Tegan Mierle via UNSPLASH
As many as 100 fires have spread over California, Oregon, Washington, now spreading into Idaho, 280,000 (IDMC) people are now displaced, at least 27 people are dead, air quality is abysmal, stretching far beyond the affected states to the eastern coast of the United States and even parts of Europe, and state leaders, citing climate change, are pleading for help.
All the while, the US President, after weeks of silence, once again, blamed forest management and denied climate change played any part in the present fires, saying, “I don’t think science knows.”
The governors of all threes states cited climate change impacts like drying forests with rising heat as contributing to more dangerous fires.
In an open letter response, Governor Jay Inslee of Washington, a fierce climate change advocate, addressed the President directly, “I hope you had an enlightening trip to the West Coast, where your refusal to address climate change — and your active steps to allow even more carbon pollution — will accelerate devastating wildfires like you are seeing today.”
Abrahm Lustgarten wondered if climate migration would be a factor in the United States? He interviewed a cross-section of more than 40 experts in economics, risk analysis, climate science and urban planning. Through his interviews and research, he contends Americans will find their lives negatively transformed by the environment, namely more heat, less water, and that one in 12 Americans in the South will move westward, causing shifts in population and also widening socio-economic divides.
In a sign of hope, more Americans now rank climate change as a top political priority or concern, as compared to 2016. In Iowa, Democratic caucus attendees ranked climate change second to health as an issue of concern, and Yale and George Mason University polls found that even Republicans’ views are shifting, with one in three now stating climate change should be declared a national emergency. (NY Times, NY Times Magazine, LA Times)