Are the Wildfires in California Related to Global Warming?

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted October 23, 2007.

AMY GOODMAN: As we continue on this issue of global warming, what does global warming have to do with the fires raging in Southern California?

More than a half a million people in San Diego County have been ordered to evacuate. Over 900 homes have been destroyed. At least one person has died. Another thirty-seven people have been reported injured, including seventeen firefighters. The fires extend from the Mexican border to Santa Barbara, the most devastating fires in San Diego County. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency.

Bill McKibben is a leading environmentalist and one of the leading forces behind Step It Up. In 1989, he wrote the book The End of Nature, one of the first books to describe global warming as an emerging environmental crisis. His latest book is called Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. Bill McKibben, joining us from Boston, welcome to Democracy Now!

BILL McKIBBEN: Amy, it's good to be with you, as always.

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. The fires in Southern California and global warming, is there a connection?

BILL McKIBBEN: I'm afraid that there is. This is the kind of disaster that we see more and more of as we begin to change the basic physics and chemistry of the planet we live on. One of the people leading the really brave rescue effort out there yesterday said, one of the San Diego authorities said, this is the driest it's been in at least ninety years. It's dry because they've had terrific heat and not much rain. And those are just the conditions for that part of the world that all the modeling suggests come about when you begin to raise the temperature.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about Tom Swetnam of the University of Arizona, one of the ecologists there. He has written about the connection to global warming. He published a study in the journal Science, saying global warming has increased temperatures in the West about one degree, and that's caused four times more fires.

BILL McKIBBEN: This is the problem. Things don't work in a linear smooth relationship, you know? You raise the temperature a little bit, and you begin to get very large cascading effects. So, for instance, across much of the West in Alaska, warmer temperatures have brought with them infestations of new kinds of insects. Those insects have killed off hundreds of thousands of square miles of forest. That forest catches fire once those trees die.

All that burning forest sends yet more carbon into the atmosphere. On and on and on. We see the same kind of dynamics playing out now with this drought in the Southeast, with the ongoing drought in the Southwest. And, of course, the US has been hit less hard by these changes than much of the rest of the world so far.

What's important to remember and the reason that we spend all our time organizing now, trying to change all this, is that so far human beings have raised the temperature of the planet about one degree Fahrenheit. The computer modeling makes it very clear that before the century is out, unless we take very strong action, indeed, we're going to raise the temperature of the planet another five degrees Fahrenheit. So, take whatever you see now, multiply it by five, and then toss in all those cascading effects that come, as we exceed one threshold after another.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, we hardly see, with the massive coverage of what's going on in California, which is very significant, these fires raging in Southern California, the words "global warming" mentioned.

BILL McKIBBEN: Well, it's like Katrina. I mean, the sheer horror of it in the moment is so enormous that it's hard to focus on causes. That's why we've got to be building that movement all the time, doing the kind of stuff that Ted Glick is doing in Washington, doing the kind of stuff that at stepitup2007.org we're doing all across the country, as we get ready for our next round of big nationwide protests on November 3rd.

It's only, you know, when we're able to take a step back -- I mean, you know, the people in California today can't be concentrating on global warming; they've got to be concentrating on getting people out of harm's way and fast. My aunt was evacuated yesterday afternoon, and I'm worried sick about her. But the rest of us can't be in there --

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Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!

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