In the short window that remains, we need policies capable putting out all these flames.

All around the world, our human societies, scorched under the stresses of late capitalism, are political tinderboxes as well.

it is the only kind of climate response that stands a chance of not going up in smoke

If the responses to the climate crisis do not simultaneously begin to repair the wrenching injustices and inequalities that scar and strain our world, they have no hope of success. The bottom line is that people are already under too much stress and strain to take any more.

We saw

instead of

They have seen firsthand that while most people very much want to help their fellow humans after disasters, sustaining that empathetic impulse beyond the initial emergency takes more than good will. It takes good policy, alongside serious public investments.

Several researchers I spoke with observed that post-traumatic stress disorder was rampant,

the cauldron of stress

But others disagreed. They portrayed the pre-fire homeless as invaders, interlopers, freeloaders.

Moreover, many Paradise evacuees camping outside Walmart reported learning valuable skills from folks with years of experience sleeping rough (including how to keep belongings safe and how to line tents with cardboard to stay dry).

Except here is the trouble: Love and comfort may have been the dominant first responses, but we do not currently live in a society that is governed by those values. On the contrary, ours is an economy built to profit off even the most desperate human needs, from water to health care to shelter and warmth after horrific disasters.

 Underlying this outbreak of mutual aid was an unspoken agreement that people in need have an inherent right to food and water and housing. Any whiff of profiteering was met with rage.

It’s true that California’s fires have provided the world with some extraordinary examples of disaster capitalism and climate apartheid: ultrarich mansion owners protecting their homes with private firefighters and failing to inform their immigrant housekeepers and gardeners that their workplaces were under evacuation; Cal Fire’s reliance on hyper-exploited prison inmates to do some of the most dangerous firefighting in the state; migrant farmworkers in wine country forced to work in a haze of wildfire smoke.

Tera Hickerson, right, and Columbus Holt embrace as they look at a board with information for services at a makeshift encampment outside a Walmart store for people displaced by the Camp Fire in Chico, Calif., on Nov. 16, 2018. Photo: John Locher/AP

There they were met by North Valley Mutual Aid, the now legendary anarchist disaster response group that self-organized in the immediate aftermath of the fire.

“Some of the most beautiful nights were in the Walmart parking lot,”

That’s why so many in the community have concluded that the impacts of climate disruption simply cannot be handled without big structural changes on the order of a Green New Deal. Some of these investments can be done locally; others will need bold state and federal support.

Tested by disaster, these communities had come together and looked after one another. At least they did at first.

Chico shows that there is no way to cope with climate breakdown without a simultaneous shift to a very different kind of economy, one that is willing to make major nonmarket investments in housing, transit, health (including mental health), water, electricity, and more.

Republican beliefs that climate change is a vast left-wing plot: Better to focus exclusively on pollution and worry about the rest down the road. Conservative Chico city council members have gone on the offensive against the Green New Deal with precisely this kind of attack.

The intersecting hardships experienced by so many in the region also explain why, days before the one-year anniversary of the deadly Camp Fire that burned down Paradise and killed 86 people, local politicians in neighboring Chico unveiled a plan calling for the small city to adopt its own Green New Deal.

Nancy Pelosi, with young demonstrators demanding that the Democratic Party embrace a sweeping Green New Deal to meet the twin crises of climate disruption and deepening inequality. Since then, as the Green New Deal proposal has picked up momentum in the Democratic primaries, several states and big cities have unveiled their own frameworks, including Maine and Seattle, where city council recently passed a resolution that included the city’s most ambitious climate justice targets to date.

Brown is well aware that a small city like hers isn’t going to make much of a dent in global emissions. But, she said, “We can demonstrate what a Green New Deal looks like at the local level.”

Chico shows that there is no way to cope with climate breakdown without a simultaneous shift to a very different kind of economy.

His rage was also directed at the absence of decent temporary housing for fire victims like him, not to mention the electric utility that had started the blaze and was still evading responsibility.

twist the knife

Of the ash, stray bricks, and weeds. Of twisted metal and charred patio furniture. Of the pine trees still standing on the edge of the lots, their towering trunks now charcoal black. Of the lonely white brick fireplace in the middle of it all, the only surviving structure, metal pokers hanging expectantly by the grate.