To sum up how this week has been (and continues to be), there’s a powerful scene from a book I keep referencing. It’s from “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War”, by Max Brooks, at it’s face a zombie novel but much deeper once you get sucked into it. I haven’t read it in several years, so I might get some details wrong, but the overall section is thus: At the early stages of the zombie war, it was just another weird thing out there to worry about. One of the survivors interviewed recounts she was at her home in the Midwest suburbs, watching news stories about various things, but she wasn’t more or less consumed with planning for this over anything else, like the flu or doing the laundry, or getting her kids off to soccer practice…until a zombie burst through her back door, and the family had to flee with no planning, no supplies, no support. Watching the fires in California, the hurricane in North Carolina, the many feet of snow and ice blanketing Kansas is very much that point in time for us. The consequences of climate change are here, but we haven’t adapted to worry about them any more or less than inflation, a bent Supreme Court, or the ways in which Covid has rocked how our modern world operates.

I’ve got more to say on all this, but before I dig any deeper, I wanted to point towards the below aid for folks in California, folks who are currently experiencing the worst time of their lives. For those of us not currently in the thick of it, we’re the helpers now. Climate refugees are a real thing, and I fear many folks who just watched their homes burn won’t be able to rebuild in place. Below is a list I’ve curated and done my best to verify that the money will be handled correctly, but always do your own due diligence, even when moved to assist.

• California Fire Relief
• California Fire Foundation
• California Community Foundation
• Global Giving’s CA Wildfire Relief Fund
• World Central Kitchen
• Pasadena Humane Society
• Love This Horse Equine Rescue (evacuating horses and other animals and providing emergency grants to horse owners)
• Yeehawllywood (evacuating animals and providing mutual aid)
• Los Angeles Times help article