Stephanie Pincetl and Glen MacDonald in The Guardian: How bad will California’s fire season be? Experts on the threat – and what can be done

After the third-driest year ever recorded in the state, California risks disaster just months after a devastating 2020.  Though environmental conditions exacerbate risks, a key problem lies with people, according to Stephanie Pincetl, professor and director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA. “There is nothing wild about these fires. These are human-created conditions that induce higher risk,” she said. “We need to acknowledge that these are our problems that we created, and if we are going to deal with it we have to start where the problem begins.”

Seventeen of the largest wildfires in California have happened in the 21st century, noted Glen MacDonald, a climate scientist at the UCLA. “Increasing temperatures give us increasing aridity,” MacDonald said, “and we can portion a large part of that to increased greenhouse gases and climate change.”