I am often asked about the cause of the fires. I usually say we are adopting Mexico’s climate, so the forests are starting to dry up as we transition to the new climate. Once the forests eventually die off, then the fires will subside. The following is a great visualization of what is happening as you scroll down.
https://projects.propublica.org/climate-migration/
Could we do anything to stop this? Technically and financially, absolutely. However, we have not shown the WILL to do it.
Why don’t we have the will to do it? It is an age-old problem. As the world progresses, the existing institutions (with the majority of the power and the capital) resist change because it threatens their very existence. These institutions will typically band together under the same banner, thereby increasing their collective power and influence. This group identifies as “conservative”, which means conserving the status quo. The opposite of conservative is progressive. As the name implies, progressives are in favor of progress, which frequently means dismantling existing institutions for better ones. Thus, progressives are striving for a better world, and conservatives want to conserve the existing world.
Today, conservative institutions include Pharma, the Medical Industry, the Food Industry, the Prison Industry, the Military-Industrial Complex, Banking & Finance, Religions, and the Petrochemical Industry (Oil & Gas), to name a few. They have tremendous power and money to sway public opinion through lobbying, political funding, cable news, social media, funding “studies” that support their agenda, funding misinformation campaigns, voter suppression, etc. The typical individual who is struggling to make ends meet does not have access to these resources.
These institutions served an important purpose, and have given us the wealth produced by the Industrial Age and consumerism. The exploitation of the Earth’s resources with high efficiency and massive scale has done a lot of good, at least for a few generations. Future generations, not so much. It is not sustainable. Thus, the need to switch to sustainable practices. For example, instead of using the sun’s energy that has been accumulating for millions of years (oil & gas), and using that energy in just a few hundred years, we should use the sun’s energy as it falls on the earth in the form of solar and wind. Note: it turns out that renewable forms of energy are much cheaper than oil and gas, with the bonus of no pollution. Instead of strip-mining the earth of its resources to make products that are just discarded (consumerism), we should build a circular economy where resources are constantly re-used.
Circling back to climate change. The effects of climate change will cost us trillions of dollars in the US alone. We have seen some of that cost right here in California. From a strictly financial standpoint, we would better off building a green economy that is sustainable, but this is not a financial issue. The only real issue is the lack of will to do anything about it, and the reason for the lack of will is a natural resistance to change by the existing institutions.
