January 2025: let’s call it the Gulf of the AmericaS

California on Fire: Climate Change deniers will continue with their heads in the sand mantras as Los Angeles burns. The truth is not to be found in the insistence on the big CC’s responsibility. We, humans, must recognize our role in the creation of the flames that are coming home to roost. Those can be traced to the Industrial Revolution when humans discovered and began to use fossil fuels . We, the human race, eagerly embraced their use and have continued to do so for more than a century. This was a key factor in the growth of mega-urban areas like Los Angeles. The combination of fossil fuel and the automobile made this urban area grow beyond any imaginable proportions, especially given its lack of accessible to reliable sources of fresh water. And now…with an increasing dry climate, what once seemed like an urban utopia, has become a flaming arramgedon . What lessons will emerge from this many Hydra headed disaster? Where will the people who lost and are as I write are still losing their homes settle when today’s fires have ceased? Will we simply begin to rebuild the Pacific Palisades, Pasadena and Sierra Madre from the bed of ashes which remains? This is certainly not the solution. As I watch the flames consume my home town of Pasadena, I am envisioning a different Los Angeles. A Los Angeles where people are concentrated in dense, yes, probably NYC high rise communities, surrounded by vast park lands, networked to beaches and mountains by affordable, rapid public transit. At present, I wonder how many others, at this moment, share that vision? It is a utopia that we need to imagine and continue to re-image just as Ernest Callenbach did in his prescience Ecotopia published more than 50 years ago. We must concentrate our hearts and minds on re-imaging the Southland as the Mecca of a new eco- California. We should have started a long time ago.