The Fossil Fuels behind Forest Fires in California

Coal, oil, and gas companies are now directly linked to worsening forest fires across the western United States. A peer-reviewed study from the Union of Concerned Scientists found that 19.8 million acres of burned forest land—37 percent of the total area scorched by forest fires in the western United States and southwestern Canada since 1986—can be attributed to heat-trapping emissions traced to the world’s 88 largest fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers. Emissions from these companies and their products also contributed to nearly half of the increase in drought- and fire-danger conditions across the region since 1901. The study—and other attribution studies like it—offers policymakers, elected officials, and legal experts a scientific basis for holding fossil fuel companies accountable for the impacts of their products and their decades-long deception efforts.