Paradise Lost

California is dying in the future it built

The morning sky is the color of well-weathered cement. The sun, what there is of it, burns deep red, tinging orange whatever it touches.

The news is bad. A new fire is loose in the foothills, burning so fast that a fire chief says he can’t put together an accurate map of its reach. Photographs show massive pyrocumulonimbus clouds roiling their way into the troposphere…