure off the coast, you get winds moving from east to west. Normally, winds blow from the ocean onto the land. That’s a normal wind flow. When we get a Santa Ana wind, everything reverses. And because the pressure system is often very high, you get very severe winds.

I saw reports of 60-to-70-mile-per-hour winds. Typically, it’s more likely to be half that speed. If you have fires being blown at 60 miles per hour, it’s extremely dangerous because people often don’t have time to get out. But it’s obvious from the Eaton Fire that they didn’t. Not everybody got out.

Scientists have warned that with climate change, fires and fire seasons will get worse. But can we attribute these fires to climate change?

Well, there’s really no way to ascribe a particular fire event to climate change. Climate change involves data that show climate trends over time. No question, though, that climate change is exacerbating our fire regime and affecting fires, making them potentially worse.

Understandably, much of the focus right now is on the loss of life and property. What about impacts to the ecosystem?

In a nutshell, these high-severity fires are not a problem. These ecosystems are well adapted to high-severity fires. Where the fire started in Pacific Palisades, for example, is chaparral vegetation. It’s a shrubland vegetation. We have good evidence that this vegetation has evolved along with fire for at least 20 million years.

In California, we have perhaps 100 herbaceous species—like wildflowers—that are only seen after a fire. They come up in abundance after a fire, they persist for maybe a year or two, and then they disappear, remaining as dormant seeds.

But what we’re seeing now is more of these severe fire events. With more frequent fires, we’re seeing large expanses of our native shrublands being eliminated and replaced by weeds. And so there’s large portions of native, California vegetation that have been totally lost.

So what does that mean for controlled burning? Should we be doing more controlled burns to prevent this kind of fire? Less?

With these fires, controlled burning would likely have had no impact whatsoever. With forests in California, we’ve caused fuels [shrubs, leaves, and other plant material] to accumulate, so we have to do prescription burning to keep those fuels down. I’m very much an advocate of burning in these forests.

But when you get to Southern California and chaparral, it’s totally different. Fires, first off, were never very frequent there. And with more people in the landscape starting more and more fires, we have no unusual fuel accumulation. And so doing prescription burning isn’t going to change the fuel structure.

Plus, when you have Santa Ana winds, it doesn’t matter what the fuel structure looks like. It doesn’t matter if you have done prescription burning. When you have these high winds, even if they run into a prescribed burn, the embers are just blown right over that burned area and ignite on the other side.

Firefighters do need space to fight a fire, so doing fuel treatments around homes makes sense if you want to defend homes. However, prescription burning can be dangerous in Southern California, so [officials] often use animals like goats to reduce the fuels.

So goats could be one part of the solution for preventing the worst fire damage—what about other solutions?

Just doing a “fuel break”—that’s what they call these areas—doesn’t stop these fires from burning homes. It’s not the flames from the fire that ignite homes. Most homes are ignited by embers that blow in the wind and land on the house.

And to stop that, there’s a lot that homeowners can do in terms of what is called “hardening” your home, basically making it more fire-safe.

In the last 20 years, we’ve had five times more area burn due to power lines than in the previous 20.

For example, just the types of vents in your roof can have a big impact. A lot of construction is done with “open eaves,” with attic vents parallel to the ground, so when the embers are blown, they blow right in and ignite the home. But the home I live in now, we have “closed eaves,” where the vents are covered and point down towards the ground, so there’s less chance for embers to get in the attic.

As a scientist who’s watching all of this happen, do you think there is any context that’s been missing from the coverage?

It’s important to recognize where the fire started. The Eaton Fire started right in the middle of a developed area. It’s not one of these fires that started off in the mountains east of LA and then burned down into LA so that people had a chance to plan. This started right within the urban environment. That’s the primary reason why it was so destructive.

We don’t know what the [direct] causes are, but there’s reason to believe they may have been driven by power line failures. In the last 20 years, we’ve had five times more area burn due to power line failure–ignited fires than in the previous 20 years.

So the big message is, climate change may be exacerbating all this, but population growth is another factor that we have to keep in mind. In the last 20 years, we’ve added something like 6 million people to California. You add that many people, and they end up having to live further and further out from the urban environment—and oftentimes, in areas of extreme risk.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

This story was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The firestorms that have been ravaging Los Angeles and Southern California since Tuesday afternoon are nothing short of calamitous. Thanks to dry weather and a burst of high-speed Santa Ana winds—some billowing in at close to 100 miles per hour—brush fires began flaring up across Pacific Palisades, Topanga, and Malibu, spreading rapidly and forcing tens of thousands of residents to flee.

By that evening, the Palisades fire had consumed more than 1,260 acres and reached down to Santa Monica, destroying homes and schools in its wake. Another fire in the hills around Eaton County roared across 10,000 acres to Pasadena and forced even more rapid evacuations. The winds and smoke got so dangerous that firefighting airlines were temporarily grounded, and LA County officially asked any residents with firefighting experience to pitch in and help. Going into early Wednesday morning, even more fires started within the county and consumed hundreds of acres, while Palisades fire hydrants found themselves sapped of water.

As of this writing, the collective destruction has killed two people and destroyed more than 1,000 buildings, including community fixtures, houses, schools, libraries, shops, and restaurants. With cell service down and electricity off for many Angelenos, it’s difficult to get the best updates in real time. TV journalists have themselves been helping residents flee, while others have been forced to evacuate from the areas where they were reporting. Cellphone footage of destroyed buildings is traveling around social media. Air pollution has reached dangerous levels. Tens of thousands of Californians are under evacuation orders, and more than 1.5 million of them have no power due to both preemptive shutoffs by utilities and infrastructural damage from the flames. The windstorms are projected to continue blasting well into Thursday, and the area along the Pacific Coast Highway lies in tatters.

So naturally, it’s conspiracy time.

Just one day after Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook and Instagram would no longer be fact-checking informational posts, and mere months after nonstop online hoaxes obstructed federal efforts to assist North Carolinians in the recovery from Hurricane Helene, we’re getting an early-year preview of how the United States is going to experience and respond to these rampaging climate disasters throughout the near future. In the vacuum left by mainstream TV networks that did not at all mention climate change in their fire coverage, bad-faith digital actors swooped in with their own takes.

The attacks by Elon Musk and others are not only false, they also show a profound ignorance of how the water supply for firefighting works.

California hadn’t even woken to its amber skies Wednesday morning before right-wing media began running with attacks on the LA Fire Department’s chief, the first lesbian woman to lead the force and already the subject of ugly attacks purely on the basis of her identity. While other area celebrities—Mark Hamill, Steve Guttenberg—either gave straitlaced updates on their escapes or even helped fire crews clear roads, conservative actor and Palisades homeowner James Woods instead denied that climate change played any role in the fires and blamed “diversity,” citing the LAFD chief’s profile.

There are plenty of worthy reasons to criticize the LAFD: for underpaying the incarcerated Californians who are conscripted to help fight these fires, and for allegedly fostering a bullying workplace while granting impunity to misbehaving firefighters in years past (an urgent issue that Chief Kristin Crowley was hired to address). But for the likes of Libs of TikTok, the fact that a woman is there at all, and that the LAFD made concerted efforts to address how L.A. firefighters from minority backgrounds were mistreated by their superiors, is the real reason these fires are overwhelming.

Others have resurfaced a Donald Trump tweet from his first presidency in which he blamed Gov. Gavin Newsom for not doing enough controlled burns to clear dry vegetation from the forest floors and, thus, leaving extra kindling behind for 2019’s horrific fires. There is some truth here: For nearly 100 years, the United States forbade the Indigenous practice of conducting prescribed burns before realizing their benefits in preemptively helping limit deadlier flames and reencouraging the practice. In fact, California had begun setting off controlled burns again by the late 2010s, making Trump’s tweet inaccurate (as usual).

Still, trauma-informed fear from the wildfires that scarred the Golden State that decade, along with budget cuts to environmental agencies like the Forest Service, led to an ill-advised pause on prescribed burns in Cali under the Biden administration (a decision I wrote about and criticized in Slate back in 2021), and once again halted Forest Service employees from deploying prescribed burns last October out of overblown fears that such practices could lead to another accidental rager. (One way to understand why these commentators are not to be trusted: Many of the same people blaming the LA government’s fire preparation have also consistently advocated over the years for slashing the city’s budgets and services.)

But the fair criticism from the right just about stops there. Trump updated his attacks on “Gavin Newscum” by alluding to a “water declaration resolution” for inflowing water supplies that, Newsom’s office clarified, never existed. Musk and his cronies have since attacked Mayor Karen Bass for supposedly fostering the aforementioned water shortages in the fire hydrants because of poor reservoir management. This is not only untrue, it completely misunderstands how water supply for firefighting works.

Water lines that feed those hydrants have been hurt by the fires, while the widespread need for L.A.’s ample water reserves outpaced the rate at which officials could refill the tanks (and their paths were obstructed along the way by the fires). Plus, water pressure has long been lower than ideal on the West Coast, especially for high-altitude neighborhoods, because of the yearslong drought crippling the region. (That climate change–fueled drought is also part of the reason why these fires spread so quickly: Barren foliage and general lack of moisture are eager fuel for fire spread.)

There is no such document as the water restoration declaration – that is pure fiction.

The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need. https://t.co/5WnnlrP3Wl

— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) January 8, 2025

The conspiracies are also not limited to the right. A common talking point, echoed by both internet leftists and L.A. Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, also blames Bass for cutting the LAFD budget in favor of funding local police. However, L.A. firefighters’ salaries have risen under Bass’ budgets, and the overall decrease in the department’s budget this year was a tiny, tiny fraction of its overall coffers.

Here’s the real, ugly truth: This is just how every major climate disaster is going to unfold online from here on out. There will be criticisms and expressions of fury, some more fair and reasoned than others, But in an ecosystem where social media outlets have purposefully hobbled their ability to provide real-time, reliable updates to users, the people affected by those disasters are literally left in the dark.

The government is never blameless when it comes to the impacts of and recovery from wildfires and storms. Still, while it takes time and effort to extinguish flames and dispatch reliable information in favor of the public interest, opportunistic liars need no such time to push their agendas. After decades of fossil-industry-funded climate denial, far-right figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene can get away with claiming Jewish space lasers are responsible for fires and that “they” can “control the weather” in order to target North Carolinians.

One can only do so much to debunk each individual conspiracy theory as brutal fires like California’s continue to spread. And as climate change supercharges more storms, fires, earthquakes, and other inevitable tragedies throughout this year and beyond, prepare to have to deal with these ambushes as well. Climate change doesn’t just boost record weather events—it boosts the snake-oil salesmen, too.

At least 10 people have been confirmed dead as wildfires continue to torch through Los Angeles County in the region’s most destructive fires in history. Officials warn that strong winds will persist into Thursday, further hampering ongoing firefighting efforts.

As of this writing, 180,000 people are under mandatory evacuation orders. Thousands of structures and entire neighborhoods have been destroyed. While fire officials are still investigating the causes, the fires have undeniably been fueled by the Santa Ana winds which at one point surpassed 100 mph. The National Weather Service has also attributed the extreme weather to low humidity levels and dry vegetation.

A 2023 study found climate change to be a significant contributor to California’s record-breaking wildfires over the past two decades.

One of the areas worst hit is the affluent Pacific Palisades neighborhood, where a main shopping center is owned by billionaire Rick Caruso.

This is what’s left of the Pacific Palisades. The mall survived. Most everything else is gone. Homes, apartment complexes… businesses. pic.twitter.com/Vfz721V48J

— Jonathan Vigliotti (@JonVigliotti) January 8, 2025

In direct response to the threat of water shortages, which officials fear could significantly hurt firefighting efforts, Mark Pestrella, director of Los Angeles County Public Works, emphasized that the hydrant system in the area was not designed to fight wildfires. “That’s why air support is so critical to the firefight and, unfortunately, wind and air visibility have prevented that support,” Pestrella said, urging residents not to use water to fight the fires to conserve it for firefighters.

“It is really quite futile to attempt to fight fire with your hose at your house,” he added.

Dozens of schools in LA County remain closed. Alberto M. Carvalho, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, said, “We make the decision of closing schools with a very methodical and science-driven manner,” citing considerations such as air quality.

“National Weather Service has predicted a continued red flag weather event with strong winds and low humidities, placing all residents in Los Angeles County in danger,” said Marrone in an 8 am PT briefing Wednesday.

Marrone made a point to share that they had already arrested two people for looting. “If you are thinking of coming into these areas to steal in these residences you are going to be caught, you’re going to be arrested and you going to be prosecuted,” said the fire chief.

The first responders at the same press conference urged residents to comply with orders and stay vigilant about the fast–evolving emergency.

“Lastly we want to make sure everybody understands we are not out of danger yet, with the strong winds that continue to push through the city and county today, I will tell you we are all committed to our first responders to protecting lives and property” Marrone emphasized at the briefing.

Meanwhile, high-profile conservatives and President-elect Donald Trump have wasted no time blaming Democratic lawmakers for the fires. Trump claimed Gov. Newsom, whom he referred to as “Newscum,” wanted “to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California.” Elon Musk and Caruso have also weighed in to criticize current democratic Mayor Karen Bass, who is in Ghana for the inauguration of Ghana President John Mahama. Bass is on her way back to LA as of Wednesday.

Caruso, who was Bass’s challenger in 2022, notably ran without a climate plan.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Rising sea levels driven by the climate crisis will overwhelm many of the world’s biggest oil ports, analysis indicates.

Scientists said the threat was ironic as fossil fuel burning causes global heating. They said reducing emissions by moving to renewable energy would halt global heating and deliver more reliable energy.

Thirteen of the ports with the highest supertanker traffic will be seriously damaged by just 1 meter of sea level rise, the analysis found. The researchers said two low-lying ports in Saudi Arabia—Ras Tanura and Yanbu‚—were particularly vulnerable. Both are operated by Aramco, the Saudi state oil firm, and 98 percent of the country’s oil exports leave via these ports.

The oil ports of Houston and Galveston in the US, the world’s biggest oil producer, are also on the list, as are ports in the United Arab Emirates, China, Singapore, and the Netherlands.

The latest science published by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI) shows 1 meter of sea level rise is now inevitable within a century or so and could come as early as 2070 if ice sheets collapse and emissions are not curbed. An even more catastrophic rise of 3 meters is probably inevitable in the next millennium or two and could arrive as soon as the early 2100s.

“Refusing to turn off the oil taps means keeping the taps on for sea level rise.”

Sea level rise is already causing problems around the world even before it overtops coastline developments. The rise to date means storm surges are higher and significantly more likely to cause coastal flooding, while infiltration of saltwater into coastal land can corrode foundations, the researchers note. Cutting emissions sharply would not only slow the rate of sea level rise but also limit the ultimate rise.

Pam Pearson, the ICCI director, said: “It’s ironic these oil tanker ports are below 1 meter of sea level rise and need to have their eyes on these potentially higher rates of sea level rise, which themselves come from continued fossil fuel use.”

Sea level rise is the most profound long-term impact of the climate crisis, redrawing the map of the world and affecting many major cities from New York to Shanghai. But Pearson said government and corporate short-term interests meant it was being overlooked. “Basic information [from scientific assessments of sea level rise] don’t seem to have gotten into the consciousness of governments,” she said.

James Kirkham, the chief science adviser at ICCI, said: “Refusing to turn off the oil taps means keeping the taps on for sea level rise. Accelerated ice melt and ocean expansion has already caused the rate of sea level rise to double in the last 30 years. Unless leaders double down on transitioning away from fossil fuels, the terrible impacts of sea level rise will only increase further—affecting every country with a coastline, including those who continue to obstruct increased decarbonization efforts.”

Aramco declined to comment.

Saudi Arabia has been accused of obstructionism at a series of recent global summits, including “wrecking ball” tactics at the Cop29 climate assembly, and of blocking progress at negotiations on a plastics treaty and on tackling drought and desertification. The latter talks were held in Riyadh and ended without agreement, with the Saudis refusing to include any reference to climate in the agreement.

The new analysis built on work from May in which researchers found that 12 of the 15 oil ports with the biggest oil tanker traffic were vulnerable to sea level rise. Maps of sea level rise from Climate Central and GoogleMaps were used to show that a 1-meter rise would damage jetties, oil storage facilities, refineries, and other infrastructure.

The new analysis added the second Saudi port, Yanbu, which is also at high risk with a 1-meter rise. The team used Bloomberg oil export data to estimate the volume and value of the oil being imported and exported from the ports. Together, Ras Tanura and Yanbu exported $214 billion worth of oil in 2023. In total, the 13 ports accounted for about 20 percent of global oil exports in 2023.

Murray Worthy, of Zero Carbon Analytics, who is part of the team, said: “This analysis shows that relying on fossil fuels in a warming world is a path to disaster, not energy security. Countries face a choice: stick with fossil fuels and risk supply disruptions as rising seas flood ports and terminals, or transition to secure, sustainable domestic renewables.”

Efforts could be made to build flood defences, which would be very costly, but Worthy said: “Ultimately it’s a losing battle. You’ve got to keep building those sea walls higher over time.”

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Rising sea levels driven by the climate crisis will overwhelm many of the world’s biggest oil ports, analysis indicates.

Scientists said the threat was ironic as fossil fuel burning causes global heating. They said reducing emissions by moving to renewable energy would halt global heating and deliver more reliable energy.

Thirteen of the ports with the highest supertanker traffic will be seriously damaged by just 1 meter of sea level rise, the analysis found. The researchers said two low-lying ports in Saudi Arabia—Ras Tanura and Yanbu‚—were particularly vulnerable. Both are operated by Aramco, the Saudi state oil firm, and 98 percent of the country’s oil exports leave via these ports.

The oil ports of Houston and Galveston in the US, the world’s biggest oil producer, are also on the list, as are ports in the United Arab Emirates, China, Singapore, and the Netherlands.

The latest science published by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI) shows 1 meter of sea level rise is now inevitable within a century or so and could come as early as 2070 if ice sheets collapse and emissions are not curbed. An even more catastrophic rise of 3 meters is probably inevitable in the next millennium or two and could arrive as soon as the early 2100s.

“Refusing to turn off the oil taps means keeping the taps on for sea level rise.”

Sea level rise is already causing problems around the world even before it overtops coastline developments. The rise to date means storm surges are higher and significantly more likely to cause coastal flooding, while infiltration of saltwater into coastal land can corrode foundations, the researchers note. Cutting emissions sharply would not only slow the rate of sea level rise but also limit the ultimate rise.

Pam Pearson, the ICCI director, said: “It’s ironic these oil tanker ports are below 1 meter of sea level rise and need to have their eyes on these potentially higher rates of sea level rise, which themselves come from continued fossil fuel use.”

Sea level rise is the most profound long-term impact of the climate crisis, redrawing the map of the world and affecting many major cities from New York to Shanghai. But Pearson said government and corporate short-term interests meant it was being overlooked. “Basic information [from scientific assessments of sea level rise] don’t seem to have gotten into the consciousness of governments,” she said.

James Kirkham, the chief science adviser at ICCI, said: “Refusing to turn off the oil taps means keeping the taps on for sea level rise. Accelerated ice melt and ocean expansion has already caused the rate of sea level rise to double in the last 30 years. Unless leaders double down on transitioning away from fossil fuels, the terrible impacts of sea level rise will only increase further—affecting every country with a coastline, including those who continue to obstruct increased decarbonization efforts.”

Aramco declined to comment.

Saudi Arabia has been accused of obstructionism at a series of recent global summits, including “wrecking ball” tactics at the Cop29 climate assembly, and of blocking progress at negotiations on a plastics treaty and on tackling drought and desertification. The latter talks were held in Riyadh and ended without agreement, with the Saudis refusing to include any reference to climate in the agreement.

The new analysis built on work from May in which researchers found that 12 of the 15 oil ports with the biggest oil tanker traffic were vulnerable to sea level rise. Maps of sea level rise from Climate Central and GoogleMaps were used to show that a 1-meter rise would damage jetties, oil storage facilities, refineries, and other infrastructure.

The new analysis added the second Saudi port, Yanbu, which is also at high risk with a 1-meter rise. The team used Bloomberg oil export data to estimate the volume and value of the oil being imported and exported from the ports. Together, Ras Tanura and Yanbu exported $214 billion worth of oil in 2023. In total, the 13 ports accounted for about 20 percent of global oil exports in 2023.

Murray Worthy, of Zero Carbon Analytics, who is part of the team, said: “This analysis shows that relying on fossil fuels in a warming world is a path to disaster, not energy security. Countries face a choice: stick with fossil fuels and risk supply disruptions as rising seas flood ports and terminals, or transition to secure, sustainable domestic renewables.”

Efforts could be made to build flood defences, which would be very costly, but Worthy said: “Ultimately it’s a losing battle. You’ve got to keep building those sea walls higher over time.”

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Joe Biden has banned offshore drilling across an immense area of coastal waters, weeks before Donald Trump takes office pledging to massively increase fossil fuel production.

The US president’s ban encompasses the entire Atlantic coast and eastern Gulf of Mexico, as well as the Pacific coast off California, Oregon, and Washington, and a section of the Bering Sea off Alaska.

A White House statement said the declaration protected more than 625 million acres of waters. Trump said he would “unban it immediately” as soon as he re-enters the White House on January 20, although it is unclear whether he will be able to do this easily.

“As the climate crisis continues to threaten communities across the country and we are transitioning to a clean energy economy, now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren,” Biden said in a statement.

“In balancing the many uses and benefits of America’s ocean, it is clear to me that the relatively minimal fossil fuel potential in the areas I am withdrawing do not justify the environmental, public health, and economic risks that would come from new leasing and drilling,” he added.

Scientists are clear that oil and gas production must be radically cut to avoid disastrous climate impacts. The ban does not have an end date and could be legally—and politically—tricky for Trump to overturn.

“Americans on both sides of the aisle support protecting our oceans from Big Oil giveaways.”

Biden is taking the action under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953, which gives the federal government authority over the exploitation of offshore resources. A total of eight presidents have withdrawn territory from drilling under the act, including Trump himself—who barred oil and gas extraction off the coasts of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.

However, the law does not expressly provide for presidents to unilaterally reverse a drilling ban without going through Congress.

Despite this, Trump vowed to undo Biden’s move, with the president-elect’s spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, calling it “a disgraceful decision” and saying the incoming administration would “drill, baby, drill.”

In an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday, Trump said the rule would be overturned on his first day. “I will unban it immediately,” he said. “I have the right to unban it.”

Environmental groups, on the other hand, welcomed the decision. “This is an epic ocean victory!” said Joseph Gordon, climate and energy director at the conservation nonprofit Oceana. “Our treasured coastal communities are now safeguarded for future generations.”

“Americans on both sides of the aisle support protecting our oceans from Big Oil giveaways,” said Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action. “President Biden’s bold action today underscores that we cannot afford the continued expansion of oil and gas production if we are to meet our climate targets and avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.”

The White House said: “With today’s withdrawals, President Biden has now conserved more than 670 million acres of US lands, waters, and ocean—more than any president in history.”

The move is the latest in a string of last-minute climate policy actions by the Biden administration before Trump’s return to the White House.

In mid-December, the outgoing administration issued an ambitious new climate target under the landmark Paris accord, committing the US to reducing economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions by between 61 percent and 66 percent below 2005 levels by 2035, on the path to achieving net zero by 2050. Trump is expected to ignore this target and remove the US from the Paris climate deal.

Biden is also expected to announce two new national monuments—protected lands designated at the discretion of the president—in California before he leaves office. When last in office, Trump shrank the size of two previously established national monuments in Utah.

The outgoing Biden administration has styled itself as as historic leader in environmental policy, passing sweeping legislation to bolster clean energy output and electric vehicle uptake, although the president has also overseen a record boom in oil and gas production and handed out drilling leases at a higher rate even than Trump.

Climate advocates have urged Biden to declare a climate emergency and reverse the growing export of gas from US-based shipping terminals before Trump’s new term.

Agence France-Presse contributed reporting

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Explosions roared through the canyons lining the Klamath River earlier this year, signaling a new chapter for the region that hugs the Oregon-California border.

In October, the removal of four hydroelectric dams built on the river was completed—the largest project of its kind in US history.

The blast of the final dam was just the beginning. The work to restore the river, which winds 263 miles from the volcanic Cascade mountain range in Oregon to the Pacific coast in northern California, is now under way. Already it’s been among the most hopeful environmental stories of past years.

“It has been more successful than we ever imagined,” said Ren Brownell, the spokesperson for the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, a nonprofit created to oversee and implement the removal, adding: “There’s an incredible amount of joy.”

The Klamath River was once an ecological powerhouse—the third-largest salmon-producing river in the American west. Its basin covered more than 9.4 million acres and its network of wetlands was the largest in the region. The ecosystem was home to millions of migrating birds. Tribes including the Hoopa, Karuk, Klamath, Modoc, and Yurok thrived in this bountiful and beautiful watershed for thousands of years, with the river providing both sustenance and ritual.

Over the last hundred years, these landscapes have been drastically altered.

After the first dam began operating in 1918—one of four that would eventually be forged in the lower Klamath to provide hydroelectric power to communities nearby—the course of the river was changed. The dams obstructed the migration of salmon and other native species, which help carry nutrients into the systems from the ocean, to cascading effects.

They also held on to huge stores of sediment that would otherwise have flowed downriver, and created shallow reservoirs that quickly heated when the weather warmed. Increased water temperatures in the river allowed toxic algal blooms to thrive.

In recent decades, the climate crisis has turned up the dial, deepening droughts and fueling a rise in catastrophic fire as the region grows ever hotter. The impacts only increased as more water was diverted to support the farming and ranching in the region, and more habitat was altered by mining and logging.

Twenty-eight types of salmon and steelhead trout, seen as indicator species that represent the health of the ecosystems they live in, have been listed as threatened or endangered.

As the Klamath ecosystem deteriorated, there was growing recognition that removing the dams would be a crucial first step in helping the region recover and build resilience in a warming world.

“We essentially performed a quadruple bypass on the river this last year—we knew there would be short-term impacts.”

But, faced with a strong resistance to change in local communities tucked around the reservoirs and a long history of difficult battles over water in the parched landscapes in the west, dam removal seemed all but impossible. The land for the dams was taken from tribes during the throes of colonization and development and more recently supported energy corporations that had shareholders to answer to.

Then, in 2002, disaster struck. Algae flourished in the shallow warming waters that year, exacerbated by the dams and decisions from the US Bureau of Reclamation to divert vital flows to farms, leaving little for fish. The event killed 70,000 salmon and thousands of other species, resulting in one of the worst die-offs ever to occur in the US.

The layers of fish floating belly-up sent an important signal of the horrors that could continue into the future if the dams remained. Forming a coalition, tribes up and down the Klamath launched a fierce campaign to educate the public, inform the shareholders of the companies that owned and operated the dams, and petition their boards. They protested and attended public hearings, and engaged with state and federal officials.

It took decades of advocacy to convince PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, to let go of the aging infrastructure straddling the Oregon-California border. But in the mid-aughts, assured by shifts in public opinion and incentivized by the steep costs to relicense the dams, the company agreed it was time to see them go.

In November 2020, nearly 20 years after the die-off, an agreement was forged between a long list of stakeholders that included tribal and state governments and federal agencies. The Klamath River Renewal Corporation was created to oversee and implement the removal.

The organization had to help bring residents near the reservoirs onboard, navigate dozens of species-management plans, and model how outdoor-recreation enthusiasts could continue to enjoy the river. Ranchers and fishers, environmentalists and farmers, and locals and visitors all had connections to the basin, and were eager to weigh in. “It has been a tremendous rollercoaster,” said Brownell. “Having the river’s health in your hands is an incredible burden to carry.”

Brownell, who grew up along the riverbanks, was standing in the canyon as the blast of the first dam released flows and the river that had been held over the last hundred years found its way back to itself. “I got to watch the water come down through the canyon and reconnect with the river below. I watched the river re-establish itself there forevermore,” she said. It was the most exciting moment of the year.

There were moments of trauma along the way. Over the 100 years the dams were standing, they had held back 15 million cubic yards of sediment. When the dams were removed, the heavy dead organic matter had to run downriver, soaking up oxygen in the water. Extensive modeling had predicted a severe impact on aquatic life, but no one knew how bad it would get or how long it would take for the river to regain its health. Some models predicted the suffocating conditions could linger for up to a month.

“I was braced and prepared but it was still tremendously hard,” said Brownell, recalling how the water, rid of oxygen, looked like oil as it cascaded through its banks.

“It is a new era for us—there are good things to come.”

“You can easily compare a river’s health to an individual’s health,” she said. “Often when someone is sick, they are going to get worse before they get better. We essentially performed a quadruple bypass on the river this last year—we knew there would be short-term impacts.

“The whole time everyone was so excited because it felt like the start of something. I just felt sick,” she said.

Leaf Hillman, a Karuk tribal ceremonial leader who has dedicated decades to seeing this project come to fruition, helped keep hopes high with assurances that these were signs of healing. “For me it was beautiful,” he said, recalling how he felt even when the rushing waters became clouded by silt. “I could envision what it was going to look like—a restored river.”

In the end, the river lacked oxygen for only two 24-hour periods, a far shorter time than scientists had feared.

As 2025 begins, so does the real work. “It is a new era for us—there are good things to come,” Hillman said.

He is looking forward to the work ahead, especially the work to ensure fish can reach “pristine habitat” in tributaries above the Upper Klamath Lake.

With 400 miles of habitat for salmon and other native species restored, and 2,200 acres made available after spending a century submerged, stakeholders are envisioning a future for these lands and those who rely on them. Already, native seeds have been strewn along the banks and in the areas once vibrant with vegetation.

There have already been strong signs of their success.

In late November, threatened coho salmon were seen in the upper Klamath River basin for the first time in more than 60 years, according to the California department of fish and wildlife. Other animals are benefiting, too, including north-western pond turtles, freshwater mussels, beavers and river otters.

Strong winter rains have also helped the rebound. “The river is doing what rivers do—redistributing sediments,” Hillman said, calling the gift of wet weather the “icing on the cake.”

“We have a lot more work to do,” he added, “but it’s a good omen.”

The roughly 2,800 acres of land sacred to the Shasta Indian Nation that had been drowned and buried under a reservoir created by one of the dams has been returned to them. The Kikacéki and Kutarawaxu bands who once called the area home were decimated by colonists in the 1800s, after the lure of gold, mining, logging and ranching drew throngs of people to the region. The small tribe that remained was then pushed from their homes through eminent domain to make way for construction of the dams to begin.

The Guardian was unable to speak to representatives of Shasta Indian Nation on record, but they have recounted the painful history endured by their ancestors and what the next chapter means to them.

“Today is a turning point in the history of the Shasta people,” Janice Crowe, the Shasta Indian Nation chair, told AZCentral. “Now we can return home, return to culture, return to ceremony and begin to weave a new story for the next generation of Shasta, who will get to call our ancestral lands home once again.”

With successes, though, there may still be setbacks. The water is still turbid as the river continues to cleanse itself of sediment. There’s a lot of data to wade through and challenges to overcome. The effects of the climate crisis will continue to unfold.

In the farther parts of the river, Klamath tribal leaders are still waiting to see the salmon that were lost to their homelands more than 100 years ago. Dams still stand in the northern stretches of the river.

But for advocates, the dams’ removal on its own serves as a strong reminder that change is possible.

Toz Soto, a fish biologist and manager of the Karuk Tribe fisheries program, said with a laugh that he was skeptical right up until the moment they blasted through the concrete. But, by convincing the public that removing the dams made sense, “not just as a social justice issue for tribal health but also from an economic standpoint,” he said, the wheels of change started to turn.

As the work continues, Soto is looking upon it with a smile.

“There were moments, and those are behind me,” he said. He’s hopeful for the future, and excited to start the reintroduction of spring-run chinook salmon that otherwise would never have had a chance. Water conditions will continue to improve with time, and they are already far better than they were a year ago.

“It is quite impressive,” he added. “I am so programmed going up there to look at a funky, nasty reservoir. Now it’s just like—wow. It’s a river again.”

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It was made possible through a partnership between Grist and WBEZ, a public radio station serving the Chicago region.

It takes approximately 700,000 megawatt hours of electricity to power Chicago’s more than 400 municipal buildings every year. As of January 1, every single one of them—including 98 fire stations, two international airports, and two of the largest water treatment plants on the planet—is running on renewable energy, thanks largely to Illinois’ newest and largest solar farm.

The move is projected to cut the carbon footprint of the country’s third-largest city by approximately 290,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year—the equivalent of taking 62,000 cars off the road, according to the city.

Local decarbonization efforts like Chicago’s are taking on increasing significance as President-elect Donald Trump promises to reduce federal support for climate action. With the outgoing Biden administration doubling down on an international pledge to get the US to net-zero emissions by 2050, cities, states, and private-sector players across the country will have to pick up the slack.

Chicago is one of several US cities that are taking advantage of their bulk-buying power to spur new carbon-free energy development.  “It’s a plan that gets the city to take action on climate and also leverages our buying power to generate new opportunities for Chicagoans and the state,” said Angela Tovar, Chicago’s chief sustainability officer. “There’s opportunities everywhere.”

Chicago’s switch to renewable energy has been almost a decade in the making. The goal of sourcing the city’s power purely from carbon-free sources was first established by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2017. His successor, Mayor Lori Lightfoot, struck a 2022 deal with Constellation, an electricity supplier, to purchase the city’s energy from the developer Swift Current Energy beginning in 2025. 

Swift Current began construction on the 3,800-acre, 593-megawatt solar farm in central Illinois as part of the same five-year, $422 million agreement. Straddling two counties, the Double Black Diamond Solar project is now the largest solar installation east of the Mississippi River. It can produce enough electricity to power more than 100,000 homes, according to Swift Current’s vice president of origination, Caroline Mann. 

Chicago alone has agreed to purchase approximately half the installation’s total output, which will cover about 70 percent of its municipal buildings’ electricity needs. City officials plan to cover the remaining 30 percent through the purchase of renewable energy credits. 

“That’s really a feature and not a bug of our plan,” said Deputy Chief Sustainability Officer Jared Policicchio. He added that he hopes the city’s demand for 100 percent renewable energy will encourage additional clean energy development locally, albeit on a much smaller scale, which will create new sources of power that the city can then purchase directly, in lieu of credits. “Our goal over the next several years is that we reach a point where we’re not buying renewable energy credits.” 

More than 700 other US cities and towns have signed similar purchasing agreements since 2015, according to a 2022 study from the World Resources Institute. Only one city, Houston, has a larger renewable energy deal than Chicago, according to Matthew Popkin, the cities and communities US program manager at Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit whose research focuses on decarbonization. However, he added, no other contract has added as much new renewable power to the grid as Chicago’s.

“Part of Chicago’s goal was what’s called ‘additionality’: bringing new resources into the market and onto the grid here,” said Popkin. 

Chicago also secured a $400,000 annual commitment from Constellation and Swift Current for clean energy workforce training, including training via Chicago Women in Trades, a nonprofit aiming to increase the number of women in union construction and manufacturing jobs. 

The economic benefits extend past the city’s limits: According to Swift Current, approximately $100 million in new tax revenue is projected to flow into Sangamon County and Morgan County, which are home to the Double Black Diamond Solar site, over the project’s operational life. 

“Cities and other local governments just don’t appreciate their ability to not just support their residents but also shape markets,” said Popkin. “Chicago is demonstrating directly how cities can lead by example, implement ambitious goals amidst evolving state and federal policy changes, and leverage their purchasing power to support a more equitable renewable energy future.”

Alex Dane, the World Resource Institute’s senior manager for clean energy innovation and partnerships in the US energy program, said many cities have set two renewable energy goals: one for municipal operations and a second goal for the community at large. Even though the latter is “a little bit harder to get to, and the timeline is a little bit further out,” said Dane, the community-side goals begin to seem less lofty once a city has decarbonized the assets it directly controls.

Indeed, Chicago’s new milestone is the first step in a broader goal to source the energy for all buildings in the city from renewables by 2035. That would make it the largest city in the country to do so, according to the Sierra Club.

Dane said it will be increasingly important for cities, towns, and states to drive their own efforts to reduce emissions, build greener economies, and meet local climate goals. He said moves like Chicago’s prove that they are capable, no matter what’s on the horizon at the federal level. 

“That is an imperative thing to know, that state, city, county action is a durable pathway, even under the next administration, and [it] needs to happen,” said Dane. “The juice is definitely still worth the squeeze.”

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Joe Biden has banned offshore drilling across an immense area of coastal waters, weeks before Donald Trump takes office pledging to massively increase fossil fuel production.

The US president’s ban encompasses the entire Atlantic coast and eastern Gulf of Mexico, as well as the Pacific coast off California, Oregon, and Washington, and a section of the Bering Sea off Alaska.

A White House statement said the declaration protected more than 625 million acres of waters. Trump said he would “unban it immediately” as soon as he re-enters the White House on January 20, although it is unclear whether he will be able to do this easily.

“As the climate crisis continues to threaten communities across the country and we are transitioning to a clean energy economy, now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren,” Biden said in a statement.

“In balancing the many uses and benefits of America’s ocean, it is clear to me that the relatively minimal fossil fuel potential in the areas I am withdrawing do not justify the environmental, public health, and economic risks that would come from new leasing and drilling,” he added.

Scientists are clear that oil and gas production must be radically cut to avoid disastrous climate impacts. The ban does not have an end date and could be legally—and politically—tricky for Trump to overturn.

“Americans on both sides of the aisle support protecting our oceans from Big Oil giveaways.”

Biden is taking the action under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953, which gives the federal government authority over the exploitation of offshore resources. A total of eight presidents have withdrawn territory from drilling under the act, including Trump himself—who barred oil and gas extraction off the coasts of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.

However, the law does not expressly provide for presidents to unilaterally reverse a drilling ban without going through Congress.

Despite this, Trump vowed to undo Biden’s move, with the president-elect’s spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, calling it “a disgraceful decision” and saying the incoming administration would “drill, baby, drill.”

In an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday, Trump said the rule would be overturned on his first day. “I will unban it immediately,” he said. “I have the right to unban it.”

Environmental groups, on the other hand, welcomed the decision. “This is an epic ocean victory!” said Joseph Gordon, climate and energy director at the conservation nonprofit Oceana. “Our treasured coastal communities are now safeguarded for future generations.”

“Americans on both sides of the aisle support protecting our oceans from Big Oil giveaways,” said Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action. “President Biden’s bold action today underscores that we cannot afford the continued expansion of oil and gas production if we are to meet our climate targets and avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.”

The White House said: “With today’s withdrawals, President Biden has now conserved more than 670 million acres of US lands, waters, and ocean—more than any president in history.”

The move is the latest in a string of last-minute climate policy actions by the Biden administration before Trump’s return to the White House.

In mid-December, the outgoing administration issued an ambitious new climate target under the landmark Paris accord, committing the US to reducing economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions by between 61 percent and 66 percent below 2005 levels by 2035, on the path to achieving net zero by 2050. Trump is expected to ignore this target and remove the US from the Paris climate deal.

Biden is also expected to announce two new national monuments—protected lands designated at the discretion of the president—in California before he leaves office. When last in office, Trump shrank the size of two previously established national monuments in Utah.

The outgoing Biden administration has styled itself as as historic leader in environmental policy, passing sweeping legislation to bolster clean energy output and electric vehicle uptake, although the president has also overseen a record boom in oil and gas production and handed out drilling leases at a higher rate even than Trump.

Climate advocates have urged Biden to declare a climate emergency and reverse the growing export of gas from US-based shipping terminals before Trump’s new term.

Agence France-Presse contributed reporting

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Explosions roared through the canyons lining the Klamath River earlier this year, signaling a new chapter for the region that hugs the Oregon-California border.

In October, the removal of four hydroelectric dams built on the river was completed—the largest project of its kind in US history.

The blast of the final dam was just the beginning. The work to restore the river, which winds 263 miles from the volcanic Cascade mountain range in Oregon to the Pacific coast in northern California, is now under way. Already it’s been among the most hopeful environmental stories of past years.

“It has been more successful than we ever imagined,” said Ren Brownell, the spokesperson for the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, a nonprofit created to oversee and implement the removal, adding: “There’s an incredible amount of joy.”

The Klamath River was once an ecological powerhouse—the third-largest salmon-producing river in the American west. Its basin covered more than 9.4 million acres and its network of wetlands was the largest in the region. The ecosystem was home to millions of migrating birds. Tribes including the Hoopa, Karuk, Klamath, Modoc, and Yurok thrived in this bountiful and beautiful watershed for thousands of years, with the river providing both sustenance and ritual.

Over the last hundred years, these landscapes have been drastically altered.

After the first dam began operating in 1918—one of four that would eventually be forged in the lower Klamath to provide hydroelectric power to communities nearby—the course of the river was changed. The dams obstructed the migration of salmon and other native species, which help carry nutrients into the systems from the ocean, to cascading effects.

They also held on to huge stores of sediment that would otherwise have flowed downriver, and created shallow reservoirs that quickly heated when the weather warmed. Increased water temperatures in the river allowed toxic algal blooms to thrive.

In recent decades, the climate crisis has turned up the dial, deepening droughts and fueling a rise in catastrophic fire as the region grows ever hotter. The impacts only increased as more water was diverted to support the farming and ranching in the region, and more habitat was altered by mining and logging.

Twenty-eight types of salmon and steelhead trout, seen as indicator species that represent the health of the ecosystems they live in, have been listed as threatened or endangered.

As the Klamath ecosystem deteriorated, there was growing recognition that removing the dams would be a crucial first step in helping the region recover and build resilience in a warming world.

“We essentially performed a quadruple bypass on the river this last year—we knew there would be short-term impacts.”

But, faced with a strong resistance to change in local communities tucked around the reservoirs and a long history of difficult battles over water in the parched landscapes in the west, dam removal seemed all but impossible. The land for the dams was taken from tribes during the throes of colonization and development and more recently supported energy corporations that had shareholders to answer to.

Then, in 2002, disaster struck. Algae flourished in the shallow warming waters that year, exacerbated by the dams and decisions from the US Bureau of Reclamation to divert vital flows to farms, leaving little for fish. The event killed 70,000 salmon and thousands of other species, resulting in one of the worst die-offs ever to occur in the US.

The layers of fish floating belly-up sent an important signal of the horrors that could continue into the future if the dams remained. Forming a coalition, tribes up and down the Klamath launched a fierce campaign to educate the public, inform the shareholders of the companies that owned and operated the dams, and petition their boards. They protested and attended public hearings, and engaged with state and federal officials.

It took decades of advocacy to convince PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, to let go of the aging infrastructure straddling the Oregon-California border. But in the mid-aughts, assured by shifts in public opinion and incentivized by the steep costs to relicense the dams, the company agreed it was time to see them go.

In November 2020, nearly 20 years after the die-off, an agreement was forged between a long list of stakeholders that included tribal and state governments and federal agencies. The Klamath River Renewal Corporation was created to oversee and implement the removal.

The organization had to help bring residents near the reservoirs onboard, navigate dozens of species-management plans, and model how outdoor-recreation enthusiasts could continue to enjoy the river. Ranchers and fishers, environmentalists and farmers, and locals and visitors all had connections to the basin, and were eager to weigh in. “It has been a tremendous rollercoaster,” said Brownell. “Having the river’s health in your hands is an incredible burden to carry.”

Brownell, who grew up along the riverbanks, was standing in the canyon as the blast of the first dam released flows and the river that had been held over the last hundred years found its way back to itself. “I got to watch the water come down through the canyon and reconnect with the river below. I watched the river re-establish itself there forevermore,” she said. It was the most exciting moment of the year.

There were moments of trauma along the way. Over the 100 years the dams were standing, they had held back 15 million cubic yards of sediment. When the dams were removed, the heavy dead organic matter had to run downriver, soaking up oxygen in the water. Extensive modeling had predicted a severe impact on aquatic life, but no one knew how bad it would get or how long it would take for the river to regain its health. Some models predicted the suffocating conditions could linger for up to a month.

“I was braced and prepared but it was still tremendously hard,” said Brownell, recalling how the water, rid of oxygen, looked like oil as it cascaded through its banks.

“It is a new era for us—there are good things to come.”

“You can easily compare a river’s health to an individual’s health,” she said. “Often when someone is sick, they are going to get worse before they get better. We essentially performed a quadruple bypass on the river this last year—we knew there would be short-term impacts.

“The whole time everyone was so excited because it felt like the start of something. I just felt sick,” she said.

Leaf Hillman, a Karuk tribal ceremonial leader who has dedicated decades to seeing this project come to fruition, helped keep hopes high with assurances that these were signs of healing. “For me it was beautiful,” he said, recalling how he felt even when the rushing waters became clouded by silt. “I could envision what it was going to look like—a restored river.”

In the end, the river lacked oxygen for only two 24-hour periods, a far shorter time than scientists had feared.

As 2025 begins, so does the real work. “It is a new era for us—there are good things to come,” Hillman said.

He is looking forward to the work ahead, especially the work to ensure fish can reach “pristine habitat” in tributaries above the Upper Klamath Lake.

With 400 miles of habitat for salmon and other native species restored, and 2,200 acres made available after spending a century submerged, stakeholders are envisioning a future for these lands and those who rely on them. Already, native seeds have been strewn along the banks and in the areas once vibrant with vegetation.

There have already been strong signs of their success.

In late November, threatened coho salmon were seen in the upper Klamath River basin for the first time in more than 60 years, according to the California department of fish and wildlife. Other animals are benefiting, too, including north-western pond turtles, freshwater mussels, beavers and river otters.

Strong winter rains have also helped the rebound. “The river is doing what rivers do—redistributing sediments,” Hillman said, calling the gift of wet weather the “icing on the cake.”

“We have a lot more work to do,” he added, “but it’s a good omen.”

The roughly 2,800 acres of land sacred to the Shasta Indian Nation that had been drowned and buried under a reservoir created by one of the dams has been returned to them. The Kikacéki and Kutarawaxu bands who once called the area home were decimated by colonists in the 1800s, after the lure of gold, mining, logging and ranching drew throngs of people to the region. The small tribe that remained was then pushed from their homes through eminent domain to make way for construction of the dams to begin.

The Guardian was unable to speak to representatives of Shasta Indian Nation on record, but they have recounted the painful history endured by their ancestors and what the next chapter means to them.

“Today is a turning point in the history of the Shasta people,” Janice Crowe, the Shasta Indian Nation chair, told AZCentral. “Now we can return home, return to culture, return to ceremony and begin to weave a new story for the next generation of Shasta, who will get to call our ancestral lands home once again.”

With successes, though, there may still be setbacks. The water is still turbid as the river continues to cleanse itself of sediment. There’s a lot of data to wade through and challenges to overcome. The effects of the climate crisis will continue to unfold.

In the farther parts of the river, Klamath tribal leaders are still waiting to see the salmon that were lost to their homelands more than 100 years ago. Dams still stand in the northern stretches of the river.

But for advocates, the dams’ removal on its own serves as a strong reminder that change is possible.

Toz Soto, a fish biologist and manager of the Karuk Tribe fisheries program, said with a laugh that he was skeptical right up until the moment they blasted through the concrete. But, by convincing the public that removing the dams made sense, “not just as a social justice issue for tribal health but also from an economic standpoint,” he said, the wheels of change started to turn.

As the work continues, Soto is looking upon it with a smile.

“There were moments, and those are behind me,” he said. He’s hopeful for the future, and excited to start the reintroduction of spring-run chinook salmon that otherwise would never have had a chance. Water conditions will continue to improve with time, and they are already far better than they were a year ago.

“It is quite impressive,” he added. “I am so programmed going up there to look at a funky, nasty reservoir. Now it’s just like—wow. It’s a river again.”