Americans who lost their homes and belongings to wildfires that spread across the western United States over the past several weeks are struggling to rebuild their lives in the aftermath.

Indonesia is burning, literally, one of the worst environmental and humanitarian disasters of our era, though you likely haven’t heard about it on TV.

With wildfires blazing throughout the parched Western United States, the state of California has found a novel, though ethically questionable, way to save money on the state’s safety budget: Send state prisoners to work on the frontlines fighting forest fires for $2 per day. About 4,000 low-level felons from California’s state prisons are fighting the fires, operating out of so-called “conservation camps.”