Maeve Higgins: US saves the banks while the rest of society is left to rot

Our biggest crisis is global warming, yet we do not tackle it with any of the urgency as bailing out the banks

An aerial image shows mud flows from a landslide that damaged homes following heavy rain during winter storms last month in Flintridge, California. Picture: Patrick T Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

The state of California is named after a mythical paradise in a 16th-century Spanish novel. 

Perhaps it once seemed like a paradise, but today even the pockets of nature that survived the growth of cities and industry in the last two centuries are struggling to withstand the climate chaos caused, in part, by those very cities and industries.