This is Jacobin radio. I'm Susie Wiseman. We're going to spend the hour today on the mega fires

engulfing much of the West Coast from Southern California to the Pacific Northwest

with writer, historian, urban and environmental theorist Mike Davis,

traditional land steward alley meders night, and our own Melissa Figueroa, urban geographer,

an activist for environmental and social justice.

Our imaginations can barely encompass the speed or scale of the catastrophe we're undergoing,

along with the pandemic, and the headlines match the story,

describing the red, orange and black skies

as the reality of climate change and accelerating apocalypse.

Our guests help us understand this new reality and how we got here, but also

what alternative traditions of land management can be utilized, and here we mean indigenous ecological knowledge and methods to

radically change the way we deal with these mega fires all this when our

program returns in just a moment. This is a Jacobin radio. I'm Susie Wiseman here with you in the middle of I guess what we're going to call

apocalyptic accelerationism California's apocalyptic second nature. We're going to spend the hour

talking about the fires, climate change, and everything that comes from this. We begin with Mike Davis and later in the program

we're going to be joined by Melissa Figaro and Ali Medders night but Mike has just

posted an article on the website Solidarity Above the Crisis and he ends that article with these words.

A new profoundly sinister nature is rapidly emerging from our fire rubble at the expense of landscapes we once

considered sacred. Our imaginations can barely encompass the speed or scale of the

catastrophe. And of course he then says,

gone, California, gone.

Well, before we go into all of that,

...