Thanks for highlighting the UCLA study on California wildfires. That study confirms that climate change is the major reason that fires are becoming year-round events. While California wildfires are natural events, climate change has intensified them, making them more frequent and more destructive.
In coming months as we read about wildfires burning out of control and devastating communities, we need to make the connection to all the little fires and flames we produce every day by combusting coal, oil, and gas — in the engines of our cars; in our home furnaces, hot water heaters, and gas stoves; in industrial factories and power plants. It is the emissions from all this combusting that has put too much heat-trapping carbon in the atmosphere which overheats our planet, kills millions with its toxic pollution, and brings chaos to our climate.
We should also be reminded that it doesn’t have to be this way. Affordable, clean energy is readily available. Free, limitless, clean energy from the sun and wind is now the cheapest way to generate electricity. Old polluting technologies, like gasoline engines, are outdated and being replaced by more efficient nonpolluting electric vehicles.
The Trump administration, in league with the fossil-fuel industry, is determined to prolong the use of these polluting fuels, but take heart, the transition to a clean energy future is inevitable and unstoppable.
