Newsletter: Hooray, another June gloom in L.A. How that intensifies feelings of climate grief

Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, and it is Saturday, June 3, 2023. Let’s look back at the week in Opinion.

With much of Los Angeles shivering under the cold blanket of fog we call May gray or June gloom — arguably our only truly identifiable season — it may seem odd to begin with a discussion on climate change. It may also seem like overkill, with last weekend’s newsletter devoted to wondering what a global warming-supercharged El Niño might bring to California (and what it might preview for a future of greater than 1.5 degrees Celsius [2.7 degrees Fahrenheit] of warming).

But the likelihood of global warming permanently burning away our mild late-spring respite serves as a good segue to a discussion on climate grief. It’s an all too easy emotion to feel spending your life in Los Angeles, where oceans warmed by our burning of fossil fuels mean the impending end of coastal fog and reliably cool starts to our summers, and hotter temperatures and longer droughts mean worse wildfires in our local mountains. The things we’ve had this whole time are disappearing; how we react to losing them isn’t all that different than how we’d handle losing a loving friend or relative.

I’ve touched on climate grief before, but without calling it exactly that. Last year, I wrote about hikers returning to forests burned in the Bobcat fire to find the landscapes that once provided peaceful escape irretrievably altered. After that I helped produce a “Hear Me Out” video that followed a reader as he tried to locate the old-growth tree in the Angeles National Forest where he scattered his first domestic partner’s ashes decades ago — only to find a fire-scared landscape with the gnarled remnants of the majestic pines that once shaded the area. I’ll never forget the reader’s words about finding his beloved’s tree burned away: “It was almost like losing him again.”

The question now is what we do with that grief — and by grief, I do not mean hopelessness. It’s the process of acknowledging, however painful it might be, that something you love is lost or may soon be gone, and how that changes you.

For me, climate grief has intensified my antipathy to oil companies and clarified my resolve to use their products as sparingly as possible. It’s made each trip into local forests and mountains much more intentional: I connect now with nature in ways I never have before, aware that the spruces, pines and oaks that generously shade my favorite trails will probably perish soon from pestilence or fire. I make sure my children know their parents are doing what we can to make their future as habitable as the one we inherited. And I appreciate when May gray and June gloom arrive on schedule, or when snow falls on peaks within sight of L.A.

I have my ways of dealing with climate grief, and others have theirs. Writing for our op-ed page, poet Tess Taylor beautifully describes the respite from climate grief that she finds in backyard gardening:

“In a record year after record years, I stop and look at a pea blossom, faint green veins weaving its pale green face. I weed daikon with my daughter and cut fava leaves to make into a pesto with my son. We make a salad out of turnip sprouts. We water our plants with a bucket that captures the now-guiltless flow from our backyard sink.

“We can’t save what we don’t love. When I’m in the garden, I realize that my grief is actually another name for this love, is a call to get out and tend this planet we often feel like we’re losing before our very eyes. When I do, I remember that my actions matter and that life is stronger and more surprising than I knew, and both of these things help ground me for the road ahead.”

Whether it’s the Dodgers or Bud Light, it’s mostly about the money. We’re learning the hard way that purportedly sincere expressions of corporate values of inclusiveness are really just rooted in bottom-line convenience. We’ve all read enough about the Dodgers’ LGBTQ+ Pride Night drama, but you probably haven’t seen much about Bud Light backtracking after it had transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney hawk its beer — as if withstanding far-right bullying hasn’t always been part of the deal in these matters. Columnist Jonah Goldberg explains why “Bud Lighting” by the right is probably here to stay. L.A. Times

There’s a reason for the anti-LGBTQ+ backlash. And it isn’t all bad news. Says columnist Robin Abcarian: “It’s happening because the number of Americans who do identify as LGBTQ+ has exploded. A February Gallup poll based on the aggregated data of 10,000 people found that nearly 20% of Generation Z, those born between 1997 and 2004, identified as LGBTQ+. By comparison, only 2.7% of Baby Boomers identified that way. This change is astonishing and proof that the stigma so long attached to gay, nonbinary and transgender people may finally be starting to fade away. Cue the backlash.” L.A. Times

He didn’t throw our economy into disarray. Thanks, Speaker Kevin McCarthy! Most people don’t deserve praise for willingly driving the country to the edge of a fiscal cliff, but the speaker of the House isn’t in an ordinary position leading this group Republicans. Says The Times’ editorial board: “Ideally McCarthy should have put principle above politics and sought to achieve Republican fiscal goals through the ordinary budget and appropriations process. But the speaker presides over a fractious caucus that elected him on the 15th ballot, and he arguably had little choice but to use the possibility of default to press for concessions on spending, even if they ended up as trivial and mostly symbolic. Even so, 71 House Republicans, most from the extreme right wing of the party, voted against the legislation. (Fortunately, it received 165 Democratic votes.) Seldom has such a massive mountain labored to bring forth such a minuscule mouse.” L.A. Times

It’s time to release Leslie Van Houten from prison. This position is different from the one our editorial board took when Van Houten previously sought parole. Now, the editorial board believes she should be released after languishing in prison for more than 50 years for the murders of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in 1969: “So what changed our minds? We have no answer that will be universally satisfying. Perhaps it is because of Van Houten’s age, that being in her 70s is markedly different from her being in her 60s. Perhaps it’s seeing the example of others, such as Hampig ‘Harry’ Sassounian, who received a life term after being convicted of the assassination of Turkish Consul General Kemal Arikan in Los Angeles in 1982. Like Van Houten, Sassounian was 19 when he committed his crime. After he spent nearly 40 years in a California prison, he was found suitable for parole, as was Van Houten, and was freed in 2021.” L.A. Times

The DOJ’s classified documents case was already dire for Trump. Now it looks even worse. Former U.S. attorney Harry Litman makes it look like an indictment of the former president in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation is inevitable: “We continue to receive intriguing but incomplete reports about what special counsel Jack Smith was doing a few weeks ago. And while they concern the details of an already obviously powerful case of obstruction and other charges against Donald Trump in the federal classified documents case, they underscore the impression that the case Smith is preparing will be overwhelming. The latest revelations about the investigation go to the epicenter of the factual case for obstruction of justice and to the heart of Trump’s anticipated defenses.” L.A. Times