L.A. STORY: Hope, Grit, & a Shared Future of abundance
by Leslie Nuccio, CMO
TRIAL BY FIRE
To say that it’s been a harrowing week in Los Angeles is grossly insufficient, but it’s hard to find the words.
I took my first steps in a currently evacuated neighborhood from the Palisades fire, before spending the bulk of my childhood in one that sits in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains that’s currently evacuated from the Eaton Fire. My parents recently downsized from their home of 25 years in the Palisades Highlands, and as of this moment we don’t know if it is still standing. My social feeds and phone are lighting up with friends and family sharing photos and videos that look more like a tour through the Gaza strip than the L.A. we grew up in.
In short, watching the apocalyptic devastation of neighborhoods I know so well has been surreal and heartbreaking.
Additionally upsetting is watching politicians disingenuously try to score points by wagging fingers at fish rather than oil companies (who knew they were causing climate change 50 years ago), and blaming governors for the water shortages causing hydrants to run dry rather than billionaire ag moguls stealing public water to irrigate non-native crops (most of which are exported).
Add that some of the ignorant, arrogant, inhumane sentiments on social media, and it’s easy to doomscroll your way into an anxiety-fueled existential dread spiral.
And yet, there is hope.
The fires are still burning, and people are still suffering. And at some point, these fires will go out and we will have a moment of reckoning. Are we going to allow disaster capitalists to swoop in and scoop up land to enrich themselves by building yet another planned development without any regard for people or habitat in it? Are we going to continue on, blindly looking for someone to blame, rather than finding ways to work together toward a better future?
It doesn’t have to be that way. Our relationship with the land - and each other - can change.
our history of (ignoring) Ecological wisdom
The truth is that we, as humans, know how to live cooperatively with fire, just like we know how to live cooperatively with each other - we’ve just forgotten. Or, more accurately, we have inherited the willful ignorance and illusion of individualism of the self-serving settlers, politicians, and land developers that came before us. The Europeans eschewed the wealth of indigenous land management wisdom that prioritized the preservation of abundant, native, fire resistant plants. On the contrary, they introduced invasive non-native annual grasses - a major cause of wildfires - for landscaping and grazing, thus eradicating the native, green-through-winter bunch grasses that used to cover California hillsides along with poppies and other wildflowers. Those grasses served as food for bison and, farther down that food chain, for Native American tribes.
American settlers also intentionally disrupted the natural ecosystems in California to starve Native people, cutting down trees that produced food and wiping out bison in order to weaken the tribes and take land and gold for themselves. Our land management officials and developers have also, until recently, refused to do any controlled burns to eradicate or suppress the invasive plants that have been choking out our native species for generations.
Instead, land developers have built homes well into wild spaces, added invasive species (some of which are extremely flammable - looking at you, juniper), and developed quickly and cheaply to prioritize maximum their financial return, rather than broader ecological return. This extractive relationship with the land, illustrated by many other points in California history (the Gold Rush, for one - which brought us the easily ignited eucalyptus), has long been out of balance.
And now we’re all paying the price for it.
We Reap What we Sow
Even after the Gold Rush, settlers rejected indigenous farming practices that prioritized native harvests in harmony with the land on which they grow. Rather than use crops adapted to the natural landscape, they instead adjusted the landscape to the crops they wanted to grow. This mindset led to a monoculture agricultural system based on extraction of maximum yields, no matter the impact on the aquifers or land or surrounding habitat. One result here is that many people whose families have been in California for generations haven’t ever tried to eat acorn, but have had an endless number of almonds and pistachios.
Another result is that agriculture makes up 1/3 of our fossil fuel emissions, uses a lot more water than it needs to, and then climate change from those emissions is feeding the fires while our food systems are failing. This is a vicious cycle. While some people are pointing at political parties and reservoirs to try to blame someone for the L.A. fires, the truth is that no amount of ground water is efficient against 80-100mph hot winds in a 5-10% humidity environment that’s experiencing a mega drought. The Santa Anas are supposed to be a fall thing, and they’re not usually this strong. To have a windstorm of this magnitude in January is, literally, a climate change.
All of this speaks to a larger imbalance with the land we live on, and that imbalance will be exacerbated as the planet continues to warm. The good news is that the wisdom on how to live in balance with our environment is accessible to anyone humble enough to look for it. The other good news is that humans, historically, have a lot of grit: when the going gets tough, the tough get going, as the adage says.
And it’s time for us to get going. We must prioritize the inclusion of scientists, indigenous communities, and people from different walks of life in planning a shared future of abundance.
redefinING WEALTH through shared abundance
If the Palisades fire in particular has proven anything, it’s that no amount of wealth can shield us from the wrath of a struggling planet. We must redefine wealth by prioritizing ecological health and abundance. If our environment and the living beings within it are doing well, we by extension will experience the positive effects of that abundance, both functionally and psychologically. This isn’t just wishful thinking: this has been proven by scientific research into telomeres, which are repetitive DNA sequences the end of our chromosomes. Healthy telomeres lead to healthier people with longer lives, and what was found in research is that wealthy people in countries without a middle class suffer shortened, brittle telomeres, simply from the stress of seeing other people’s suffering. The body is smarter than we often give it credit for: it knows that we, as humans, aren’t separate from each other, or from the other living beings on the planet.
Think about this for a moment. Notice how your body feels when you’re doomscrolling photos of the devastation in L.A., or driving by a homeless encampment, or seeing an animal in distress. If you feel angry and your first reaction is to try to blame someone, it’s a great time to do some reflection as to why. The illusion that we have control over what’s happening simply because we swap out a governor or political party is just that, and it’s one that is fed to us in a “Look over there!” tactic that we all need to be smarter about ignoring.
The small percentage of people who want us to blame ecological disasters on politics are disingenuous and self-interested. Why are we allowing those that benefit from environmental destruction to convince us that we disagree on a habitable environment? The truth is that, while “climate change” has become an intentionally politicized concept, people across the aisle believe in things like “conservation” and “preserving natural resources.”
The earth is sending its own very clear signal that something needs to shift, and that something isn’t a political party. It’s our relationship with our environment. Imagine what would it be like to live in a world where people, animals, and plants all had the resources and habitat they needed to thrive. What does it feel like to visualize this type of abundance?
It’s high time that we flip the script on what “wealth” means as we move forward in a warming climate. It’s up to us, the other 99%, to ignore the self-interested billionaires and autocrats abusing our environment and its inhabitants in a pointless race to reserve the right to starve last.
We can do this, together. Whether or not we’re willing to remains to be seen.
Resources
There is plenty of help needed in the short term. Here are some resources for those affected, and ways to help for anyone on the sidelines feeling compelled to do something.
For Fire Victims:
Where to start after a fire from the survivors of the Marshall Fire
Free and Discounted Food from L.A. restaurants
Housing and food options from the L.A. Homeless Authority
For Those who Want to Help:
Displaced Black Families GoFundMe Directory
