Smart Bombs: Climate change affects fire season, drought

If you think global warming is bunk, or occurs randomly based on natural forces, then your reaction to wildfires and drought in our midst is to shrug and say, “Tough break, but Mother Nature could turn on the spigot at any time.”

If you think the warming planet is the top menace facing people for generations to come, you aren’t surprised at what’s occurring, but are immensely frustrated because the experts studying global warming have issued very clear warnings.

Last year, climate scientists released a National Climate Assessment, with a detailed section on regional impacts. The Northwest, they said, will continue to experience dwindling snowpack and smaller stream flows. The sea level will rise, waters will warm and increased acidification will kill off marine life. Insect outbreaks will cause more trees to become diseased, making them more susceptible to wildfires.

Sure enough, the snow that didn’t fall over the winter is now coming down as embers.

On Thursday, a tearful Nathan Rabe, the incident commander at the Okanogan Fire Complex, said, “We’re seeing fires and fire growth that I have not seen much of in 35 years of doing this.”

Similar sentiments were heard last year during the Carlton Complex fires, the largest in state history. That record lasted all of one year. The reality is that the entire West is becoming increasingly parched and temperatures are rising. A study published last week in Geophysical Research Letters shows that global warming has exacerbated the drought in California, which has cost the state $2.7 billion over the past four years.

This is what the fallout from global warming will look like in our slice of the globe, climate scientists say. And this is what summers will be like, more or less, for the rest of our lifetimes and for decades beyond. We’ve littered the atmosphere with greenhouse gases that are trapped for 100 years, so no matter what we do, the climate will continue to change.

To act now would be entirely selfless and would take a leap of faith … in science. We’ll never know if pricing carbon and other emissions-curbing strategies can reverse the course. We won’t be alive to see the benefits. But if we accept what climate scientists are telling us, we need to act now, or be guilty of knowingly creating a more inhospitable planet for future generations.

Business as usual? It’s clear that no amount of proof will persuade global warming deniers. But what to make of those who publicly discuss the issue as if it were a reality, while simultaneously shooting down solutions?

I’m thinking of powerful business groups that fret about the effects of remediation on the near-term economy. We shouldn’t take unilateral action in Washington state, they say, because that would put our industries at a competitive disadvantage.

OK, so how about Congress? Let’s put the entire country on a level playing field by subjecting all states to the same regulations. Well, this is actually a global problem, they say, so the federal government shouldn’t act until it can be assured all countries will act.

As a result, if governors and the president issue executive orders aimed at reducing carbon emissions, they are criticized for not “collaborating” or for taking “command and control” over the situation and issuing “top-down” directives. And guess who escapes criticism? Politicians who do nothing. In fact, they clean up quite nicely when it comes to campaign contributions from the business community.

I’ve assumed that business interests accept there is a problem. Otherwise, why call for collaboration? But maybe I’ve been snookered, and what they really want to do is talk this issue to death.

Be nice to see some action – as opposed to reaction – that clears the air.