Despite Evidence, Newsom Cites Climate Change for Wildfire Spread in California
“California’s wildfire season is off to a ferocious start, with the state’s top wildfire official saying that fires have already burned through five times the average amount of land for this time of year,” reported the Guardian on July 11, 2024. In response, California Governor Gavin Newsom shared “Climate change is real,” and “extremes are [] present every day in the great state of California.”
However, evidence does not support climate change is driving the current pattern of wildfire spread in California. According to Dr. Jon Keeley, a US Geological Survey (USGS) scientist, wildfires are either created by windy, coastal shrubland or mountainous, dense forestation. Since the US Forest Service (USFS) alongside various US agencies have controlled fires the last 100 years, forestation, becoming more dense and functioning similar to shrubland, is more sensitive to wildfire outbreak. “If you recognize that 100% of these [shrubland] fires are started by people, and you add 6 million people [since 2000], that’s a good explanation for why we’re getting more and more of these fires,” Keeley concludes in the same 2019 interview.
While scientists argue climate change could play a role, a paper published in 2018 found in California “all ignition sources of fires had declined except for power lines,” affirming wildfire outbreak is more complex than climate change alone, and practical interventions can still be made to mitigate its spread.
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