Wildfires

Volunteers Mobilize In Aftermath Of Oregon Fires

September 27, 2020 Shane Burley, Al Jazeera. Organize! Mutual Aid, Oregon, Portland, Wildfires

Portland, United States - Hunter Bombadier has spent the better part of the past year protesting for an end to police violence and anti-Black racism – and supporting communities hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. That is how the 33-year-old member of Symbiosis, a network of left-wing organisations across the United States, was ready to help when massive wildfires broke out south of Portland, Oregon, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes. “We were able to use the programming and infrastructure we already had,” Bombadier told Al Jazeera in a recent phone interview.

This Is America: Prisoners In The Crosshairs, Mutual Aid Fire Relief

September 25, 2020 It's Going Down. Educate! Mutual Aid, Police violence, Prisoner rights, Wildfires

On this episode, we have a special report from Perilous Chronicle, about how prisoners are directly impacted by the climate change fueled wildfires in the Pacific Northwest. This audio report is based on an article on the unfolding situation, which can be read here. Next up, we have an interview with the Portland chapter of Symbiosis, an autonomous anti-capitalist group organizing dual power programs and initiatives in the Pacific Northwest. In the wake of the spreading wildfires, the group began to organize mutual aid fire relief efforts along with a network for many other organizations.

Portland Protests, The Fire And Organizing Eviction Defense

September 21, 2020 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Evictions, Portland, Rebellion2020, Wildfires

Portland, Oregon is one of the epicenters of the rebellion against police violence that broke out after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Portland has a long history of racism and abusive police. David Rovics, a composer, performer, organizer and activist, joins Clearing the FOG to speak about the history of Oregon as a "Whites Only" state, the resistance there, the murder of Michael Reinoehl, the current fires and his work to develop Eviction Defense Squads. Eleanor Goldfield joins Margaret in the first half of the show to discuss current news.

Climate Change Will Force A New American Migration

September 17, 2020 Abrahm Lustgarten, Pro Publica. Educate! climate crisis, Environment, Migration, Wildfires

August besieged California with a heat unseen in generations. A surge in air conditioning broke the state’s electrical grid, leaving a population already ravaged by the coronavirus to work remotely by the dim light of their cellphones. By midmonth, the state had recorded possibly the hottest temperature ever measured on earth — 130 degrees in Death Valley — and an otherworldly storm of lightning had cracked open the sky. From Santa Cruz to Lake Tahoe, thousands of bolts of electricity exploded down onto withered grasslands and forests, some of them already hollowed out by climate-driven infestations of beetles and kiln-dried by the worst five-year drought on record.

We Can Still Win The War On Plastic

September 15, 2020 Michael K. Dorsey, Fair Observer. Organize! health, Plastic, Water, Wildfires

For many years, even decades, before the current global pandemic, environmental advocates have waged a war against single-use plastic. We’ve been winning that war. More and more consumers are carrying reusable bags for groceries and other shopping items, asking restaurants to use more sustainable materials for take-out containers, and using fewer plastic straws. Homeowners are even rethinking and replacing plastic PVC (polyvinyl chloride) in everything from home siding to piping. As with so many other things in 2020, the full-out war against plastic has abated.

With Global Heating, Expect Inferno Seasons In The American West

September 14, 2020 Peter Kalmus and Natasha Stavros, LA times. Educate! California, climate crisis, Forests, Wildfires

More than 3.1 million acres have burned in California this year — some 3% of the state — with many wildfires still at zero containment and months of fire season left to go. This far exceeds the previous record set in 2018, when 1.7 million acres burned, including the town of Paradise. These raging fires, some exacerbated by the blistering heat last weekend, are the direct result of climate change. The planet is currently 1.0°C to 1.2°C (about 2°F) hotter than it ought to be. This excess heat is entirely due to humans, mainly from burning fossil fuels and destroying forests.

Oregon Can’t Fight Wildfires Because Its Helicopters Were Sent To Afghanistan

September 12, 2020 Alan Macleod, Mintpress News. Educate! Afghanistan War, Oregon, US military, Wildfires

More than half a million Oregonians have been forced to flee their homes, as wildfires continue to ravage the West Coast of the United States. Amid record-breaking temperatures, the wildfires, which have charred one million acres of land, have caused the sky to turn a terrifying shade of red, with many comparing it to Mars, hell, or the apocalypse. Air quality in Portland, the state’s largest city, is currently the lowest in the world, below even that of infamously polluted cities like Delhi and Beijing.

Clear-Cuts: Cause Hot Catastrophic Wildfires

September 12, 2020 Chuck Burr, Culture Quake. Educate! climate crisis, Forests, Logging, Wildfires

Pack billions of the same-age trees close together, wait for dry-lightning or another ignition source, and you have an unnatural firebomb. The cause of thousands of annual catastrophic hot fires around the world are tree farms created by timber industry clear-cutting and fire suppression to prevent timber inventory loss. I have seen it happen. About five years ago, driving home on Interstate 5 North of Lake Shasta, a dry-lightning storm began. It looked like the finger of God came down as lightning struck a conifer and it burst into smoke.

Wildfire, Hurricanes, Floods And Droughts Quadrupled In Cost Since 1980

August 26, 2020 By Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News. Educate! climate crisis, Droughts, Floods, Wildfires

In the last 40 years, 663 disasters linked to climate change in the United States killed 14,223 people. The total cost: an estimated $1.77 trillion, a bit more than Canada's Gross National Product in 2018. Economic losses in Europe resulting from climate-linked extreme weather from 1980 to 2017 were lower, totaling $537 billion. The difference was the cost of tropical storms, which don't affect Europe but accounted for nearly half of the U.S. total costs. The report analyzed data going back to 1980 from several sources, including a database of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that catalogs climate disasters with costs of $1 billion or more and is continually updated. Only disasters with costs of that magnitude were included in the analysis.

California And Colorado: Climate-Driven Transformation Of Wildfires

August 25, 2020 Michael Kodas, Inside Climate News. Educate! California, climate crisis, Colorado, Wildfires

The wildfires that exploded over the past few days in California and Colorado show clear influences of global warming, climate scientists say, and evidence of how a warming and drying climate is increasing the size and severity of fires from the California coast to the high Rocky Mountains. They may also be the latest examples of climate-driven wildfires around the world burning not only much bigger, hotter and faster, but exploding into landscapes and seasons in which they were previously rare. For tens of thousands of Californians enduring evacuations, and millions more suffering through smoke that has brought some parts of the state the worst air quality in the world, the recent fire weather has seemed almost biblical. The entire state and much of the rest of the West has been, for the last week, in the grip of a "heat dome" that has brought temperatures of 129.9 degrees Fahrenheit to Death Valley, perhaps the hottest temperatures ever recorded on the planet.

Freakish Arctic Fires Alarmingly Intensify

August 14, 2020 Robert Hunziker, Counterpunch. Educate! Arctic, climate crisis, Russia, Wildfires

NASA satellite images of fires in eastern Siberia depict an inferno of monstrous proportions, nothing in modern history compares. And, as of July, it’s intensifying. Should people be concerned? Answer: Yes, and double yes. According to Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts: “What has been surprising is the rapid increase in the scale and intensity of the fires through July, largely driven by a large cluster of active fires in the northern Sakha Republic.”

Fossil Fuel Producers Should Pay For Australia’s Fires

January 8, 2020 Staff, Yubanet.com Create! Australia, Fossil Fuels, Wildfires

January 6, 2020 – The Australia Institute has welcomed the Government’s $2 billion bushfire recovery fund announcement, but has questioned why regular Australian taxpayers are being asked to pay when a levy on fossil fuel producers would be a more appropriate way to raise the required funding. “Regular Australians should not be forced to pay while fossil fuel producers are being let off scot-free,” says Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director of The Australia Institute.

Ruling Class Bereft Of Answers While Catastrophic Fires Escalate Across Australia

January 6, 2020 James Cogan, Wsws.org Educate! Australia, Climate Change, Ruling Class, Wildfires

Catastrophic fire conditions exist today throughout much of Australia, from the southwest of Western Australia, across South Australia, to Victoria, the island state of Tasmania, and New South Wales (NSW), to the southeast of Queensland and areas of the tropical north. Another severe heat wave is moving across the continent, generating temperatures that may breach historical records that were broken only a few weeks ago. New fires are expected to ignite, while strong winds are predicted to fan the hundreds of blazes that are already burning.

Earth’s Hottest Decade On Record Marked By Extreme Storms, Deadly Wildfires

December 19, 2019 Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News Educate! Climate Change, Global Warming, Wildfires

Deadly heat waves, wildfires and widespread flooding punctuated a decade of climate extremes that, by many scientific accounts, show global warming kicking into overdrive. As the year drew to a close, scientists were confidently saying 2019 was Earth's second-warmest recorded year on record, capping the warmest decade. Eight of the 10 warmest years since measurements began occurred this decade, and the other two were only a few years earlier. Arctic sea ice melted faster and took longer to form again in the fall.

We Need Publicly Owned Utilities

November 1, 2019 By Jill Richardson, Otherwords.org Create! California, Utilities, Wildfires

Right now, thousands of Californians are fleeing raging wildfires, while millions sit in the dark. And for-profit utilities may be to blame. Pacific Gas & Electric — a private, for-profit utility in the state — has admitted that its equipment likely caused 10 wildfires this year alone. To avoid further damage, the utility has been shutting off its customers’ power when weather conditions cause increased fire danger. Will this lower the risk of wildfires? Maybe. It will also leave blacked out hospitals choosing whether to refrigerate their vaccines or keep their medical records online.

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