Evidence of wildfires dates back more than 300 million years, suggesting they’ve been around roughly as long as trees and lightning. But data shows they’ve gotten much worse in just the last few years, as anyone in the Los Angeles area can attest.
Since last week, Southern California’s deadly fires have forced more than 100 thousand people to evacuate their homes and have destroyed more than a thousand buildings. The Palisades and Eaton fires have burned close to 40 thousand acres; dozens of people have died. As of this writing, L.A.’s fire chief is warning “we are not in the clear” amid high winds that could worsen conditions.
Our hearts are with the people facing this disaster—those facing losses, those displaced, and those fighting to keep it from getting even worse. To say it’s painful to watch is an understatement. The scope of destruction unfolding short-circuits the mind, but let’s try to understand what’s going on here.
The forces behind the fires
We know that climate change is driving more extreme weather—higher temperatures, worse dry spells—that can lead to more wildfires. Indeed, research from the World Resources Institute has found that forest fires now burn twice as much tree cover as they did two decades ago; several of the worst fire seasons have occurred just since 2020.
“Extreme heat waves are already 5 times more likely today than they were 150 years ago and are expected to become even more frequent as the planet continues to warm,” per WRI.
This trend is evident not just in California but in tropical forests like the Amazon, and in boreal regions like Canada. There, wildfires in 2023 blanketed the northeastern U.S. with enough smoke to turn New York’s skies an apocalyptic orange—an event that experts say climate change made more than twice as likely.
(Eerie orange skies from wildfires also linger in the memory of anyone who lived in California’s Bay Area in September of 2020, including Daniel Potter, the human writing this post, and Anshuman Bapna, who had just founded Terra.do earlier that year.)
This trend will worsen as long as we keep adding more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, underscoring the need for rapid climate action to phase out fossil fuel use.
Resilience in community
Wildfires in California were “a real wake-up call” for Supriya Booth a few years ago. Watching ash fall from the sky with her kids, she felt compelled to do more for the climate: “If you want to be a great parent, you have to do something about this, right?”
But the journey toward climate action is difficult alone, and Supriya felt overwhelmed before discovering Terra.do and joining its flagship Learning for Action program. Over 12 weeks, she learned about climate science and solutions, as well as emotional resiliency, and grew more optimistic; these days, she works as a climate tech executive.
Amid the current fires in the Los Angeles area, other Terra alums have been sounding off about the climate connection and the importance of education, like Evren Holland (“Please, educate yourself on the climate crisis and how it’s impacting you!”) and Akhila Kosaraju, who urges people to find a piece of the climate puzzle they’re well-positioned to solve: “This could be influencing your social circle, lobbying and activism, shifting your investments, pushing for behavior change, community building etc.”
Here, it’s important to remember that as awful as the fires and the climate crisis are, the only way to deal with them is alongside others who care. That’s true in immediate, practical ways (supporting evacuees, for instance) as well as in terms of ramping up meaningful climate action—that is, working to stop the planet from getting even hotter.
Crucially, it’s also true for anyone experiencing climate anxiety. Pictures and videos from the fires have a way of humbling us and making us feel fragile, but you are not powerless. You’ll feel better when you do something about this problem. That’s much easier to do in the company of like-minded peers, and it’s what we’re all about here.
