For the first time, US climate scientists have quantified the extent to which greenhouse gases from the world’s top fossil fuel companies contribute to wildfires.
Their analysis, published Tuesday in Environmental Research Letters, found that carbon dioxide and methane emissions from the so-called “Big 88” firms were responsible for more than a third of the area burned by wildfires in western North America over the past 40 years. ,
First author Christina Dahl from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) reports that wildfires in the western United States and southwestern Canada have been worsening for decades: they are burning more intensely, for longer periods of time, covering larger areas. cover and reach higher altitudes.
To date, the cost of rebuilding and increasing resilience has largely been fixed by the general public, “so we wanted to better understand the role of fossil fuel industry emissions in changing the wildfire landscape,” she said.
“We really wanted to shine a spotlight on their role, to hold them accountable for their fair share of the cost.”