Climate change, wildfires, and environmental justice

I came across a recent scientific publication, and the results were sobering, troubling, and indicated a real problem, one which many of us were aware of a long ago.  Climate change is real, and we are seeing the impacts everywhere we look, from melting glaciers and problems with penguins (check out an earlier post), rising sea level and beach erosion, phenological changes, increased incidence in intense storm events and subsequent flooding, droughts, and an increase in the intensity, frequency and extent of wildfires.  And while all of us will see, feel the impact of climate change sooner rather than later, some are going to be impacted in much more significant ways when compared to others.  This is where the idea of environmental justice comes in.  According to the US EPA, environmental justice is "... the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies."  This idea, policy, would be great, if all environmental disasters equally impacted all people.  But unfortunately, this is not the case.  While we hope that laws, regulations, and policies do not "see" race, color, or income as a factor, we know that there are many cases where this is not true.  And apparently, this applies to the impacts of wildfires in the western U.S.A.

The number of acres burned in the US by wildfires has more than doubled in the last 30 years, and climate scientists claim that approximately 1/2 of this increase can be attributed to extreme warmth during the summer, along with an increase in drought, caused by climate change.  The nature of forest fires in particular,  burn patterns, frequency and intensity, is complicated.  And while the continued increase in frequency and intensity of forest fires predicted as a result of climate change in the future will depend on many factors, especially local ecosystem properties, there is no question among scientists that there will be more large and intense fires in the future due to climate change.  And unfortunately, the impacts of these fires will not be felt equally among those people living in fire-prone areas.  The impacts of environmental disasters, like wildfires, are not felt equally among all socioeconomic groups.  While disasters themselves appear to have a random element (often in terms of when and where a disaster strikes), the impacts are not random.  Low-income communities are more at risk, and much less able to respond, to disasters such as wildfires.  In this recent publication, by Davies et al. (2019) published in PLoS ONE, the authors present an impelling case, supported by lots of data, that the impacts of wildfires are not felt equally among all socioeconomic groups.  They reported that 12 million of the over 29 million Americans who live in areas with significant potential for intense wildfires are socially vulnerable.  For these 12 million people, a wildfire event could be catastrophic.  This is sad, and totally unacceptable.  We will all be impacted by climate change, but let us be sure, let environmental justice be served, such that all of us are impacted the same, regardless of race, color, country of origin, or income.  And then, maybe, when the wealthy are exposed to the same risks as the rest of us, there will be action.

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