This year, the West has had its worst wildfires ever. Fire season is far from over, but it has already exhausted firefighters across a dozen states.
Picture the millions of acres ravaged, the countless homes destroyed and people displaced, the heavy smoke darkening the skies. I have a child who’s been breathing the hazardous smoke in Portland, Ore., a city whose air on Sept. 11 was rated the worst on the planet.
Think about what’s been burning: not just trees but plastic, rubber and I’m afraid to ask what else. I texted my daughter, asking why she didn’t leave town. She sent back a map of the air quality across the Northwest, asking “Where would we go?”
Nowhere within a day’s drive offered any refuge. So I would wake up each morning and grab my phone to see if rain had come to Portland. I worry about the long-term health effects of the air she’s been breathing. I worry about the fires to come. Like any parent, I want to know what I can do to protect my child.
It’s no secret that the record-breaking frequency and intensity of wildfires are products of climate change. The weather gets hotter, the forests and grasslands get drier, and a lightning strike sets off an inferno. We need to end the climate chaos to protect the health and safety of Americans out West — not to mention Americans in the coastal states where an unprecedented hurricane season is wreaking havoc.
Hurricanes, too, are fueled by the climate heating up: warmer oceans lead to higher winds and heavier rainfall, and rising seas power greater storm surges.
Here in New England, even if we avoid wildfires during droughts and flooding from heavier rainfalls, we won’t be untouched. As of 2018, disaster relief was costing the federal government 10 times as many of our (inflation-adjusted) tax dollars as it did 30 years before. So when you vote, on or before Nov. 3, please vote for leaders willing and able to face up to the climate emergency and help us tackle it.
Linda Butler is a resident of Leeds.