AP Photo/Ethan Swope

The state has worked for over 40 years to successfully reduce emissions?but that never gets mentioned when hillsides burn I don?t expect people who don?t live here to understand what it?s like. Trying to fall sleep as the ominous scent seeps into your bedroom, then awaking to your windowsills flecked with ash. Watching flames chew through a beloved destination on a live local newscast while you attempt to block out the near-constant throb of helicopters ferrying water across the sky. Tugging the air purifier closer to your baby?s crib in the hopes it might quiet their coughs as your toddler asks you: ?Mom, is the fire coming to our house tonight"?
As Californians, we?re used to outsiders attempting to add ?context? to our disasters by sharing celebrity evacuation tweets and quoting Joan Didion back at us from thousands of miles away. But this year?s planned electricity outages have added new fuel to the hot takes. While our lives are upended, sending us scrambling to locate reliable phone service or safe refuge for our aging parents, we?re getting lectured on Twitter about underground power lines, battery storage, and solar microgrids.
Now there?s a new, annoying way for people who don?t live here to explain our situation to us: ?This is what climate change looks like.?
Yeah, we know. That?s why we decided to do something about it?four decades ago.
In the 1970s, long before the federal government had taken any action on climate, California...