Tag Archives: world

What the stock market crash means for the climate

by MapleFitzsimons Posted on December 28, 2018

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Let’s talk about the stock market. Pretty terrifying, huh? The big Christmas Eve dip plunged the U.S. markets into “bear” territory — with declines of over 20 percent in the past three months alone. The day after Christmas followed with the largest rally in market history, half of which evaporated at one point on Thursday, but then entirely came back by the afternoon. That’s a lot of volatility in a time when the future is pretty volatile already — that’s right, I’m talking about the climate.

For those of us with more of a planetary perspective, what are we supposed to make of this financial rollercoaster?

Politicians have long presented the economy and the environment as competing issues. And on the surface, the vast majority of people in the world don’t care about the stock market. Nearly half the people in the world live on less than $5.50 per day, and it’s them who’ll bear the brunt of climate change. When asked, they care much more about climate change than the economy.

There’s evidence that an economic downturn could be good for the planet. The rare times the world has successfully temporarily stabilized or decreased annual emissions were during economic recessions like 1990-93 and 2008-09.

Recessions can force a rethink of the status quo; they demand efficiency and innovation. In short, during a recession, the economy must figure out how to do more with less. That’s exactly the challenge we face now that the science is absolutely clear that radical change is our only hope to stop climate change before irreversible tipping points kick in.

But while our capitalistic, growth-based economy is still closely tied to fossil-fuel use and a sustained downturn would likely reduce emissions, the whole truth is not so simple. Economic hardship doesn’t just hurt the rich, who are (by far!) the world’s biggest carbon emitters. Economic downturns hit hard in places with large inequality like Miami and Puerto Rico, which are also slated to bear some of the biggest burdens of climate change.

Not only would another recession impact unemployment, it could result in a shift in priority away from long-term challenges (like climate change) and onto short-term survival. And because governments have a bad habit of choosing austerity as a tool for cutting spending, it’s likely the rich will try to pass off the burden of their mistakes on the backs of the working class.

It’s impossible to know whether a future economic downturn in the U.S. would result in a widening gap between rich and poor, popular revolt (as we recently saw with France’s yellow vests), or something else entirely. But according to the Trump administration’s own climate reports, there is a strong possibility of long-term global warming-related GDP shrinkage. Even though many people (including me) have argued that the human costs of climate change are more important than the monetary ones, that doesn’t mean environmentalists can afford to ignore a possible market downturn. Those hurricanes are going to keep on coming, and someone has to pay the bills.

Climate change is much more terrifying than a potential recession. Still, we SHOULD care about the volatility of the stock market and a looming recession — at the very least, it should make us pay attention to the fragility of our current system and provide excuses for rethinking the way things work.

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What the stock market crash means for the climate

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Climate change is a human rights issue

by payoneerdeutsch Posted on December 10, 2018

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Seventy years ago today, nearly every nation in the world approved a list of fundamental rights entitled to every human being on the planet. the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a milestone document signed in the wake of World War II. Now, a new humanitarian crisis is afoot: climate change.

So many of our human rights, such as the right to life, food, health, and an adequate standard of living are adversely affected by climate change. From devastating hurricanes to killer wildfires, climate change exacerbates socioeconomic disparity, gender inequality and other forms of discrimination.

And yet, even among our so-called climate leaders, the link between justice and the environment goes unnamed. As the United Nations climate summit in Katowice (dubbed COP24) enters its second week, some advocates are concerned that the conversation has not been focused enough on human rights. When the Paris Agreement was signed three years ago, parties outlined a vision that recognized nations must respect and protect human rights. This year, the talks are being sponsored by coal companies, and the latest draft of the Paris rulebook (which outlines what countries need to do to put the accord into action) omits a human rights reference.

Sébastien Duyck, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law released a statement in response to the silence around human rights at COP24, saying, “Immediate action is necessary to avoid the suffering of millions of people and the collapse of ecosystems, and to be truly effective that action must be rights-based and people-centered. At a time when every human right is threatened by the accelerating climate crisis, it is unacceptable for negotiators to be backsliding on the promises of the Paris Agreement.”

Here at Grist, we agree that covering the environment involves covering human rights as well. Here are some of our top justice stories of 2018:

Heat Check

Grist / Justine Calma

Extreme heat kills more than a hundred New Yorkers yearly. Here’s how the city’s tackling the problem in a warming world.

4 Indigenous leaders on what Bolsonaro means for Brazil

Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro wants to open the Amazon rainforest up to new development.  But it’s not just one of the world’s largest carbon sinks that’s threatened — the lives of many of Brazil’s indigenous peoples are under siege as well.

Between Trump and a devastated place

This year, undocumented immigrants reeled from hurricanes, fires, and the Trump administration.

When criminal justice and environmental justice collide

Shadia Fayne Wood of Survival Media

Black communities in the United States face a host of structural challenges that impact day-to-day life — from environmental injustice to heightened policing and racial profiling.

California’s most vulnerable were already breathing bad air. Heat and wildfires are making things worse.

MARK RALSTON / AFP / Getty Images

It was a punishing summer in California. But it’s worse for those who live in the most polluted areas

On Thin Ice

Grist / Michael DeFreitas / robertharding / Allan White / Winnie Au / Getty Images

Climate change circles are not immune to #MeToo. Homeward Bound was supposed to foster science’s next generation of female leaders. But it finds itself navigating treacherous waters.

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Climate change is a human rights issue

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Global carbon emissions are on the rise, but don’t let that dash your hopes

by ClaraAgosto Posted on December 6, 2018

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Carbon dioxide, that invisible, earth-warming gas you keep hearing about, is anticipated to hit an all-time high in 2018. Emissions are expected to rise by 2.7 percent this year, according to new research. That’s compared to a 1.6 percent rise in 2017 and a plateau between 2014 and 2016.

What’s behind this disturbing shift? A rise in coal usage, particularly in India and China, as well as the United States’ continued dependence on oil and gas. That’s according to two studies published Wednesday by the Global Carbon Project, a group of 100 scientists from around the world. Unveiled the same week as the United Nations climate change conference in Poland, the new research puts in sharp perspective just how far the world still needs to go to address carbon emissions, even with renewables booming.

“The growing global demand for energy is outpacing decarbonization for now,” Corinne Le Quéré, a French-Canadian climate scientist and lead author of the research, said in a statement. “This needs to change, and change quickly.”

There’s a lot a stake with this spike in emissions. Most recently, the United Nations IPCC climate report warned of a societal and ecological collapse if we don’t keep the world below 2 degrees C warming. When it comes down to it, climate change means the loss of lives — as emissions go up, we’ll see more intense heatwaves, hurricanes, and wildfires.

It all sounds pretty grim, but some of the same researchers behind these reports found things to be optimistic about. Le Quéré, along with former U.N. climate office head Christiana Figueres and other climate experts, authored an analysis in Nature of the Global Carbon Project’s findings. What we’ve achieved so far, they write, seemed “unimaginable a decade ago.” Here are the roses among the thorns:

  1. “If current trends continue, renewables will produce half of the world’s electricity by 2030.”

The future is renewable. This isn’t just a hopeful thought — it’s already poised to be. The cost of solar has dropped a whopping 80 percent in the past decade, and renewables are now cheaper than coal. We already have a lot of the systems in place to shift the world away from gas and oil. Worldwide, more than half of new capacity for generating electricity is renewables.

Developing countries are leading the way on this one; in many, renewables account for the majority of new power generation. Now, the world’s developed nations (the largest polluters) need to catch up.

  1. “Big batteries will spread beyond utilities.”

Renewables have some issues to work out — namely, how to keep delivering power even when clouds cover the sun and the wind stops blowing. The good news is that batteries offer a promising solution for beautiful, continuous power storage. They’ve certainly come a long way from the tiny, forgotten devices scattered about the catch-all drawer in your kitchen: Battery technology is quickly improving, and the price of battery storage is anticipated to halve by 2030.

Advances in battery technology have led to demand for electric vehicles, and many car manufacturers are shifting over. The transition to batteries will allow “developing regions to leapfrog the need for fossil-fuel power plants and conventional distribution grids, just as mobile phones overtook landlines,” according to the commentary.

  1. “Most U.S. citizens live in a jurisdiction that still supports the Paris goals.”

National governments in key countries like Brazil and the United States threaten to undermine global progress on climate change. The good news is that local governments and businesses are stepping up their game. After President Trump announced his intent to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, thousands of city officials promised to stick with the country’s original goals.

As the Nature analysis notes, “globally, more than 9,000 cities and municipalities from 128 countries, representing 16 percent of the world’s population, have reiterated their commitment to the Paris Agreement.” On top of that, more than 6,000 companies around the world have committed to the climate agreement, and 1,400 companies have factored a price on carbon into their business plans.

As global leaders now meet in Poland to determine how to hold onto a quickly destabilizing world, the task at hand is clear — at least in the abstract. The commentary states that the transition to renewables is “an economic imperative and an ecological necessity” and calls upon leaders to “accelerate that momentum and keep everyone on board.”

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Global carbon emissions are on the rise, but don’t let that dash your hopes

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Another 2 billion people are coming to dinner. How do we feed them?

by ColleenMXZ Posted on December 5, 2018

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How do we feed the world’s growing population without wrecking the earth? It’s a question that looks especially urgent given estimates that some 9.8 billion people will inhabit the planet by 2050, up from 7.6 billion now. Without improving techniques and technology, feeding all of them would require putting an area twice the size of India under plow and pasture while emitting as much carbon as 13,000 coal plants running nonstop for a year, according to a report published on Wednesday by the World Resources Institute.

The Washington D.C.-based think tank has been working on this report for the last six years, looking for a solution to our existential triple challenge: feed everyone and shrink agricultural emissions to keep the world from heating more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, all without clearing more land for farming. The WRI’s report lays out a way that everyone could get enough to eat in 2050, even as we turn farmland into forest and allow carbon-sucking trees to spread their leaves over an area larger than Australia.

The report recommends an all-of-the-above approach starting with reducing the size of harvests needed. By eating less meat, leveling off population growth, reducing waste, and phasing out biofuels, we could reduce the amount of additional food needed by half:

World Resources Institute

But diminishing demand for meat by getting more people to go vegan just isn’t enough.

“There’s a tendency in this field for people to treat dietary change as a magic asterisk where somehow we wave our hands and there will be an overwhelming reduction in meat eating,” said Tim Searchinger the Princeton professor who led the research on this report. “We wanted to focus on things that were realistic and achievable.”

If we also develop better seeds and animal breeds and use existing farm and pasture-land more intensively, we could shrink our agricultural footprint by 800 million hectares, an area bigger than Texas.

That’s important, because the world needs to cover at least one Texas with trees to keep temperatures below 1.5 degrees of warming. And, as the chart below shows, we’d have to do all of the above and more if we want to make agriculture do its part in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Pulling all this off seems daunting, but the researchers divided the action needed into a 22-item “menu” with discrete recommendations like eating less beef and lamb, and breeding crops that can withstand higher temperatures.

“Not everything on the menu is going to be for everyone,” said Richard Waite, a WRI researcher who worked on the study. “But there’s something for everyone whether you are just shopping for your family, or in charge of food procurement for a major company,”

The report also points out that very little of the $600 billion a year governments spend on agriculture goes toward the innovations that would give us a sustainable food system. Agricultural research and development gets just $50 billion a year — that’s including private funding and public support.

World Resources Institute

Most of the money for agriculture comes in the form of subsidies and price-supports that shelter farmers from changes in the industry. The report says if those funds were diverted to programs that reduce food waste, squeeze more food from the ground, and study how to improve soil health, the world could solve this three-headed monster of a problem.

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Another 2 billion people are coming to dinner. How do we feed them?

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10 Thoughtful Gifts for Your Favorite Zero Waster

by FrankStatton006 Posted on December 3, 2018

The holidays are a wonderful time to celebrate friends and family and linger in feelings of joy and gratitude. It’s also a great time to get your consumer habits in check!

Have a zero waster in your life who is trying to cut down on excess? Here are a few thoughtful gift ideas that won’t make them squirm, but smile instead!

10 Thoughtful Gifts for
Your Favorite Zero Waster

1.?Steel + Bamboo Chopsticks

Made from renewable, recyclable materials, these gorgeous steel and bamboo chopsticks are perfect for the foodie in your life! Plus, they come in a lovely little carry case, so they can be easily stashed in one’s purse.

2.?Zero Waste Self-Care Kit

Typical health and beauty products are designed for disposal and contribute to a significant portion of household waste. These beautifully crafted products may be used again and again, till the end of their life when they can be composted.

3.?Zero Waste Lunch Kit

Coffee cup, to-go tin, cutlery…this kit has everything one might need to go out for lunch without creating an ounce of garbage. Bonus: these are perfect for picnics! You might just want to pick one up for yourself.

4. Geranium Frankincense Body Oil

Perfect for that person in your life who loves luxury, this body oil smells sweet and nourishes the body with all sorts of delicious all-natural ingredients.

5.?“Don’t Mess With Mama” Tote

Help your recipient share their love for Mother Nature with the world! This bag will help them keep plastic bags out of landfills and make grocery shopping a whole lot more interesting.

6.?Opinel Folding Mini Chain Knife

This tiny but mighty pocket knife will be a no-brainer addition to your recipient’s “phone, wallet, keys” list. It has a million uses: cut off tags, open packages…you name it!

7.?Biodegradable Pela iPhone Case

Now your loved one can talk, text and tweet the sustainable way! This case is durable, eye-catching and biodegradable. No guilt. Tons of style.

8.?Dusk Lip Paint

Zero waste makeup doesn’t have to be crunchy. It’s classy too! Pick up this delightful hazy mauve lip paint if you want something out there. It’s flattering on every skin tone.

9.?Que 12-oz Collapsible Water Bottle

Say goodbye to plastic water bottles! This lightweight bottle will serve every need on the go. Made from silicone, its spiral design allows it to collapse to half its size. Especially great in airports, coffee shops and on hikes!

10.?Plaine Products Shampoo Subscription

Throwaway shampoo bottles are now a thing of the past! Plaine has done an incredible job designing a subscription service that delivers top-tier beauty products like shampoo and body lotion in refillable stainless steel containers. This is a serious zero waste win.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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10 Thoughtful Gifts for Your Favorite Zero Waster

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Broca’s Brain – Carl Sagan

by Myrna Posted on November 30, 2018

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Broca’s Brain

Reflections on the Romance of Science

Carl Sagan

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: April 12, 1979

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


A fascinating book on the joys of discovering how the world works, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Cosmos and Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. “Magnificent . . . Delightful . . . A masterpiece. A message of tremendous hope for humanity . . . While ever conscious that human folly can terminate man’s march into the future, Sagan nonetheless paints for us a mind-boggling future: intelligent robots, the discovery of extraterrestrial life and its consequences, and above all the challenge and pursuit of the mystery of the universe.” — Chicago Tribune “Go out and buy this book, because Carl Sagan is not only one of the world’s most respected scientists, he’s a great writer. . . . I can give a book no greater accolade than to say I’m planning on reading it again. And again. And again.” — The Miami Herald “The brilliant astronomer . . . is persuasive, provocative and readable.” — United Press International “Closely reasoned, impeccably researched, gently humorous, utterly devastating.” — The Washington Post

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Broca’s Brain – Carl Sagan

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U.N. climate report card: When it comes to cutting emissions, a dog ate the world’s homework

by Lavon33Uqsia Posted on November 29, 2018

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On Tuesday, the U.N. released its annual report card on climate change. The bad news is we’re failing to address the biggest problem facing humanity. The good news? There’s so much room to improve! — and cities and businesses could help pick up the slack.

First, our failing marks: After a three-year plateau, global emissions are rising again “with no signs of peaking,” according to the report. Countries aren’t hitting their Paris goals. In fact, we’re failing at those goals to such a degree that we are making the climate problem worse at an accelerating rate.

And, even if we hit our current targets, it wouldn’t be enough. Factoring in the most ambitious stated climate goals of every nation on Earth, we are still on track for emissions to keep rising beyond 2030. If you’ll recall, the recent IPCC report found that global emissions need to be half their current levels by that year for a shot at keeping warming below catastrophic levels. The U.N. report found that the countries of the world would need to increase the carbon-cutting power of climate policies five-fold in order to meet that goal of 1.5 degrees C warming.

So yeah, the gap between what we’re actually doing and what we need to be doing is at its widest point in history (the report includes a truly stunning interactive visualization of this problem).

The report is sure to be on leaders’ minds as they gather in Katowice, Poland, next week for the 24th annual U.N. climate meeting. The U.N.’s chief climate official, Patricia Espinosa, called the crucial meetings “Paris 2.0” to emphasize the agenda of finalizing the rulebook that will govern commitments made three years ago in the French capital.

Taking a closer look at the report offers a few glimmers of hope. Cities and states could be the driving force to close the “ambition gap,” and there are clear signs that’s already underway, at least here in the United States. The report found that “non-state actors” — anyone besides national governments — could play an extremely important role, especially in countries with obstructionist national governments (cough, cough the U.S.).

An impressive 7,000 cities from 133 countries and 6,000 companies with at least $36 trillion in revenue have now vowed to take action on climate. But there’s so much more that could happen. Those impressive numbers represent just 20 percent of global population and only about 1 percent of all publicly traded companies.

“If international cooperative initiatives are scaled up to their fullest potential, the impact could be considerable” — and may alone be enough to prevent climate change beyond 2 degrees Celsius, according to one study the report cites.

“This year has seen some outstanding progress in the fight to protect the climate, with impressive commitments from cities, countries, and companies around the world,” the report concludes, “but the truth is, we need so much more.”

The report is the latest in a flurry of high-profile climate reports over the past several weeks which have helped re-establish the core message from scientists on our shared civilization-threatening challenge: We have no time to lose. This is a crucial time in history, and we only have one shot to get it right.

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U.N. climate report card: When it comes to cutting emissions, a dog ate the world’s homework

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Another El Niño is nearly upon us. What does that mean?

by TWTKamwbbsdhe Posted on November 21, 2018

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A new El Niño is brewing in the tropical Pacific, threatening an uptick in global temperatures and extreme weather.

Scientists around the world have been tracking the looming El Niño — the warm phase of a normal three to five year global weather cycle — since at least May, watching the warming waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean for telltale signs that a large-scale shift in winds and weather patterns has set in.

On Tuesday, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said that water temperatures have now crossed El Niño thresholds, and a full-scale El Niño is likely to start sometime in December. U.S. forecasters place a 90 percent chance of El Niño to form by January.

The last El Niño, peaking in late 2015, was the strongest ever recorded. Rainfall patterns shifted worldwide, causing enormous fires in Indonesia, spurring the largest coral bleaching episode in history, and impacting more than 60 million people worldwide. The coming El Niño isn’t expected to be as severe as 2015’s, but will likely have serious consequences nonetheless.

In response to the news, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization issued a report listing several countries at high risk of food shortages. Food crises could worsen or erupt in Pakistan, Kenya, Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, Mozambique, and the Philippines, according to the report. In the U.S., El Niño often brings torrential rains to California. It can also boost East Coast snowstorms, which, in an era of sea-level rise, now routinely cause serious flooding.

Since El Niño also works to warm the atmosphere, it’s possible that 2019 could beat 2016 as the warmest year on record. As El Niño begins to set in, both October and November have been unusually warm globally, and that trend is likely to continue, according to Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at University of California-Berkeley. “It’s not a safe bet 2019 will beat 2016, but it will very likely be warmer than 2018,” Hausfather told me.

There’s a growing body of evidence that suggests global warming is pushing the Pacific towards more extreme El Niños, with amplified effects around the world like 2015’s massive wildfires — another example of a vicious feedback cycle in a changing climate. Not only is El Niño making weather worse; it’s doing it at an ever-faster rate.

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Another El Niño is nearly upon us. What does that mean?

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Pigeons – Andrew D. Blechman

by Myrna Posted on November 19, 2018

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Pigeons

The Fascinating Saga of the World’s Most Revered and Reviled Bird

Andrew D. Blechman

Genre: Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: December 1, 2007

Publisher: Grove Atlantic

Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC


A “quirky, endlessly entertaining” look at the surprising history of the pigeon (Simon Winchester).   Domesticated since the dawn of man, pigeons have been used as crucial communicators in war by every major historical superpower from ancient Egypt to the United States and are credited with saving thousands of lives. They have been worshipped as fertility goddesses and revered as symbols of peace. Charles Darwin relied heavily on pigeons to help formulate and support his theory of evolution. Yet today they are reviled as “rats with wings.”   To research this lively history of the humble pigeon, the author traveled across the United States and Europe to meet with pigeon fanciers and pigeon haters in a quest to find out how we came to misunderstand one of mankind’s most helpful and steadfast companions. Pigeons captures a Brooklyn man’s quest to win the Main Event (the pigeon world’s equivalent of the Kentucky Derby), as well as a convention dedicated to breeding the perfect bird. The author participates in a live pigeon shoot where entrants pay $150; he tracks down Mike Tyson, the nation’s most famous pigeon lover; he spends time with Queen Elizabeth’s Royal Pigeon Handler; and he sheds light on a radical “pro-pigeon underground” in New York City. In Pigeons , Andrew Blechman reveals for the first time the remarkable story behind this seemingly unremarkable bird.   “A quick and thoroughly entertaining read, Pigeons will leave readers chuckling at the quirky characters and pondering surprising pigeon facts.” — Audubon Magazine   “Manages to illuminate not merely the ostensible subject of the book, but also something of the endearing, repellent, heroic, and dastardly nature of that most bizarre of breeds, Homo sapiens.” — Salon  

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Pigeons – Andrew D. Blechman

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The Camp Fire’s flames were deadly. Its smoke could be even more dangerous.

by EzekielSaw Posted on November 16, 2018

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A year of fire and relentless heat has spilled over into a grimy, smoky, full-blown public health crisis in northern California.

While the epicenter of the Camp Fire’s gruesome tragedy is in the town of Paradise, where 63 people are known to have died and 631 are still missing, many more people in the region are suffering from the life-threatening impact of wildfire smoke.

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar officially declared a public health emergency for California on Tuesday, and since then, air quality conditions have only gotten worse.

On Thursday, northern California’s Air Quality Index, a measure of how polluted the air is, was the worst of any region in the world. Chico, Oroville, and Sacramento reported pollution levels in the “hazardous” category — the highest on the scale — topping parts of China and India and breaking records for the worst air quality in the area since record keeping began. It’s the equivalent of smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day.

Friday is the eighth consecutive day that millions of people in Northern California are breathing wildfire smoke. Public health officials fear that chronic smoke inhalation could lead to a whole suite of new health problems, like those seen in Asian megacities.

The smoke in the region is so bad, it’s disrupting the regular flow of life. The vast majority of schools are closed across the Bay Area. The cable cars in San Francisco have stopped running. Flights are being delayed due to reduced visibility. Cars are forced to use headlights in the middle of the day.

The current smoke emergency mirrors one earlier this year in the Pacific Northwest, which darkened the skies over Seattle for days.

So far, there hasn’t been a noticeable uptick in emergency room visits across California, but that’s likely to change. Past studies show that particulate pollution, like smoke, aggravates pre-existing conditions, especially in seniors. Young children are particularly at-risk because they are still growing and tend to be more active than adults. Homeless populations, farmworkers, and low-income residents are all especially vulnerable because they are more likely to work and live in places where it’s difficult to avoid exposure to the pollution.

Smoke, not flames, is the deadliest public health risk of wildfires. The fine-grain air pollution it carries (classified as particulate matter fewer than 2.5 micrometers in diameter) is already one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. — an estimated 17,000 people die of wildfire smoke-related causes each year. By the end of the century, it could cause twice as many deaths as it does now — to 44,000 each year.

Each year, wildfire smoke leads to thousands of premature deaths, much more than other types of extreme weather. It often hits with little warning, adversely affecting people who aren’t prepared in places hundreds of miles away from the fires.This summer, when wildfires broke out in British Columbia, public health alerts were issued as far away as Minnesota — roughly 2,000 miles east of the fires.

Across the world, more than 7 million people die each year due to air pollution from smoke and exhaust from fossil fuel burning. A study last month from the World Health Organization found that more than 90 percent of children in the world breathe toxic air every day.

Air pollution caused by wildfires is a problem that’s just going to keep getting worse thanks to climate change. As drier and hotter weather continues to intensify the fire season — creating the conditions for massively destructive wildfires like the Camp Fire — the number of people affected by smoke on the West Coast is expected to increase by 50 percent in just the next two decades.

This week’s smoke outbreak should remind us that, as we talk about preparing for future fire catastrophes, we need to also prepare for their wider public health impacts.

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The Camp Fire’s flames were deadly. Its smoke could be even more dangerous.

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