The Fire and the Flood

I’ve been writing about climate change and its relation to political change since soon after starting this blog on Valentines Day, 2025. See here, you disbelieving readers: https://outofunitedstates.com/p/climate-change-is-the-big-picture

In the California of January 2025, the air was ash, and the horizon burned. The Palisades and Eaton fires clawed the sky, their embers dancing like lost stars over a land that once dreamed of plenty. Los Angeles, a city of angels, and ghosts, and glass, mourned 28 souls lost, 16,000 structures reduced to cinders, 35,000 acres scorched black. The rains, once a promise of renewal, abandoned it. The Santa Ana winds, those dry-throated harbingers, howled through canyons, fanning flames that nothing could tame. Across the globe, the story repeats: Canada’s boreal forests belch 2.4 petagrams of carbon, a 16% surge above the norm, as wildfires grow hungrier, fed by a planet fevered with our own making. Studies estimate a 172% rise in burned lands from 1971 to 2021, with projections of 3-52% more to come. The vapor pressure deficit, a silent assassin, spikes with each degree of warming—68% of its increase in the western US tied to our carbon sins from 1979 to 2020. The world is a tinderbox, and humanity the match.

In August 2025, California burns under more wildfires. The Gifford Fire, a behemoth at 131,614 acres, scars San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, barely contained at 95%. The Pickett Fire in Napa devours 6,803 acres, a mere 29% tamed, while the Garnet Fire in Fresno rages unchecked at 12,378 acres. Dry winds, scorching heat, and a parched earth—fueled by climate’s cruel hand—drive these infernos. Evacuations choke communities, and 16,344 structures lie in ashes, a testament to a world unraveling.

Beneath the surface, another theft unfolds. Nestlé’s groundwater extraction for bottled water, particularly under its Arrowhead brand, began in the San Bernardino Mountains of California in 1894. The scale of their operations grew and, by the 1970s, Nestlé (then operating as Perrier Group of America) expanded its reach, acquiring brands like Arrowhead and establishing large-scale extraction in areas like Strawberry Creek. In Michigan, Nestlé’s Ice Mountain brand began pumping groundwater in 2000, sparking legal battles by 2003 over environmental impacts. 

Groundwater reduction in California exacerbates drought and contributes to increased wildfire risk through several mechanisms, as supported by scientific studies and reports:

1. Amplification of Drought Conditions: Groundwater depletion intensifies drought impacts by reducing available water reserves during dry periods. A 2019 study in Hydrological Processes notes that groundwater use increases during droughts as surface water dwindles, creating a positive feedback loop that worsens regional drying. This depletion reduces soil moisture, making vegetation more susceptible to drying out, thus increasing fire risk.

2. Impact on Vegetation and Fire Fuel: The California Department of Fish and Wildlife highlights that drought-induced moisture stress in vegetation, exacerbated by groundwater depletion, heightens wildfire susceptibility. Even after wet years, vegetation recovering from prior droughts remains vulnerable, providing ample fuel for fires.

3. Hydroclimate Whiplash and Fire Risk: A 2025 Nature Reviews study describes “hydroclimate whiplash”—rapid shifts between wet and dry conditions—as a key driver of wildfire severity in California. Groundwater depletion limits the ability to buffer these swings, as reduced aquifer levels mean less water for vegetation during dry spells, leading to drier, more flammable landscapes.

4. Watershed Dynamics Post-Wildfire: Research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2019) shows that wildfires alter hydrological processes, including groundwater levels. While post-fire conditions can temporarily increase groundwater storage due to reduced evapotranspiration, the long-term depletion of groundwater before fires contributes to drier conditions that fuel more intense blazes.

5. SGMA and Drought Management: The Public Policy Institute of California (2023) notes that groundwater overdraft, particularly in agricultural regions, worsens during droughts, reducing resilience. This over-extraction lowers water tables, limiting water availability for ecosystems and increasing fire-prone conditions.

Corporate vampires like Nestlé bottle it without permit or penance, leaving aquifers as dry as the dreams of the farmers who once relied on them. But it’s not just Nestlé. The tech lords build their server farms like fortresses, cooling their machines with water that could sustain towns. In Minnesota, a single data center drinks as much as 12,000 households, lowering water tables until taps run dry. The locals, their lives tethered to pipes gone silent, are left to beg or borrow from a system that serves only the powerful. This is no accident but a design, a blueprint for a world where water is a commodity, and only the wealthy drink the good stuff.

The science of our undoing is no secret, though it’s buried beneath the noise of denial. NASA scientist James Hansen stood before Congress in 1988, his voice cutting through the Reagan era’s haze of optimism. Global warming, he warned, was no theory but a fact—carbon emissions were reshaping the planet, promising fires, floods, and chaos. The atmosphere, he explained, holds 7% more water per degree Celsius. In Phoenix, where 115°F meets 34% humidity, the air—sucking moisture from the Gulf of California—chokes with a wet bulb temperature that kills. When the body cannot sweat, cannot cool, death creeps close. He was ignored by those who preferred profit to prophecy.

The new regime, under the banner of Donald Trump, seeks to obscure this truth. Russell Voght, a shadow in the machinery of power, plans to “unfund” NOAA, climate research, and weather prediction, diverting funds Congress allocated under Biden back to the Treasury’s coffers. This is no mere budget cut but a guillotine for knowledge, severing the tools that warn of storms and fires. Websites like climate.gov and globalchange.gov flicker, then fade, their data consigned to digital oblivion. Worse, the administration demands loyalty oaths from civil servants—questions like, “How would you advance the President’s policies? Pick two executive orders and explain.” These are not applications but pledges of fealty, a purge of dissent in a nation where thousands of federal workers have already been cast out by DOGE’s decrees. The Constitution, once a shield, is now a relic, its protections eroded by quasi-legal maneuvers that echo Trump’s first term. The intent is clear: to blind the nation to its own peril, leaving us defenseless against the disasters science has long foretold.

This is not neglect but strategy. Trump’s America militarizes its cities—blue strongholds like Chicago and Seattle now patrolled by forces loyal to the regime. FEMA, once a lifeline in catastrophe, is gutted, its resources redirected to fortify the enclaves of the elite. The pattern is familiar, etched in the memory of Hurricane Katrina, when New Orleans drowned while the powerful fled. Knowing that wildfires, floods, and storms will multiply, the administration seems content to let the masses perish in “death zones,” areas where escape is impossible without private jets or helicopters. The wealthy, as Terrence McKenna foresaw, will always find refuge where the Apocalypse has not yet reached. But for those without means, the future is a trap, a landscape of ruin where survival is a privilege reserved for the few.

The seeds of this dystopia were sown long ago, under Reagan’s sunlit reign, when greed was crowned a virtue. The Southern Baptist Convention, entwined with the White House, blessed a nation that began to worship wealth. Ivan Boesky, in his 1986 UC Berkeley commencement address, declared, “Greed is all right, by the way. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.” His words, later echoed by Gordon Gekko’s “greed is good” in Wall Street, became a mantra for an era. Prosperity theology, birthed in the Word of Faith movement, took root in the 1980s, its televangelists preaching that wealth was God’s reward. By the 1990s and 2000s, it spread through Pentecostalism and charismatic churches, with figures like Joel Osteen ($50 million), Kenneth Copeland ($300 million), and Creflo Dollar ($27 million) building empires on the promise of divine riches. Their gospel, from Oral Roberts to Benny Hinn, justified excess while the earth groaned under the weight of exploitation.

Trump, the heir to this legacy, merges greed and governance. During his first term, his net worth swelled by $1.7 billion, reaching $3.7 billion by 2020, according to Forbes estimates. In his second term, as of August 2025, it has climbed another $2 billion, fueled by ventures that blur the line between presidency and profiteering. His cryptocurrency schemes, launched from the White House, are a masterstroke of manipulation. Posts on X proclaiming, “It’s a good time to buy!” spark frenzied markets, but only after Trump, his family, and insiders have secured their stakes. When his followers rush in, prices soar, and the elite cash out, leaving the faithful with empty wallets. This is no accident but a fleecing, a digital con that mirrors the televangelists’ promise of prosperity for the price of devotion.

The world, meanwhile, burns and drowns. Trump’s alliances with Putin, Xi, and other authoritarians carve up the globe like a corporate boardroom deal, their borders redrawn in the currency of power. As wildfires rage and floods swallow cities, Trump fiddles—not with a lyre, but with stock tickers and crypto wallets, amassing treasures while the planet chokes. His followers, dazzled by his gilded promises, fail to see the strings: each tweet, each sale, is a transaction that enriches him at their expense. The earth, once a shared inheritance, is now a chessboard on which ever more squares, and pawns are removed, where the powerful hoard what remains—water, land, safety—while the rest are left to face the flames.

This coming America is a patchwork of fiefdoms where loyalty to wealth replaces allegiance to the Constitution. The federal government, hollowed out by executive fiat, serves only those who can pay for its protection. Science is silenced (as far as the public is concerned), its warnings buried beneath the rhetoric of denial. The fires, the floods, the dry wells—these are not anomalies but the future, a truth the regime refuses to acknowledge. And in its place rises a hierarchy as old as empires, where survival will be a luxury the 99% cannot afford.

Scenario: The Gilded Enclaves of Tomorrow

By 2030, the United States is no longer a nation but a constellation of fortified enclaves, each a glittering fortress for those whose wealth exceeds a million dollars a year (in 2025 dollars). These are the “Freedom Cities” dreamt by visionaries like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, where the air is filtered, the water pure, and the walls impenetrable. Beyond their gates, the world is a wasteland of ash and flood, where wildfires consume what remains of the forests, and hurricanes redraw coastlines with merciless precision. The middle class—those earning $100,000 or more—find purpose as the guard force and bureaucrats of these citadels. ICE agents, once enforcers of borders, now patrol the perimeters of wealth. Clerks, engineers, and service workers maintain the machinery of these enclaves, their lives tethered to the whims of the ultra-rich: techno-feudalism.

The rest—the millions who cannot buy their way into safety—are left to the mercy of a planet in revolt. In the death zones, where cities like Los Angeles and Miami once thrived, survivors scavenge amidst the ruins, their taps dry, their homes burned or submerged. Federal disaster response, once a lifeline, is a memory; FEMA’s skeleton crew serves only the enclaves, delivering supplies to those who need them least. The government scientists who warned of this future—Hansen’s heirs—are gone, their research defunded, their voices silenced. The data centers, while still humming, power AI systems that develop nanobots and such to clean and rejuvenate elite bodies. Soon, they will all be in the space stations orbiting Earth, currently under construction by other bots. Nestlé’s factories, now guarded by robot militias, bottle the last of the aquifers for export to the enclaves and space stations.

This is the legacy of a planet whose leading nation chose greed over stewardship, power over truth. Trump’s America, built on the ruins of Reagan’s promises, has birthed a world where the wealthy thrive in isolation, their Freedom Cities glowing in a darkening world. The Constitution, once a covenant, is now a curiosity, its words unread in a land ruled by wealth. The fires still burn, the floods still rise, but within the walls of the enclaves, the Apocalypse is just a problem being dealt with by the 0.0001%. For the rest, it's a hell of a way to die.