Portside

The...pressing matter is why there are conditions for such extreme fires in the first place. Climate change is one of the culprits. Western colonization of the state resulted in the wiping out of Indigenous knowledge of fire management.

Reader Comments: Mourn RBG and Fight for the Living; Print your own ‘TRUMP 200,000; Bertolt Brecht on the Super-Rich; The Wages of Whiteness; lots of resources and announcements;

Climate change is fast making large parts of the US uninhabitable. As the South and the Southwest grow more dangerous and hot, people will be forced to move north. And those who stay behind will be disproportionately poor and elderly.

At a meeting last year, industry leaders contradicted public claims that emissions of climate-warming methane are under control.

Fire in the Anthropocene has become the physical equivalent of endless nuclear war. A new, profoundly sinister nature is rapidly emerging from our fire rubble at the expense of landscapes we once considered sacred.

It's exacerbating hot, dry conditions allowing wildfires to spread farther and faster. Demographic and forest management factors alone are insufficient to explain the magnitude of the observed increase in wildfire extent over the past half-century.

The heat from one fire in California has been so strong that it generated its own thunderstorm cloud. There were at least 24 large wildfires in California, 14 in Oregon, and another 12 in Washington. Yes some still deny climate change.

Between COVID-19, structural racism, police brutality, climate change, plutocratic politics, and threats to democratic governance, it is time—past time—to say ENOUGH. The future is not a fact foretold: it is what people shape by our actions...

There are four key ingredients to the disastrous wildfire seasons in the West, and climate change figures prominently.