UCLA Reports 2022 Wildfires Wiped Out Climate Change Gains For Last 16 Years
UCLA reports that the 2020 wildfire season, which consumed 1.7 million of the 33 million acres of forest in California, caused more carbon dioxide releases than all of the combined savings the state has made in carbon emissions over the previous 16 years.
As the chart above shows and UCLA’s modeling and statistics show, 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 in the State of California were from wildfires which consumed 70% more acreage in 2020 (1.7 million) as compared to the second largest year on record 2019 (1 million).
Since 2005, when a bipartisan group led by GOP Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democrat majority Legislature, began California’s efforts to curtail emissions that have been linked by scientists to man made climate change (primarily carbon dioxide), industry, job producers, and families have invested hundreds of billions through some of the highest power rates in the country, some of the highest petroleum and transportation taxes in the country, and through participation in climate exchange markets, to only see all of those net gains likely lost to wildfires within just 2020.
“First, wildfires in California have become a major and growing source of GHG emissions.”
Given the widespread participation of nearly every Californian in the effort to curtail carbon dioxide emissions, we will continue to track this story and related studies.
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