Respect Mother Nature, or suffer her wrath

The California wildfires hundreds of thousands of miles away are generating headlines in American and Chinese media alike. The other day a colleague shared a video clip showing a conflagration engulfing hundreds of acres of forests. The headline read: “Why are California wildfires so catastrophic?”

According to the latest US media reports, two more bodies of Camp Fire victims were recovered on Wednesday, bringing the death toll to 83. As Shanghai Daily went to press, hundreds more are still missing and tens of thousands have been evacuated. The firestorm turned a city called Paradise into an inferno, razing homes and reducing entire neighborhoods to charred debris.

As I watched firefighter braving the soaking rain to search for survivors and charred remains of fire victims, my heart went out to the Americans who lost their loved ones and their properties.

There have been media reports criticizing the perceived inadequacy of the American disaster-fighting system in responding to the most destructive fire in California’s modern history.

Some blame the firefighters for their late arrival that eventually cost more lives. These criticisms are, in my opinion, misplaced, for they lose sight of the magnitude of the calamity and belittle the good efforts made by rescuers to reach those still stranded in the flames.

It is reported that sparks from a power line ignited a brush fire, which grew as high winds drove it toward the town. But the rapid spread of the fire has many complex explanations. Most notably the extended dry spells this summer doubtlessly made the blaze hard to control.

Pricey tactics

Americans are now debating ways to stop the fire, or change the zoning laws to prevent it from happening again.

Among the suggested measures include hiring more firefighters, undergrounding spark-producing power lines, emptying fire-prone areas of their inhabitants, equipping homes with fire-resistant building materials, clearing overgrown vegetation and so on, San Francisco Chronicle reported on November 20.

But the author concedes that “all of the tactics are pricey, and even pursued in tandem, there are no guarantees.”

It is understandable that anger at futile attempts to extinguish the blaze might boil over into recriminations. But pointing fingers at a time for more serious questions seems to be missing the point.

Many an American commentator seems to have hit the bull’s eye in their search for the culprit behind the wildfires: climate change.

As Eric Holthaus wrote in Slate magazine: “Our unnaturally warming climate set the stage for the return of this type of devastating fire. The camp fire, and the escalating onslaught of weather emergencies like it, crystallizes the urgency of the climate challenge: Without radical changes, there will be more fire catastrophes like Paradise.”

Here’s another incisive comment from The New Yorker’s Bill McKibben, who blamed the wildfires partly on “a summer of unprecedented high temperatures and a fall ‘rainy season’ with less than half the usual precipitation.”

McKibben’s article is appropriately titled “How extreme weather is shrinking the planet.”

All around the world, we are witnessing examples of global warming wreaking havoc by creating abnormal weather conditions that allow for disasters like the California firestorms.

But we are still indulging the excesses of big industry in shunning their responsibility for perpetuating global warming. We, of course, are not exempt from guilt ourselves, unless we begin to seriously weigh the consequences of our high-carbon life.

As McKibben observes in the sub-heading of his article: “With wildfires, heat waves, and rising sea levels, large tracts of the earth are at risk of becoming uninhabitable. But the fossil-fuel industry continues its assault on the facts.”

We in China often console ourselves on the fact that our country has one of the most efficient disaster prevention and reduction systems in the world. This is true. When major catastrophes hit, the system is often immediately kicked into action, with all hands to the pump.

Even blessed with such a system, we should always remember the maxim: forewarned is forearmed. The recent California fires are a poignant reminder yet again of how formidable and unforgiving Mother Nature can be at times, and how we humans are at her mercy in spite of our technological strengths.

In order not to incur her wrath again, we’d better act now.