by Phil G.
Facilitator of Third Act’s Southern California Working Group
In the wake of the devastating LA fires, one of the most important things we climate advocates can do is talk with our family, friends, and neighbors about the connection between the fires and climate change.
Many people are looking for someone to blame for the severity of the destruction. In their usual fashion, news outlets, social media, and blogs have amplified the voices of blame. In the rush to judgement, we’ve seen the finger pointed at L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Joe Biden, Democrats, Environmentalists, DEI advocates, rich people, the residents themselves, the fire department, and even immigrants.
People are traumatized, angry, grief-stricken, and frustrated. And in their hurt, many are looking to lash out at someone or something. It doesn’t help that our new President is spreading lies and blame, and trying to attach strings to relief aid for victims of the fires, rather than calling for compassion and support.
In time, we’ll learn lessons from the fires, including what we can do better in the future. And I’m sure we’ll find that mistakes were made, but no individual or group was responsible for the severity of the recent fires and the damage they caused. There were a multiplicity of factors. It was, so to speak, a perfect storm–of conditions, circumstances, and chance. It will take months or years to investigate and unpack all of this.
There’s one thing we know for certain: climate change was a critical factor in creating the conditions that led to the fires and made them so destructive. And we can safely predict that climate change will lead to more fires in the future. Yet much of the news coverage of the LA fires barely mentions climate change. It ought to be the headline and a wake-up call.
The climate change we’ve been experiencing over the last few decades is a result of human activity, mainly the burning of fossil fuels. There have always been natural disasters, but events like the LA fires, record high temperatures, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and a worsening pattern of hurricanes, flooding, wildfires, and droughts are not natural. We should not downplay the human influence by calling them natural disasters. They are unnatural disasters.
I’m convinced that a large proportion of the population hasn’t yet fully connected the dots between climate change and the extreme weather events and unnatural disasters we’ve been experiencing. Otherwise, climate change would be a burning issue (again, so to speak) and everyone would be talking about it. There would be more pressure on public officials and corporations to take serious climate action. And voters wouldn’t elect climate deniers to public office. There doesn’t seem to be massive awareness or political will…at least yet.
Every year Yale University conducts a public survey on Americans’ views on climate change. In the most recent survey, 65% of respondents reported that they are worried about global warming, but only 33% of respondents said they’ve ever had a climate conversation with family or friends. If people aren’t talking about climate change, how can we expect it to become a priority issue?
World-renowned climate scientist, author, and climate communication expert Katherine Hayhoe says that the most important thing we as individuals can do about climate change is talk about it. As climate advocates and activists, we need to help connect the dots between unnatural disasters like the LA fires and climate change.
So please, when you talk about the fires or other extreme weather events, bring up climate change. We need to amplify the issue to generate more awareness and level it up to a priority issue for more people. We need to talk about it!