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.

As wildfires continue to burn all around Los Angeles, influencers have emerged to promote sales of their own, highly specific solutions to the crisis. With smoke filling the air of many neighborhoods, the wellness machine has sprung into action, promoting tinctures, detox products, essential oils, parasite cleanses, and even raw milk as “treatments” for its effects.

The fires began in earnest on Tuesday, January 7. By that Thursday, Mallory DeMille, a correspondent for the Conspirituality podcast, says she noted an “immediate influx” of people promoting products on Instagram and TikTok by trying to tie them to the fires. The situation, DeMille says, is “heartbreaking and really irresponsible.”

“How do you know you can trust them… if they’re financially driven to sell products and services?”

In a recent Instagram video, DeMille outlined the ways that wellness influencers are, as she put it, “trying to capitalize” on the wildfires and their potential negative health effects. Many focus on the impact of wildfire smoke on people’s lungs, and suggest potential “treatments,” including supplements, powders, and essential oils, alongside often-cited “detox” tools like drinking apple cider vinegar or taking activated charcoal.

While activated charcoal is used in emergency settings to mitigate swallowed poisons, there is no evidence it can “detox” lungs or any other body part. It can also decrease the effectiveness of medication. In general, bodily organs do not need to be “detoxed” or “supported” with supplements, some of which can cause additional harm.

One particularly impassioned detox influencer, Ginger DeClue—who offers online detoxing seminars and describes herself as a “master healer”—suggested on Instagram that Los Angeles deserved its fate. “Everything that’s burning needs to burn,” she said in a video post that pushed the notion the city is suffused with toxic mold.

“Los Angeles has been a den of evil, SA [sexual assault] and child abuse, moldy overpriced apartments and buildings, with no HVAC maintenance. crappy store fronts and hollyWEIRD since 1920,” she wrote. “God don’t like ugly in the span of a night he promises to destroy evil: but RESTORE the RIGHTEOUS.”

Some of the advice promoted by influencers and doctors who use social media have included commonsense, low-risk strategies that public health departments also recommend: using an air purifier at home, a saline nasal spray to help with irritation and congestion, and wearing high-quality masks outdoors.

But many are promoting products they have financial incentives to recommend, DeMille says, offering discount codes for products they already sold before the fires. “How do you know you can trust them with your health and wellness,” she asks, “if they’re financially driven to sell products and services?”

What’s happening with the wildfires is similar to the bogus cures and “detoxes” that have been offered throughout the Covid pandemic. Essential oils have been promoted as “immune support” for people trying to prevent Covid, along with a huge body of evidence-less products have sprung up for people who want to “detox” from the effects of Covid vaccines or being near people who have been vaccinated. (Vaccine detox was promoted by some in the alt-wellness world even before Covid.) 

“Wellness influencers are always leveraging tragedies,” DeMille points out, “but typically they’re personal tragedies”—say, telling sick people to try their products while undergoing cancer treatments or chronic illness.

“Leveraging a community tragedy isn’t that a long of a walk,” she adds.

As climate disasters continue to happen more frequently—and the world faces a new potential pandemic in the form of bird flu—business looks extremely good for wellness influencers adept at turning disease and disasters into marketing hooks.

On July 10, 2020, Terry Tamminen wrote a letter to the board chair of Waterkeeper Alliance, the clean-water group founded and led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to say that he wanted out.

Tamminen, a veteran, highly-regarded environmentalist and co-founder and longtime board member of the organization, had become concerned about the outfit’s finances—so worried that he was tendering his resignation. At issue was at least $67 million that Kennedy’s group had received and passed along over the previous six years—an eye-popping amount for a non-profit that prior to this influx of money had annual revenues of about $4 million, according to its tax filings. Tamminen noted in his letter that he had repeatedly asked Kennedy and other top WKA officials for an explanation regarding these funds—the source of the money and its ultimate use—and had received no satisfying response. He wrote that either there was “no proper documentation” covering this large flow of funds or such documentation was being “withheld” by Kennedy and the staff.

Tamminen had come across a situation that had raised questions among staff at WKA and people within the group’s orbit about the organization and Kennedy’s handling of tens of millions of dollars. His letter was prompted by a legal complaint that claimed WKA had “funneled millions of dollars to the Bahamas” to assist Louis Bacon, a hedge-fund billionaire, in his purported effort to “destroy and damage” Peter Nygård, a Canadian fashion mogul, who owned an estate next to Bacon’s on the island nation. The complaint, filed in a lawsuit brought by Nygård against Bacon, alleged that WKA had engaged in “illegal and/or improper activities” to benefit Bacon, a major financial backer of WKA. It also claimed Kennedy had “carried out illegal and improper activities to further [Bacon’s] scheme to damage [Nygård’s] business and property at the direction of, under the supervision of, at the request of or on behalf of [Bacon].”

“Where did that money go? The whole thing stunk. It was obvious they were hiding something. They have never provided good answers.”

Tamminen’s letter suggested that he was concerned about possible misconduct at Waterkeeper Alliance, a network of hundreds of organizations across the globe that protect bodies of water, and that he worried that Kennedy was not being straightforward about the matter. The Nygård complaint was ultimately dismissed. But with Kennedy, an anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist, tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to run the massive Department of Health and Human Services, this episode—involving millions of dollars—could shed light on his managerial experience and competence.

A Mother Jones investigation has found that charities associated with Bacon, the co-founder and CEO of Moore Capital Management, did contribute at least $63 million to WKA and that these funds were subsequently sent by WKA to Save the Bays, a small environmental group that Bacon, Kennedy, and others had started in the Bahamas and that filed multiple environmental suits against Nygård.

This money flow occurred at the same time Bacon was involved in a bitter feud with Nygård. The two owned adjacent estates in Lyford Cay, a posh community for the super-rich in the Bahamas, and a property dispute—they shared a driveway—had evolved into wild combat costing each millions of dollars. And Save the Bays and its lawyer had become involved in Bacon’s battle with Nygård.

Some WKA staff and associates considered these large transfers of funds to Save the Bays unusual and wondered how this modest outfit was absorbing and spending tens of millions of dollars. For them, it was a sign of Kennedy’s autocratic management of WKA. “You couldn’t really ask questions about this,” a former staffer says. “There was a cult of Bobby.”

Through 2023, the amount of money routed through Kennedy’s organization to finance what was described in its tax records as a program in the Caribbean totaled $79 million. A WKA trustee replying on behalf of the group to queries from Mother Jones maintains this money financed environmental-related litigation mounted by Save the Bays in the Bahamas. Former WKA staff say this is a tremendously high figure for such cases and assert there was no sufficient public documentation that this funding was appropriately handled. “Where did that money go?” asks Bob Shavelson, a former founding WKA board member. “The whole thing stunk. It was obvious they were hiding something. They have never provided good answers.”

Tamminen’s queries about WKA’s finances in 2020 were triggered by a news report about the years-long feud between Bacon and Nygård. Their titanic battle had come to involve multiple lawsuits in varying jurisdictions, private investigators, gang members, phony websites, an allegation of a murder plot targeting Bacon, charges of harassment, political intrigue, secret recordings, and accusations of sexual assault against Nygård.

Eventually, Nygård ended up being convicted in Canada last year of sexual assault and sentenced to 11 years in prison, while still facing trials for sex crimes and other charges in Montreal, Winnipeg, and New York. And Bacon won a defamation case against Nygård and a $203 million judgment, but in November that award was tossed out.

Tamminen had spotted a story about the complaint Nygård had filed on April 30, 2020, in a New York federal court alleging that Bacon and others had engaged in a pattern of illegal conduct for years to defame him and destroy his fashion brand. Nygård listed a host of people and organizations supposedly involved or knowledgable of this alleged scheme, including Waterkeeper Alliance, Kennedy, and Fred Smith, a Bahamian lawyer and co-founder and board member of Save the Bays, the group that Kennedy and Bacon had helped to start. (Smith was also a member of Waterkeeper Alliance.) Launched in 2013, Save the Bays had sued Nygård for dredging and other activity that, the group contended, had despoiled Clifton Bay, which Nygård’s gaudy and palatial estate overlooked.

There is “no way you can spend $79 million on this type of litigation. You can buy a whole ecosystem for that amount of money… Without details, there’s no way you can explain these numbers.”

Nygård’s complaint stated that Save the Bays had relied “heavily on funding and support from Waterkeeper Alliance.” The filing also cited a 2010 Denver Post story in which Kennedy had praised Bacon, noting he was the “single largest supporter” of the Waterkeeper Alliance. A lawyer who has worked with WKA describes Bacon as “one of Bobby’s rich-guy friends.”

After reading about this complaint, Tamminen wondered about WKA and Kennedy’s connection to the Nygård-Bacon face-off. According to his resignation letter, on July 2, 2020, Tamminen emailed Mary Beth Postman, the deputy director of WKA, and asked, “Did we run any litigation funding for this case through WKA? Some rumors flying around, but I don’t recall anything like that on our 990s.” He was referring to the annual tax return that nonprofits must file. WKA’s public 990s indicated that tens of millions of dollars had been sent to the Caribbean without detailing what they financed. A onetime WKA associate says, “This looked totally smelly.”

According to Tamminen’s resignation letter, he soon spoke with Kennedy and asked for records related to this funding, and Kennedy, was “unable to provide the documents (or a verbal explanation).”

Afterward Postman informed Tamminen that the WKA had a “fiscal sponsorship agreement” to support work in the Bahamas. This meant WKA was receiving, as a pass-through, money for the Bahamian group. Acting as a pass-through is a common practice for nonprofits, but they can only do this to support charitable activity, usually a project in sync with their own missions. They can charge a percentage of the funds for this service, often in the 7-to-14-percent range, and, according to the WKA trustee who replied to queries from Mother Jones, the organization did receive a cut. The trustee would not say how much.

Tamminen pressed Marc Yaggi, the CEO of WKA, for documentation and details on the source of the millions sent to the Bahamas, the recipients of those funds, and how this money was spent. “We can’t be funneling millions of dollars (3X our own budget as shown on 990s) to [nongovernmental organizations] without full transparency about how the money is being spent and an unambiguous contract with those recipients about what is allowable and, specifically, what is not,” he wrote in his resignation letter.

Finally, according to the letter, Tamminen was sent a spreadsheet from WKA trustee William Wachtel indicating that the majority of the more than $67 million in question went to the Coalition to Protect Clifton Bay, an earlier name for Save the Bays, and “an invoice for reimbursement by WKA from lawyers involved in the [Nygård-Bacon] litigation…in the amount of $1,752,193” for a three-month period in 2020.

Tamminen deemed this reply insufficient. At this point, he threw up his hands and decided to quit, noting in his letter, “I have a fiduciary responsibility to understand the organization’s finances” and stating that because Kennedy and his staff had not provided adequate documentation he could not perform this basic task.

Tamminen declined to comment.

In response to a long list of questions sent to Kennedy by Mother Jones about WKA forwarding money to the Bahamas, RFK Jr. texted, “The coverage on me from mother John’s [sic] has been consistently hostile and inaccurate. MJ was once a counter culture journal that spoke truth to power It now seems to be yet another propaganda bullhorn for the DS Regime.” (Might “DS Regime” refer to a Deep State Regime?) Asked if this text was his full response to the list of queries, Kennedy did not reply.

Tamminen’s letters, Shavelson says, was a “damning piece of evidence.” His resignation drew attention within WKA and its large network of local Waterkeeper groups to a curious question: Why had Kennedy’s organization passed along so much money to the Bahamas? “We didn’t really know who was giving us this money,” a former staffer says.

The WKA’s 990s show that through 2023, the total amount that passed through what the group called its Central America/Caribbean program was $79 million. On the 990s available to the public, the name of the recipient of those funds were redacted. (This is unusual; grantees tend to be identified.) A former WKA staffer says that the recipient listed on the 990s was the law firm of Fred Smith, the Bahamian lawyer who, with Kennedy and Bacon, helped organize Save the Bays and who was associated with Bacon’s wide-ranging fight against Nygård. That battle included a lawsuit charging Nygård with sex crimes.

WKA staff and associates of the Waterkeeper Alliance were suspicious of this funding arrangement. The amount of money going to Save the Bays was “off-kilter,” a former WKA staffer says. “It was disproportionate to the size of the program. They had an office that was maybe 400-square-feet with one full-time staffer and some part-timers. We did not know the source of the money going down there.”

Save the Bays has run a radio show and a youth education program. Its website is no longer operational, and the phone number listed on its Facebook page is out of service. “I’ve never heard of that amount of money being spent on that type of litigation,” Shavelson says.

“This money was orders of magnitude greater than anything in my experience in my 30 years of practice as an environmental lawyer,” says Daniel Cooper, the founding partner of Sycamore Law, a firm that specializes in filing environmental enforcement cases for grassroots nonprofits. (He was not involved in the Save the Bays litigation.)

The former WKA staffer adds that “there was a very closed loop on that money, with Bobby involved.” Some staffers at the time questioned whether some of the funds going to the Bahamas were being used for the ongoing conflict between Bacon and Nygård beyond the environmental lawsuits Save the Bays had filed regarding Nygård.

A key issue was the source of the funding. A review conducted by Mother Jones of charitable organizations associated with Bacon—Moore Charitable Foundation, Belvedere Charitable Foundation, and Bessemer Trust—shows that these entities donated a hefty amount, nearly $63 million, to the Waterkeeper Alliance from 2014 through 2023. (Unlike the Moore and Belvedere foundations, the Bessemer Trust, a multifamily office that oversees more than $200 billion for endowments, families, and foundations, is not controlled by Bacon. But Bacon’s contributions to its Bessemer Giving Fund closely matched the contributions it sent to WKA.)

The WKA trustee confirms that the Bacon donations to WKA were the source of the funds that Kennedy’s outfit passed to Save the Bays. If so, that means Bacon was sending money to WKA—a group for whom he was a major supporter—that Kennedy’s organization, after taking a cut, was forwarding to a group that Bacon, Kennedy, Smith and others had formed, which subsequently filed lawsuits against Bacon’s archnemesis.

For years prior to Tamminen enquiring about WKA’s activity in the Bahamas, Save the Bays had been a controversial organization on the island nation and had prompted questions about its funding and relationship to Bacon. During a 2016 television interview, Fred Smith refused to acknowledge that Bacon was a major financial supporter of Save the Bays. “It is often used as some measure of criticism against us,” he said. When the host suggested that Bacon had used Save the Bays “to get at Peter Nygård…to discredit Peter Nygård,” Smith replied, “Louis Bacon doesn’t need Save the Bays to do what you are suggesting.” In this interview, Smith said, “I have never been paid by Save the Bays… I’m a director of Save the Bays.” (About that time, Minister of Education Jerome Fitzgerald claimed Save the Bays, through its environmental lawsuits, was trying to destabilize and “overthrow” the Progressive Liberal Party government—a charge Smith denied in this interview. Nygård, a PLP supporter, once bragged he had donated $5 million to party.)

After Tamminen’s resignation caused a fuss for WKA, the law firm run by WKA trustee William Wachtel conducted a review of the money sent to the Bahamas and produced a private report. Wachtel was part of this review, according to the trustee who spoke to Mother Jones. In a one-page statement, the WKA board of directors called this inquiry an “independent assessment.” It said that the review found “no red flags” and concluded there was “no clear evidence of misuse of funds” and “no clear evidence of donors improperly gaining benefits from donations”—presumably a reference to Bacon. The statement did not mention Bacon, Save the Bays, or the Bahamas.

Former WKA associates point out that this was not an independent investigation, given that it was conducted by a trustee. “This was a bogus audit,” Shavelson says. A onetime WKA associate says, “To have a trustee conduct an investigation that then says ‘nothing to see here’ doesn’t pass the smell test.”

The inquiry’s final report was shared with an audit committee of the WKA board, not the full board.

The WKA trustee says this inquiry showed that the $79 million was mostly spent on litigation conducted by Smith and his law firm for Save the Bays and that the inquiry reviewed billing documents and invoices from Smith and determined they were accurate and covered legitimate expenses. “We saw nothing spent for anything other than the litigation that went on,” the trustee says. A former board member, who has not seen the review, says that they learned the litigation billing included expenses for lavish hotel suites, limousines, and security services.

Save the Bays and Smith did indeed engage in environmental-related litigation. In 2015, the group launched a legal action regarding pollution attributed to a power plant. It successfully sued Nygård for illegally dredging Clifton Bay to expand his property, and that case led to the Supreme Court of the Bahamas seizing his property in 2018. It also filed a legal action claiming Nygård had engaged in unauthorized construction. In 2021, Save the Bays and Waterkeeper Bahamas filed a case to compel judicial review of foreign oil development in the Bahamas.

But former WKA associates say the nearly $79 million price tag for Save the Bays litigation seems exceedingly high. “The cost of an illegal dredging case is in the tens of thousands of dollars,” a former WKA staffer says. Shavelson asks, “Where’s all this litigation? There would have to be a mountain of stuff for those billables. I’ve never heard of that amount of money being spent on that type of litigation.” Another former WKA associate says that the typical cases that Waterkeeper Alliance members bring range for $10,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars and that there is “no way you can spend $79 million on this type of litigation. You can buy a whole ecosystem for that amount of money.” This source adds, “Without details, there’s no way you can explain these numbers.”

While Smith was filing environmental cases for Save the Bays, he was a key ally of Bacon in the billionaire’s fierce fight with Nygård. According to a lengthy New York Times account of the Bacon-Nygård clash, Smith worked with private investigators and found 15 Bahamian women to participate in a sex crimes lawsuit against Nygård. He also encouraged women who claimed to be Nygård victims to go to the Bahamian police. The newspaper noted that Smith created a nonprofit called Sanctuary, which he and Bacon funded, and that it paid Bahamian lawyers and investigators involved in putting together the sex crimes lawsuit against Nygård. Smith and the private investigators, according to the newspaper, compensated at least two witnesses who located alleged victims.

Nygård reportedly spent $15 million on a smear campaign against Bacon, which included television and radio ads, doctored videos, and outlandish accusations, and Bacon said in court that he expended $53 million for investigators and lawyers in his legal fight with Nygård.

Mother Jones sent lengthy lists of questions to Marc Yaggi and Mary Beth Postman of WKA, Fred Smith, Save the Bays, Louis Bacon (through his Moore Charitable Foundation), and the Trump transition team. It asked WKA if it would release unredacted versions of its 990s. It asked if WKA could provide an accounting of the litigation the tens of millions of dollars supposedly financed. It asked whether Tamminen’s account—including his claim that Kennedy would not provide him information to confirm the money sent to the Bahamas was handled appropriately—was accurate. None of them, except Katie Miller, a Trump transition staffer, replied. Miller emailed, “As a matter of policy, I don’t respond to left wind [sic] activists masquerading as journalists.” The Bessemer Trust did not respond to a request to comment.

Several months after Tamminen prompted a stir about the Bahamas money, Kennedy resigned as WKA president. The WKA trustee says the Bahamas project was not a factor in Kennedy’s resignation. By that point, Kennedy had become a leading promoter of Covid disinformation, and this had caused concern within WKA and among the group’s funders and supporters.

When WKA in November 2020 announced Kennedy’s resignation as president, he said, “Waterkeeper is my life’s work and will always be my proudest achievement…. I’m immensely proud of what we created.” He added, “My dreams overflow with the thousands of miles of magnificent waterways that I’ve been privileged to paddle or travel with many of you over 40 years; the mangroves, the muskies, the Spanish moss, the schooling salmon, the shrimp, crayfish, blue crab, and yellow perch, the calving glaciers and all that flowing water from the Himalayas to the Tetons, from the Andes to the Arctic, from Bimini to Homer, from Bhutan to the Jordan, and from Lake Ontario to the Futaleufú.” He did not mention the Bahamas. Upon his departure, the board named him president emeritus.

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.”

Los Angeles has been hit with its worst-ever wildfires, which continue to blaze, already claiming at least ten lives and devastating air quality—just as a spate of mask bans have been enacted or proposed around the country, including in LA itself.

Since authorities began issuing evacuation orders across the area, Joaquín Beltrán, a community organizer and software engineer, has been visiting centers to hand out masks. Beltrán still takes Covid-19 seriously, as do organizers with Mask Bloc LA, a mutual aid group that Beltrán linked up with, which has also been visiting evacuation shelters to hand out N95 and KN95 masks.

Personally handed out well over 1,000 respirators here at the Pasadena Convention Center to every person awake. @PasadenaGov @lapublichealth @RedCross, the people want to be protected from hazardous wildfire smoke. Please set up a system and supply respirators immediately. pic.twitter.com/C6OFzytjpr

— Joaquín Beltrán Free Palestine (@joaquinlife) January 8, 2025

For people involved in Covid mask organizing, handing out masks serves two purposes: protection from harmful wildfire smog and against infectious diseases. I spoke to Beltrán about his experience working to keep his community safe, even as this dual-purpose public health tool has become an increasingly villainized symbol of the culture wars.

What led you to get involved in mask organizing?

In March of 2020, I realized that the government was not coming to save us, that we needed to save ourselves. I started a fundraiser right away and distributed respirators, KN95s, to the county hospitals here. I [looked at] the numbers in Italy, and I saw the same growth rate here in the United States, and knew it was going to be disastrous for all our communities. We’re all connected in this. By making sure that other people are safe, we are safer as well.

Why was it such a priority to bring masks to evacuation centers?

Earlier this week, they were evacuating seniors from a care facility, with the fire raging, and it just broke my heart. I have masks. I’m like, ‘Okay, I need to do something.” The masks I had, I took them to All Saints Church [in Pasadena].

I was also aware that the Pasadena Convention Center was receiving people, so I went there. I had given out all the masks I had already. So I’m asking them, “Do you guys have respirators?” The Red Cross didn’t. The city didn’t. I asked the police, they didn’t have any. It was past eleven, so places like Home Depot that would sell them were closed. I made a video saying that we needed respirators to pass out to people. A lot of people are sending messages, and one of them was from Mask Bloc LA; they had enough where I didn’t have to go all over the city to pick up the other ones too, well over a thousand masks.

Masks protect you from any [airborne] disease, and there’s flu that’s increasing as well. To add to that, the toxic dangers of particulate matter from the wildfire smoke are incredibly harmful to everybody, but in particular, everyone who’s already at high risk [for respiratory complications].

What have been some of the reactions you’ve faced when handing out masks?

They were so grateful. A lot of the seniors didn’t know how to put them on, so I had to. It’s a devastating event. The government did not have the supplies, and instead, it was provided and distributed just by community members. It shows how incredible our community members are, and how quickly they’ll step up to help our neighbors.

Do you hope that these wildfires can convince people that a mask ban in Los Angeles, which Mayor Karen Bass has raised as a possibility, would be a bad idea?

I think we’re in the state of emergency we’re in right now because our government is focused on ridiculous ideas like mask bans to target people who are protesting against the genocide of the people of Palestine. This is a wake-up call that they need to not be focused on things that harm members of the community, like mask bans, and instead on resources that protect us, like having more firefighters and more water [supply] to fight fires, and providing masks.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. To seek masks from Mask Block LA, find them on X .

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.”

Los Angeles has been hit with its worst-ever wildfires, which continue to blaze, already claiming at least ten lives and devastating air quality—just as a spate of mask bans have been enacted or proposed around the country, including in LA itself.

Since authorities began issuing evacuation orders across the area, Joaquín Beltrán, a community organizer and software engineer, has been visiting centers to hand out masks. Beltrán still takes Covid-19 seriously, as do organizers with Mask Bloc LA, a mutual aid group that Beltrán linked up with, which has also been visiting evacuation shelters to hand out N95 and KN95 masks.

Personally handed out well over 1,000 respirators here at the Pasadena Convention Center to every person awake. @PasadenaGov @lapublichealth @RedCross, the people want to be protected from hazardous wildfire smoke. Please set up a system and supply respirators immediately. pic.twitter.com/C6OFzytjpr

— Joaquín Beltrán Free Palestine (@joaquinlife) January 8, 2025

For people involved in Covid mask organizing, handing out masks serves two purposes: protection from harmful wildfire smog and against infectious diseases. I spoke to Beltrán about his experience working to keep his community safe, even as this dual-purpose public health tool has become an increasingly villainized symbol of the culture wars.

What led you to get involved in mask organizing?

In March of 2020, I realized that the government was not coming to save us, that we needed to save ourselves. I started a fundraiser right away and distributed respirators, KN95s, to the county hospitals here. I [looked at] the numbers in Italy, and I saw the same growth rate here in the United States, and knew it was going to be disastrous for all our communities. We’re all connected in this. By making sure that other people are safe, we are safer as well.

Why was it such a priority to bring masks to evacuation centers?

Earlier this week, they were evacuating seniors from a care facility, with the fire raging, and it just broke my heart. I have masks. I’m like, ‘Okay, I need to do something.” The masks I had, I took them to All Saints Church [in Pasadena].

I was also aware that the Pasadena Convention Center was receiving people, so I went there. I had given out all the masks I had already. So I’m asking them, “Do you guys have respirators?” The Red Cross didn’t. The city didn’t. I asked the police, they didn’t have any. It was past eleven, so places like Home Depot that would sell them were closed. I made a video saying that we needed respirators to pass out to people. A lot of people are sending messages, and one of them was from Mask Bloc LA; they had enough where I didn’t have to go all over the city to pick up the other ones too, well over a thousand masks.

Masks protect you from any [airborne] disease, and there’s flu that’s increasing as well. To add to that, the toxic dangers of particulate matter from the wildfire smoke are incredibly harmful to everybody, but in particular, everyone who’s already at high risk [for respiratory complications].

What have been some of the reactions you’ve faced when handing out masks?

They were so grateful. A lot of the seniors didn’t know how to put them on, so I had to. It’s a devastating event. The government did not have the supplies, and instead, it was provided and distributed just by community members. It shows how incredible our community members are, and how quickly they’ll step up to help our neighbors.

Do you hope that these wildfires can convince people that a mask ban in Los Angeles, which Mayor Karen Bass has raised as a possibility, would be a bad idea?

I think we’re in the state of emergency we’re in right now because our government is focused on ridiculous ideas like mask bans to target people who are protesting against the genocide of the people of Palestine. This is a wake-up call that they need to not be focused on things that harm members of the community, like mask bans, and instead on resources that protect us, like having more firefighters and more water [supply] to fight fires, and providing masks.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. To seek masks from Mask Block LA, find them on X .

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.

Luchia Brown used to bomb around Denver in her Subaru. She had places to be. Brown, 57, works part time helping to run her husband’s engineering firm while managing a rental apartment above their garage and an Airbnb out of a section of the couple’s three-story brick house. She volunteers for nonprofits, sometimes offering input to city committees, often on transportation policy. “I’m a professional good troublemaker,” she jokes when we meet in her sun-soaked backyard one fine spring day.

She’s also an environmentally conscious type who likes the idea of driving less. Brown bought a regular bike years ago, but mainly used it just for neighborhood jaunts. “I’m not uber-fit,” she says. “I’m not a slug, but I’m not one of the warriors in Lycra, and I don’t really want to arrive in a sweat.”

Then, a couple of years ago, she heard Denver was offering $400 vouchers to help residents purchase an e-bike—or up to $900 toward a hefty “cargo” model that can haul heavier loads, including children. She’d considered an e-bike, but the city’s offer provided “an extra kick in the derriere to make me do it.”

She opens her garage door to show off her purchase: a bright blue Pedego Boomerang. It’s a pricey model—$2,600 after the voucher—but “it changed my life!” she says. Nowadays, Brown thinks nothing of zipping halfway across town, her long dark-gray hair flying out behind her helmet. Hills do not faze her. Parking is hassle-free. And she can carry groceries in a crate strapped to the rear rack. She’d just ridden 4 miles to a doctor’s appointment for a checkup on a recent hip replacement. She rides so often—and at such speeds—that her husband bought his own e-bike to keep up: “I’m like, ‘Look, when you’re riding with me, it’s not about exercise. It’s about getting somewhere.’”

She ended up gifting the Subaru to her son, who works for SpaceX in Texas. The only car left is her husband’s work truck, which she uses sparingly. She prefers the weirdly intoxicating delight of navigating on human-and-battery power: “It’s joy.”

Many Denverites would agree. Over the two years the voucher program—pioneering in scale and scope—has been in effect, more than 9,000 people have bought subsidized e-bikes. Of those, more than one-third were “income qualified” (making less than $86,900 a year) and thus eligible for a more generous subsidy. People making less than $52,140 got the most: $1,200 to $1,400. The goal is to get people out of their cars, which city planners hope will deliver a bouquet of good things: less traffic, less pollution, healthier citizens.

Research commissioned by the city in 2022 found that voucher recipients rode 26 miles a week on average, and many were using their e-bikes year-round. If even half of those miles are miles not driven, it means—conservatively, based on total e-bikes redeemed to date—the program will have eliminated more than 6.1 million automobile miles a year. That’s the equivalent of taking up to 478 gas-powered vehicles off the road, which would reduce annual CO2 emissions by nearly 190,000 metric tons.

Subsidizing electric vehicles isn’t a new concept, at least when those vehicles are cars. President Barack Obama’s 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act offered up to $7,500 to anyone who bought an electric car or light truck, capped at 200,000 per automaker. In 2022, President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act created new and similar rebates without the caps. The US government has spent more than $2 billion to date subsidizing EV purchases, with some states and cities kicking in more. Weaning transportation off fossil fuels is crucial to decarbonizing the economy, and EVs on average have much lower life-cycle CO2 emissions than comparable gas vehicles—as little as 20 percent, by some estimates. In states like California, where more than 54 percent of the electricity is generated by renewables and other non–fossil fuel sources, the benefits are even more remarkable.

Now, politicians around the country have begun to realize that e-bikes could be even more transformative than EVs. At least 30 states and dozens of cities—from Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Raleigh, North Carolina—have proposed or launched subsidy programs. It’s much cheaper than subsidizing electric cars, and though e-bikes can’t do everything cars can, they do, as Brown discovered, greatly expand the boundaries within which people work, shop, and play without driving. Emissions plummet: An analysis by the nonprofit Walk Bike Berkeley suggests that a typical commuter e-bike with pedal assist emits 21 times less CO2 per mile than a typical electric car (based on California’s power mix) and 141 times less than a gas-powered car. And e-bikes are far less resource- and energy-intensive to manufacture and distribute.

Cities also are coming to see e-bikes as a potential lifeline for their low-income communities, a healthy alternative to often unreliable public transit for families who can’t afford a car. And that electric boost gives some people who would never have considered bike commuting an incentive to try, thus helping facilitate a shift from car dependency to a more bikeable, walkable, livable culture.

In short, if policymakers truly want to disrupt transportation—and reimagine cities—e-bikes might well be their secret weapon.

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I’m an avid urban cyclist who rides long distances for fun, but I don’t ride an electric. So when I landed in Denver in April, I rented a Pedego e-bike to see how battery power would affect my own experience of getting around a city.

Reader: It was delightful. Denver is flat-ish, but it’s got brisk winds and deceptively long slopes as you go crosstown. There are occasional gut-busting hills, too, including one leading up to Sunnyside, the neighborhood where I was staying. Riding a regular bike would have been doable for an experienced cyclist like me, but the battery assist made longer schleps a breeze: I rode 65 miles one day while visiting four far-flung neighborhoods. On roads without traffic, I could cruise along at a speedy 18 miles an hour. The Cherry Creek bike trail, which bisects Denver in a southeast slash, was piercingly gorgeous as I pedaled past frothing waterfalls, families of ducks, and the occasional tent pitched next to striking pop art on the creekside walls. My Apple watch clocked a decent workout, but it was never difficult. 

I did a lunch ride another day with Mike Salisbury, then the city’s transportation energy lead overseeing the voucher program. Tall and lanky, with a thick mop of straight brown hair, Salisbury wears a slim North Face fleece and sports a beige REI e-bike dusted with dried mud. He’s a lifelong cyclist, but the e-bike, which he’d purchased about two years earlier, has become his go-to ride. “I play tennis on Fridays, and it’s like 6 miles away,” he says, and he always used to drive. “It would never, ever have crossed my mind to do it on my acoustic bike.” 

E-bikes technically date back to 1895, when the US inventor Ogden Bolton Jr. slapped an electric motor on his rear wheel. But for more than a century, they were niche novelties. The batteries of yore were brutally heavy, with a range of barely 10 miles. It wasn’t until the lithium-ion battery, relatively lightweight and energy-dense, began plunging in price 30 years ago that e-bikes grew lighter and cheaper. Some models now boast a range of more than 75 miles per charge, even when using significant power assist.

All of this piqued Denver’s interest. In 2020, the city had passed a ballot measure that raised, through sales taxes, $40 million a year for environmental projects. A task force was set up to figure out how to spend it. Recreational cycling has long been a pastime in outdoorsy Colorado, and bike commuting boomed on account of the pandemic, when Covid left people skittish about ridesharing and public transit. E-bikes, the task force decided, would be a powerful way to encourage low-emissions mobility. “We were thinking, ‘What is going to reduce VMT?’”—vehicle miles traveled—Salisbury recalls. His team looked at e-bike programs in British Columbia and Austin, Texas, asked dealers for advice, and eventually settled on a process: Residents would get a voucher code through a city website and bring it to a local dealer for an instant rebate. The city would repay the retailer within a few weeks.

A program was launched in April 2022 with $300,000, enough for at least 600 vouchers. They were snapped up in barely 10 minutes, “like Taylor Swift fans flooding Ticketmaster,” Salisbury wrote in a progress report. His team then secured another $4.7 million to expand the program. “It was like the scene in Jaws,” he told me: “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” Every few months, the city would release more vouchers, and its website would get hammered. Within a year, the program had handed out more than 4,700 vouchers, two-thirds to income-qualified riders.

Denver enlisted Ride Report, an Oregon-based data firm, to assess the program’s impact: Its survey found that 65 percent of the e-bikers rode every day and 90 percent rode at least weekly. The average distance was 3.3 miles. Salisbury was thrilled.

The state followed suit later that year, issuing e-bike rebates to 5,000 low-income workers (people making up to 80 percent of their county’s median income). This past April, state legislators approved a $450 tax credit for residents who buy an e-bike. Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office, told me he found it very pleasant, and highly unusual, to oversee a program that literally leaves people grinning: “People love it. There’s nothing we’ve done that has gotten as much positive feedback.” 

I witnessed the good cheer firsthand talking to Denverites who’d taken advantage of the programs. They ranged from newbies to dedicated cyclists. Most said it was the subsidy that convinced them to pull the trigger. All seemed fairly besotted with their e-bikes and said they’d replaced lots of car trips. Software engineer Tom Carden chose a cargo model for heavy-duty hauling—he’d recently lugged 10 gallons of paint (about 110 pounds) in one go, he told me—and shuttling his two kids to and from elementary school.

Child-hauling is sort of the ideal application for cargo bikes. I arrange a ride one afternoon with Ted Rosenbaum, whose sturdy gray cargo e-bike has a toddler seat in back and a huge square basket in front. I wait outside a local day care as Rosenbaum, a tall fellow clad in T-shirt and khakis, emerges with his pigtailed 18-month-old daughter. He straps her in and secures her helmet for their 2.5-mile trek home. “It’s right in that sweet spot where driving is 10 to 15 minutes, but riding my bike is always 14,” Rosenbaum says as we glide away. “I think she likes this more than the car, too—better views.”

The toddler grips her seatposts gently, head swiveling as she takes in the sights. Rosenbaum rides slowly but confidently; I’d wondered how drivers would behave around a child on a cargo bike, and today, at least, they’re pretty solicitous. A white SUV trails us for two long blocks, almost comically hesitant to pass, until I give it a wave and the driver creeps by cautiously. At the next stoplight, Rosenbaum’s daughter breaks her silence with a loud, excited yelp: There’s a huge, fluffy dog walking by.

E-bikes stir up heated opposition, too. Sure, riders love them. But some pedestrians, drivers, dog walkers, and “acoustic” bikers are affronted, even enraged, by the new kid on the block.

This is particularly so in dense cities, like my own, where e-bikes have proliferated. By one estimate, New York City has up to 65,000 food delivery workers on e-bikes. Citi Bike operates another 20,000 pay-as-you-go e-bikes, and thousands of residents own one. When I told my NYC friends about this story, probably half, including regular cyclists, blurted out something along the lines of, “I hate those things.” They hate when e-bikers zoom past them on bike paths at 20 mph, dangerously close, or ride the wrong direction down bike lanes on one-way streets. And they hate sharing crowded bikeways with tourists and inexperienced riders.

“You have to build” bike infrastructure first, notes one advocate. “If we’re going to wait for the majority of the population to let go of car dependency, we’re never going to get here.” 

In September 2023 near Chinatown, a Citi Bike customer ran into 69-year-old Priscilla Loke, who died two days later. After another Citi Biker rammed a Harlem pedestrian, Sarah Pratt, from behind, Pratt said company officials insisted they weren’t responsible. Incensed, a local woman named Janet Schroeder co-founded the NYC E-Vehicle Safety Alliance, which lobbies the city for stricter regulations. E-bikes should be registered, she told me, and she supports legislation that requires riders to display a visible license plate and buy insurance, as drivers do. This, Schroeder says, would at least make them more accountable. “We are in an e-bike crisis,” she says. “We have older people, blind people, people with disabilities who tell me they’re scared to go out because of the way e-bikes behave.”

Dedicated e-bikers acknowledge the problem, but the ones I spoke with also felt that e-bikes are taking excessive flak due to their novelty. Cars, they point out, remain a far graver threat to health and safety. In 2023, automobiles killed an estimated 244 pedestrians and injured 8,620 in New York City, while cyclists (of all types) killed eight pedestrians and injured 340. Schroeder concedes the point, but notes that drivers at least are licensed and insured—and are thus on the hook for casualties they cause.

Underlying the urban-transportation culture wars is the wretched state of bike infrastructure. American cities were famously built for cars; planners typically left precious little room for bikes and pedestrians, to say nothing of e-bikes, hoverboards, scooters, skaters, and parents with jogging strollers. Cars hog the roadways while everyone else fights for the scraps. Most bike lanes in the United States are uncomfortably narrow, don’t allow for safe passing, and are rarely physically separated from cars­—some cyclists call them “car door lanes.” The paths winding through Denver’s parks are multimodal, meaning pedestrians and riders of all stripes share the same strip, despite their very different speeds. 

Even in this relatively bike-friendly city, which has 196 miles of dedicated on-road bike lanes, riding sometimes requires the nerves of a daredevil. I set out one afternoon with 34-year-old Ana Ilic, who obtained her bright blue e-bike through the city’s voucher program. She used to drive the 10 miles to her job in a Denver suburb, but now she mostly cycles. She figures she clocks 70 miles a week by e-bike, driving only 10.

Her evening commute demonstrates the patchiness of Denver’s cycling network. Much of our journey is pleasant, on quieter roads, some with painted bike lanes. But toward the end, the only choice is a four-lane route with no bike lanes. Cars whip past us, just inches away. It’s as if we’d stumbled into a suburban NASCAR event. “This is the worst part,” she says apologetically.

The fear of getting hit stops lots of people from jumping into the saddle. But officials in many cities still look at local roadways and conclude there aren’t enough cyclists to justify the cost of more bike lanes. It’s the chicken-egg paradox. “You have to build it,” insists Peter Piccolo, executive director of the lobby Bicycle Colorado. “If we’re going to wait for the majority of the population to let go of car dependency, we’re never going to get here.” 

Advocates say the true solution is to embrace the “new urbanist” movement, which seeks to make cities around the world more human-scaled and less car-dependent. The movement contends that planners need to take space back from cars—particularly curbside parking, where vehicles sit unused 95 percent of the time, as scholar Donald Shoup has documented. That frees up room, potentially, for wider bike lanes that allow for safe passing. (New York and Paris are among the cities now embracing this approach.) You can also throw in “traffic calming” measures such as speed bumps and roads that narrow at intersections. One by-product of discouraging driving is that buses move faster, making them a more attractive commute option, too. 

The Inflation Reduction Act initially included a program that could have put nearly 4.5 million e-bikes on the road. It was cut.

Cities worldwide are proving that this vision is achievable: In 2020, the mayor of Bogota added 17 permanent miles of bike lanes to the existing 342 and has plans for another 157. (Bogota and several other Colombian cities also close entire highways and streets on Sundays and holidays to encourage cycling.) Paris, which has rolled out more than 500 miles of bike lanes since 2001, saw a remarkable doubling in the number of city cyclists from 2022 to 2023—a recent GPS survey found that more people now commute to downtown from the inner suburbs by bicycle than by car. In New York City, where bike lane miles have quintupled over the past decade, the number of cyclists—electric and otherwise—has also nearly doubled.

Colorado has made some progress, too, says Toor, the Energy Office director. For decades, state road funds could only be used to accommodate cars, but in 2021, legislators passed a bill to spend $5.4 billion over 10 years on walking, biking, and transit infrastructure—“because it’s reducing demand” on roadways, he explains. The transportation department also requires cities to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets, which is why Denver ditched a long-planned $900 million highway expansion in favor of bus rapid transit and safer streets.

One critique of e-bike programs, ironically, involves the climate return on investment. Research on Swedish voucher programs found that an e-bike typically reduces its owner’s CO2 emissions by about 1.3 metric tons per year—the equivalent of driving a gas-­powered vehicle about 3,250 miles. Not bad, but some researchers say a government can get more climate bang for the subsidy buck by, for example, helping people swap fossil fuel furnaces for heat pumps, or gas stoves for electric. E-bike subsidies are “a pretty expensive way” to decarbonize, says economist Luke Jones, who co-authored a recent paper on the topic. That’s because e-bikes, in most cases, only replace relatively short car trips. To really slash vehicular CO2, you’d need to supplant longer commutes. Which is clearly possible—behold all those Parisians commuting from the inner suburbs, distances of up to 12 miles. It’s been a tougher sell in Denver, where, as that 2022 survey found, only 5 percent of trips taken by voucher recipients exceeded 9 miles. 

But the value of e-bikes lies not only, and perhaps not even principally, in cutting emissions. Cycling also eases traffic congestion and improves health by keeping people active. It reduces the need for parking, which dovetails neatly with another new urbanist policy: reducing or eliminating mandatory parking requirements for new homes and businesses, which saves space and makes housing cheaper and easier to build. And biking has other civic benefits that are hard to quantify, but quite real, Salisbury insists. “It has this really nice community aspect,” he says. “When you’re out riding, you see people, you wave, you stop to chat—you notice what’s going on in the neighborhoods around you. You don’t do that so much in a car. It kind of improves your mood.”

That sounds gauzy, but studies have found that people who ride to work do, in fact, arrive in markedly better spirits than those who drive or take transit. Their wellbeing is fueled by fresh air and a feeling of control over the commute—no traffic jams, transit delays, or hunting for parking. “It’s basically flow state,” says Kirsty Wild, a senior research fellow of population health at the University of Auckland. Nobody has ascribed a dollar value to these benefits, but it’s got to be worth something for a city to have residents who are less pissed off.

What would really make e-bikes take off, though, is a federal subsidy. The Inflation Reduction Act initially included a $4.1 billion program that could have put nearly 4.5 million e-bikes on the road for $900 a pop, but Democratic policymakers yanked it. Subsequent bills to roll out an e-bike tax credit have not made it out of committee.

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E-bike sharing companies are sometimes seen as gentrifiers, but Denver’s experience shows that e-bikes can be more than just toys for the affluent. Take June Churchill. She was feeling pretty stressed before she got her e-bike. She’d come to Denver for college, but after graduating had found herself unemployed, couchsurfing, and strapped for cash. Having gender-­transitioned, she was estranged from her conservative parents. “I was poor as shit,” she told me. But then she heard about the voucher program and discovered that she qualified for the generous low-income discount. Her new e-bike allowed her to expand her job search to a wider area—she landed a position managing mass mailings for Democratic campaigns—and made it way easier to look around for an affordable place to live. “That bike was totally crucial to getting and keeping my job,” she says.

It’s true that e-bikes and bikeshare systems were initially tilted toward the well-off; the bikes can be expensive, and bikeshares have typically rolled out first in gentrified areas. Denver’s answer was to set aside fully half of its subsidies for low-­income residents.

Churchill’s experience suggests that an e-bike can bolster not only physical mobility, but economic mobility, too. Denver’s low-­income neighborhoods have notoriously spotty public transit and community services, and, as the program’s leaders maintain, helping people get around improves access to education, employment, and health care. To that point, Denver’s income-qualified riders cover an average of 10 miles more per week than other voucher recipients—a spot of evidence Congress might contemplate.

But there are still some people whom cities will have to try harder to reach. I ride one morning to Denver’s far east side, where staffers from Hope Communities, a nonprofit that runs several large affordable-­housing units, are hosting a biweekly food distribution event. Most Hope residents are immigrants and refugees from ­Afghanistan, Myanmar, and other Asian and African nations. I watch as a procession of smiling women in colorful wraps and sandals collect oranges, eggs, potatoes, and broccoli, and health workers offer blood-pressure readings. There’s chatter in a variety of languages.

Jessica McFadden, a cheery program administrator in brown aviators, tells me that as far as her staff can tell, only one Hope resident, a retiree in his 70s named Tom, has snagged an e-bike voucher. The problem is digital literacy, she says. Not only do these people need to know the program exists, but they also have to know when the next batch of vouchers will drop—and pounce. But Hope residents can’t normally afford laptops or home wifi—most rely on low-end smartphones with strict data caps. Add in language barriers, and they’re generally flummoxed by online-first government programs.

Tom was able to get his e-bike, McFadden figures, because he’s American, is fluent in English, and has family locally. He’s more plugged in than most. She loves the idea of the voucher program. She just thinks the city needs to do better on outreach. Scholars who’ve studied e-bike programs, like John MacArthur at Portland State University, recommend that cities set up lending libraries in low-income areas so people can try an e-bike, and put more bike lanes in those neighborhoods, which are often last in line for such improvements.

In Massachusetts, the nonprofit organizers of a state-funded e-bike program operating in places like Worcester, whose median income falls well below the national average, found that it’s crucial to also offer people racks, pannier bags, and maintenance vouchers.

As I chat with McFadden, Tom himself suddenly appears, pushing a stroller full of oranges from the food distro. I ask him about his e-bike. He uses it pretty frequently, he says. “Mostly to shop and visit my sister; she’s over in Sloan Lake”—a hefty 15 miles away. Then he ambles off.

McFadden recalls how, just a few weeks earlier, she’d seen him cruising past on his e-bike with his oxygen tank strapped to the back, the little plastic air tubes in his nose. “Tom, are you sure you should be doing that?” she’d called out.

Tom just waved and peeled away. He had places to be.

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