Being a first responder at this stage of the climate crisis must confront the escalation of violence. For many wildland firefighters, the unprecedented scenes of the past two weeks in Los Angeles — dozens dead, tens of thousands homeless, hundreds of thousands displaced — appear part of a familiar pattern.
The national conversation, predictably, follows a pattern: Republicans try to deny or minimize the role of fossil fuel-driven climate change, and everyone must decide whether to ignore or argue with them.
How we frame this form of violence is important because it drives the core of our solutions The struggle for accountability. Scientists will spend the next months and years Measuring the right degree Climate change may be responsible for this particular disaster. This research is important, but should not distract from the reality facing our state: 18 of the 20 largest wildfires in California history. have burned Since 2000. There is no reason for this Forest Management Or Zonal policyIt has seen some improvements. Our changing climate is causing devastating fires.
Since 1988When scientists told Congress that burning fossil fuels would cause catastrophic changes to our climate, humanity had burned more carbon than was emitted in the entire span of human civilization dating back 10,000 years. In the same decades, when we had to phase out fossil fuels, the industry improved its relationship. Republican Party To pursue record profits – approx $3.2 billion per day. fossil fuel industry, President Trump, now back in office, is once again exercising his powerThis has thrust us into a new age of combustion.
As a firefighter, I experienced this climate violence firsthand in 2020, when a record heat wave caused the Dolan Fire in Big Sur to double in size overnight. 15 of my colleagues were caught in the fire and many were injured. The tragedy rarely made the news because other parts of the state were burning like never before — 4 million acres in smoke.
“This is what climate chaos looks like.” wrote This month is Los Angeles Times columnist Sammy Roth. Warmer air means drier, more flammable vegetation. Frequent heat waves and droughts increase the burning potential. Climate change Increases the probability Extreme events piled on top of each other, creating unprecedented conditions that caused Los Angeles to burn. These conditions Doubled In California between 1980 and 2020.
For those of us who live near wildfires, this should come as no surprise. In 2021, just months after my colleagues burned in the Dolan Fire, another record heat wave settled on the West Coast. This caused an explosive fire – my boss, a veteran of over 20 years, said it was the most intense he had ever seen. It was still spring. As we fought to defend a town, I collapsed from heat exhaustion.
I am luckier than most. Hundreds died. When my body collapses, There was heat Utility lines and roads for melting on the West Coast must be demolished. In cities, medical personnel Run less Among the cooling supplies, they filled body bags with ice and then sent in people who had fainted from heatstroke. As people collapsed on the sidewalks, they suffered Third degree burns. In hospital records, thermometers designed to read patients' body temperatures often came out at 107 degrees, which is mysterious. Until the doctors realized Those tools aren't designed to go that far. Atmospheric scientists faced a similar problem: Their instruments weren't calibrated to monitor the temperatures at which we put out fires.
And yet, despite the increasing regularity of these disasters, the same old arguments from mainstream Republicans blame anything but climate change. The Reviews of Forest Management From former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his successor, Vince Fang, who represented Bakersfield, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene may seem like misguided diversionary efforts. Strange claims About Jewish Space Rays or Elon Musk Sacrifice Diversity initiatives. But all of these arguments ultimately serve the same purpose: to divert attention from fossil fuels and delay science-backed climate action by distorting the conversation about energy policy and climate catastrophes.
The right-wing blame game forces us into a misguided debate about whether disasters like wildfires are caused by climate change or some other factor. This leads people to feel they have to pick climate change off the list of culprits.
In 2021, as my crew worked to protect giant sequoias from the most devastating wildfire the trees have faced in thousands of years, a fellow firefighter told me: “Sure, climate change is real, but you can't blame it all. There are others – and that is happening.
By allowing the right-wing narrative to dominate in this way, we are fueling a fundamental misunderstanding of how climate change works. It is not a factor to be weighed against others. It is a Intensify – A force that amplifies and worsens existing conditions. Climate change increases the probability that extreme conditions will converge and become unprecedented. The odds may seem abstract, but think of it like Russian chili: our lives are at stake, and the fossil fuel industry is adding bullets to the cylinder.
This is not only true of wildfires. Climate change is now at work behind most disasters: famines and floods, Human displacementdiffusion Infectious diseases, Armed conflicts. When we talk about climate change as a single variable, we promote right-wing narratives that blame disasters on everything but fossil fuel policies, allowing policymakers to avoid the climate action we need.
Climate change is embedded in every variable. The real question is not whether wildfires are caused by climate change, degraded forests, or reckless development; How climate change interacts with other factors. No disaster mitigation technique will succeed if we continue to burn fossil fuels at our current rate.
By understanding the ubiquitous role of climate change, we can design solutions to address it and the local conditions that amplify its impacts. In California, for example, switching to fossil fuels means promoting more prescribed burns and hardening homes against fire. As disasters arise from the interplay of these factors, solutions must deal with them together.
You don't have to get into the debate about how much climate change played a role in the recent fires. Change topic: How much environmental, economic and humanitarian violence are we willing to endure? Because, in Words Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist who fled Los Angeles: “How bad things get depends on whether we let the fossil fuel industry call the shots.”
Jordan Thomas, the upcoming “When everything burns,” is a former wildland firefighter and PhD candidate in anthropology at UC Santa Barbara, where he researches the cultural forces that shape wildfires.
