Print In California, 2020 would have gone down as an apocalyptic year even without COVID. It was the year when it became impossible to ignore that climate change is here, it’s accelerating, and it’s dramatically altering California in myriad ways. High-temperature marks were shattered, with Death Valley hitting 130 degrees in August and Woodland Hills recording 121 in September. State park ranger and safety officer Gabe McKenna inspects a burned redwood in Big Basin Redwoods State Park, where an August wildfire burned about 97% of the park’s 18,224 acres. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) Some of the largest fires in state history torched more than 4 million acres, and exasperated firefighters said they’d never seen monstrous, destructive events like these.