Artsy: To say the Los Angeles art community has been devastated by the wildfires would be an understatement. Artists in areas like Altadena and the Palisades have seen their workspaces gutted and livelihoods threatened as ongoing fires continue to wreak havoc across L.A. County.
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It’s heartbreaking to hear about how many lives have been ended and how many have been upended. It is an easy and heartless thought that it is the Californians fault for being in areas that are prone to fire and that they should have not been there if they did not want to lose their lives or possessions. Yet this kind of danger from fires and natural disasters is not normal and this threat from nature is new in its intensity. There has been a marked increase in threat from wildfires in California of twenty five percent over just the last 20 years. The nineteen of the twenty worst wildfires have occurred since 2003 and half have occurred in the last five years. It is not the fault of the people of California for living their but the people and companies that have charged forward in their pursuit of profits above humankind and the planet they live on to pollute and warm the planet through the reckless release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The release of these gases has already broken the cyclical warming and cooling of the planet by over two degrees Fahrenheit. The energy required to warm up 5.15x10^18 kg of mass that makes up the atmosphere is approximately 2.3x10^23 joules. Both of these numbers are unrecognizable because of how big they are. 10^23 is a sextillion, a number with 23 zeros after the first. It is insane that no one has been able to stop this trend but at least it has slowed a minor amount.
As someone who grew up in California and has had to pack up and evacuate multiple times I sympathize with the stress and terror of wildfires that do not let up. I think all of the art and culture that has burned with the city is tragic, but it’s nice to hear the artists in the articles speak on how they plan to recover and rebuild their art community. A lot of discussion online concerning the LA fires is often insensitive and labels all the victims as wealthy Hollywood elites but in reality most of the affected people are regular citizens and artists who were already struggling before the fires burnt everything they own. There’s also a lot of weird conspiracy theories on why the fires started involving insurance companies and “Dream City.” In the end it is good to hear most of the artists writing were OK and with their families as art can be replaced but lives cannot.
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