The Fires are Evidence that We Can’t Afford to Wait for Climate Action

We have been devastated by the stories of families racing to escape the fires and the people who weren’t able to make it out, of the thousands of homes that have been destroyed and emotional toll on our entire community. We have been heartened by the skilled firefighters preventing further spread, the reporters, meteorologists, and scientists keeping us informed, and the people that have come from all over the region to support their neighbors.

Smoke obscured the sunrise during the Eaton Fire. January 8, 2025. Photo by Andrew C. Ellis.

The fires that swept through Altadena and the Pacific Palisades were the result of a dangerous combination of dense dry vegetation and extraordinarily strong winds. Climate change helped set this stage by making extreme swings from dry to wet and back again more likely. After two very wet years that led to dense vegetation, this has been one of the driest starts to the rainy season in Southern California’s history. Climate change has been extending California’s wildfire season, making it more likely to overlap with strong Santa Ana wind conditions.

And continued climate change will increase the risk of extreme California wildfires even more.

Whether you were directly impacted or not, consider how you felt watching the fires spread. Now consider that happening here more frequently. The astronomical cost of these fires (monetarily and emotionally) should change policymakers’ calculus from avoiding short term expenses to investing in prevention, which needs to include both adaptations to prevent the spread of wildfires and reforms to speed our transition away from the fossil fuels that generate most of the greenhouse gas pollution.

We can’t afford to wait for climate action.

Here are a few ways to get involved with our Climate Reality Project chapter:

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