Mountain Journal

Last summer, the Murdoch press played down the influence of climate change on the terrible fire season we experienced across much of the continent. Instead, they promoted the ‘arsonists are to blame’ line, which was then amplified across social media by climate deniers around the world, including one of Donald Trump’s sons.

While the hand of global warming was clear in that fire season, and this has been accepted in the various investigations carried out into the fires, conservative media and right wing deniers continue to peddle the falsehood that arsonists are to blame for bad fire seasons. The NSW Bushfire Inquiry debunked arson as a major cause in the fires that devastated that state. (Another favourite line run by conservatives is that a lack of hazard reduction burning also made fires worse).

A study on the fires after the 2019/20 fires by the World Weather Attribution consortium showed that although “natural variation was very important and will continue to be important in fueling these large fire seasons”, climate change is making them “substantially more probable.” 

Now, with much of the west of the North American continent on fire, the same debate is being played out over there.