How Climate Change Has Fueled L.A.’s Devastating Wildfires

Climate change didn’t start the wildfires that are ravaging Los Angeles County this week. But the big swings in weather patterns that have accelerated over the past two decades serve as rocket fuel that intensifies the flames and spreads the devastation.

Environmental experts and scientists warn that Southern Californians will have to come to grips with hard truths in the wake of the horrific firestorms in Malibu, Pacific Palisades and Altadena. The scope of the damage will have an impact on every industry that operates in the region – and no amount of velvet ropes, basement bunkers or private firefighting brigades will spare Hollywood.

“This is not going to go away tomorrow,” says Debbie Levin, who has served as the CEO of the Environmental Media Association for 25 years. “We’re still going to have climate change. We’ve had an industrial world since the early 1900s, so this has been going on for 100-plus years into our atmosphere, and we’re dealing with it now. For some reason, there’s still a blindness when it comes to the questions of how local communities need to deal with it.”

Wildfires are a natural and even necessary part of the region’s desert ecosystem. The pain and suffering for humans is magnified by more than a century of expanded residential development in areas that are prone to fire, mudslides, drought as well as unpredictable amounts of rain and snow. And all of this is made worse by the effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere driving climate change around the globe.

“Here’s the paradox: Climate change is humanly induced and is making the fire season far worse,” says Stephanie Pincetl, a professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and founding director of the school’s California Center for Sustainable Communities. “Although we always have had a fire season — these places have burned in the past — the extreme weather has become accelerated. Hotter hots, dryer dries, wetter wets, colder colds.”

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The situation that erupted in Los Angeles’ hot spots was sadly predictable, she adds.

“The combination of very, very dry vegetation and extremely strong winds meant that any ignition that occurred in that ecosystem would spread very rapidly,” Pincetl says.

Monalisa Chatterjee, a professor of environmental science at USC, echoed Pincetl’s sentiments.

Fierce Santa Ana winds are normal for Southern California, in part because the region has an unusual combination of mountain ridges that run both north and south and east and west. But even for Santa Ana conditions, the 80- and 90-mile-an-hour winds registered in this week’s hot spots are unprecedented. The early January timing of these Santa Ana conditions is also unexpected. As one expert put it, the situation that erupted on Jan. 7 was essentially a hurricane but with fire instead of rain.

“Santa Ana wind events happen in this place quite often, but of this magnitude — this is an unprecedented event that we are experiencing,” Chatterjee says.

The extremes in Southern California weather conditions over the past few years have wreaked havoc. In 2021 and 2022, the Los Angeles area was pounded by heavy rainfall, which put vegetative growth on hillsides, canyons and woodland areas on steroids. Drought conditions that returned in 2023 and 2024 turned those areas into dried-out tinderboxes just waiting to ignite.

“Every type of extreme situation has overlapped in this one moment,” Chatterjee says.

For scientists and activists, the fact that climate change has become a highly politicized issue in the U.S. is infuriating in times of crisis. Pincetl and Chatterjee both decried the blame game that ensued this week amid the anguish and loss. The problem is bigger than the capabilities and resources of any one fire department.

“You simply cannot have enough firefighters on the ground to contain something that is so violent, and with the winds that we experienced. And there’s starting to be all the finger-pointing. ‘Oh, it was DEI at the fire department,’” Pincetl says. “Or, ‘The fire department didn’t have enough money.’ Even if the fire department had had more money, there would not have been enough resources to fight these fires. It was not [immediately] containable. We just need to be more accepting of the fact that we have unleashed forces that are beyond our control. And the real finger-pointing that should be taking place is at the oil companies and the continued reliance on fossil energy, which is disturbing the climate.”

The destruction from this week will be felt throughout the region for years, possibly even decades. It should serve as a wake-up call.

“I think that we will discover through this process that there are opportunities to try to come to grips with a changing climate that were not there before,” Pincetl says. “Maybe we will not be rebuilding some of the most egregiously risky houses.”

The EMA’s Levin sees this moment as an opportunity to rally an intellectual approach to mitigating future risk – if the political will is there among local leaders.

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“The houses in Malibu on the ocean side, they’re not going to be able to be rebuilt. There’s been such erosion from what’s gone on in the climate that the Coastal Commission will not let them build,” Levin observes.

Unfortunately, the political debate around climate change and policy decisions that affect businesses and homeowners will make the process of recovery and long-term risk mitigation more difficult. “People start blaming the wrong things. I fear that we will hear more about, ‘Why weren’t the services better?’ and ‘Why isn’t my insurance covering me?’ conversation,” Levin says.

Chatterjee points to the long-term increase in non-native flora and fauna in the region. Plants, grasses and trees that aren’t naturally found in desert climates tend to burn faster and at higher temperatures, while native plants are generally more resilient.

“In many cases, we have moved far away from native species which are fire resistant and therefore did not burn so much and are able to survive, even if there’s high temperatures and fires,” Chatterjee says. “But then we have moved to invasive species that may be more beautiful. We put them in our area because they look pretty. But from a fire perspective, they are very bad because they burn easily and then help with the spreading of the fire.”

One of the immediate concerns is the danger of a massive amount of pollutants flying through the air and seeping into the ground. Modern homes are full of plastics, chemicals and other synthetic materials that emit toxins when burned. That’s why residents of the most affected areas are under orders to boil water before consuming any of it.

“We have so many things that are not natural in our houses. We have so much plastic in our house, and we have different kinds of chemicals,” Chatterjee explains. “When all of those things burn, and those things also get converted into ash, all that toxic material goes into our air that we end up breathing, so it ends up exposing us to a lot of things. It breaks it up, burns down, which makes it even more toxic, and then it’s released into the environment.”

Levin firmly believes that Hollywood and storytelling can play a role in helping the general public understand the practical realities of climate change. The EMA has advocated for years that writers and producers seek out hopeful stories that demonstrate how incremental change – such as banning the use of plastic shopping bags, which the EMA strongly supported — can make a difference. There is no shortage of apocalyptic visions of the future. It’s high time for a climate scientist hero or two to be showcased in TV and film in ways that can educate and inspire.

“You’ve got the climate disaster movies and TV shows that show how bad it can be,” Levin says. “But they usually don’t address what we need to do now. And that’s a problem because if it’s all catastrophic, people turn off or see it as a threat to people who don’t believe in climate change.”

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Pincetl and Chatterjee assert that a series of decisions are on the horizon for Southern California residents as well as political and business leaders. This week’s firestorm is likely to convince some people to leave the Golden State entirely.

“We cannot stop climate change because there’s so much greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. So we have to make some decisions,” Pincetl says. “Are we going to continue to create the conditions for even greater climate perturbations and continue to try to push the status quo of our lifestyles through work arounds? Or are we going to face the fact that the world has changed, and we have to change the way we build and where we build, and the way we get around and so on? I just don’t see any other way around this.”

Despite the political winds in the U.S., and President-elect Donald Trump’s history of denying and aggravating climate-change issues, evidence is mounting in cities and towns across the country that the risks posed by erratic weather patterns are only increasing. In the view of key experts, there is a path forward for Southern California if key stakeholders embrace the urgency of the situation.

“It is getting drier and hotter because of climate change. So the risk of wildfire is not going to go anywhere,” Chatterjee says. “We have to be smart about how we are living in this environment, where we are living, what kind of choices and decisions we are making, how we are managing our fuel and how we are communicating about these risks. It’s a lot of adjustments and adaptations that we have to consider if we want to continue living in this environment.”

(Pictured: Two unidentified people walk through a fire-scarred area of Pacific Palisades on Jan. 10, 2025)