As LA fires still burn, how can we rebuild?

Climate Voices

As LA fires still burn, how can we rebuild?

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With fires burning for a third week, people are gauging whether or how they can return 

I’m a writer. It’s what I do.

But writing about the LA fires has felt false. Writing, when everything friends care about is in ashes, has felt like voyeurism. 

Growing up in the mountains behind LA, above the now devastated neighborhood of Altadena, I knew those Santa Ana winds; I knew it was fire weather, even 50 years ago. Never thought, tho, that the Junior High I attended would today be ashes.  

I fought big California fires. The Bear Fire in the mid-1970’s was moving an acre a second. Colorado fires have behaved similarly. I fought Storm King in ‘94, which killed the 14 Prineville hotshots. In my fire shirt pocket, I keep a lump of metal – someone’s zipper or button, melted and laying in the ashes where they died. I kept that lump with me as we evacuated animals from the Marshall Fire of 2021, the most destructive in Colorado history. 

Much of what I had thought to say has been written: It was inevitable. Yes. Live among the laurels and mountain mahogany and it will burn. It’s explosive. An acre of chaparral equals a ton of TNT going off. 

Much was written that is untrue, not worth repeating. 

The big truth, tho, belongs here: It’s climate change. Yes, it is.  

My colleague Russell Greene, whose home still stands, but whose dearest possessions are packed for evacuation, helped me find words. He wrote:

What Is the Color of the Sky Tonight?

It is the color of denial
And the color of our future
It is an announcement of what will be with us for decades at least, centuries perhaps
And a warning that what is coming will be worse
Hotter. Wetter. Faster. Stronger.
If you’re not shaken, you’re not getting it
If you sleep well tonight, it’s because you have disconnected.
If you think the climate movement will save you,
you are mistaken.
Your move

A climate artist and activist, Russell also knows that the climate movement is the only thing that will save us. Working together to inspire citizen-based activism, we both know that unless we implement the climate solutions we have that are now cheaper than continuing to burn fossil energy, nowhere will be safe from climate catastrophe. 

Unless we implement the climate solutions we have that are now cheaper than continuing to burn fossil energy, nowhere will be safe from climate catastrophe. 

Remember Asheville? Billed as a “climate haven,” a new meteorological phenomenon called the “brown ocean effect” made it vulnerable to a degree that no one there imagined. Hurricanes used to dissipate over land. They are now so powerful they push rain bands ahead of themselves over ground that is so warm (yes, 2024 was the hottest year ever in recorded history) that the hot, wet land energizes a hurricane just as a hot ocean does.

What does that have to do with LA? Santa Ana winds have always swept the LA basin. But not with hurricane force. LA has always burned. Malibu has burned 30 times. But not whole neighborhoods.

This was not a wildland fire that took a few homes in what is called the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI). It started that way, but this became an urban fire, just as the Marshall Fire did. 

John Vailant wrote about this in his brilliant book Fire Weather, describing how a Canadian wildland fire became an urban fire, destroying much of Fort McMurray, the home of Canada’s tar sands. Vailant chronicles how our love affair with fire, made possible by fossil fuels, has come home. Ember storms driven by hurricane force winds are coming for us all now. 

Yes, LA will rebuild. But here’s a thought: do it with climate smart technology. This makes you more resilient, as it helps solve the climate crisis. Use the best fire-resistant construction. Many homes that did this are still standing. Use these approaches, too, to harden existing buildings. 

But in the rush to return to normal, let’s consider that how we use energy now will determine whether we all burn. As LA rebuilds, it can do so in ways that do not use fossil fuels. Solar and battery powered microgrids can provide electricity for individual homes, power businesses and energize whole communities. 

As I write, a colleague, Craig Lewis, is in LA meeting with officials about the role that microgrids might play in the reconstruction. Craig founded Clean Coalition, a community-based organization that works with municipalities, utilities, community choice aggregators, and just about every other type of entity to facilitate solar, energy storage, and solar-driven microgrids. 

The Clean Coalition, a long-time consultant to LA County, offers technical engineering to aid the County’s decarbonization efforts. It has conducted multiple Solar Microgrid feasibility studies for the East Los Angeles Solar Microgrids Feasibility Study, and EVSE & Solar Microgrids for 30 LA County Lifeguard Station sites. 

As we pray for rain, remember, fire-denuded hills respond to rain with mudslides. The climate crisis is not done with LA. Nor with the rest of us.

I have a microgrid at my ranch: solar in the front pasture, batteries in the garage, an electric car, and an isolation relay. Today as the sun is shining, I am selling power to the utility, but when power goes out, I keep running. Why isn’t every house built this way?

As I spoke to Russell, he was bundled against the cold (well, LA’s version of it) because power was out at his home. It hadn’t burned, but most of LA was under PSPS: Public Safety Power Shutdown. The utilities de-energize the lines when the winds blow hard enough to spark fires. (Well, they are supposed to do. But, surprise, people don’t like that, so utilities delay as long as they can, and, well, we’ll see, but early indications are that downed power lines burned much of LA.)

So, to all of us: Your move. Will we turn now to the better, faster, cheaper technologies, or will we burn? As I write, the winds have risen once again, and tens of thousands more people are evacuated. And as we pray for rain, remember, fire-denuded hills respond to rain with mudslides. The climate crisis is not done with LA. Nor with the rest of us.

Written by

Hunter Lovins

Hunter Lovins is a pioneer in the global environmental movement. An author of 16 books and hundreds of scientific articles and founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions, she has consulted on sustainability strategies in business, economic development, agriculture, energy, water, security, and climate policies for scores of governments, communities, and companies worldwide, including heads of state and energy, defense, commerce, environment and other agencies. Chief Impact Officer of Change Finance and a Managing Partner of Now Partners, Hunter has won dozens of awards, including the Right Livelihood Award. Time recognized her as a Millennium Hero for the Planet; Newsweek called her a Green Business Icon. Her recent book A Finer Future: Creating an Economy in Service to Life won a Nautilus Award.