Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Sun editorial:

With or without Trump team, nation must address climate change

Natural disasters are not only getting more severe, they’re ganging up. Coming two, three or four at a time, they’re killing hundreds and displacing thousands.

In California, killer wildfires continue to break out amid drought conditions, followed by destructive mudslides. In Florida, coastal areas are swamped as rising sea waters are pushed inland by hurricanes of enormous strength, while other areas suffer through droughts.

Welcome to the “new abnormal,” to use California Gov. Jerry Brown’s chillingly accurate term. We’ve damaged the planet to the point where massive destruction, loss of life and economic impact of climate change have become a terrifying reality.

All of this was predicted. Those predictions were ignored.

And now, as a result, what is being predicted is much, much worse.

As stated in recent reports on climate change, the natural disasters we’ve seen in recent years offer a mere preview of what’s to come — which, if we don’t take action, will make what’s happening now look like the good old days.

Without a turnaround, we face the possibility that an entire metro area could be wiped out by fire or flooding. That could quite literally be the case in California’s East Bay, where the susceptibility to fires could lead to the deaths of thousands and leave 1.5 million people homeless if the wrong things were to happen.

In the Southwest, the unrelenting drought is an increasing threat to the 30 million Americans who rely on the Colorado River as their primary source of water. Elsewhere, hurricanes that are coming in a series of unprecedented strength — no sooner has a Category 4 or Category 5 hurricane blown through than another smashes ashore — are only getting stronger.

This calls for two courses of action.

One is to help people survive what’s coming in the next few decades.

The other is to begin working fervently to reduce the effects of climate change, which in the long term would curb the damage we’re seeing now.

In terms of survival, that means investments in such means as fleets of fire suppression planes and rescue helicopters in California and the Western states, as well as stockpiles of tens of thousands of tents in states like California to provide temporary housing.

It also means increased spending on projects like San Francisco’s $5 billion sea wall renovation.

As that project shows, climate change is already costing billions today — it’s not merely threatening to cost money down the road. But with our failure to heed the warnings, we’ve made it necessary to rack up the spending to keep pace with the severity of disasters.

On the long-term front, it’s critical to reduce the carbon emissions that are speeding global warming. By moving to renewable energy sources, recycling more materials and taking similar steps, we can begin the long healing process and lay the groundwork to reduce the severity of climate change decades from now.

It won’t affect the current droughts, the collapse of the ice shelves or today’s hurricanes and wildfires — we’re stuck with those. But if we take action now, we can ease the blow of the next predicted outcomes of global warming.

What we can’t do is accept the Trump administration’s contention that the current disasters can somehow be managed out of existence.

When the White House recently issued an 841-word commentary from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke under the headline “What it will take to prevent deadly wildfires,” the fact that not one of those words addressed climate change spoke volumes about the irresponsibility of the Trump administration in dealing with the problem.

Zinke said forest management was the solution, but he was dead wrong. The bracing fact is that we can’t stop the ferocity of these fires right now.

Keep in mind that the blazes are overwhelmingly happening in areas adjacent to towns and cities, where forests tend to be more dense than in wild areas where fires burn periodically. As a result, it’s easier for fire to move from forests or grasslands into neighborhoods in these so-called “urban interface” blazes. In these cases, forest management is only a fraction of the problem when extreme drought conditions are present.

Also, while Zinke said removing dead trees was a key part of the solution, forestry experts say logging does nothing to reduce the frequency of wildfires. That’s because dead trees don’t burn easily — as with starting a fire in a fireplace, you start with kindling before tossing in big logs.

Another fundamental part of the problem is that while California has significantly increased spending on forest management, the federal government has cut back on its spending. Considering that the federal government owns the majority of the land in California, the reduction is especially alarming.

So let’s stop pretending there are short-term fixes.

Instead, let’s recognize that climate change is already actively transforming the lives of Americans and creating new risks.

The good news is that voters in Nevada and a number of other states are pushing back and demanding action. They’re electing leaders who are responding to the alarm of climate change and will work at the state and local level to curb it.

In Nevada, where Democrats were elected to all but one state office and to majorities in both chambers of the Legislature, voters will be expecting lawmakers to help solve the problem by fostering continued growth of renewable energy and placing restrictions on carbon emissions.

Meanwhile, with Democrats soon to be holding five of the state’s six seats in the U.S. House and Senate, voters have put the state on a path toward reversing the Trump administration’s assaults on environmental regulations and getting the federal government back on the right track on climate policy.

So while Zinke and Trump might choose not to acknowledge it, voters in Nevada and elsewhere know the right way forward.