Is there a way we can prevent them from occurring in the first place, or is it inevitable during the summer months?
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The problem is not that wildfires happen. Wildfires are natural and have been going on for millions of years. Some plants actually *need* wildfires to germinate their seeds.
The problem is that with climate change, things are both warmer and drier than they used to be. There’s more dead and rotting vegetation, and they’re more susceptible to burning than forests have historically been. So when a fire starts, it gets huge and quickly consumes that dead vegetation, creating a hotter fire that burns and spreads quicker, which in turn creates even more smoke than usual.
Preventing natural fires is impossible, but mitigating them is simple. We just have to overturn hundreds of years of economic conditions that have made it profitable to add CO2 to the atmosphere and simultaneously find out how to make it profitable to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Maybe not so simple after all.
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