In May, California caught fire again. Or maybe it’s more correct to say it kept burning. Wildfires have been a problem in California for as long as there were people that didn’t want them to occur, but they’ve only gotten worse in recent years. With the conditions of the land only getting worse and feeding larger, more devastating fires, science has a job to do and media has something to point and scream at.

The article I chose was “Fire Season Starts Early, and Fiercely,” published this May in the New York Times. In the article, the author discusses how conditions are getting worse, the fires are getting worse, and no one has any solutions because it’s not even clear what’s to really blame. Up until that last bit, the article was really well researched: experts from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the state’s Natural Resources department were interviewed; statistics were used; there was a handy graph.

But the most mention the article does to the cause of the fires is the especially dry conditions, draught, and one expert saying that climate change was assuredly playing a factor. The article went on to say absolutely nothing because it offered no possible solutions—sort of playing the whole thing to be a twist of fate. Twists of fate, I might dare say, are not science (unless we’re talking about entropic determinism and physics, I guess). The problem with this article is that it wasn’t written to further any degree of understanding, but instead to garner attention with the drama that wildfires present. With the experts, the journalist gives equal time to California inhabitants discussing the consequences the fires have had on them personally; there is even a video that explains the science behind how fires work but not the reason the fires are getting any worse. So, why are the fires getting worse?

I’ve done some research and it seems to be a combination of human activity and climate change (well, insofar as climate change is another kind of human activity I guess; all in all we’re all at fault). Wildfires are a pretty natural process in the wild and can even be somewhat beneficial—the fire burns away the tree canopy and lets more sun in for other plants to grow, fertilizes the soil with wood ash (which is a fantastic fertilizer that also helps keep the soil at a neutral pH using carbonates that remain after wood burns), and some species of plants have become sort of dependent on forest fires to further their growth, a good example being the Jack Pine which releases seeds as its temperature rises so that even if the tree dies, new ones will take its place. But because fires have always been so near to human settlement (because human settlement is everywhere), the general view of wildfires was always to put them out immediately, which has led forests becoming overgrown with more small trees and ferns that will feed fires to make them that much larger. The additional dryness added by climate warming has, as it turns out, not helped at all. This video and its provided sources do a better job explaining the phenomenon:

So now the problem becomes my main crux with the article: what can we do about it? And now my problem becomes the same as the article’s, because I have very little of an idea. Somehow we need to find a way to fix climate change, know when to put out fires and when to let them burn for a little longer, and put more water and dampness into dry regions. Let’s call Captain Planet.