California. Such a wonderful and beautiful place to be in. However and unfortunately, it is a place of disaster as well. The geology is diverse which allowed millions of natural disasters to occur there, which includes but not limited to high earthquake risk surrounding the San Andreas Fault line, high flood risks in Southern California, and extremely dry climate making California more accepted to wildfire. It is just sad to see how it just took a huge turn and we are not helping the problem at all, instead we are actually feeding into “killing” California.
That might be a little bit exaggerated, but definitely not as exaggerated as the movie “San Andreas” starring the Rock which shows how California basically turn into a “shit hole” after disasters come one after another. But honestly, if we keep on creating more and more global warming, that unrealistic might become a reality.
Only three days before today (January 22, 2024), a particularly strong Pacific storm pummeled the Southern California, causing widespread flooding in San Diego. Roads are blocked, homes are damaged and destroyed, and families are separated, which prompted rescues around the location. And unfortunately, this is only one out of the millions and millions flooding that California has encountered before, but it has been getting more and more serious recently.
The most serious and largest California wildfires that happened in recent time is the August Complex fire that happened in August 2020. More than a million acres of trees, grass, and land are burned, 935 structures are destroyed and one person is killed. It was terrible to hear and see through. You might say “but it happened because of an unprecedented dry lightning storm between August 16-18”. However, I would like to point out that even though natural disasters do occur naturally, they have become more and more frequently due to the rise in global temperature, other known as climate change.
Basically everything that we do in our daily lives is contributing a lot to the climate change, for example, turning on the lights and driving around in a car. We are the biggest contributor to ruining the planet. However, I am not here to tell you that you should do what or what, like you should reduce the use of heating and cooling appliances, turn off the lights when you go out, take the public transport or even walk instead of always driving, eat more vegetables, and so on. I do not want to mention any of that and tell you to do that because I am sure you have already heard of them before. If they didn’t make you start doing them before, why would I be able to do so? Therefore, I want to try to tell you more about different serious natural disasters that is happening around the globe or even only on the land of America, hoping that your empathy will start making you realize stuff that you are doing should not be the one that you should be doing.
I know some of you (or even most of you) do not care much about California, but just remember it might one day come back to you and where you live and it is affecting all of us and it is just a matter of time.
I really liked how you conceded that the wildfires in California were due to natural causes however human interactions with the environment such as climate change has strong implications on the frequency of events such as the wildfires. I really enjoyed your explanation of each of our individual impacts on the climate. It is hard to contemplate the issue of climate change on an individual level as it is easier to think of it as a global issue. I also really liked your call to action at the end. It provides a level of suspense to the end of your content whilst highlighting the prominence of the issue at hand.
I enjoyed your commentary on the climate crisis and each person’s role in the collective destruction of our planet, while you specifically honed in on issues in California such as extremely dry conditions and rampant wildfires. I have a lot of family in California, so I visit every other year, and I was beyond shocked when last year I actually saw some of the hills have green grass and flowers on them. This was such a shock because California managed to luck out and get some rain last year, but every other year the climate crisis and our ignorance in terms of our climate and our attitudes towards it was plainly visible on the surface of the states terrain. I personally would love to see a world in which seeing green grasses and floral in California wasn’t such a shock, which as you mentioned, can only happen if we all start to take a good look at our impacts on our environment.