Even if you’re not a chronic news-watcher like me, it was hard to miss the wildfires that recently ravaged the L.A. area.
They’re devastating, to say the least. When the fires were still in their infancy, my Instagram feed became a blur of GoFundMe’s, petition links and pleas for help, all to support the victims of the Palisades and Eaton fires. Now, just a few weeks later, 200,000 people have been forced to evacuate their homes.
Yet support for the victims of the fires has died down. We’ve lost our empathy, and it’s time to regain it. Simultaneously, link-sharing and empathetic cries often fall flat. How much of this so-called activism is no more than performance?
While the support for L.A. has been great, it begs the question of why other disasters have not received the same press coverage as the current fires.
Where were the influencers when floods hit Nigeria in 2022? When there was a landslide in Papua New Guinea just six months ago? Many influencers champion their desire to help people, but their silence on topics other than the L.A. fires speaks volumes.
Even during his recent inauguration, President Donald Trump referred to the disaster as a struggle for the “wealthiest and most powerful individuals in our country.”
However, those who’ve struggled most due to the fire aren’t the ones who are up-and-coming billionaires on their fourth home in Hollywood. It’s those who were barely making ends meet in a city with some of the highest priced real estate in the world, and are now without a roof over their heads.
Why do our elected officials pretend that those who don’t live in the lap of luxury are non-existent?
If people wanted to actually help, they’d be more open to acknowledge the destruction from the fires. It’s incredibly important to recognize the damage that the fires have caused, but it’s not as if fires in California are new, though. They seemingly happen at least once every year, each more disastrous than the last. To say that the worsening of the fires isn’t, in part, due to the climate change crisis that we’re facing would be a flat-out lie.
But Trump just pulled out of the Paris Agreement, the largest treaty dedicated to stopping the rise of climate change. It’s incredibly clear that the Trump-Vance administration has no plans to reverse global warming. If anything, they have “concepts of a plan,” which doesn’t exactly inspire much confidence within me.
It’s going to be a long four years.
