Fresh Take: As California Wildfires Rage, Neighbors Offer Glimmers Of Hope

The devastation from the fires in Southern California is far from how anyone wanted to start 2025. But climate change doesn’t care about our New Year’s resolutions, and it doesn’t stop even when there’s hopelessness in the smoke-filled air. The fact of the matter is, climate change is getting worse. And while fires are a natural way for the environment to heal itself during the normal wildfire season, these winter fires demonstrate just how quickly things are evolving.

As a New Yorker who loves Los Angeles dearly—it’s one of my favorite cities in the entire world and I thank Forbes for allowing me to explore it over the past decade through countless reporting trips—it’s beyond heartbreaking to witness the loss that thousands are facing right now. And yet I’ve also been inspired by glimmers of hope. Communities are coming together to support those affected. Chefs are cooking for the unhoused. It’s all a crucial reminder that, in the face of crisis, neighbors are sometimes all we’ve got. And, with that support, we can still make it out on the other side.

If you’ve been moved by this crisis, consider donating to mutual aid networks in LA, World Central Kitchen, which is feeding first responders, or emergency food networks like Project Angel Food and the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. Or one of the countless other organizations aiding the efforts.

And if you want to dig deeper into what’s driving food insecurity amid the climate crisis, consider joining me at one of my upcoming in-person events for the paperback tour of my book Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed and the Fight for the Future of Meat. It takes all of us. And the first step is knowing the truth, no matter how grim it is.

January 2025 Live Events

Thursday, January 16

Book Larder

4252 Fremont Ave N, Seattle, WA 98103

6:30 p.m.

RSVP HERE

Tuesday, January 21

Farm To People

1100 Flushing Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237

6 p.m.

RSVP HERE

Wednesday, January 29

Bold Fork Books

3064 Mount Pleasant Street Northwest Washington, DC 20009

7 p.m.

RSVP HERE

Thursday, January 30

National Press Club

529 14th Street Northwest Washington, DC 20045

7 p.m.

RSVP HERE

I look forward to seeing you in-person soon. 2025 is going to be quite the year.

— Chloe Sorvino, Staff Writer

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FIELD NOTES

One of my goals for 2024 was to do more fishing, crabbing and clamming. But then I broke my knee and had to cancel multiple planned trips—each one a little more upsetting than the last. Balancing on the boat was still its own form of physical therapy, but I’m so very happy to have kicked off 2025 with some gulf fishing and a killer feast: fish fried by my husband Nick, beans by me.

Thanks for reading the 130th edition of Forbes Fresh Take! Let me know what you think. Subscribe to Forbes Fresh Take here.

Chloe Sorvino leads coverage of food and agriculture as a staff writer on the enterprise team at Forbes. Her book, Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed and the Fight for the Future of Meat, published on December 6, 2022, with Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books. Her nearly nine years of reporting at Forbes has brought her to In-N-Out Burger’s secret test kitchen, drought-ridden farms in California’s Central Valley, burnt-out national forests logged by a timber billionaire, a century-old slaughterhouse in Omaha and even a chocolate croissant factory designed like a medieval castle in northern France.