Guest Opinion | PCC Trustree Steve Gibson: From Altadena to Washington: When Climate Change Hits Home, We Must Act

On January 8th, my wife and I awoke at 3:15 a.m. to the shrill tone of a phone alert. We had been without power for twelve hours, but nothing could prepare us for what came next. When we opened the front door, the darkness outside was suffocating, lit only by the red glow of swirling embers. The alert screamed “immediate evacuation.”

We checked on our neighbors, grabbed our insurance papers and a change of clothes, scooped up our little dog, Cantinflas, and drove away in a haze of ash and headlights. That was the last time I saw our home of 24 years in Altadena.

For me, this is not an abstract debate about climate policy. This is personal. The fire that destroyed my home is one chapter in a growing national crisis—one fueled by climate change and made worse by political choices in Washington.

Yesterday, I shared my story publicly at the People’s Hearing on Extreme Weather at the Maxwell House in Pasadena, an event organized by the Climate Action Campaign and partner organizations. Survivors, experts, and community leaders gathered to testify before the public and the media about how climate change is already devastating lives—and to call on the Environmental Protection Agency to halt dangerous rollbacks to climate protections. My testimony was one of many personal accounts underscoring that the climate crisis is real, urgent, and hitting home now.

As a trustee of Pasadena City College, I have also seen how disasters like these ripple through a community. Fires, extreme heat, and toxic air don’t just damage homes—they disrupt education, threaten health, and upend the lives of students, faculty, and staff. At PCC, we work to connect our students’ dreams to a brighter, more secure future. But that future is under threat if we don’t act decisively to curb the pollution fueling the climate crisis.

The Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1970 with overwhelming bipartisan support to protect our health and our environment. For decades, it has been a bulwark against the pollution driving climate change. The EPA’s Endangerment Finding, established in 2009, is grounded in rigorous science and requires the agency to protect the public from greenhouse gases that threaten our lives.

Now, that protection is under direct attack. The administration’s plan to roll back the Endangerment Finding and weaken climate pollution standards would be a catastrophic step backward. It would make climate denial official U.S. policy—leaving more families vulnerable to disasters like the one that uprooted mine.

If these rollbacks succeed, more people will suffer. More homes will be reduced to ash. More communities will face the trauma of evacuation, the loss of stability, and the grief of starting over. We can’t afford to let that happen.

We must stand together to defend the EPA’s mission. Climate change is not a distant threat—it is here, it is real, and it is devastating lives right now. I’ve lived through it. And I’m determined to ensure that what happened to me never happens to you.

The EPA must reverse course, uphold the Endangerment Finding, and protect the climate standards that safeguard our health, our safety, and our future—including the future of our community college students, who deserve to inherit a world where their education can prepare them for opportunity, not survival. Anything less would be a betrayal of the American people.

Steve Gibson is an Altadena resident and a Pasadena Area Community College District Trustee since 2022.