On a train trip across the United States, the sight of millions of dead trees in the Sierra Nevada and Rockies is as shocking as the homeless encampments that have cropped up along Amtrak’s right-of-ways and on the sidewalks of cities like New York.
I left the Bay Area in mid-October, just as it was engulfed in thick, toxic smoke erupting from uncontained wildfires to the north. The dingy pall recalled the Mount Vision and…