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The devastating wave of wildfires that has reduced thousands of Hollywood homes to ashes could not have afflicted the US at a more telling moment. Figures released last week revealed that for the first time the world overshot the 1.5C limit in global temperature rises that had been set as a desired upper figure by the Paris climate accord of 2015.
It is clear that the floods that engulfed Valencia last year, along with the typhoons that ripped through the Philippines and the drought that afflicted the Amazon were all made more likely by this unwanted temperature rise, say scientists. From this perspective, Hollywood’s misery is just one of many examples of the destruction heaped upon the planet by our burning of fossil fuels and ever-rising emissions of greenhouse gases. Crucially, such disasters are only going to worsen until humanity abandons the widespread combustion of coal, gas and oil.
It is therefore grimly ironic that, in a few days, the next president of the United States, Donald Trump – a congenital climate change denier, will take office. This is a politician who has said that the concept of global warming “was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive”. The climate emergency is a myth, Trump argues, a belief that will bring him into conflict with legislation, introduced by Joe Biden, to limit America’s role as a major contributor to global warming. This includes measures to cut emissions and to halt deforestation, policies that can expect to be early targets for Trump after his inauguration this month.
It is an unsettling combination of events. The Hollywood fires have killed at least 11 people, it has been confirmed, and destroyed more than 10,000 homes. Our world has become hotter, a key factor behind California’s conflagration. Deliberating overturning attempts to limit that heating seems incredible. Yet there is little doubt that this will be Trump’s likely course of action.
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Just how much of an impact the new president may have is open to debate. Many individual states in the US have recently embarked on ambitious renewable energy generation projects and are unlikely to abandon them. Certainly, Trump’s room for manoeuvre has decreased since he was last in office. On the other hand, the UK-based climate watchdog Carbon Brief has estimated that his actions could still add 4bn tonnes to US carbon emissions by 2030, the equivalent of the combined annual emissions of the European Union and Japan.
As Hollywood burns, this looks to be an extraordinarily reckless course of action. It is also worth noting that over the past two years there have been particularly large surges in atmospheric temperatures, and many scientists fear that, rather than rising steadily, global warming is starting to accelerate. As one leading US climate scientist told Nature last week: “All of us who made projections at the start of the year underestimated just how warm 2024 would be.”
The evidence is not yet clear cut, however, and it is possible that temperatures may dip slightly this year. Or the acceleration in warming may continue.
Humanity is carrying out a colossal scientific experiment whose outcome will affect how future generations live on this planet. Given the evidence from Hollywood, and many other parts of the world, the prospects of a hopeful outcome are diminishing.
