The World Is Burning and We Need to Act
The devastating wildfires on the West Coast are not a new phenomenon. They are, however, something we can prepare for.
Fire surrounds California’s Bidwell Bar Bridge in Lake Oroville during the Bear fire.
Photographer: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
California’s fire season has become the state’s most destructive in modern memory, spreading into Oregon and forcing mass evacuations. A suffocating heat wave coupled with strong seasonal winds have made the West Coast especially vulnerable to lightning strikes, causing thousands of fires. And as global temperatures rise, so do the oft-ignored risks of wildfires that can lead to avoidable deaths and billions of dollars in damage. Our failure to confront climate change has put California — and other places around the world, including Australia — and its fire-prone landscape directly in the crosshairs, as Bloomberg Opinion writers have documented over the years.
The U.S. Has to Get Serious About Wildfires — Bloomberg’s editors