Fossil fuel companies responsible for major share of California wildfires, scientists say

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Perhaps more than any other expression of our changing climate, Californians know about wildfires. Whether they lost a home, evacuated one, witnessed the apocalyptic day of 2020 when the sun never rose, or simply had to cancel plans.

Who is to blame? Worsening wildfires in the western United States have been definitively linked to climate change for years, and now scientists are making a measurable link between acres burned and carbon emissions released by the world’s biggest firefighting companies. fossil fuels.

A new study released Tuesday by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a national science advocacy organization, has linked emissions from the world’s major producers of fossil fuels to 37% of hectares burned by wildfires in the west. of North America between 1986 and 2021.

These emissions, researchers say, are also responsible for nearly half of the atmospheric conditions that dry out California’s forests. They hope these findings will translate into corporate liability for damage from past and future disasters.

This is the first study we know of anywhere in the world that attributes the impacts of climate change wildfires to specific fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers, said Union of Concerned researcher Kristina Dahl. Scientists and lead author of the study.

I hope this helps shift the discourse of the general public and our decision makers in California toward a narrative in which we expand our view of corporate responsibility in the face of wildfires.

Between 2017 and 2021, Californians experienced more than 45,000 wildfires that burned a total of more than 9.5 million acres, including the eight largest wildfires on record and cost $25 billion in suppression response and in economic damages.

The 2018 fire season alone destroyed more than 22,000 structures and caused damage exceeding $140 billion, not to mention deteriorating air quality and particulates that disproportionately harmed health. low-income communities.

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As the state moves forward in addressing the risk of wildfires, the study authors say greater resilience is needed. And to this day, it is the general public who pays the bill for these disasters.

Combustibles behind the fires

To conduct the study, Fossil Fuels Behind Wildfires, scientists used a measure of air’s thirst for plant and soil moisture, called a vapor pressure deficit, to link emissions of fossil fuels to the increasing intensity of forest fires.

Studies have shown that a rapid jump in the vapor pressure deficit in the western United States has contributed to the increased frequency and severity of wildfires, as well as the type of mega-drought prolonged that California has experienced over the past decade.

The researchers asked what role fossil fuel companies have played in this trend by looking at regional and global temperatures with and, hypothetically, without emissions from the world’s 88 major fossil fuel producers, a list of coal, oil and gas companies. , natural gas and cement.

These companies range from household names such as Chevron, Exxon and BP to state-owned and government-run companies. The study was published this week in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

Using observed data and statistical models, they found that the influence of emissions from these companies accounted for 48% of the increase in vapor pressure deficit since 1901 and 37% of California’s cumulative area burned. in New Mexico and southwestern Canada since 1986.

In a statement, Kevin Slagle, vice president of strategic communications at the Western States Petroleum Organization, downplayed the scientists’ findings and called for collaboration for a common cause.

We all want the same thing: affordable, reliable and ever cleaner energy and fuels, he said. A press release from a well-funded activist group with a long history of attacks on energy industries does not help serious and realistic discussions about the climate and energy policies needed to get us there.

Measurement uncertainty

At the root of the study, Dahl said, is the question of who should be held accountable for the impacts of our climate intensifying. She said individuals often wrongly bear the burden even though they were never offered alternatives to petrol cars and gas stoves.

Oil giants like Exxon have predicted global warming with in-house scientific accuracy since the 1970s, Dahl said, and then spent decades publicly smearing the same science. She said people might understand that we live in a reality influenced by fossil fuel companies, but did not connect it to our lived experience of wildfires.

Pacific Gas and Electric has borne the brunt of the Californians’ liability suit, having been found guilty of starting some of the state’s largest wildfires and neglecting to maintain their equipment for decades. But she said responsibility should extend beyond usefulness.

There’s this much bigger set of corporate players that have shaped our climate, so a spark from PG&ES gear can ignite into a nearly million-acre wildfire, Dahl said. . So I hope people in California will start to see that we need to demand greater accountability.

Comprehensive or not, advocates hope this type of research will lead public officials and individuals to hold fossil fuel companies to account as questions arise about who will pay for efforts to decarbonize the economy and response to climate disasters.

But like any scientific research, the study has limitations. Its authors noted that the analysis does not take into account the legacy of fire suppression, the banning of native burning, and the increased likelihood of humans starting fires from a distance.

Anthony LeRoy Westerling, professor of applied climatology at UC Merced, said a more comprehensive model including factors such as drastic changes in precipitation would find that fossil fuel emissions are linked to a much higher percentage of damage from forest fires.

I would say 100%… They ignore the parts that they don’t have enough data to quantify properly, he said. It is difficult to create these models. But if I was a punter, no one would say oh yeah, 48% of that increase was due to greenhouse gas emissions affecting the vapor pressure deficit 50 years from now.

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