Let Us Be The Change — tamara white

This is a non-art post. This is a post about the tragedy that has become a sobering yearly event. The Dixie Fire is currently consuming the area where I was born and raised. This flaming beast with an insatiable appetite has currently scorched an area eight times the size of San Francisco and leveled a neighboring town. In the most harrowing manner, I understand the panicked anxiety that those in Santa Rosa endured. The heartbreak at leaving your home not knowing if it will be standing when you return.

I am safe, yet my entire family had to flee town with little notice. The shelters were full. Hotels booked. Airbnb’s unavailable if you have pets. And those that were available were priced exorbitantly high. I have woken the past several mornings looking around my house, grateful. Imagining if it just burned to the ground. Gone. Understanding there is so much that we take for granted if we don’t pay attention.

While many victims of this fire have been quick to blame our Governor and criticize President Biden, the truth is that climate change is at the core of these repeated tragedies. Scientists have confirmed that climate change has contributed to these fires, causing the region to be warmer and drier in the past 30 years. These disasters won’t stop if we don’t start taking this situation seriously. The climate crisis is bipartisan. Those flames don’t care if you are conservative or liberal. The weather will continue to be extreme. These wildfires will keep coming and become “more frequent and destructive” if we do not pay attention.

I am encouraging anyone reading this to make a change. Just one thing. Anything that can help prevent another fire, the next hurricane, or whatever natural disaster is bound to impact another community. If ever there was a time to reach across the aisle, it is now. We are living through not only natural disasters, but also a global pandemic that has currently killed four million individuals. Just one thing…

Ways that you can help stop climate change:

“In a world of more than seven billion people, each of us is a drop in the bucket. But with enough drops, we can fill any bucket.”

— David Suzuki

-trw