As wildfires proliferate, state must fight Trump on climate

Sunday, Nov. 5, 2017 | 2 a.m.

So maybe you doubt the science behind climate change. You think it’s all been cooked up by Al Gore or some other member of the tree-hugging elite as a false basis to create momentum for a bunch of liberal causes.

OK, then listen to Matthew DeFalco.

DeFalco, it should be said upfront, is a Democrat with political aspirations, having made an unsuccessful attempt to unseat Henderson City Councilman John Marz this year.

But he’s also an Army veteran who fights wildfires. And for him, climate change isn’t some academic theory or a collection of studies. It’s an on-the-ground killer that he’s faced in person.

He’s seen whole forests go up in flames. He’s seen homes destroyed. He and his teammates have worked themselves ragged and placed themselves in danger to save many more.

“There are a lot of numbers like these,” he said Thursday during an event at the Las Vegas Sierra Club office, pointing at slides of statistics on global warming. “But for a lot of people this (issue) is everything; it’s people losing everything they have.”

And the danger keeps getting worse.

This year, a heavy snowfall and a wet spring had officials thinking the 2017 wildfire season might be relatively tame.

Instead, it’s been horrific.

After the 71,000-acre Brian Head fire was put out in Utah in June, the deadly fires in Northern California broke out in October. Fires also broke out in Nevada, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon.

“Our fire season was supposed to end a month ago,” DeFalco said. “But it’s getting longer and longer every year.”

The factors driving the destruction are pretty basic. Temperatures have increased in recent decades, which has led to earlier melt-off of mountain snowfall, which has left forests drier for a longer period of time, which has drastically increased the fire risk. In the Southwest, meanwhile, the drought that has gripped the region for years has shown no sign of letting up, making the area particularly vulnerable to wildfires.

So the forests go up in flames, along with the homes located within them.

And everyone pays even if they’re not directly affected, either through increased health care costs brought on by smoke-related respiratory problems, or by bearing the costs of firefighting efforts and disaster relief. It’s been predicted that the Northern California fires, which destroyed more than 220,000 acres, will create an overall economic impact of at least $85 billion.

All of which brings us to President Donald Trump’s insane attack on efforts to reduce man-made climate change, such as restricting carbon emissions, reducing use of fossil fuels and funding climate science and research.

As fires rage and the Western environment becomes increasingly arid, Nevada’s leaders must battle the Trump administration’s assault on the environment at every turn. And the state can use all the advocates it can find to press for the development of renewable energy while also cutting down on carbon-dioxide emissions. Nevada has been a national leader on solar energy; now, more than ever, it’s critical for the state to defy what’s happening in the White House and continue setting the bar on clean energy.

Even the government acknowledges that climate change is an alarming problem and that there’s “no convincing alternative explanation” to humans being the cause of it, according to a blockbuster report released last week. Despite the administration’s efforts to cast doubt on the severity and cause of the problem, principled government workers in the trenches are doing their best to make Americans aware of the problems we’re facing — including a sea-level rise of 8 feet by 2100, widespread flooding and, yes, an increase in wildfires.

This isn’t a matter of theory. As firefighters like DeFalco know all too well, the need to curb global warming and protect the environment is being etched in flames across the West.