Lawrence Culver
@lawrencecphd.bsky.social
Historian of environment/climate/disaster/cities/culture. Also public history & urban/enviro/recreation public policy. UCLA Bruin. Book: The Frontier of Leisure: SoCal and the Shaping of Modern America; writing on climate & history in US & North America.
Today (August 4, 2026) is the day the smart house dies in Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains,” his remarkably prescient and (very!) short story from 1950 about an automated “intelligent” house in California—complete with roombas and a chatty AI—and its last day after a nuclear war. 1/5
“The Eaton Fire started due to Edison’s dilapidated equipment igniting a fire in a brush-covered area that Edison was responsible for maintaining.”
Los Angeles Times@latimes.com · 22h agoEdison tower caused deadly Eaton fire that devastated Altadena, long-awaited investigation finds
LA was the first US city to impose planning & zoning ordinances and land use restrictions. It strictly segregated housing, and limited “noxious” industries to poor and non-white neighborhoods. More than a century later, Boyle Heights and East LA children are still paying for those choices.
LAist@laist.com · 22h agoThe Boyle Heights warehouse fire spoiled summer break for neighborhood kids. Now the ongoing clean-up has also added a layer of anxiety and complication to the start of the new school year. 🔗 More details: vist.ly/5djt6 ✍️ Mariana Dale 📸 Mariana Dale/LAist
An example of lessons learned from the similar 2025 LA fires is how quickly law enforcement worked to evacuate residents: “The sheriff evacuated 60,000 people out of a portion of Spokane in a matter of two hours without injury or accident. That’s unbelievable.”
Los Angeles Times@latimes.com · yesterdayDevastation in Spokane bears tragic parallels to Palisades, Eaton fires
“It’s an indication that decades of efforts to clear flammable plants around homes and fortify their exteriors against flames, heat and embers are being outpaced by increasingly extreme wildfire behavior and construction in fire-prone areas.”
Los Angeles Times@latimes.com · yesterdayAs of 2020, wildfires destroyed 18% of California homes they came into contact with. Here’s what that means https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2026-08-01/percentage-homes-surviving-wildfires-dropping?utm_medium=social&utm_source=bluesky_
“An urban firestorm occurs when a massive, high-intensity fire moves into a built environment, causing structures — rather than just vegetation — to become the primary fuel source. The Spokane firestorm is just the latest example of one of these most dangerous and destructive wildfires.”
Dr. Jeff Masters@drjeffmasters.bsky.social · 2d agoUrban firestorms like the one that devastated Spokane Saturday have been growing more common because of increased development in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) and climate change. In this post, I document 9 such fires since 2016 in the U.S. yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/08/urba...
Good, I guess, but it is ***INSANE*** that it’s currently legal in the US to bet on wildfires individuals could start.
Zahra Hirji@zhirji.bsky.social · 2d agoA group of Democratic senators urged the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to rein in prediction market trading on wildfires, expressing concern that individuals could be tempted to commit arson to make their bets pay off New story @bloomberg.com: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Gift article. “Videos on social media showed billowing smoke and orange skies as cars in slow-moving traffic tried to get away. Others showed scorched communities, homes and vehicles. People who evacuated their homes reported being jammed in hourslong traffic.” www.nytimes.com/2026/08/02/u...
Spokane Wildfires Destroy Hundreds of Buildings as Thousands Evacuate (Gift Article)
Firefighters were hopeful that improving weather conditions in Washington state could help efforts to contain the blaze, which officials described as the largest natural disaster in the history of Spo...
nytimes.com
Gift article. The pre-1492 Americas were more populous, advanced, and far older than Europeans once claimed—and every “wilderness” was inhabited. The geoglyphs contradict “the depiction of the Amazon as a largely untouched expanse before the arrival of Europeans.” www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/w...
Archaeologists Find Hundreds of Ancient Glyphs in the Amazon (Gift Article)
The geometric earthwork structures, carved into the ground with embankments and ditches, are in some cases more than 2,500 years old, researchers said.
nytimes.com
Gift article. “Heat is linked to hundreds of workplace deaths each year, but labor groups say the true toll is unknown because heat-related illnesses are not properly tracked or reported.” www.nytimes.com/2026/08/01/c...
Trump Administration Is Undoing Plans to Boost Workplace Heat Protections (Gift Article)
The Biden administration took steps to shield workers from extreme temperatures. The Trump administration is taking a gentler approach with employers.
nytimes.com
Gift link. Optimistic or ominous? “Experts say the plan is a good opening bid in what could turn out to be a spirited competition for Americans displaced by increasingly common and intense bursts of catastrophic weather, including floods, wildfires and hurricanes.” www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/c...
A City With a Plan (Gift Article)
Cincinnati wants to take in people fleeing climate disasters. Plus, the latest on fires in Europe.
nytimes.com
Gift article. Different places, same potential fire problems: Untended or abandoned agricultural land near Lahaina in Hawai’i, and house lots and landscaping not kept to fire code in Southern California. Both issues apparently worsened fires in France too. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/f...
In Area Hit by Blaze, French Officials Failed to Enforce Wildfire Rules (Gift Article)
Under French rules, homeowners must clear vegetation within roughly 50 yards of their houses. In the forests affected by France’s worst fire in decades, that didn’t happen.
nytimes.com
The Trump administration has released a 10-year plan for the dwindling Colorado River. It spares California, Arizona and Nevada from the most severe water cutbacks for now, and calls for reassessing cuts every two years. www.latimes.com/environment/...
Trump administration spares Southwest from harshest water cuts in new Colorado River plan
The Trump administration has released a 10-year plan for cutting water use to prop up the Colorado River's reservoirs, which have fallen to a record low.
latimes.com
“Let’s not forget that behind these numbers are real people who died too soon. We must take urgent action to adapt our homes, care settings, and infrastructure, while doubling down on global efforts to reach net zero and stop temperatures rising further.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...
England on track for record heat-related deaths this summer, official data shows
UKHSA estimates 2,877 fatalities during heatwaves in May and June, almost twice that recorded in 2025 season
theguardian.com
California can’t replant its forests fast enough to keep up with wildfires calmatters.org/environment/... via @ra-becks.bsky.social
California is losing its forests faster than it can replant them — and no one has enough seeds, staff, or money to catch up
California needs to ramp up reforestation to keep pace with wildfires — instead, funding and staff keep shrinking.
calmatters.org
The 1877 El Niño, one of the deadliest weather events ever, killed perhaps 3% of global population in famines caused in part by the British empire prioritizing crop exports over feeding people. The one brewing now may be even bigger, just as US global food aid disappears. youtu.be/69o-8Mtd3Kc?...
A SUPER El Niño Triggered History’s DEADLIEST Disaster. THIS One Might Be Worse.
YouTube video by PBS Terra
youtu.be
In the 1800s French “wetlands considered unhealthy and unproductive were drained and replaced with pine forest” for timber and resin. Now it’s burning: "This isn't a fire in a natural forest. It’s a fire in a forest that was planted there to support industrial activity." www.cbc.ca/news/world/h...
A human-made forest is at the centre of France's raging wildfires | CBC News
Scientists say climate change is driving the extraordinary fire conditions gripping western Europe, but that the scale of those fires cannot be understood without looking at how humans drastically cha...
cbc.ca
Gift article: “We’ve never seen anything like it,” said Roger Peuron, 89, a retired engineer born before World War II, who was driven out of his home by the approaching flames. He could have been speaking for millions of people across Europe.” www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/w...
Summer of Heat, Fires and Storms Is a Reckoning for Europe on Climate (Gift Article)
The continent is experiencing some of its biggest fires and highest temperatures ever. Residents are fleeing, leaders are struggling to respond and “it will get worse,” one climate expert said.
nytimes.com
Gift article. The consequences of Ohio importing vast amounts of toxic fracking wastewater: “Four wells just outside Marietta, population 13,000, are permitted to inject a combined 840,000 gallons of brine daily within two miles of the city’s drinking water aquifer.” www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/c...
In Ohio, Toxic Wastewater Is Bubbling Up Out of the Ground (Gift Article)
The state is a major importer of fracking wastewater, which gets pumped underground but doesn’t always stay there. The city of Marietta is fighting back.
nytimes.com
“California’s most populous Indigenous nation works to reclaim its homelands, a mission inscribed in its constitution. The Yurok Tribe has so far regained 60,000 acres — about 12% — of its 500,000-acre ancestral territory, which stretches along the North Coast and the Klamath River.”
Los Angeles Times@latimes.com · last wk.California redwoods gateway is returned to Indigenous tribe. 'That's healing our people too'
Fire effects last long after the smoke clears: “While living and economic conditions have improved since the fires, many people in Maui are still struggling with health concerns such as poorer lung functions, higher blood pressure and mental health challenges.” www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...
Past fires suggest effects of Europe and North America wildfires may linger for years
Three years after Maui wildfires many still struggle with ‘biological, emotional and social consequences’, study says
theguardian.com
“As the appalling impact of this summer’s wildfires vividly illustrates, the notion that climate measures are a kind of optional add-on, appropriate only when times are good, is wildly at odds with the developing reality.”
Guardian Environment@environment.theguardian.com · last wk.The Guardian view on Europe’s wildfires: politics must catch up with the new reality | Editorial
The passing of a giant of African American, L.A., California, and US modern art: “I had this Aunt Jemima, and I wanted to put a rifle and a grenade under her skirts. I wanted to empower her. I wanted to make her a warrior. I wanted people to know that Black people wouldn’t be enslaved by that.”
Los Angeles Times@latimes.com · last wk.Pioneering L.A. assemblage artist Betye Saar, who ‘liberated’ Aunt Jemima, dies days before her 100th birthday https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2026-07-27/betye-saar-dead-artist-assemblage-aunt-jemima-99?utm_medium=social&utm_source=bluesky_
New ‘Chavez Ravine: An Unfinished Story’ documents 100 years in communities displaced to build LA’s Dodger Stadium The digital collection is the first community curated archive featuring hundreds of never-before-seen photos of the families who lived in Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop.
New ‘Chavez Ravine: An Unfinished Story’ documents 100 years in communities displaced to build LA’s Dodger Stadium
The digital collection is the first community curated archive featuring hundreds of never-before-seen photos of the families who lived in Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop.
lapublicpress.org
In 1966, Ed Ruscha drove a car rigged with a motorized camera to capture Los Angeles’s most iconic street: Sunset Boulevard. He created a time capsule of its famed facades, beginning a 60-year-long commitment to documenting the changing urban landscape of postwar Los Angeles.
Gift article. Broadway still follows the Lenape’s Wickquasgeck trail…its “angle enabled the formation of public spaces like Union Square, Madison Square and Times Square, public spaces that served as meeting grounds for the country’s social movements.” www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Glimpses of New York City’s History Are Still Visible. Here’s Where to Look. (Gift Article)
Traces of New York’s layered histories can be found scattered throughout its contemporary urban landscape.
nytimes.com
A complicated story of how the desire to preserve scant LA open space, a shady refuge from urban heat, and surviving ancestral tribal landscapes has collided with environmental cleanup and restoration, race, class, recreation, and pollution at one small stretch of stream bed in the Arroyo Seco. 1/2
“Although the federal plan aims to slow the decline of Lake Powell, it may not be enough to prevent the loss of hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam... And there are no guarantees the states won’t be forced to take more dramatic action within the next two years.”
Ian James@ianjames.bsky.social · 2w agoCalifornia, Arizona and Nevada have avoided the harshest water cutbacks the Trump administration could have imposed over the next two years to deal with the Colorado River crisis. Federal officials have agreed with much of the states’ water-saving proposal. www.latimes.com/environment/...
“The blazes are the latest episode in a summer of wildfires that threaten to burn an unprecedented expanse of land. Europe has endured heatwaves since the spring, fuelled by the climate crisis, including the hottest-ever June, leaving vegetation tinder dry.” www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...
Firefighters in France battle to prevent huge blaze from approaching Bordeaux
Efforts to contain wildfire that has consumed an area of four times the size of Paris impeded by windy conditions
theguardian.com
“The main cause of worsening fires in Canada is not mismanagement – most Canadian forests are remote and haven’t been managed at all, unlike the US – but instead a warming climate that has made large and extreme wildfires more common.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Scientists decry Trump’s ‘blame game’ after he claims Canada ‘poisoning’ US air
Trump told Mark Carney ‘you got to stop these fires from coming in’ as experts say wildfires symptom of climate crisis
theguardian.com