Stop playing politics with the LA fires and address the key cause: man-made climate change
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Editorial: With uncontrolled blazes still raging around Los Angeles, on the day it was confirmed that last year was the hottest in human history, it would be a good time for global leaders to finally take climate change seriously. But the signs are that no such Damascene conversion is about to be witnessed.
Inevitably, and depressingly, the wildfires in southern California have been heavily politicised even while the terrified residents are seeking refuge and the firefighters are trying to bring the situation under control. Never missing an opportunity to turn some human tragedy to partisan advantage, president-elect Donald Trump has attacked the governor of California, Democrat Gavin Newsom for allegedly failing to protect water supplies for fire hydrants and prioritising the endangered smelt fish over the inhabitants of Los Angeles. Irrespective of its ecological function, Mr Trump blames the effort to save what he calls “an essentially worthless fish” for this vast natural disaster.
The science of climate change can never be precise enough to be able to attribute any particular freak weather event to anthropogenic global warming. What it can be very clear about is that the frequency and sometimes unprecedented nature of such events are the outward and obvious consequences of anthropogenic climate change.
The experts point, for example, to the failures of the seasonal rains in the hills around Los Angeles as a crucial factor in allowing the wildfires to take hold and spread as devastatingly as they have (whether the fires were started as an act of arson or not). California has suffered increasingly lengthy droughts, followed by correspondingly heavier but late rainfall. In recent months, the very dry weather created ideal conditions for the conflagration that has engulfed the homes of thousands of people.
