Fueled by dangerous winds, changing directions and incredibly dry conditions, wildfires were kickstarted across various parts of Los Angeles last week. The Eaton and Palisades fires are still actively raging through greater Los Angeles, and a new onslaught of Santa Ana winds is expected to bring extreme wildfire danger to Southern California.
Santa Ana refers to a strong hot dry foehn wind from the north, northeast, or east in southern California(Merriam-Webster).
The immediate causes of the wildfires have been debated and are incredibly multifaceted, with the Palisades fire being believed to be ignited by a New Year’s Eve firework and the Eaton fire suspected to have been sparked by downed utility lines. Although all of these fires could have been caused by pure negligence and electrical failures, there is no doubt that this has been caused by a build-up of other events in the past decade, and this has now culminated across the world with disastrous consequences.
Aside from the wildfires, there’s been abnormally high temperatures in Australia during summer, disastrous snowstorms in America, from 2022-2024, with the Southern States declaring emergencies ahead of ‘historic snow levels exacerbated by cold temperatures chilling 220 million people’, and 2025 has only just begun.
Two years ago, NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus decided to leave LA in fear that it would burn. Reddit threads and Quora posts responding to his guest essay have sympathisers who have done the same dotting comments in dozens, leaving areas like Topanga Canyon, Altadena, and dating to a year back, places like Vermont and New England which were previously affected by disastrous floods and storms- The Great Vermont Flood Of 2023
Sceptics do exist, and governments vow to set new targets to reduce global warming, to achieve carbon zero, to cut down on emissions and food waste, but despite every effort, there’s an omnipotent fact that has arisen, one we will all eventually be forced to accept- Climate change is progressing at a rapid pace, and before wars, economic collapse or viruses, the Earth might burn, wiping out humanity.
Rising temperatures, prolonged droughts, and changing weather patterns have created a tinderbox environment in countries and continents globally, California being one of them. The Santa Ana winds, which are common in the region, have become more intense and frequent due to climate change, further spreading the fires and increasing destruction tenfold. In the last decade, another catastrophic fire incident took place in Australia, 2019-2020(The Black Summer), one of the most devastating fire events on record, killing at least 434 people and razing 24.3 million hectares to the ground. It was terrible enough that a Google Doodle was created, the game requiring individuals to survive as they jumped and vaulted over pixelated bushfires, another event pushed into the archives of history, and perhaps, disregarded too soon.
What were the causes? Exceptionally dry conditions, a lack of soil moisture and an early bushfire season caused by climate change.
https://wwf.org.au/news/2020/3-billion-animals-impacted-by-australia-bushfire-crisis/
And forget humans and homes, animals have been affected too. For actions they did not commit.
In the last decade or more, thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of incidents as such have arisen. Every time, after every incident, plans are made to upgrade infrastructure, to conserve the environment, to preserve different species and improve farming and irrigation methods. But are these initiative truly being carried out fast enough? Is climate change being given the importance that it requires?
The Earth is now warming faster than any recorded point in history, disrupting the natural equilibrium that is crucial for our survival.
The LA wildfires could have been mitigated if improved forest management was implemented, such as controlled backburning and the clearing of dead vegetation. Using fire-resistant material for construction could have made communities more resilient to the wildfires. Stricter emissions standards would have reduced the overall greenhouse gas emissions, especially with LA having ozone and particle pollution, making it the city with the most contaminated air in the country. In 2021, LA was still the last county using coal to power its electricity, and still tapping oil wells, an industry that rapidly grew in size after 1918, all the way to 1971, when it exuded its previous peak. California consumed 1.8 barrels of oil a day. If this extreme use of fossil fuels had been reduced earlier with earlier incentives for the adoption of solar, wind and other renewable energy, the decreased reliance on materials like coal and oil could have reduced the amount of emissions clogging the air, and in turn have reduced the tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions that were produced throughout the decades. In 2023, LA lost 98.2 kha of forestland to deforestation, equivalent to an absorption of 74.6 Mt of CO2 emissions. In the short term, that may not seem like much, but in a larger scheme of things, it would’ve played a crucial role in mitigating climate change. These are after all, little actions, negligent mistakes that built up from the very moment of the Industrial Revolution, leading to these grey skies, destroyed weather patterns and catastrophic weather events that have become commonalities in the news today.
It’s time we start taking climate change seriously, instead of viewing it as a far off, fantastical probability 5 billion years later. It’s here, and it’s far closer than we expected, with reality slapping us all in the face every time another wildfire begins, every time a hurricane lands, and every time climate reports come out with even worse numbers and far more accelerated rates of warming.
For if we don’t attempt to reverse the adverse consequences Earth has faced because of our ignorance, we might find ourselves in a failing race against time, one that would end very soon for us.
Signing off…