It isn’t lack of water or DEI making LA’s wildfires worse. Experts say it’s climate change

As wind-whipped wildfires rage in Southern California, perhaps the only thing spreading faster is misinformation.

Prominent conservatives, including President-elect Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, have blamed the catastrophic damage and loss of life from multiple Los Angeles-area wildfires on everything from the Los Angeles Fire Department’s commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) to conservation efforts to protect an endangered fish called the delta smelt.

“DEI means people DIE,” Musk wrote in a post on X, the social media platform he owns.

“Now the ultimate price is being paid. I will demand that (Gov. Gavin Newsom) allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is the blame for this. On top of it all, no water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes. A true disaster!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns.

Experts say these baseless claims ignore the source behind the worsening fires.

“The root cause is climate change,” said Julie May, senior scientist with Communities for a Better Environment, a nonprofit which advocates for environmental justice and pollution reduction.

The “fingerprints” of climate change are all over this disaster, said Professor Craig Clements, chair of the San Jose State University Department of Meteorology and Climate Science and director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center there.

May said climate change has contributed to periods of heavy rain — which causes plant life to grow — followed by extended periods of drought — which dries those plants out, turning them into perfect fire fuel, leading Southern California to its current tinderbox state.

Then all it takes is an extreme weather event, such as winds with gusts up to 90 miles per hour, Clements said, and “you have a recipe for disaster.”

Clements said that what’s happening in the Los Angeles area is “the worst fear,” something wildfire experts expected as high winds were forecast.

He disputed claims from the former, and future, president that lack of water contributed to the worsening catastrophe that has destroyed thousands of homes and claimed several lives.

“That wouldn’t have mattered. (Fire) suppression does totally help but we couldn’t even get aircraft in the air because of the wind,” he said.

Clements added that as the winds subside, he expects firefighters will make substantial gains in controlling the blazes.

“In increasingly extreme weather conditions, we’re just reaching the limits of what we can do,” May said.

One factor making the Los Angeles area fires different than many of the previous catastrophic California wildfires of the last decade is that these fires are centered on a largely urban environment. Clements called that “bad luck.”

“This is what people have been predicting would be a worse-case scenario,” he said, though he added that this isn’t the first time wildfires have raged in cities.

“This has happened before in Southern California, people forget,” Clements said.

So what can be done to prevent wildfires from breaking out when the winds are strong?

While the causes of the L.A. area fires have yet to be determined, Clements said one key tool for preventing wildfires from spreading is Public Safety Power Shutoffs, where electric utilities power down their lines to prevent them from being a hazard during fire weather.

Looking more broadly, May said that it will take pollution reduction efforts, such as phasing out fossil fuel production and gas-powered vehicles, to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, something she said is unlikely given Trump’s imminent presidency.

“Trump’s fossil fuel expansion plans are sure to make for even worse, exploding climate disasters in the future,” she said.

This story was originally published January 10, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "It isn’t lack of water or DEI making LA’s wildfires worse. Experts say it’s climate change."