I guess when I lived there 30 years ago, that was not climate change when we had excessive dryness and wildfires. I think back then, they called that weather. A desert environment is determined by average rainfall a year. A lot of Southern California is and has always been classified a desert environment or right on the cusp of being a desert environment.
I moved to kommiefornia in ‘98. The first two things I saw
(I 40) stunned me: 1) the entire countryside was in flames and 2) people driving along minding their own business like it was nothing.