By Isi Stewart Duran
At the time of writing, firefighters in Los Angeles are warning of ‘explosive fire growth’ and ‘critical fire weather’ in the city and its surroundings, where at least 27 people have been killed and at least 31 people have been reported missing since wildfires began on Tuesday, 7 January. Two hundred thousand residents have now been ordered to evacuate and hundreds of thousands more living in high-risk and elevated-risk areas could be told to leave their homes for safety in the coming days.
Unending catastrophes
The west coast of North America is one of the worst affected areas by wildfires. The combination of dry vegetation and strong winds means that any ignition can spread rapidly. With climate change-induced rising temperatures and prolonged periods of drought on the increase, places like Palisades in LA are particularly vulnerable. In 2020, one million acres in California caught fire in one week, dwarfing all previous records. Of course, the US isn’t the only country affected by worsening wildfires: Portugal, Canada and Brazil were other countries hit by particularly severe uncontrolled fires in 2024, the warmest year on record.
2024 was the first year to exceed the key milestone of 1.5C above the pre-industrial global temperature level, the limit set by climate experts who have warned that it could trigger multiple climate tipping points with ‘abrupt, irreversible and dangerous impacts for humanity.’ Annual breaches of the 1.5C limit do not necessarily indicate that we have reached this milestone yet, as it is usually calculated on decadal timescales. Still, it shows that the climate crisis is worsening at pace.
Climate researcher Peter Thorne described it as a ‘wake-up call to the world’. Wildfires are one consequence of this, and they are also accelerating it, by decreasing the effectiveness of carbon sinks (i.e. vegetation), which play a vital role in removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
Profiting from disaster
The destructive drive for profit above all else, which is the raison d’être and driving force of capitalism, is the cause of the increased extreme weather events that are already impacting millions of people’s lives. Unfortunately, this cruel logic does not pause in the event of climate disaster. Still, it continues to extract as much wealth as possible from ordinary people and the earth, even in the most dire of circumstances.
In response to thousands of people losing their homes, landlords in surrounding areas have already hiked rents by thousands of dollars. Similarly, greedy speculator companies were on the ground within days of the fires trying to exploit traumatised residents to buy land at cut prices (a practice the Governor was forced to temporarily ban).
Furthermore, insurance companies like Allstate and State Farm have refused to issue new property insurance policies or renew existing ones in California due to ‘significant losses’. This shows once again that the insurance industry is never about protecting people, and as more communities become vulnerable to extreme weather events, the less accessible insurance will become.
Disaster capitalism
Last year, the annual cost of property insurance in the Pacific Palisades soared from $4,500 to $18,000. And despite California being so vulnerable to wildfires, fire protection services are chronically underfunded. Instead, the state depends on the cheap labour of prison firefighters who are paid way below minimum wage to work in life-threatening conditions. Currently 950 prison firefighters have been deployed to contain the fires, on a wage of $10.24 per day.
‘Disaster capitalism’ was the term popularised by writer Naomi Klein to explain how the rich and powerful profiteer from crises. We can see this in action in California, where the devastating wildfires are already generating enormous profits for the capitalist class, despite it pointing to further climate breakdown and destruction for all humanity and wildlife globally.
To save our futures, working-class and oppressed people the world over must heed this wake-up call and fight to defend our habitual ecosystem from the capitalist system which is waging war on it. ‘Green capitalism’ was always a con, but even this pretense of concern for the environment is being dispensed with by our maniacal rulers, following Trump’s rallying cry of ‘drill baby drill’ as the world around us burns. The only thing capable of taking on the fossil fuel industry and the major corporate polluters, the disaster capitalists, and their whole system is an international eco-socialist force fighting for a just transition based on public ownership and democratic, rational and sustainable planning of the economy.
