Editor's Note:
Matthew Albracht is a social justice advocate, researcher, and writer.
He is the former CEO and currently a Board member of The Peace Alliance, a US-based NGO that advocates for national and international peacebuilding priorities.
He is also the author of the upcoming book "Nourish Your Self Whole."
Follow him on Twitter.
The opinions expressed in this comment are yours.
See more opinion at cnne.com/opinion
(CNN) -
A few years ago, I never would have imagined that my beloved Northern California would be ground zero for the global climate crisis, not here, and especially not so soon.
But here we are.
This year's devastating fire season, which is turning the sky an apocalyptic orange over the San Francisco Bay area, is just one heartbreaking example.
While we are not the only people affected by a disaster on the planet, we who live here have lost a lot.
We will have a lot to resolve as we recover and move through this charred and complicated landscape.
But for now, I am simply sorry for the enormity of what has been lost.
I won't lie, it's heavy.
I just learned that part of my most precious natural place, at Armstrong Woods State Nature Reserve, was destroyed by fire.
Now he lives only in my memories.
It's the latest reminder of a harsh truth: the climate crisis is unshakable in its ferocity and has already irreparably damaged my home state, with much more to come.
One of the first and biggest tangible signs of the problem was the mega-drought of recent years, the longest in modern California history.
Then, the great fires began, returning year after exhausting year, killing so much in their wake.
The dry thunderbolts and electrical storms, once in a generation, that ushered in this year's fires, offer a vivid warning of what this planet faces - an alarming harbinger of what is to come.
Climate scientists cautioned that all of this will likely be our new normal.
Many of us put it out of our minds, praying that these new patterns were an anomaly.
But this year, for me at least, the stark reality is finally settling in: this is not going to go away.
Much of what I love about this magnificent area, both physically and emotionally, is already gone or seriously damaged.
There will still be much to love, and I must have hope for the future here, but neither can I deny that what was will never return.
LOOK: While firefighters hope to contain some fires on the west coast, flames in other places cause more evacuations
It was like the death of a loved one.
So many magnificent creatures are gone.
The pristine land itself was burned and scarred, hundreds of thousands of acres with countless trees, including redwoods over a thousand years old.
Autumn usually brings our best weather.
It is the time when we want to be outside and carefree, but now we are plagued by worry, making contingency plans, preparing evacuation kits and exhaust bags, which litter the aisles and fill the back of cars for months, not knowing when there might be a new fire or evacuation order.
It is also the inability to go out and simply breathe, due to all the thick, toxic smoke that stains the skies and our lungs.
It can also be difficult to breathe inside, as a result of weeks of unusually hot weather and closed but leaky windows and mediocre air conditioning systems that do their best against mounting challenges, but too often they just don't measure up to this level. Of attack.
Then there are the ongoing blackouts, an attempt to mitigate new fires that can be caused by downed power lines during windstorms.
Will we essentially have to cancel one to three months a year, every year, to deal with these recurring fires?
It's a lot to hold.
But we will have to figure out how to navigate these new realities of the climate crisis, and those unknown that are yet to come.
This is the kind of thing those of us who live in parts of the world that are already being hit hard are grappling with now.
MORE: The pandemic did not fix climate change.
This week's disasters are proof
There's still a lot of beauty left here in Northern California, at least for now, and razed trees and wildlife will emerge over time, hopefully with better land management practices and less human expansion, which are also part of the problem. .
But that innocent and magical ease that used to be a part of life here for me and so many others feels gone, at least in this tender moment.
What we are left with is a warning, to the United States and the world, about the dangers of global warming.
It is not too late to move forward in a much more sustainable way, mitigating the worst impacts of man-made climate change.
We are smart and inventive.
We can build a cleaner, greener society and economy that will not only keep the worst at bay, but also create a much healthier planet.
Let's not keep pushing our pain and fear into denial and complacency.
Instead, let us feel deeply in our new reality, accept it, and let it motivate us to productive action.
We can do it.
We must do it.
California fires