The House Is Quite Literally on Fire: Peter Kalmus on the Climate Emergency Hitting Home
02/03/25 • 53 min
Peter Kalmus, climate scientist and returning friend of Crazy Town, used to live in Altadena, California, where one of the disastrous Los Angeles wildfires struck on January 7th. Having learned that his former house had burned, Peter penned an emotional article for the New York Times about his family's decision to leave LA two years prior, out of safety concerns about frequent heat waves, drought, and just the sort of tragic conflagration that has reduced parts of LA to ashes. Get Peter's take on this historic wildfire, what nature is trying to teach us, and how to think about unnatural disasters now and in the future. Note: this interview was recorded on January 24, 2025.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
- Peter Kalmus’s article in the New York Times from January 10, 2025: “As a Climate Scientist, I Knew It Was Time to Leave Los Angeles”
- Peter’s book, Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution
- News story about the huge Bobcat Fire that struck Los Angeles County in 2020
- Article in Science about the damage from Hurricanes Helene and Milton
- Peter mentioned the Clausius-Clapeyron equation, which relates vapor pressure to temperature.
FeedSpot ranked Crazy Town as the #1 environmental economics podcast.
Peter Kalmus, climate scientist and returning friend of Crazy Town, used to live in Altadena, California, where one of the disastrous Los Angeles wildfires struck on January 7th. Having learned that his former house had burned, Peter penned an emotional article for the New York Times about his family's decision to leave LA two years prior, out of safety concerns about frequent heat waves, drought, and just the sort of tragic conflagration that has reduced parts of LA to ashes. Get Peter's take on this historic wildfire, what nature is trying to teach us, and how to think about unnatural disasters now and in the future. Note: this interview was recorded on January 24, 2025.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
- Peter Kalmus’s article in the New York Times from January 10, 2025: “As a Climate Scientist, I Knew It Was Time to Leave Los Angeles”
- Peter’s book, Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution
- News story about the huge Bobcat Fire that struck Los Angeles County in 2020
- Article in Science about the damage from Hurricanes Helene and Milton
- Peter mentioned the Clausius-Clapeyron equation, which relates vapor pressure to temperature.
FeedSpot ranked Crazy Town as the #1 environmental economics podcast.
Previous Episode
The Frequent Flyer Tree: Losing the Last Bit of Sense in the Climate Emergency
In the world of college sports, money talks and the volleyball team walks, er, flies 33,000 miles to play games. The NCAA, like almost everyone else, is playing games with Mother Nature. What do we expect student-athletes to gain from ignoring the climate emergency (not to mention putting their health at risk)? Who cares, as long as we can wring a few more dollars out of the TV deals -- am I right?!? Jason, Rob, and Asher propose a new plan for college sports and for taking the climate emergency seriously.
On a happy note: FeedSpot ranked Crazy Town as the #1 environmental economics podcast.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
- Jeff Eisenberg, "Conference realignment has redefined 'travel ball'," yahoo!sports, September 11, 2024.
- Stanford University's Woods Institute for the Environment and Doerr School of Sustainability
- Stanford has the most winning NCAA program, counting all sports. (2nd and 3rd are UCLA and USC, by far!)
Next Episode
Bargaining With Collapse: A Superabundance of Lab Grown Meat and Dryer Balls
Do you contemplate topics like climate change, biodiversity loss, and the risk of civilizational collapse? If so, then you probably understand something about bargaining – a psychological defense mechanism that’s one of the five stages of grief. With just a wee bit of embarrassment, Asher, Jason, and Rob reveal damning episodes of bargaining from their personal histories (involving green consumerism and cult-like devotion to technology). Having admitted their sins, they discuss the allure of false solutions to our environmental predicaments and how even veteran environmental journalists can be susceptible to it. Stay to the end for thoughts on how to avoid getting hoodwinked by the horde of ecomodernist tech bros who continuously shove unworkable "solutions" down our throats. Originally recorded on January 16, 2025.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
- Julia Musto, "The end of the world as we know it? Theorist warns humanity is teetering between collapse and advancement," Independent, January 13, 2025 (about Nahfeez Ahmed's take on superabundance versus collapse).
- Rob Dietz, "Chris Smaje Vs. George Monbiot and the Debate on the Future of Farming," Resilience, October 27, 2023.
- Crazy Town episode 32 on cognitive bias
- Megan Phelps-Roper's six questions
- Crazy Town episode 45 on feedback loops, featuring an interview with Beth Sawin
- Post Carbon Institute's Deep Dive on building emotional resilience
If you like this episode you’ll love
Episode Comments
Generate a badge
Get a badge for your website that links back to this episode
<a href="https://goodpods.com/podcasts/crazy-town-214881/the-house-is-quite-literally-on-fire-peter-kalmus-on-the-climate-emerg-83501359"> <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/badges/generic-badge-1.svg" alt="listen to the house is quite literally on fire: peter kalmus on the climate emergency hitting home on goodpods" style="width: 225px" /> </a>
Copy