How Climate Change Has Fueled L.A.’s Devastating Wildfires: ‘We Have Unleashed Forces Beyond Our Control’
Experts say Southern Californians face hard choices and lifestyle changes as erratic weather patterns create dangerous conditions
Michael Buckner
Climate change didn’t start the wildfires that are ravaging Los Angeles County this week. But the big swings in weather patterns that have accelerated over the past two decades serve as rocket fuel that intensifies the flames and spreads the devastation.
Environmental experts and scientists warn that Southern Californians will have to come to grips with hard truths in the wake of the horrific firestorms in Malibu, Pacific Palisades and Altadena. The scope of the damage will have an impact on every industry that operates in the region – and no amount of velvet ropes, basement bunkers or private firefighting brigades will spare Hollywood.
“This is not going to go away tomorrow,” says Debbie Levin, who has served as the CEO of the Environmental Media Association for 25 years. “We’re still going to have climate change. We’ve had an industrial world since the early 1900s, so this has been going on for 100-plus years into our atmosphere, and we’re dealing with it now. For some reason, there’s still a blindness when it comes to the questions of how local communities need to deal with it.”
Wildfires are a natural and even necessary part of the region’s desert ecosystem. The pain and suffering for humans is magnified by more than a century of expanded residential development in areas that are prone to fire, mudslides, drought as well as unpredictable amounts of rain and snow. And all of this is made worse by the effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere driving climate change around the globe.