CNN
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Despite the finger-pointing about who is to blame for the spread of the Los Angeles fires, Jeff Goodell believes there’s no level of preparation that could have fundamentally changed the trajectory of this massive disaster, which was propelled by urban planning decisions made decades agoand more than a century of fossil fuel pollution that has made 2024 the hottest year on record.
LA — and much of the rest of the world — was built for a climate that no longer exists, said Goodell, a journalist and writer who has covered climate change and the environment for the past quarter century. We must reimagine how we build our world and the kinds of urban planning, water supplies, building insulation, and public transportation that are necessary to adapt to a hotter climate.
In a conversation last weekend, Goodell and I also discussed how the Biden administration has presided over the most significant amount of gas and oil production in American history — a fact that the Biden team has been reticent to advertise and a trend that the incoming Trump administration will likely only amplify.
Goodell, who — full disclosure — was a fellow at New America, the research institution where I’m a vice president, also described the emergence of “attribution science,” which increasingly allows scientists to attribute the responsibility for certain extreme weather events to climate pollution. It’s a significant step forward in research that could ultimately enable those harmed most by climate change to hold fossil fuel companies accountable.
Our conversation was edited for clarity.
PETER BERGEN: Are you surprised by what’s unfolding in Los Angeles?
JEFF GOODELL: I wish I could say that I was, but I’m not, partly because I’m a fourth-generation Californian and I grew up seeing wildfires. And I know that fire is deeply a part of the California landscape. I’ve also been writing about climate change for 25 years. I know about the relationship between heat and fire, and as we build a hotter and hotter world, bigger and more intense fires are inevitable.
BERGEN: Southern California is prone to fires, and the Santa Ana winds are a recurring weather event. Are these LA fires different from anything we’ve seen before?
GOODELL: What’s different about these are the fires’ scale, speed and intensity. Another thing that’s very different is that it’s in January, which is not typically fire season in Southern California. And this elongation of the fire season is a hallmark of our changing climate. It used to be that in Southern California, there were five or six months a year of fire danger. And now it’s virtually year-round.
BERGEN: And what were those five or six months typically?
GOODELL