THE SET-UP: There’s one line that stands out from the Outlook India story below:
Those who bear the least responsibility for climate change are the most vulnerable to its consequences.
That harsh reality has been a hallmark of the 21st Century. People in the “developing world” who did little or nothing to cause or contribute to the problem often ended-up paying for it. It’s not fair. It also not fair that the people who produced the most climate pollution are often the people best equipped to buy their way out of its worst impacts.
Exposing unfairness seems to be the changing climate’s modus operandi.
Perhaps that’s because climate pollution is an unpaid debt.
Essentially, we’ve been putting climate pollution on Mother Nature’s carbon credit card during a profligate, post-World War II spending spree. Every barrel of oil we burned put a little more on the card. We’ve long-since exceeded our debt limit, but instead of paying it down … we doubled-down and tripled-down and quadrupled-down each time scientists tried to tell us the true cost of building the industrialized world.
But, nope. We just we ignored or dismissed climate pollution as an externality.
Mother Nature sent us a few “final notices” after the turn of the century.
We just ignored those, too .
Now she’s put our account into collections and we’re learning the hard way that there are no externalities in nature. Externalities are just deferred payments. Earth’s system is closed.
We’re also realizing it’s going to be really expensive to keep on living these lifestyles in these homes … and it doesn’t seem to matter where “home-sweet-home” is located. Hurricanes and floods and tornado clusters and bomb cyclones and atmospheric rivers and heatwaves and droughts and wildfires … pick your place and you’re picking your poison. And for those of us who didn’t hoard assets or accrue capital in the wake of the Crash of 2008, there’s a chance we’ll end up in the same boat with climate refugees who cannot afford a second or third home, or a trip to Mars. - jp
TITLE: Climate Migrants: Displaced And Without Protection
https://www.outlookindia.com/environment/climate-migrants-displaced-and-without-protection
EXCERPTS: As firefighters race to contain the spreading wildfires around Los Angeles and evacuation warnings leave homeowners on edge, the crisis has reignited debates on climate change, displacement, and the growing phenomenon of climate migrants. The International Organisation for Migration defines climate migrants as people moving due to “sudden or progressive change in the environment due to climate change”, by choice or compulsion, “within a state or across an international border”.
For years, sudden disasters like hurricanes, cyclones, tsunamis, and droughts have upended lives, and forced migration. Displaced people often have no choice but to seek refuge in rural areas, overcrowded camps, or informal settlements with limited access to basic amenities or infrastructure. Without any organised attempt to monitor this migrant population, these desperate individuals end up wherever they can, not necessarily where they should.
Although climate migration is now widespread, there are no regional or global legal frameworks to protect these migrants. While the term “climate refugees” is increasingly used in media and advocacy, these individuals are not legally considered refugees.
The term 'refugee' is legally defined and refers to individuals who have a "well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion" (Art. 1, 1951 Refugee Convention). The convention does not recognise environmental factors as a basis for persecution.
This means that states are not legally obligated to admit climate migrants as asylum seekers. Many are forced to return to their home countries, where they remain in perilous conditions under the constant threat of disaster.
Latin America, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa are among the regions most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, which could lead to large increases in both internal and cross-border migration. More than half of the developing world’s population resides in these three regions.
By 2050, the World Bank’s Groundswell report estimates that up to 216 million people across six global regions could be displaced internally due to slow-onset climate impacts such as water scarcity, reduced crop productivity, and rising sea levels. Regionally, this includes 86 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, 49 million in East Asia and the Pacific, 40 million in South Asia, 19 million in North Africa, 17 million in Latin America, and 5 million in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
There are no accurate estimates of how many people are currently moving, or will move, due to environmental factors. Much of the climate-induced migration occurs within countries—such as from rural to urban areas—and is often undocumented. Cross-border migration linked to natural disasters and slower-moving climate impacts is harder to measure but is expected to increase, particularly for those living near borders.
In April 2021, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) released data indicating that 21.5 million people have been displaced by climate change-related disasters since 2010, noting that “in addition to sudden disasters, climate change is a complex cause of food and water shortages, as well as difficulties in accessing natural resources.”
Ironically, countries with the lowest emissions are often geographically vulnerable to climate change, such as deserts and low-lying islands. Those who bear the least responsibility for climate change are the most vulnerable to its consequences.
According to a report from Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute, people with the top 1 percent highest incomes globally—a group of about 63 million—emitted twice the amount of carbon emissions between 1990 and 2015 compared to the bottom 50 percent, which includes 3.1 billion people.
TITLE: Meet the $10k-a-day private firefighters who've ignited resentment
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14280379/private-firefighters-super-rich-pay-save-homes.html
EXCERPTS: With its run-down neighbourhoods and tent cities sitting cheek by jowl with street after street of opulent mansions, Los Angeles has always been a city sharply divided between the haves and have-nots.
Now, as the city is consumed by deadly wildfires, there is a new financial divide: whether or not you have access to highly paid private firefighters to ensure that your house may be spared the flames - even as your neighbours' properties are burnt to a crisp.
While these private companies typically only work with local governments and insurance companies, such is the desperation of wealthy Los Angelino homeowners that they're getting in touch with them directly.
And, apparently, paying wildly over the odds. A typical two-person private firefighting crew with a small vehicle can cost $3,000 a day, with a much larger 20-man team running to $10,000 a day.
With some distraught millionaires promising to 'pay any amount' to save their homes, it's been claimed that some firms are now able to charge as much as much as $2,000 (£1,650) an hour.
Clients who can afford that sort of rate tend to have huge swimming pools, which is fortunate because - with the fire hydrants serving the city out of water - they can suck what they need from their pools.
Critics counter that these outfits are actually a hindrance rather than a help - competing for precious resources including water and getting in the way of other firefighters.
And while private firefighting bosses insist they bring their own water or take it from clients' swimming pools rather than hooking up to street hydrants, critics question how they manage when those two sources inevitably run out during LA's sustained wildfires.
Some private firefighting companies have conceded that they will, if necessary, use hydrants or other sources of water, such as lakes and ponds, on which government firefighters will also rely.
These companies first came to the attention of the general public in the US in 2018 when one helped save rapper Kanye West and his then-wife Kim Kardashian's £50million mansion in the gated LA community of Hidden Hills from that year's Woolsey wildfire.
Some neighbours praised the couple as they said the intervention, which involved digging a string of trenches to create a fire break, saved their own homes, too.
But opinions have hardened considerably against the super-rich and their firemen-for-hire as the devastation in LA has continued.
Indeed, damning photos have shown streets reduced to ash and rubble with the exception of a favoured few - sometimes with a small team of private firefighters parked watchfully outside as the rest of the street smoulders.
LA was once a city famous for fawning on the rich and famous who live there, but Hollywood celebrities are losing their lustre. Some blame the pandemic, when so many of them appeared tone deaf as they posted smug social media videos from their luxurious mansions.
As a result, those moneyed locals who have publicly admitted using private firefighters, or tried to recruit them, have had to contend with the fury of their fellow citizens, many of whom have expressed outrage at the mere notion that there could even be a two-tier system when it comes to putting out fires.
Keith Wasserman, a millionaire property investor who had previously boasted online about how he avoids paying taxes, was engulfed in his own personal firestorm on social media after posting on X: 'Does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home in Pacific Palisades? Need to act fast here. All neighbours' houses burning. Will pay any amount. Thank you.'
Adam Leber, a Hollywood agent whose clients have included singers Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears, ran into the same trouble when he admitted his house was being protected by a private firefighting company, All Risk Shield, on a $6,000 annual retainer after a fire last year.
They rushed in to save his mansion in the Hollywood Hills as he left the 6,000 sq ft house with his wife and three-year-old daughter and headed for their second home in another part of California.
Leber rallied to his own defence, telling the New York Times: 'I did what any human being on earth would do…I was 1,000 per cent certain my house was done and the neighborhood was done.'
He went on: 'The team brought in their own water and then pulled water from his swimming pool. They did not tap into the fire hydrants. That's a huge misconception.'
However, firefighting union leaders - who have long had a rocky relationship with private companies whose workforce are often not in a union - beg to differ.
Brian Rice, president of California Professional Firefighters, which represents 35,000 members, said this week such outfits were a 'liability' rather than an asset, principally because they are trained to fight fires in deep forests rather than cities.
'The private contract companies are not trained or equipped to operate in this environment,' he said.
That hasn't deterred Hollywood's 'one-per centers'. Rick Caruso, a billionaire property developer who owns Palisades Village, a glitzy shopping mall full of luxury brand stores, such as Chanel, as well as an expensive sushi restaurant, called in several firefighting firms from the neighbouring state of Arizona last week as the flames spread to the development.
Caruso said the local hydrants had run out, so his lorries - each with hundreds of gallons - saved the day. 'Our property is standing. Everything around us is gone. It is like a war zone,' Caruso noted bluntly.
'The rich suffer zero consequences of anything, even cataclysmic natural disasters,' complained an X user. 'Private and firefighter should not be in the same sentence.'
TITLE: The Dangerous Yet Desirable Work of Being an Incarcerated Firefighter in California
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/01/11/los-angeles-palisades-prisoners-firefighters
EXCERPTS: More than 900 incarcerated firefighters [responded] to the fires in Southern California, according to California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officials.
In a written statement earlier in the week, CDCR Secretary Jeff Macomber called the incarcerated workers an “essential” part of the state’s response. “Their commitment to protecting lives and property during these emergencies cannot be overstated,” Macomber said.
Generally, incarcerated firefighters work on “hand crews,” using hand tools to clear vegetation and create firebreaks that slow the spread of wildfires, whereas tasks like operating fire hoses or spreading flame retardant are left to professional firefighters. It’s grueling manual labor, and during emergencies, it’s common for firefighters, incarcerated or not, to work in 24-hour shifts.
Firefighting is voluntary for incarcerated people. The work can be dangerous, and even deadly, but is generally considered one of the most desirable prison jobs available in places where it is offered. It’s not uncommon to hear formerly incarcerated firefighters say that their time on the line was the most rewarding time they spent in custody, or even the most rewarding experience of their lives.
“Sometimes we would stay at a fire for two or three weeks, and when we left, people would hold up thank-you signs. People would bring pastries, sodas or sandwiches to us. No one treated us like inmates; we were firefighters,” wrote David Desmond in a personal essay for The Marshall Project in 2023.
Even those with positive feelings about their time on the fire line wrestle with the complicated ethics, however. Writing in The Washington Post in 2021, former incarcerated firefighter Matthew Hahn considered how “the decision to take part is largely made under duress, given the alternative,” of the violent confines of prison.
Nevertheless, speaking to The Marshall Project this week, Hahn said the program was positive for him. He worked as a wildland firefighter during the last three years of his incarceration in California and helped fight the Jesusita fire in 2009. It was meaningful work, and he got to serve much of his time living outside in nature. It also allowed him to earn time off his sentence — he was released 18 months early.
Historically, incarcerated firefighters have made up as much as 30% of the California wildfire force, according to the Los Angeles Times. Sentencing reforms have led to steady declines in the number of people incarcerated in the state, however, reducing the number of prisoners eligible to participate in work on the fire lines. Last summer, with only about half of the budgeted hand crews fully staffed, some in the state worried that the reductions could affect the state’s ability to contain fires.
Of course, there are ways to staff hand crews without recruiting prison labor, but few would be as cheap in a state that has faced profound budget deficits in recent years. According to CDCR’s website, incarcerated fire crew members make between $5.80 and $10.24 per day, and earn an additional $1 per hour when responding to emergencies, up to $26.90 over a 24-hour shift. That reflects a pay raise enacted in April, which roughly doubled the salary ranges for all incarcerated laborers in the state.
Legally, one of the reasons that the state can pay incarcerated firefighters around a dollar an hour for this dangerous and vital work is that under the U.S. and California constitutions, involuntary servitude is permitted as punishment for a crime.
California voters had the opportunity in November to remove this exemption from the state constitution. That would have opened the door to new kinds of legal challenges over working conditions for incarcerated people in the state, but the measure failed.
While the pay is low compared with wages in the free world, firefighter work is often the best-paying prison labor available, which is one reason that it's sought after. Some firefighters told our colleague Christie Thompson in 2020 that the work has a higher degree of prestige compared to other prison jobs. Perhaps the most common reason people give for volunteering for fire fighting is being able to help people, give back to their community and make amends for mistakes in their past.
That’s how Anthony Pedro felt after his time as an incarcerated firefighter. “It's so rewarding to be able to help people in their worst days,” Pedro said in an interview with The Marshall Project this week.
Pedro wanted to continue the work when he got out of prison in 2018. But despite his experience, getting a firefighting job with a criminal record is difficult. He spent months sleeping in a car, before finally finding a professional firefighting job in 2019. Two years later, he founded the Future Fire Academy, to help train and certify other formerly incarcerated people, so they wouldn’t face the same struggles. Some of his former trainees are fighting the fires in Los Angeles, he said.
Legislation passed in 2020 has made it easier for former fire crew members to get their records expunged and get firefighting jobs. But Pedro said the process can still be difficult and time-consuming.
While the work is rewarding to many, it is inherently dangerous. A 2022 Time Magazine analysis of public records found that incarcerated firefighters suffer higher rates of some kinds of injuries than professional firefighters, including object-induced injuries like cuts and bruises, and smoke inhalation. The analysis found that professional firefighters are much more likely to experience burns and heat-related injuries.
Amika Mota was a firefighter in California's Chowchilla prison before her release in 2015. She said fighting wildfires was not the bulk of their duties, which also included putting out structure fires and responding to overdoses or car crashes.
Now the executive director of Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition — an organization of currently and formerly incarcerated people that advocates for better conditions — Mota said that during the two and half years she was an incarcerated firefighter, she and the other women often relied on heavily used equipment, such as using hand-me-down goggles that no longer sealed properly. But few were willing to complain too much or refuse job assignments, she said, in part because they feared facing punishment or being taken out of the program.
“Every single firefighter that is out there right now, I'm sure they're proud to be there,” she said. “But also every single one of those people has signed away their rights for any sort of compensation if they die on the fireground. They're putting themselves on the frontlines without really understanding the health impacts long-term.”