The answer to what caused these fires is “D all of the above”.
Climate Change: Climate Change has caused our wet seasons to be less wet then usual as well as prolonging our dry seasons so that they overlap more with Santa Anna wind season which makes fires like this current one more likely.
Forest Management: Because we live in a capitalist system forests are managed via how much $$ they provide and not their true worth. Old growth forests where cut down in mass when Anglo settlers started moving into the area. Private logging companies have bought up land/lumber rights since then and have been treating lots of the forest as a private bank. Also when Anglo settlers started moving in they halted all native burning practices which has contributed to large amount of fuel build up.
Capitalism: The philosophy that humans can rape/pillage/plunder the land for profit without facing any of the consequences is the driving force behind these decisions. Until the system in which we manage our planetary household changes we will still continue to see the destabilization of the biosphere.
The answer to what caused these fires is “D all of the above”.
Climate Change: Climate Change has caused our wet seasons to be less wet then usual as well as prolonging our dry seasons so that they overlap more with Santa Anna wind season which makes fires like this current one more likely.
Forest Management: Because we live in a capitalist system forests are managed via how much $$ they provide and not their true worth. Old growth forests where cut down in mass when Anglo settlers started moving into the area. Private logging companies have bought up land/lumber rights since then and have been treating lots of the forest as a private bank. Also when Anglo settlers started moving in they halted all native burning practices which has contributed to large amount of fuel build up.
Capitalism: The philosophy that humans can rape/pillage/plunder the land for profit without facing any of the consequences is the driving force behind these decisions. Until the system in which we manage our planetary household changes we will still continue to see the destabilization of the biosphere.