California is burning and I want to blame somebody, maybe those climate change deniers or Congress. But it really is all of us. None of us wants to get rid of our toasters. Including me. It is not just so called Global warming or that sea level is rising, we are running out of water – here in the west, atleast – and we are polluting the oceans as well as the atmosphere. To protect communities built where they shouldn’t be, we have national policies that results in bigger fires (don’t forget, those fires are adding CO2 to the atmosphere and they are going to get bigger and the season is going to be longer). We want to think we can still do something to stop the change but the change is here. Maybe we can do something to stop it from getting much worse, but I doubt it. Maybe, just maybe, we can stop the climate from getting catastrophically worse, but there is no particular reason to think we have the political will to do that. It really is time to look at how we are going to mitigate the changing climate. I am not saying that we should stop thinking and talking about improving the way we live and what we are going to leave future generations, but we should also adjust to the reality that we have already trashed the planet. Maybe our policy should be that when an area gets devastated by a natural disaster, we don’t try to restore it. Including the Fifth Ward in New Orleans, the New Jersey coast,  and the areas burned by this fire. Maybe we should admit that our hubris is part of the problem and it is time to admit that we can’t go mano a mano with nature.