The Map is not the Road

Growth is something we really need to get past.

We knew there would be unknown unknowns when we started passing tipping elements. We had seen firenadoes — where a fire has such intensity that it generates an actual tornado — in the Canberra bushfire in 2003. Those are not new. A firenado killed 38,000 people in 15 minutes in Tokyo in 1923. They can reach up to 2,000°F (1,090 °C), hot enough to melt heavily alloyed steels and cast iron. Before the Los Angeles fires of the past week we had not seen a fire-a-cane — a wildfire with hurricane winds — battering a coastline for days, its steady gale in excess of 70 mph, gusting to 120 (200 kph), casting embers for miles in advance of its march. The LA fire-a-cane uprooted 50-foot trees and cast them aside like used matches.

I began this series of posts last week by saying that climate disintegration — witnessed in Western North Carolina with Hurricane Helene and now felt in Southern California — is only the most obvious and pressing symptom of a deeper, underlying malaise. Another symptom is looking for someone to blame or some simple explanation that can make it all go away.