Climate Change and Wildfires

On September 14th in California, Trump said in response to the negative effects of climate change on wildfires this season that, “it will get cooler”. We all know that the current president of the United States does not think climate change is real, but in the midst of people dying, homes being destroyed, and smoky skies throughout all of the west coast the best he can say is “it will get cooler”. It’s almost the same weight as when he was asked what he thought about the death toll from COVID-19, he claims “it is what it is”. Unfortunately, environmental ignorance is not new in politics.

Native American’s used small prescribed fires to promote diversity, clear land for food, hunting, pest management and more (Williams). Settlers saw the Native Americans’ use of fire as savage and evil. They saw fire as destructive instead of a source of renewal for the forests (Minor & Boyce). In the end Native American’s were banned from using prescribed burns, and without small controlled fires that the forest depended on, the forest started storing up fuel for larger wildfires (Williams).

Finally, in the 1980’s Cal Fire created the Vegetative Management Program that works with homeowners to clean vegetative matter from the forest floor and use prescribed burns to minimize larger wildfires in the future (CalFire).

Yet, if we are finally using vegetative management why are we still seeing an unprecedented rise in wildfires this year especially in places such as Oregon and Washington that have had never seen wildfires to this extent. The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, released in an interview about the historic fire season that last year 118,000 acres were burned and this year there were 19 times more acres burned, with a total of 2.3 million acres. The fire season is far from over in California, with more fires predicted for the upcoming months.

The effects of climate change on wildfires in cumulative forest area burned over time. https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-driving-wildfires-and-not-just-in-california-107240

Cue in this season of political ignorance with the relationship between forest fires and climate change. Climate change has not only raised global temperatures, but also has increased dry conditions, and extreme weather patterns. The USDA’s forest service report uses projections to show that an average annual one degree C temperature would increase the median burn area by 600% in some types of forests on the west coast. Even if some of the forest fires were caused by fireworks and arson, climate change created the perfect conditions for the wildfires to get extremely out of hand. We have seen an increase of natural disasters all over the world from tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, and now unprecedented forest fires. It is all linked to the effects of increased human carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere which causes sun U.V. rays to reflect on the earth instead of escaping the atmosphere, warming the global temperature. So, yes Trump was correct that it will get cooler because we are entering the fall season, but overall the global temperature will continue to rise and therefore increase more natural disasters.

What’s even worse is that wildfires give off large amounts of carbon dioxide worsening the effects of climate change. When this happens in nature it’s called a positive feedback loop where climate change causes a natural disaster and the natural disaster increases greenhouse gases continuing the increase of our global temperature. If this positive feedback loop is not stopped then we will continue to see unprecedented temperatures and natural disasters each year. It starts with voting like your environment, your community, your life depends on it. You are not ignorant, you know what causes forest fires and you know how to change it, vote for more vegetative management which includes prescribed burns that are done right and measures that fight against climate change.

CalFire. (n.d.). Welcome to Vegetation Management Program. Retrieved September 18, 2020, from https://www.fire.ca.gov/programs/resource-management/resource-protection-improvement/vegetation-management-program/

Minor, J., & Boyce, G. A. (n.d.). Smokey Bear and the pyropolitics of United States forest governance. Political Geography, 62, 79.

Vose, J. M., Peterson, D. L., & Patel-Weynand, T. (2012). Effects of climatic variability and change on forest ecosystems: A comprehensive science synthesis for the U.S. forest sector. General Technical Report — Pacific Northwest Research Station, USDA Forest Service, No.PNW-GTR-870. https://www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/abstract/20133108890

Williams, G. W. (n.d.). REFERENCES ON THE AMERICAN INDIAN. 130.