Nineteen firefighters are confirmed dead in a raging wildfire that spanned 2,000 acres in Arizona. The Granite Mountain Hotshots were members of an elite specialized team of firefighters. This didn’t have to happen.
Due to budget cuts, austerity, sequestration, Republican intransigence, call it what you will, we are spending fewer inflation adjusted dollars on wildfire prevention this year than we did in 2002.?On top of that the Obama administration, desperate to cut wherever it can, has cut thirty-one percent of the Hazardous Fuels Reduction Program which reduces the severity of wildfires when they do happen.
But this isn’t just about cutting funds to needed programs so we can continue to pay military contractors to spy on us and our allies. ?No. This problem has been a long time coming. ?When the flames that killed the Granite Mountain Hotshot Firefighters finally go out, one thing we know is that Sens. McCain and Flake from Arizona will still be “climate change skeptics” — which is a polite way of saying they will take oil company money to not talk about the growing problem of climate change. No matter how many firemen have to die.
Scientists are being increasingly clear that man-made climate change is contributing to the conditions that make wildfires burn longer and occur more often. And it’s going to get worse. By ?the government’s own estimate, last year an area the size of Maryland went up in flames. This year it is predicted to be bigger than that and by 2050 it is expected to be twenty million acres a year.
Nineteen dead Granite Mountain Hotshot Firefighters is a tragedy. Not doing the work to prevent those deaths is criminal. Refusing to take sides on the climate debate when the citizens of your state are dying is cowardice of the lowest kind. Remember the fallen by calling for change.
Edited and published by TW
