The western United States is currently on fire. The raging wildfires have decimated parts of California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado. As of September 15th, 2020, 87 large wildfires had cumulatively burned over 4.7 million acres of land. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, an organization and website that provides up-to-date data on the number of active fires, evacuation information, and prevention education, there were 71 active fires burning 4,116,730 acres of land on October 14th, 2020. 18 of these blazes are in California, 11 in Montana, 7 in Oregon, and 3 in Colorado. While this tragedy is no longer highlighted in the media as much as it was a couple months ago, the fires are still raging with great strength and destruction. People are losing their homes and lives, many are having to evacuate, and the resulting smoke is increasing respiratory problems as it spreads across the county, darkening the sky. Wildfires occur annually in some places, however, worsening climate change is only making the fires larger, more frequent, and harder to control. This is an example of climate change having a negative effect now, today. When talking about climate change, it often referred to a problem that can be dealt with in the future or something that will have a greater impact on other countries. But the strength and abundance of the fires in the western U.S. is climate change in our own backyards. This should be a wakeup call that shows people the urgency of the climate emergency. We need effective, sustainable, and substantial changes to the way we address the climate crisis; raking the forest floors is not going to fix this.
Sources:
Smoke over Fort Collins, CO (Tom Mateer)
Air Quality in the U.S. measured in PM2.5 on September 16th, 2020 (PurpleAir)