January 12, 2025 • 16 mins
In this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, host Andrew Lewin discusses the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, emphasizing the significant role climate change plays in their occurrence and intensity.
Lewin highlights that the wildfires are exacerbated by a phenomenon known as "hydroclimate whiplash," where California experiences extreme fluctuations between wet and dry conditions. In 2023, the state saw record precipitation and lush vegetation growth, but by 2024, drought conditions led to that vegetation drying out, creating ample fuel for wildfires. The situation was further intensified by the Santa Ana winds, which reached speeds of up to 90 miles per hour, allowing fires to spread rapidly and uncontrollably.
The episode underscores that these abrupt climate variations, intensified by global climate change, contribute to the increasing frequency and severity of wildfires. Lewin stresses that ignoring the science behind climate change and the resulting environmental conditions will only lead to more disasters, as seen in both California and Hawaii. He calls for urgent action and the election of decision-makers who acknowledge and are willing to address climate change effectively.
Overall, the episode serves as a somber reminder of the real and devastating impacts of climate change on communities, urging listeners to recognize the urgency of the situation and take action.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
That science, that science is going to be key. Because if
we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think it's all about vegetation
management, we're not going to succeed together protecting Californians. That
was a clip from a number of years ago, I think it was 2020, where Donald Trump
was talking to a panel discussing the wildfires that we're having at that
point that were devastating communities within California. Sound
(00:33):
familiar? This is the problem with what's happening with
wildfires. Climate change is causing things that
we cannot control and the Santa Ana fire that's
happening in LA right now due to the Santa Ana winds is
out of control. And it's really difficult to fight, no matter how
much water you have, no matter how many people you have, just because of the
(00:54):
speed of the winds and how dry things are. We're gonna talk
today, on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, about why
the fires happen, the blame and the myths that are going on, the
fact that people are in a very vulnerable position, and what we
can do about it. On this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, let's
start the show. Hey,
(01:16):
everybody, welcome back to a somber episode of the How to Protect the Ocean
podcast. I am your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with
the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a
better ocean by taking action. And this is an
episode that I don't ever want to cover. This is something that is
devastating to a number of people in L.A. County, and it's
(01:37):
a really difficult pill to swallow for all of us. It's
a perfect example, unfortunately, of the devastation that climate change
can cause, and we are in the thick of it. This
is a problem where there's really not much
we can do until these winds of the Santa Ana winds really
(01:57):
stops. And it's scary. It is
scary. Now, I would love to say that this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
but this has been predicted for quite some time. And we're gonna talk about it on today's
episode because I think it's something that we do need to talk about it. I've
done a little bit of research and I wanna talk about a few things of why this
happened, the blame and the myths that are going around the
(02:20):
fire, as well as, people are in a very vulnerable
position. They're getting hurt, they've lost their homes, they've lost their
childhood memories, they've lost a lot, people have lost their
lives. You know, it is a difficult thing. This
is not just a case where celebrities are losing their homes and they can buy new
homes. That could be true. There's a lot of people who
are suffering right now and a lot of the fire people that are out there doing
(02:43):
their best to put this fire out and putting themselves in danger again
in a vulnerable position to fires where they're just
trying to contain. They know they can't put out right away until
these winds die down. So we're going to talk about What the
heck happened? It goes back a couple of years. In
2023, there was a lot of precipitation in California. They had
(03:03):
record snowfalls up in the mountains. They had a
lot of water. In fact, in the spring, they had a lot of landslides, and
they had a lot of disasters regarding water. There was a lot of floods. LA got flooded.
But in that time, there was so much water that all this
vegetation grew, and it was quite lush for
quite some time, for about a year. In comes 2024, super dry in LA. Very,
(03:27):
very dry in California, drought conditions, all that vegetation just
dried up. That just becomes an accelerant for any
type of fire that could happen. It doesn't matter how it started, once
that starts, if you get a bad wind, see where I'm going with this,
if you get a bad wind, you're in trouble. And
that is what really happened this year, a
(03:48):
few weeks ago. The Santa Ana winds, which happen every
once in a while, were massive this year. They
were 90 mile an hour winds, and they still haven't settled
down. It's caused any type of ignition of
vegetation to go widespread. There were reports
of, you know, five football fields of area
(04:11):
being covered within an hour. Just think about that.
Think about how fast this fire can go. You've seen pictures,
you've seen videos of the fires. You've seen
what's happened before, what happened during and what happened after. People
had to leave just in the nick of time because they could not predict how
fast this fire was going to spread. There are a number of
(04:32):
different fires and you just never know. Once the winds change, you never know
where it's going to go. Scientists refer to this Scientists
refer to this action of being super
wet conditions to super dry conditions as a hydroclimate whiplash,
where essentially it happens where it gets extremely wet for one year, extremely
dry, and then they're intensified by global climate
(04:55):
change. So the wetness is intensified by global climate change, and the
dryness is intensified by global climate change. It's
climate change, folks. It's what people have been saying all along.
And this is the problem that we have. These
abrupt climate variations contribute to the increased vegetation growth during
wet periods and followed by the drying of that vegetation during droughts,
(05:18):
creating an abundant fuel for wildfires. This
pattern has been observed in California, exacerbating the frequency and intensity
of wildfires. This has been happening for a long time, but it's getting worse and
worse. And once you get those bad winds, those Sandana winds, you get what
we have right now, an absolute disaster, $250 billion
worth of damage, 250 billion with a B. It's
(05:39):
the cost of climate change. Unfortunately, it's putting
people at risk. It doesn't matter where you are in your
1% or a 99%, it doesn't matter. It's coming for us. And
if you're put in vulnerable positions, if you live in an area that
is vulnerable to wildfires or drought or flooding, eventually
it's gonna catch up. And if we continue to ignore climate change,
(06:02):
these are the things that are gonna happen. We saw it out in Hawaii,
in Maui, and now we're seeing it here in California. And it's devastating. It's
absolutely devastating. I feel so bad for the people who had to
go through that. I have friends who lost their childhood homes
and their childhood friends have lost their homes. Parents
just barely getting out, 11 dead so far. It's
(06:25):
absolutely devastating. And we continue to have people like the
next president that's coming in in a couple of weeks to talk that, hey, it's
gonna get cooler in a couple of years. This is what he said in 2020. It's gonna
get cooler in a couple of years. You just watch. We've had record heat
every single year, including last year in 2024. And there
are arguments all the time. I always see it. It's, you know, it's, It's
(06:47):
it's wet. So why is it the things now? Everything's not warming. It's
wet outside. We're getting rain. We're getting all this stuff. It's not snowing
or it's snowed too much. How's this global warming? It's
always the same thing. People believe in conspiracy theories. You
know, it's government trying to control people. It's climate change.
The scientists have been saying it for years for decades. And
(07:08):
we continue to just ignore the people in charge that we elect to
be in charge, continue to ignore the signs, continue to
ignore what people are going through. It's like they don't even care.
All they care about is the money that they're paid to get in to
power. And it's really interesting because when you see these disasters happen,
the blame game starts to show up and all the myths start to
(07:29):
show up. you know, the blame first going on the fire department, which why
are you blaming the fire department when the fire department is the one
that is out there trying to stop
these fires from happening, which is virtually impossible. And you have like, you know,
the chief firefighter. was a woman criticized because she
came out one time and said, yes, there will be, you know, the fire department will
(07:50):
be focusing on making a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace.
That's all that she that's all she said one time. And now it's like, oh, well, it's because she's
not hiring white men, that this is the problem that
we're in. They can't put out the fire. That's not the case. That was debunked. And
that's not the case. It does not matter how many firefighters we
have. It does not matter how much water is available. The fact that these
(08:11):
winds are picking up the fire in such dry conditions due to climate change,
we're in trouble. That's why these fires are happening. And it is insane.
People are even saying there's not enough water in, you know, the
hydrants are like drying up. The chief came out
and said, hey, you know, we have the right amount of water. It's
just, there's not enough. They have a million gallon tanks of water waiting.
(08:33):
to be used in the hydrants. It's just not enough. It's very difficult to predict this
extent of fire, the intensity, the speed
at which this fire is going. It is almost impossible to stop.
And they just have to wait till the fires die down. And then unfortunately, people
are in a vulnerable position because of climate change. This is what
we've been saying. This is why scientists are so frustrated. There's
(08:56):
data that comes out. We tell the people, the people who are making money because that
are causing climate change say, you know what? We want to continue to make money. So
we're just going to pay off the decision makers and we're going to start putting
out misinformation out there. And we're going to say, Hey, you know what? Let's,
let's not worry about climate change. It's not even real. Don't even worry about all this stuff.
The scientists are saying they're just elitist. They just want to control you. It's
(09:16):
not, it's nothing. It's insane. It's insane to even think. that
we're at a position like this. I find it funny that the next
president is blaming the governor for saying, hey, there's not
enough water because you diverted some water for smelt,
which is a conservation project way north of
where the fires are. And then there's also a situation
(09:38):
where, well, they got rid of a dam. And they could use the
water from the dam for an indigenous reconciliation project. And
that's the reason. That's not the reason. It's the decades of
federal government ignoring climate change and not doing
anything about it. And to be honest, anybody who has
been in power, whether it be Democrats or Republicans, who
(09:59):
have been the president over the last like three, four
decades are responsible because they did not move at
all, or they did not move fast enough to help climate change. Or
they reversed all the actions that were done in climate change, AKA Donald
Trump, getting out of the Paris Accord. We continue to
fall within these traps. It's continuous. We try and
(10:19):
blame all of these people, blame the mayor for cutting the
budget of the fire department, which they never really did. It was debunked.
And here we are, we have people who are living in areas that
are vulnerable to fire. They are spending millions on
their homes and they are losing out because the
insurance companies are getting out of dodge. They're getting out of California
(10:41):
because it's so difficult. Their insurance claims canceled.
or their insurance canceled, or they're not renewed because they live in
a fire hazard. If you want to know about climate change and where the most vulnerable
spots are, you watch where insurance companies will not cover
certain disasters. They're starting to get out of Florida because of hurricanes, and
the Southeast because of hurricanes, and they're getting out of California and other places because
(11:03):
of fire. Because they can't, they don't have the reserves, they don't have the
money to cover the amount of money that's required
to cover all these disasters. They're not built for that. So
they get out of there. They know way ahead of time. And whether they
may not renew your insurance for that coverage, or
they don't offer it to you at all anymore on new houses or new bills.
(11:25):
They know exactly what's happening. And they just get out. And then we're
stuck with the bill. The people are stuck with the bill. And look, I
get it. We see celebrities on TV because it's
in LA, it's in Hollywood. And people are like, oh, well, you
know, these celebrities, they make millions, tens of millions, hundreds of
millions of dollars. Why should we care? They're going to be able to buy a nice house. Yes.
I mean, obviously it sucks to lose a house. You
(11:48):
lose pictures. I can't even imagine. It is devastating. But
yes, many of them, of the celebrities, probably either have homes somewhere
else or they can afford to pay for another home. They
lose all their, their memories. They lose all of, you
know, any kind of memorabilia that they have, any type of
ancestry things that they have, which is awful for
(12:09):
anybody. It doesn't matter how rich you are, how poor you are. It's awful. But
yes, they could probably move and buy another house. And although
it affect their income, they'd still be able to have a house. It's
the people who can't afford to move. That's where it becomes really devastating. They
have no homes. They can't afford, they have to move out of the
state, because it's really expensive to live, and they have no place to go. Nobody's
(12:30):
gonna buy their house. Why would you buy in a place that is so
vulnerable to wildfires that took out entire neighborhoods? Not
just one, entire neighborhoods. Not to mention all the air
quality hazards that are out there for people for years
to come. It is brutal the way people continue to
get treated Yet we listen to politicians who
(12:51):
deny climate change, who want to drill baby drill, and
these things continue to happen. It's awful. Now what can we do
about it? The first thing is put decision makers in place that
agree that climate change is happening and we need to do something about it, like three decades
ago. That's what we need to do. Put people into place who
are capable of understanding the complexities of climate change and
(13:12):
what need to happen. It's really it. That's all you have to do is
use your vote. Climate change, back when Obama
was president, the Navy said that climate change was the biggest
threat to the United States, to the world, to the planet. Yet
all of a sudden we've forgotten that. No, no, they're just blowing up
promotion. It wasn't even a big topic in the US presidential
(13:32):
election. It won't be a big topic in
the next election for Canada, other than taking the carbon tax away,
which is a measure to combat climate change. It's
unreal. Yet we continue to just fall into these traps.
This disaster will happen. We'll follow it for a few months. We'll
forget about it, just like we did to Hawaii. And then we'll continue with
(13:54):
our way. And then we'll continue to vote people in who don't do anything about
climate change when they're in power. We do it to ourselves. And
I'm frustrated. I'm so sick of it. We just continue to do it to
ourselves. And until we realize that climate
change is affecting all aspects of our life, including the economy, we're
going to run out of money. We can't always pay for these natural disasters. $250 billion.
(14:18):
We have to, we have to change something. Things have to change. And
if we keep ignoring it, we're going to keep having these happen. And there's going to
be areas in the United States, as well as around the world where we
cannot live because it's too unsafe for people to
live. And that's going to continue that, that area is going to continue to
grow. And we're going to continue to have problems as
(14:40):
people are trying to figure out where they can live and where they can't. So it's
a, it's a, an awakener, although we've, we've had these problems before,
but people need to like, as people are, are, you
know, donating money to the red cross and donating money to people to
help them survive, maybe they should realize like, maybe I should donate
to campaigns of politicians who are actually going to do something about climate change.
(15:01):
Cause those are the ones we need. The scientists are all, they're pretty much on board.
They're like climate change is happening, but the decision makers refuse to do
anything about it or do anything about fast enough. Like there's even criticism with
the Biden administration that they're not working fast enough, including and
with the Trudeau government as well. We just aren't
doing it fast enough because we don't want to pay for it, but we're going to
(15:22):
have to pay for it in one way or another. And it could be with our homes. It could be
with our lives. It could be with just our
countries and it's not discriminating against any country. It's
going after everything. So it's a rude awakening. I hate to start off the week like
this, but something I thought I had to cover. I feel so, so bad
for the people who are, who have been devastated by these fires. And
(15:43):
I'll put links now where people can donate to help people out
in these fires as they continue to burn. And hopefully people can
recover and find a way to live on, but it's going to forever change
them. That's it for today's episode. If you have any comments or anywhere that people
can donate, please let me know. You can hit me up on Instagram at
how to protect the ocean. You can also and I hope everyone is safe out
(16:04):
there, especially our fans and our audience in the L.A. region.
And I just I hope that everybody is just able
to recover and get to a safe spot. Thank you very much for listening to this episode of
the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Angelo, and have a good day. I'll
That science, that science is going to be key. Because if
we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think it's all about vegetation
management, we're not going to succeed together protecting Californians. That
was a clip from a number of years ago, I think it was 2020, where Donald Trump
was talking to a panel discussing the wildfires that we're having at that
point that were devastating communities within California. Sound
(00:33):
familiar? This is the problem with what's happening with
wildfires. Climate change is causing things that
we cannot control and the Santa Ana fire that's
happening in LA right now due to the Santa Ana winds is
out of control. And it's really difficult to fight, no matter how
much water you have, no matter how many people you have, just because of the
(00:54):
speed of the winds and how dry things are. We're gonna talk
today, on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, about why
the fires happen, the blame and the myths that are going on, the
fact that people are in a very vulnerable position, and what we
can do about it. On this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, let's
start the show. Hey,
(01:16):
everybody, welcome back to a somber episode of the How to Protect the Ocean
podcast. I am your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with
the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a
better ocean by taking action. And this is an
episode that I don't ever want to cover. This is something that is
devastating to a number of people in L.A. County, and it's
(01:37):
a really difficult pill to swallow for all of us. It's
a perfect example, unfortunately, of the devastation that climate change
can cause, and we are in the thick of it. This
is a problem where there's really not much
we can do until these winds of the Santa Ana winds really
(01:57):
stops. And it's scary. It is
scary. Now, I would love to say that this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
but this has been predicted for quite some time. And we're gonna talk about it on today's
episode because I think it's something that we do need to talk about it. I've
done a little bit of research and I wanna talk about a few things of why this
happened, the blame and the myths that are going around the
(02:20):
fire, as well as, people are in a very vulnerable
position. They're getting hurt, they've lost their homes, they've lost their
childhood memories, they've lost a lot, people have lost their
lives. You know, it is a difficult thing. This
is not just a case where celebrities are losing their homes and they can buy new
homes. That could be true. There's a lot of people who
are suffering right now and a lot of the fire people that are out there doing
(02:43):
their best to put this fire out and putting themselves in danger again
in a vulnerable position to fires where they're just
trying to contain. They know they can't put out right away until
these winds die down. So we're going to talk about What the
heck happened? It goes back a couple of years. In
2023, there was a lot of precipitation in California. They had
(03:03):
record snowfalls up in the mountains. They had a
lot of water. In fact, in the spring, they had a lot of landslides, and
they had a lot of disasters regarding water. There was a lot of floods. LA got flooded.
But in that time, there was so much water that all this
vegetation grew, and it was quite lush for
quite some time, for about a year. In comes 2024, super dry in LA. Very,
(03:27):
very dry in California, drought conditions, all that vegetation just
dried up. That just becomes an accelerant for any
type of fire that could happen. It doesn't matter how it started, once
that starts, if you get a bad wind, see where I'm going with this,
if you get a bad wind, you're in trouble. And
that is what really happened this year, a
(03:48):
few weeks ago. The Santa Ana winds, which happen every
once in a while, were massive this year. They
were 90 mile an hour winds, and they still haven't settled
down. It's caused any type of ignition of
vegetation to go widespread. There were reports
of, you know, five football fields of area
(04:11):
being covered within an hour. Just think about that.
Think about how fast this fire can go. You've seen pictures,
you've seen videos of the fires. You've seen
what's happened before, what happened during and what happened after. People
had to leave just in the nick of time because they could not predict how
fast this fire was going to spread. There are a number of
(04:32):
different fires and you just never know. Once the winds change, you never know
where it's going to go. Scientists refer to this Scientists
refer to this action of being super
wet conditions to super dry conditions as a hydroclimate whiplash,
where essentially it happens where it gets extremely wet for one year, extremely
dry, and then they're intensified by global climate
(04:55):
change. So the wetness is intensified by global climate change, and the
dryness is intensified by global climate change. It's
climate change, folks. It's what people have been saying all along.
And this is the problem that we have. These
abrupt climate variations contribute to the increased vegetation growth during
wet periods and followed by the drying of that vegetation during droughts,
(05:18):
creating an abundant fuel for wildfires. This
pattern has been observed in California, exacerbating the frequency and intensity
of wildfires. This has been happening for a long time, but it's getting worse and
worse. And once you get those bad winds, those Sandana winds, you get what
we have right now, an absolute disaster, $250 billion
worth of damage, 250 billion with a B. It's
(05:39):
the cost of climate change. Unfortunately, it's putting
people at risk. It doesn't matter where you are in your
1% or a 99%, it doesn't matter. It's coming for us. And
if you're put in vulnerable positions, if you live in an area that
is vulnerable to wildfires or drought or flooding, eventually
it's gonna catch up. And if we continue to ignore climate change,
(06:02):
these are the things that are gonna happen. We saw it out in Hawaii,
in Maui, and now we're seeing it here in California. And it's devastating. It's
absolutely devastating. I feel so bad for the people who had to
go through that. I have friends who lost their childhood homes
and their childhood friends have lost their homes. Parents
just barely getting out, 11 dead so far. It's
(06:25):
absolutely devastating. And we continue to have people like the
next president that's coming in in a couple of weeks to talk that, hey, it's
gonna get cooler in a couple of years. This is what he said in 2020. It's gonna
get cooler in a couple of years. You just watch. We've had record heat
every single year, including last year in 2024. And there
are arguments all the time. I always see it. It's, you know, it's, It's
(06:47):
it's wet. So why is it the things now? Everything's not warming. It's
wet outside. We're getting rain. We're getting all this stuff. It's not snowing
or it's snowed too much. How's this global warming? It's
always the same thing. People believe in conspiracy theories. You
know, it's government trying to control people. It's climate change.
The scientists have been saying it for years for decades. And
(07:08):
we continue to just ignore the people in charge that we elect to
be in charge, continue to ignore the signs, continue to
ignore what people are going through. It's like they don't even care.
All they care about is the money that they're paid to get in to
power. And it's really interesting because when you see these disasters happen,
the blame game starts to show up and all the myths start to
(07:29):
show up. you know, the blame first going on the fire department, which why
are you blaming the fire department when the fire department is the one
that is out there trying to stop
these fires from happening, which is virtually impossible. And you have like, you know,
the chief firefighter. was a woman criticized because she
came out one time and said, yes, there will be, you know, the fire department will
(07:50):
be focusing on making a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace.
That's all that she that's all she said one time. And now it's like, oh, well, it's because she's
not hiring white men, that this is the problem that
we're in. They can't put out the fire. That's not the case. That was debunked. And
that's not the case. It does not matter how many firefighters we
have. It does not matter how much water is available. The fact that these
(08:11):
winds are picking up the fire in such dry conditions due to climate change,
we're in trouble. That's why these fires are happening. And it is insane.
People are even saying there's not enough water in, you know, the
hydrants are like drying up. The chief came out
and said, hey, you know, we have the right amount of water. It's
just, there's not enough. They have a million gallon tanks of water waiting.
(08:33):
to be used in the hydrants. It's just not enough. It's very difficult to predict this
extent of fire, the intensity, the speed
at which this fire is going. It is almost impossible to stop.
And they just have to wait till the fires die down. And then unfortunately, people
are in a vulnerable position because of climate change. This is what
we've been saying. This is why scientists are so frustrated. There's
(08:56):
data that comes out. We tell the people, the people who are making money because that
are causing climate change say, you know what? We want to continue to make money. So
we're just going to pay off the decision makers and we're going to start putting
out misinformation out there. And we're going to say, Hey, you know what? Let's,
let's not worry about climate change. It's not even real. Don't even worry about all this stuff.
The scientists are saying they're just elitist. They just want to control you. It's
(09:16):
not, it's nothing. It's insane. It's insane to even think. that
we're at a position like this. I find it funny that the next
president is blaming the governor for saying, hey, there's not
enough water because you diverted some water for smelt,
which is a conservation project way north of
where the fires are. And then there's also a situation
(09:38):
where, well, they got rid of a dam. And they could use the
water from the dam for an indigenous reconciliation project. And
that's the reason. That's not the reason. It's the decades of
federal government ignoring climate change and not doing
anything about it. And to be honest, anybody who has
been in power, whether it be Democrats or Republicans, who
(09:59):
have been the president over the last like three, four
decades are responsible because they did not move at
all, or they did not move fast enough to help climate change. Or
they reversed all the actions that were done in climate change, AKA Donald
Trump, getting out of the Paris Accord. We continue to
fall within these traps. It's continuous. We try and
(10:19):
blame all of these people, blame the mayor for cutting the
budget of the fire department, which they never really did. It was debunked.
And here we are, we have people who are living in areas that
are vulnerable to fire. They are spending millions on
their homes and they are losing out because the
insurance companies are getting out of dodge. They're getting out of California
(10:41):
because it's so difficult. Their insurance claims canceled.
or their insurance canceled, or they're not renewed because they live in
a fire hazard. If you want to know about climate change and where the most vulnerable
spots are, you watch where insurance companies will not cover
certain disasters. They're starting to get out of Florida because of hurricanes, and
the Southeast because of hurricanes, and they're getting out of California and other places because
(11:03):
of fire. Because they can't, they don't have the reserves, they don't have the
money to cover the amount of money that's required
to cover all these disasters. They're not built for that. So
they get out of there. They know way ahead of time. And whether they
may not renew your insurance for that coverage, or
they don't offer it to you at all anymore on new houses or new bills.
(11:25):
They know exactly what's happening. And they just get out. And then we're
stuck with the bill. The people are stuck with the bill. And look, I
get it. We see celebrities on TV because it's
in LA, it's in Hollywood. And people are like, oh, well, you
know, these celebrities, they make millions, tens of millions, hundreds of
millions of dollars. Why should we care? They're going to be able to buy a nice house. Yes.
I mean, obviously it sucks to lose a house. You
(11:48):
lose pictures. I can't even imagine. It is devastating. But
yes, many of them, of the celebrities, probably either have homes somewhere
else or they can afford to pay for another home. They
lose all their, their memories. They lose all of, you
know, any kind of memorabilia that they have, any type of
ancestry things that they have, which is awful for
(12:09):
anybody. It doesn't matter how rich you are, how poor you are. It's awful. But
yes, they could probably move and buy another house. And although
it affect their income, they'd still be able to have a house. It's
the people who can't afford to move. That's where it becomes really devastating. They
have no homes. They can't afford, they have to move out of the
state, because it's really expensive to live, and they have no place to go. Nobody's
(12:30):
gonna buy their house. Why would you buy in a place that is so
vulnerable to wildfires that took out entire neighborhoods? Not
just one, entire neighborhoods. Not to mention all the air
quality hazards that are out there for people for years
to come. It is brutal the way people continue to
get treated Yet we listen to politicians who
(12:51):
deny climate change, who want to drill baby drill, and
these things continue to happen. It's awful. Now what can we do
about it? The first thing is put decision makers in place that
agree that climate change is happening and we need to do something about it, like three decades
ago. That's what we need to do. Put people into place who
are capable of understanding the complexities of climate change and
(13:12):
what need to happen. It's really it. That's all you have to do is
use your vote. Climate change, back when Obama
was president, the Navy said that climate change was the biggest
threat to the United States, to the world, to the planet. Yet
all of a sudden we've forgotten that. No, no, they're just blowing up
promotion. It wasn't even a big topic in the US presidential
(13:32):
election. It won't be a big topic in
the next election for Canada, other than taking the carbon tax away,
which is a measure to combat climate change. It's
unreal. Yet we continue to just fall into these traps.
This disaster will happen. We'll follow it for a few months. We'll
forget about it, just like we did to Hawaii. And then we'll continue with
(13:54):
our way. And then we'll continue to vote people in who don't do anything about
climate change when they're in power. We do it to ourselves. And
I'm frustrated. I'm so sick of it. We just continue to do it to
ourselves. And until we realize that climate
change is affecting all aspects of our life, including the economy, we're
going to run out of money. We can't always pay for these natural disasters. $250 billion.
(14:18):
We have to, we have to change something. Things have to change. And
if we keep ignoring it, we're going to keep having these happen. And there's going to
be areas in the United States, as well as around the world where we
cannot live because it's too unsafe for people to
live. And that's going to continue that, that area is going to continue to
grow. And we're going to continue to have problems as
(14:40):
people are trying to figure out where they can live and where they can't. So it's
a, it's a, an awakener, although we've, we've had these problems before,
but people need to like, as people are, are, you
know, donating money to the red cross and donating money to people to
help them survive, maybe they should realize like, maybe I should donate
to campaigns of politicians who are actually going to do something about climate change.
(15:01):
Cause those are the ones we need. The scientists are all, they're pretty much on board.
They're like climate change is happening, but the decision makers refuse to do
anything about it or do anything about fast enough. Like there's even criticism with
the Biden administration that they're not working fast enough, including and
with the Trudeau government as well. We just aren't
doing it fast enough because we don't want to pay for it, but we're going to
(15:22):
have to pay for it in one way or another. And it could be with our homes. It could be
with our lives. It could be with just our
countries and it's not discriminating against any country. It's
going after everything. So it's a rude awakening. I hate to start off the week like
this, but something I thought I had to cover. I feel so, so bad
for the people who are, who have been devastated by these fires. And
(15:43):
I'll put links now where people can donate to help people out
in these fires as they continue to burn. And hopefully people can
recover and find a way to live on, but it's going to forever change
them. That's it for today's episode. If you have any comments or anywhere that people
can donate, please let me know. You can hit me up on Instagram at
how to protect the ocean. You can also and I hope everyone is safe out
(16:04):
there, especially our fans and our audience in the L.A. region.
And I just I hope that everybody is just able
to recover and get to a safe spot. Thank you very much for listening to this episode of
the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Angelo, and have a good day. I'll
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