As Wildfires Blaze In Southern California, Experts Find Climate Change To Be An Underlying Cause

Since January 7th, several devastating wildfires have spread throughout the Greater Los Angeles area, quickly becoming one of the worst fire events in California’s history. Reports find that a total of nine separate fires ignited in the region over the last week. Several of the fires have since been contained, but the Palisades fire and Eaton fire continue to spread rapidly due to weather risk factors that are abnormally high for this time of year. Critical resources ran dry on the first day of firefighting efforts, leading many to question how a state with a history of frequent wildfires could be caught completely off-guard despite the warning signs. 

NBC reported that as of January 12th, at least 16 people are confirmed dead and over a dozen more are missing, but experts warn that these numbers cannot be confirmed until first responders have safely investigated the scorched areas. According to the BBC, more than 150,000 people have been forced to leave their homes and another 160,000 are under evacuation warnings. Tens of thousands of acres have been burned in the firestorm, and while firefighters are working tirelessly to put out the flames, the two largest blazes are still mostly uncontained.

The effectiveness of L.A. County’s emergency response has come under intense criticism as the public questions how the situation continues to worsen despite it happening in one of the richest places on Earth. California Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered an investigation into why fire hydrants ran empty so quickly (BBC). In addition, accusations that Mayor Karen Bass cut funding to the L.A. fire department prior to the fire outbreak have been deeply frustrating for those who feel the extent of the damages so far could have been limited. 

Investigations by local officials are ongoing to determine the immediate cause of the fires and to understand what could have been done to make the initial response more effective. So far, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department has been unable to identify what caused the fires to ignite but has ruled out several of the most common causes of wildfires. The National Weather Service believes that extremely dry conditions, in combination with the Santa Ana winds that are gusting upwards of 110 kph, have allowed the fires to expand at an astonishing rate. 

While local investigators search for answers as to what started the L.A. fires in the first place, experts have already begun to emphasize climate change as a prominent underlying cause. This week, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) announced that 2024 was the first full year the earth has experienced at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, marking a worrying chapter in human-environment interactions. It is no coincidence that the C3S announcement coincides with the L.A. wildfires, a perfect example of the weather events researchers warn will become more common as global temperatures continue to rise. 

According to the World Resources Institute, a non-profit research organization dedicated to finding solutions to current climate issues, “climate change is making wildfires more frequent, intense and destructive than ever before,” a fact that is abundantly clear in the case of the L.A. wildfires. Looking back at 2024, wildfires are not the only natural disasters increasing in frequency and intensity. The National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) found that last year the United States experienced 27 weather-related disasters, compared to a yearly average of nine events between 1980-2024. 

In response to criticism about what could have been done ahead of time to mitigate the damage, L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said in a statement shared by BBC, “It wasn’t for a lack of preparation or decision-making that resulted in this catastrophe. It was a natural disaster” (BBC).  Indeed, no amount of preparation by a single city or county would be sufficient to take on the natural disasters incited by climate change, which are becoming more and more severe with every tenth of a degree in global temperature rises. 

The lack of preparation that allowed the L.A. fires to become so severe should instead be blamed on the remarkably little importance placed on fighting climate change in the United States. As one of the top contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, the United States needs to take on a greater burden in the international effort to curb the impact of climate change. For this to happen, the incoming government under President Donald Trump must commit to cutting national carbon emissions and eliminating other factors contributing to global temperature rises. The best course of action for the United States would be for President Trump to agree to the terms of the Paris Climate Accords, an international treaty with 195 signatories requiring countries to cut carbon emissions and make other efforts to slow the effects of climate change. However, this is unlikely, as President Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2019 during his first term.

In addition to contributing to the international effort, the United States government could make several domestic changes to help fight climate change. States such as Washington and Vermont have achieved great success in the use of renewable energies which, with more investment and research, could be used on a national level to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The agricultural sector is another key industry that could be improved in the United States to combat climate change. Experts around the world aware of the agricultural sector’s contribution to emissions have invented countless sustainable agricultural techniques that could be implemented by farmers in the United States if given the proper funding. There are many opportunities for the United States to scale back greenhouse gas emissions if the incoming government under President Trump is willing to prioritize investment in sustainable technology. 

Record-breaking heat waves and rates of natural disasters have been occurring in greater frequency around the world over the last several years. Research finds climate change to be one of the most significant underlying factors in the growing severity of these weather-related disasters. In each incident, there are countless victims – each of whom bears little responsibility for creating climate degradation compared to the United States government. The fires that are currently ravaging the L.A. region are just one example of a natural disaster caused by climate change, and in one week they are on track to displace hundreds of thousands of individuals. Failure to address climate change moving into a new presidential term in the United States would be a major injustice, and the new government under President Trump must prioritize aiding the victims of climate-related disasters and preventing future events from occurring.

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