Newsletter: Hey, presidential candidates, climate change would like a word

Good morning. It is Wednesday, Oct. 2. Here’s what we’ve been doing in Opinion.

You might not know it watching the campaign for president, but climate change is still a thing. Two of the 105 minutes in Kamala Harris’ and Donald Trump’s debate were spent discussing it, but the inconvenience of the topic didn’t deter Hurricane Helene from dumping 30 inches of rain over a three-day period on cities hundreds of miles inland from the warm tropical waters that feed such megastorms.

“Yeah, but you can’t blame any single weather event on climate change,” I can hear some saying. Maybe I can’t, but some climate scientists sure can: Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have estimated that global warming caused 50% more rainfall from Hurricane Helene over parts of Georgia and the Carolinas. We’ll see if further research bears that estimate out, but the reflexive objections to implicating climate change in extreme weather events are so 2003.

Speaking of 2003, you remember what we in Southern California were doing in October that year, besides electing Arnold Schwarzenegger our governor? I do: We were choking on smoke during an unrelenting wildfire outbreak, primarily in San Diego County. The Cedar fire killed 15 people and destroyed more than 2,500 structures in San Diego’s inland suburbs and rural communities; at the time, it was the largest California wildfire in 75 years.

But if it had burned this year, the Cedar fire wouldn’t even make the state’s top five in acreage since 2020. In fact, the entire 2003 fire season — which, I’ll remind you again, felt unprecedented and apocalyptic at the time — saw about the same amount of land burn in California as the ongoing 2024 season, which still has a few warm, dry months to go, and another heat wave bearing down on us. The Line fire in the San Bernardino Mountains has roared back to life, putting communities around Big Bear Lake back on evacuation notice just over two weeks after evacuation orders were lifted.

A fire season surpassing 1 million scorched acres of land that doesn’t feel like a big deal — that’s climate change. A hurricane washing away parts of an inland mountain city once touted as a haven from global warming — that’s climate change. And an election year in which climate change barely rates mentioning, as communities on both coasts face devastation and fossil fuel companies make billions during the warmest year on record — that’s insanity.

You know what could help? More housing in Los Angeles. There’s a climate angle to housing that often gets overlooked: Increasing density in already built-out cities like Los Angeles could reduce the need to sprawl past the urban-wildland interface, where fires present a huge risk to residents. And as The Times’ editorial board noted last week, L.A.’s planning commission had the chance to prioritize density and housing affordability over upholding single-family zoning. Alas, the commission gave L.A.’s single-family neighborhoods a reprieve.

This is an interesting anecdote about JD Vance from columnist LZ Granderson: “The first time I met Vance was Nov. 9, 2016, on the set of ‘Good Morning America.’ It was the day after the election. Donald Trump was to become president, and Vance told me he was not happy about it. In fact, earlier in the year Vance had compared Trump to Hitler. That morning in New York, Vance told me Trump didn’t care about poor white people, but just used them to win.”

MacArthur Park crime forced his restaurant’s closure in 1990. He hopes Langer’s survives. Ken Rausch’s family opened Edward’s Steak House in 1946, just before Al Langer opened his deli nearby. In this video episode of “Hear Me Out,” he says the deterioration of the neighborhood around MacArthur Park forced him to close Edward’s in 1990; now, he’s worried for Langer’s Deli.

Donald Trump is waging one last battle to bottle up the Jan. 6 case until election day. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan will soon decide how much of the prosecution’s 180-page brief describing its evidence against Trump in the federal Jan. 6 case should be made public. Columnist Harry Litman writes: “This isn’t the full trial that those who hunger for accountability for the former president hoped to see.... But it is an extremely powerful body of evidence that could harm Trump’s prospects if it comes out before the election. Talk about an October surprise.”

A lot of California Democrats loathed Gov. Ronald Reagan. They’re misguided. The Republican is remembered for taking decidedly right-wing positions before winning the 1966 election against two-term incumbent Gov. Pat Brown. But it wasn’t conservative radicalism that would eventually propel Reagan to the White House, writes Max Boot; rather, once in power, Reagan governed California as a pragmatist.

More from Opinion

From our columnists

• Robin Abcarian: What kind of country would kill Marcellus Williams despite the doubts about his conviction?
• Jackie Calmes: Sometimes real life has to intrude on the news. In this election year, what’s crucial will catch up to you
• LZ Granderson: Too corrupt for reality TV? There’s always Congress as a Plan B

From guest contributors

• Why Americans love scary stories — none of them scarier than our own
• Op-comic: Women’s pants are making more than a fashion statement
• Child care is now a central issue in the presidential race. That didn’t happen overnight

From the Editorial Board

• Mark Gonzalez for Assembly District 54
• Yes on Measure G for a more functional and representative L.A. County government
• Yes on Proposition 3. Remove same-sex bigotry from the California Constitution

Letters to the Editor

• I worked for Nikki Haley’s campaign. Now, I am voting for Kamala Harris
• I live in the Palos Verdes landslide. Here’s what “you can’t fight nature” gets wrong
• Your “protest vote” for Jill Stein is really a vote for Donald Trump