PRESSURE POINT — We did start the fire, it was always burning
by Lina Osman | January 23, 2025
Last week, the Guardian published an article titled “What is Happening in Los Angeles Is Our Future.” I disagree. What is happening in Los Angeles is not a glimpse into some distant future—it is our present, and it is our fault. Climate change is not looming on the horizon; it is here, raging in the hillsides of California, flooding villages in Sudan, and displacing millions across the Global South. The problem with framing the climate crisis as a “future issue” is that it absolves us of the need for urgency. It is a narrative that has lulled us into denial for decades while the world burns around us.
In case you missed it, fires ravaged communities across Los Angeles, burning homes and displacing families. The Eaton fire erupted in Pasadena’s Eaton Canyon on January 4th, its flames rapidly spreading across 120 acres of bone-dry terrain. Just days earlier, the Palisades fire scorched through hillside communities, forcing hundreds of evacuations and leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. These fires, fueled by unseasonably dry conditions and relentless winds, are a grim reminder of the growing toll climate change is exacting on California.
The intensity of the LA fires is a convergence of human-driven and ecological factors exacerbating the region’s vulnerabilities. Invasive species, such as non-native grasses introduced through colonial agricultural practices and urbanization, have spread across Southern California, creating highly flammable ground cover that acts as a tinderbox. Chaotic rainfall patterns, driven by anthropogenic climate change, disrupt ecosystems and fuel the growth and subsequent drying of vegetation. The infamous Santa Ana winds—a natural meteorological phenomenon—fan flames with ferocious speed, making containment near-impossible. Compounding this is the expanding wildland-urban interface, where human development encroaches into natural areas, amplifying both the risk of ignition and the human cost of destruction. Together, these elements form a grim equation now captured in every headline.
But this isn’t just about California. These disasters are part of a global story—a story of greed and systemic inequity. For years, Los Angeles has ignored its ecological vulnerabilities, silenced and abused environmental activists, and profited from industries that fuel climate destruction. Now, the same city turns to those activists for solutions. And so I am forced to ask: are these fires a kind of cosmic retribution? It’s a stark sentiment: are we, as as members of the Global North, finally reaping what we’ve sown? Has our greed—toward the planet, its people, and its resources—begun to catch up with us?
Climate change is an illustration of the systemic issue of global inequality. Globally, the top 10% of earners are responsible for nearly half of all energy-related CO2 emissions. Yet the consequences of this carbon inequality fall disproportionately on those least responsible. In 2020, catastrophic floods in Sudan displaced over three million people, destroyed 100,000 homes, and claimed countless lives. In 2022, historic floods in Pakistan affected 33 million people and displaced eight million. Scientists predict ongoing climate change will trigger events displacing about 143 million people in the Global South by 2050. These aren’t abstract tragedies; they’re the grim reality of a crisis unfolding now.
And while climate change is undeniably most perpetuated by those most fortunate, we cannot absolve ourselves of individual responsibility. This isn’t just billionaires flying private jets—earning as little as £30,000 annually can place you among that top 10%. Our daily choices—what we consume, how we travel, and the waste we generate—contribute to the system that sustains corporate greed. Corporations like M&S don’t exist in a vacuum; they thrive because we sustain them with our wallets. And just as we individually fuel corporate greed, individual responsibility can be used to fuel collective action.
So when the media frames the climate crisis as a “future” problem, it erases this reality. What is happening in Los Angeles is our present, what is happening in Los Angeles is our fault, what is happening in Los Angeles is the product of similar media which has for years framed climate change as an issue that we have not yet arrived at.
Despite our collective denial, we are here. We have arrived at climate change, and we have been here for a while. Fires are currently devasting affluent and poor neighbourhoods alike, levelling the playing field in ways both cruel and karmic. We’ve become too accustomed to these disasters. We are clinging to the belief that someone else will solve the problem, that it will only affect people far away. Each new inferno, flood, or storm blurs into the next. The trees burn; the flowers wither; the bees vanish. And with them go the small, ordinary joys they bring—tea leaves for our mugs on slow mornings, paper for our books, daisies for our fields. And so we grieve. But in our grief, we forget, lulled by the convenience and comfort of greed. That grief hardens into a complacency that only serves the systems that created it. And then it happens again.
Where I’m from, climate change is often dismissed as a “white girl concern.” It’s the easiest, most surface-level form of activism—a symbolic recycling bin in the kitchen rather than dismantling systems of oppression. It is a white girl’s “gateway drug” into social justice. Climate change is a privilege to care about, a “starter pack” issue for those who can afford to ignore the pressing realities of poverty, war, and displacement. But this argument misses the point. At its core, the climate crisis is a Global South issue. It is the culmination of centuries of extraction, exploitation, and environmental destruction, all disproportionately affecting the world’s most vulnerable.
And though we might not often speak of climate change where I’m from, we know the earth as a blessing—a ni’ma—entrusted to us as its caretakers: “The servants of the Lord of Mercy are those who walk gently upon the earth”. But we, all of us, have not walked gently. We have trampled, extracted, and consumed without restraint. And now we are reaping the consequences.
So, what is happening in Los Angeles? It is not our future: the reckoning is upon us, not to warn us, but to demand a response. Whether we meet it with complacency or courage is our future.∎
Words by Lina Osman. Image courtesy of mbtrana via Flickr.