From Palestine to Los Angeles: The Inferno of Capitalist Priorities

A tale of two infernos exposes a failing system hellbent on prioritizing capitalist and colonial interests, and exploitative extractive policies that value profit over people, endangering us all.

Palestine and Los Angeles are burning because those in power have chosen profits over people, prioritizing corporate greed and colonial domination over the well-being of millions of human beings.

Whether it’s bombs flattening Gaza or wildfires consuming California, the cyclical devastation we witness is no accident—it’s the inevitable result of systems built to exploit, extract, and destroy.

Across continents, we are living through the brutal consequences of capitalism and settler colonialism, their impacts growing more deadly and undeniable with each passing day. And the media, rather than serve as a mirror, reporting facts and reflecting truths that we must confront, is busy distracting and misinforming the public.

In Los Angeles, the most populous urban region in the United States, the hills and valleys burn with ferocity, leaving behind scorched earth and broken lives. The flames lick at the edges of civilization, consuming not only forests but the modern houses that are designed, it seems, to fuel the fire—structures laden with petroleum-based materials that explode into deadly infernos. At least 1200 structures are completely gone. Firefighters are overmatched, hamstrung by dry weather, unrelenting winds, and the inescapable reality of climate change.

But like in Gaza, with context missing from the media coverage, our ability to understand why we find ourselves in these loops of destruction is elusive, perpetuating a status quo that benefits the few and further exploits the many in an unsustainable system desperate for revolution.

The images of a burning California, in many ways mirrors the devastation in Gaza, where bombs rain down, turning homes into rubble, erasing entire families, neighborhoods and releasing obscene plumes of carbon into the air. These fires, both literal and metaphorical, are not natural disasters; they are man-made catastrophes born of greed, apathy, and systemic violence. They are the brutal offspring of imperialist capitalism and settler colonialism, systems that prioritize profit over people, extraction over life, and domination over coexistence.

The Moral Bankruptcy of Power

In his analysis of Gaza this week, John Mearsheimer described the moral bankruptcy of American leaders —a bankruptcy mirrored in the United States’ response to the climate crisis. Corporations, banks, and governments have colluded for centuries to preserve a fossil-fuel-based economy, despite overwhelming evidence of its destructive impact. To acknowledge the truth would require dismantling the systems that enrich the few at the expense of the many.

Instead, they double down. Billionaires and politicians cling to the status quo, pouring money into fossil fuels, policing, and war while slashing budgets for fire departments and climate resilience. In Los Angeles, the Fire Department faced a $17.6 million budget cut, while the LAPD received a $138 million increase. Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues to funnel billions into Israel’s war machine—$22.76 billion and counting—even as wildfires displace hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Connecting the Dots

Why is there no water to fight California’s fires when the state sits beside an ocean?

(Many fire hydrants, when tapped, had little to no water flowing out as Los Angeles water systems are several hundred years old and aren’t equipped to have water pressure to fight massive fires).

Why are insurance companies abandoning homeowners, leaving 90-year-old couples to defend their homes alone?

(Many insurers paused coverage in parts of California or raised premiums sharply after the 2017 and 2018 wildfires led to huge losses for the industry).

Why do US taxpayers pour billions into subsidizing oil companies and funding Israel’s genocidal war, while American citizens are left to fend for themselves in the face of climate disasters?

(US government prioritizes profit over people, and lobbying groups, whether representing corporate interests or Israel’s interests, trump the interests of the American people as politicians are increasingly answering to donors and super pacs rather than their citizens — who by the way, overwhelmingly demand a ceasefire in Gaza and a stop of arms to Israel)

These questions are not rhetorical. They expose the dissonance between the science of climate change and the policies that perpetuate it.

Fifteen of the worst 20 wildfires in California’s history have occurred in the last 15 years. The frequency of extreme wildfire risk has grown by nearly 20 times in recent decades due to climate change, research has shown.

A woman in LA says her parents’ fire insurance got cancelled shortly before the fires ripped through Southern California is forced to defend the house herself.

“They got canceled from their fire insurance… They're 90 years old, they've lived in this house for 75 years and they've had the same insurance, she said.

The pattern is clear: hotter, faster, more destructive fires fueled by drought, late rains, and the relentless burning of fossil fuels. Yet instead of addressing the root causes, our leaders choose to perpetuate systems that exacerbate the crisis.

The same logic applies to Gaza, where U.S.-made bombs level entire neighborhoods, releasing carbon emissions that dwarf the annual footprint of some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations. Emissions during the first two months of the war in Gaza alone were greater than the annual carbon footprint of more than 20 of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations.