It’s the Climate Stupid

George Wuerthner

 May 8, 2026

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Severe drought has dominated the West, leading to larger wildfires. Photo by George Wuerthner.

If you want to understand why we are seeing larger wildfires, severe drought, and higher temperatures, I suggest the mantra should be “it’s the climate, stupid.”

Yet, it appears that most agencies, many scientists (who are paid by the Forest Service and timber industry), and far too many conservation groups, blame recent large blazes on “over dense” forests that are “unhealthy” and in need of thinning (read logging).

Natural sources of mortality, like bark beetles, are indicators of “healthy forests” where ecological processes still function. Photo by George Wuerthner.

To these folks, tree mortality from natural processes like drought, insects, or wildfire is an indication of “unhealthy” forests. This paradigm drives all federal and state forest policy.

The driving force in all large fires is climate and weather, not fuel. I am always astounded that advocates of logging can seemingly ignore the fact that most of the West (and other parts of the country) are in severe drought. The historic conditions that created the forests we have today no longer exist. Our forest ecosystems are operating under a new climatic regime. And yet it does not seem to occur to people that this might have something to do with the large blazes we are experiencing.

Drought, high temperatures, low humidity, and wind are the key factors in all large blazes. The ongoing climate conditions that began in the 1980s have exacerbated all of these factors.

It doesn’t matter how much fuel you have; if you don’t have the right climate/weather conditions, you will not have a significant blaze. That is why wildfires are almost non-existent in wet, cool places like the Tongass National Forest in rainy Southeast Alaska. You could use a blowtorch to ignite the forest, and you would not get a large conflagration.

We have many climate/fire studies that demonstrate that, under severe drought conditions, wildfires are larger and more frequent—regardless of fuel type. By contrast, if you have decades of wet, cool conditions, the acreage burned and the size of wildfires decrease.

We have recent evidence of this trend from the last century. In the early 1900s, we experienced a significant drought. Remember the Dust Bowl? Indeed, in 1929, more than 50 million acres were charred across the West.

There is a shifting baseline. If you start in the 1970s, wildfire size has increased, but if you were to look at the early part of the last century, wildfires were just as large due to dry conditions that prevailed at that time.

To put that into perspective, today, if 10 million acres burn, it is considered a “record” year.

Then, in the late 1930s, the climate shifted due to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which controls climate conditions along the West Coast. Throughout the 1940s through the early 1980s, the climate was considerably cooler and moister. The number of ignitions declined; even those that managed to burn did not impact large areas.

In the 1970s, glaciers were expanding around the West, and some predicted a new Ice Age had begun. Photo by George Wuerthner.

During this period, glaciers grew in the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades, and the Rockies. Some scientists were predicting a new Ice Age.

In addition to fewer large fires, the cool, moist conditions favored tree establishment and survival, leading to denser forest stands.

While most logging and prescribed burn advocates attribute denser forests to “fire suppression,” it ignores how many natural conditions influence fire suppression efforts. It is easy to suppress fires when it’s cool and moist, but the supposed success of fire suppression was more a consequence of natural conditions that hindered ignition and spread.

Nature did a fine job of suppressing fires and increasing forest density.

The other reason given for larger blazes is the presumed cessation of “Indian burning.” According to this idea, before the spread of Euro-American control over wildfires, native people kept forest fuels low, forests healthy, and everyone happy by regularly burning the woods. Here is a recent paper promoting the idea that Indian burning kept fuel loading low and prevented large fires.

There are many problems with this concept.

First, while tribal people did burn the landscape, the influence was primarily local. In other words, Indian burning was localized and did not have a landscape-scale effect. We have numerous studies documenting the negligible influence of tribal fire, including evolutionary evidence.

For instance, Vachula et al. (2019) did a study of what is now Yosemite National Park where, historically, large Indigenous communities resided. Their research found a direct correlation between climate and the amount of burning on the landscape.

“We analyzed charcoal preserved in lake sediments of Yosemite National Park and spanning the last 1400 years to reconstruct local and regional area burned. Warm and dry climates promoted burning at both local and regional scales…

For instance, sagebrush ecosystems are among the most widespread vegetative communities in the West, yet are not adapted to fire. If tribal burning were as widespread and influential as claimed, we would not have sagebrush-adapted species like sage grouse, sage thrashers, pygmy rabbits, and a host of other species specifically adapted to sagebrush landscapes.

Sagebrush, a common plant species at low elevations where native people lived, lacks adaptations to frequent fire. If Indian burning were as widespread as asserted, we would not have sagebrush and sagebrush-adapted species like sage grouse. Photo by George Wuerthner.

A further problem with the idea that fire suppression and Indian burning reduced large blazes is that most plant communities in the West burned at long fire intervals, during which fuel naturally built up.

Finally, you have to ask yourself, how did forests survive and remain healthy for millions of years before there were any humans in North America? For example, ponderosa pine forests, a tree species that many suggest only remain healthy if they experience frequent fires set by humans, have existed as a separate species for 55–60 million years. Yet, tribal people only colonized North America in the last 15,000 years or so.

Fire suppression is not the issue. Climate change is what is driving large blazes. And solutions like increased logging or even prescribed fires are not going to significantly reverse the ongoing effects of severe drought and climate change.

The burning of fossil fuels, which contributes to climate warming, is the driving force behind larger wildfires. Photo by George Wuerthner.

The change in wildfire spread and size began in the late 1980s, as the cumulative influence of greenhouse gases began to create warmer, drier conditions, which in turn led to more wildfires.

The ultimate cause of larger blazes is warming climate. Until we, as a society, seriously address climate change and work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, no amount of logging or prescribed burning will result in fewer large blazes.

In the meantime, the only viable way to protect homes and communities is to ramp up home hardening to reduce the vulnerability of structures to ignition.

George Wuerthner has published 36 books including Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy. 

As Household Bills Soar, Is it Time for a “Working-Class Climate Agenda”?

By Dharna Noor

May 7, 2026

Source: Earth Island

​Workers rally for climate action in Melbourne, Australia, in 2020. Photo by John Englart.

Group that worked with AOC and Bernie Sanders seeks to counter claim that climate policy is politically toxic.

Americans do not care about the climate crisis, only economic issues: that’s the message some wonks have put forth in the past year, as the Trump administration has dismantled environmental protections. But the shift away from climate is misguided, an influential group of progressives is arguing.

“The climate crisis is a core driver of the cost-of-living crisis and instability we see across the economy,” says a new policy platform from left-leaning think tank Climate and Community Institute (CCI).

The proposal, “Stop Greed, Build Green,” outlines a framework for what its authors call “green economic populism.” Decarbonization should be understood not as competing with affordability, but as a potential tool for achieving it, says the group, which has written federal bills for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a representative, and Bernie Sanders, a senator, and was behind a groundbreaking New York public power law.

It’s a rebuttal to the growing Washington chorus claiming climate policy is politically toxic.

“The strength of this approach is that it directly challenges the perception that reducing emissions will make your life harder and more expensive,” said Naomi Klein, prominent left-wing author and founding advisory board member for CCI.

The think tank unveiled its “working-class climate agenda” at a recent New York City launch event, with speakers including Louise Yeung, Zohran Mamdani’s chief climate officer, representatives from the Democratic Socialists of America and Cornell University’s Climate Jobs Institute. A week later, CCI took its message to Washington DC, meeting with lawmakers and hosting a day of panels with former White House officials, congressional staff, scholars, advocates, and union leaders.

The advocates backed their proposal with new data: A recent survey by CCI and the progressive polling firm Data for Progress found that 70 percent of voters, including 65 percent of Republicans, believe climate action can lower the cost of living. That suggests working people — an audience long targeted by rightwing populists such as Donald Trump — may be receptive to green policies, they say.

“What we have to be focused on is the real pain that people are feeling in their everyday lives right now as a result of decades of underinvestment on the part of capital and the government in working people,” Patrick Bigger, research director at CCI, said at the New York event.

Other Democrats and progressives are currently linking the cost-of-living crisis to climate. But CCI says it aims to go beyond short-term fixes, promoting economic democracy by confronting corporate power and working with unions and social movements to shape policy.

“True affordability has to fundamentally rewire the hardware that our economy runs on and not the wallets of shareholders and corporate executives,” said Rakeen Mabud, a political economist and senior fellow at CCI.

From the Green New Deal to green economic populism

The approach builds on the Green New Deal, the sweeping framework popularized by the Sunrise Movement and Ocasio-Cortez in 2018, for which CCI served as a policy arm. That movement sought to yoke decarbonization to an extensive expansion of the social safety net, promising jobs, housing, and healthcare alongside a rapid energy transition.

CCI, then the Climate and Community Project, helped develop federal Green New Deal proposals, including a 2019 public housing bill introduced by Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders and a 2021 schools bill from then representative Jamaal Bowman and Ed Markey, a senator. It was a “moment for big ideas”, said Daniel Aldana Cohen, the CCI’s founding co-director, whose research underpinned both acts.

Those federal initiatives, while politically galvanizing, stalled in Congress. Elements of the Green New Deal were folded into more incremental policies such as Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022, which delivered major clean energy investments yet fell far short of the broader economic overhaul progressives envisioned. After returning to power last January, the Trump administration swiftly began unraveling those gains.

The new platform aims to learn from both the strengths and limits of that era. Like the Green New Deal, it foregrounds Americans’ everyday material concerns.

Past “neoliberal climate policies” such as carbon pricing, said Klein, paid little attention to impacts on household costs.

“The Green New Deal was our movement’s attempt to correct those errors, by focusing on big-ticket infrastructure and jobs programs,” she said. “But it was so big picture that it came to seem unfeasible to a lot of people, and it was so far off in the distance that detractors could lie about what it was and wasn’t.”

Green economic populism aims to make carbon-cutting proposals more tangible, focusing not on system-wide decarbonization but “climate policy you can touch”, said Aldana Cohen.

“We need to show people: ‘Hey, these policies are for you,’” he said.

One pitfall of the Biden-era climate policy, Cohen argued, is that its benefits were uneven and often invisible. Despite its scale, only 35 percent of voters in a 2024 survey said they had heard “a lot” or “some” about the IRA. The new approach aims to deliver quick, observable wins: lower bills and expanded access to heat pumps, union-built affordable EVs and free electric buses.

While the Green New Deal emphasized job creation, the new framework focuses on cutting everyday costs. Underemployment remains a concern, Cohen said, but the green jobs created under Biden were a “drop in the bucket” relative to the broader labor market. All working people, he added, are feeling the cost-of-living crisis — especially as the Iran war drives up fuel prices, underscoring that “fossil fuels cause deadly wars and make your life more expensive”.

“Right now, we need to address the entire working class,” he said.

Organizing beyond elections

Demonstrating that climate policy can improve people’s lives, CCI says, can help build a broader political coalition willing to defend and expand it. The group says those efforts are already under way.

In New York City, Mamdani, a democratic socialist mayor, centered his campaign on affordability while integrating climate policy.

“The mayor inspired New Yorkers by putting affordability at the front and center of his administration, and that extends to how we think about climate solutions,” Yeung, Mamdani’s chief climate officer said. “I really want to make sure we are imbuing all our work with that value.”

Katie Wilson, Seattle’s new socialist mayor, ran on a populist platform that integrated climate, notably plans for green social housing. “I think there’s a lot of alignment between my priorities in office and the green economic populism platform,” Wilson said on a recent CCI press call.

CCI also points to organizing beyond elections, such as the Chicago Teachers Union linking school investment to climate resilience and tenant campaigns in Minnesota paving the way for energy-efficient upgrades, as evidence that the approach is gaining traction.

The platform calls for policies including rent and insurance caps to shield residents from taking on the costs of disasters and green upgrades, expanded free public transit and taxes on polluters to fund climate programs. CCI is also working with unions, social movements and advocates to develop proposals and engaging with federal lawmakers, from progressive mainstays to traditional Democrats.

“By meeting with folks who might not necessarily be in the left flank, we can get a better idea of what kinds of green economic populist policies can resonate more broadly,” said Ruthy Gourevitch, CCI’s housing director and former senior policy adviser for Bowman. “We’re trying to be the research arm of a majoritarian coalition.”

Raising questions

At its DC convening, CCI also solicited feedback. Labor advocates raised questions about tradeoffs between job quality and cost suppression. Sameera Fazili, who served as a deputy director of the National Economic Council in the Biden administration, questioned whether large-scale public spending plans would gain traction in a high-debt environment. And Jigar Shah, who was Biden’s clean energy loans czar, wondered if the plan leans too heavily on price controls and regulation over technological solutions and innovation.

It’s the right time to have debates and “build consensus” about the best way to frame climate policy, Shah said.

“This is why I’m so happy that CCI put out this paper … and that they want my opinion,” he said.

Though she had feedback for CCI, Fazili said she believes green economic populism could help show Americans that climate need not be a culture-war issue. While the Green New Deal era encouraged green advocates to put climate first, she said, green economic populism could help “tuck climate aims into other policy, into the issues that are the most salient for people.”

Experts say rapid and transformative emissions cuts are still urgently needed, but achieving them will require durable political support, said Bigger, the research director at CCI.

“The really big emissions wins come from the broader structural transformation that we need to win in the long term,” he said. “To get there, we need buy-in.”

This article was originally published by Earth Island; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.

Evacuation Must Start Now as Climate-Driven Rising Gulf Slowly Drowns New Orleans: Study

“Coastal Louisiana has evidently already crossed the point of no return,” says new research.


Homes in New Orleans are surrounded by rising waters on August 23, 2019 amid the worsening climate emergency.
(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
May 04, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

A study published Monday warns that New Orleans must immediately begin planning and gradually implementing its permanent evacuation to avert a dangerously rushed exodus later, because it has passed a “point of no return” as climate-driven sea-level rise slowly swallows the storied city.

“With global temperatures poised to exceed the 1.5°C Paris Agreement threshold—a level that triggered substantial ice sheet collapse during the Last Interglacial—low-elevation coastal zones face sea-level commitments far beyond current planning horizons,” says the study, which was published by the journal Nature Sustainability.

“With this geological frame of reference, we examine the impact of sea-level rise on what may be the most physically vulnerable coastal zone in the world using prehistoric and contemporary patterns of human mobility,” the publication continues. “We highlight the positive aspects of the recently commenced out-migration in this region and argue that the fate of communities landwards of this coastal zone will be decided in the next few decades.”

“While climate mitigation should remain the first step to prevent the worst outcomes, coastal Louisiana has evidently already crossed the point of no return,” the paper adds.

That’s because rising waters are slowly eroding Louisiana’s coast, including New Orleans, which “may well be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico before the end of this century,” according to the study’s authors.

“Louisiana is a canary in the coal mine. It is one of the rare places where we’re already clearly seeing climate-motivated depopulation combined with other social and economic factors,” said Yale School of the Environment professor and study co-author Brianna Castro.

The authors argued that by acknowledging the inevitability of New Orleans’ underwater future, government and residents can avert a fraught rushed retreat by planning and executing a managed multigenerational relocation and set an example for other threatened coastal communities.

According to one widely cited study published a decade ago, around 13 million Americans living in coastal areas could be forced to relocate to higher ground by the end of the century due climate-driven sea-level rise, with the Gulf Coast and Florida expected lose the most livable land. Globally, hundreds of millions of people are expected to be displaced by 2100 due to rising seas.

After Hurricane Katrina—which inundated the city and killed nearly 1,000 people in the New Orleans metro area—billions of dollars were spent fortifying the city’s levee system, which failed catastrophically during the 2005 storm. However, experts warn that in the long term, levees won’t be able to stop the rising waters any longer.

That’s why the study’s authors said officials must begin the city’s orderly depopulation as soon as possible.

“What kind of retreat do you want?” asked Castro. “Do you want to incentivize it and then people go naturally for jobs, housing, and lifestyle amenities—or do you want people to wait and then have to leave abruptly in crisis?”