Climate Scientist: I Got Out of LA 2 Years Ago

As a climate scientist, Peter Kalmus is monitoring the wildfire catastrophe in the Los Angeles area with concern. But in a New York Times essay, Kalmus explains that his concern has a personal twist: He uprooted his family from Altadena two years ago because the warning signs kept stacking up, and "I feared that our neighborhood would burn." And now it has—the home where he and his wife raised their children for 14 years is gone, along with others on their former cul-de-sac. Kalmus got it right, but "even I didn't think fires of this scale and severity would raze it and other large areas of the city this soon." One thing climate change keeps teaching us, he writes, is that its worst effects keep happening earlier than predicted.

Kalmus recounts his personal history as a scientist in a danger zone and warns that "nothing will change until our anger gets powerful enough." He singles out oil, gas, and coal companies and says it's vital to get "all sides of the political spectrum" on board with meaningful change. As for the Kalmus family, they relocated to North Carolina—which got pummeled by Hurricane Helene a few months ago. "No place is truly safe anymore," Kalmus writes. (Read the full essay.)