LATEST CLIMATE NEWSIt was a smell that invoked a memory. Both for Emily Kuchlbauer in North Carolina and Ryan Bomba in Chicago. It was smoke from wildfires, the odor of an increasingly hot and occasionally on-fire world.
“It’s been very apocalyptic feeling, because in California the dialogue is like, ‘Oh, it’s normal. This is just what happens on the West Coast,’ but it’s very much not normal here,” Kuchlbauer said. It’s so bad that perhaps the term “wildfire” also needs to be rethought, suggested Woodwell Climate Research Center senior scientist Jennifer Francis.
Fires in North America are generally getting worse, burning more land. Even before July, traditionally the busiest fire month for the country, Canada has set a record for most area burned with 31,432 square miles , which is nearly 15% higher than the old record.B.C. coalition calls for a better climate emergency plan and an end to fracking
Activists note that the Donnie Creek fire, burning in the fracking country of northern B.C., is the largest in the province’s history, having already consumed an area nearly twice the size of Metro Vancouver. This single wildfire has already emitted about 76 million tonnes of CO2e, surpassing the 64.6 million tonnes of CO2e that the entire province of B.C. produced in 2020, the coalition says.
If all six projects become operational, they would create more than three times the allowable emissions in the province’s climate plan, producing 30.3 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents per year, the coalition says.Oregon’s most populous county is suing more than a dozen large fossil fuel companies to recover costs related to extreme weather events linked to climate change.