The catastrophic fires ravaging Los Angeles have become the most destructive in the state’s history, decimating native ecosystems, killing at least 29 people, destroying more than 12,000 structures and displacing over 150,000 people.

As someone born and raised in southern California, I could have never imagined Santa Ana winds of this magnitude in January. We are witnessing climate chaos fueled by centuries of colonial extractivism.

A hemisphere away, the Amazon rainforest continues to reel from its worst fire season in the past two decades – amplified by the region’s worst drought on historical record. While distant from one another, these two wildfire crises share much in common.

To address the root cause of these interconnected crises, we must unite in our calls to keep oil in the ground, from California to the Amazon.