The LA climate scientist who foresaw his neighbourhood’s destruction and left

Two years ago, climate scientist and activist Dr Peter Kalmus moved his family away from Los Angeles because as California’s climate kept growing drier and hotter, he was afraid that his much loved, indeed idyllic sounding, neighbourhood would burn. He had lived in Altadena for 14 years.

Now, from his new home in North Carolina, he has had the deeply upsetting experience of watching Altadena razed, as climate-driven wildfires caused death, destroyed homes and ruined livelihoods.

Kalmus tells In the News that even he – who has spent his career warning about the deadly impact of our fossil fuel dependence – didn’t expect fires of this scale. It is he says proof that climate models which consistently predict the sort of temperatures that will alter life on earth, have tended to err on the side of optimism.

Our inability – in a world shaped by the interests of big business, billionaires and the fossil fuel industry – to grasp the threat caused by carbon emissions, means he says that nowhere is safe from unpredictable, and even devastating weather events. The LA fires won’t be the last.