Global warming is a popular topic in the climate debate, often portrayed as setting the world on fire. However, the data from satellites tell a different story. Over the past two decades, the area burned annually has actually been decreasing. In 2022, the world experienced a record low of 2.2% burned area. Despite this clear trend, it is difficult to find accurate reporting on the matter.
The media tends to portray the world as if it is engulfed in flames. For example, The New York Times launched a project called “Postcards From a World on Fire,” which featured a photorealistic animation of the world in flames. This project aimed to convince readers of the immediate climate crisis through stories of climate-related devastation, such as the 2019-20 wildfires in Australia.
Recently, the focus has been on Canada’s wildfires, with both the Canadian prime minister and the White House blaming climate change. However, the latest report from the United Nations’ climate panel does not directly attribute the global area burned by wildfires to climate change. Instead, it suggests that the weather conditions that promote wildfires are becoming more common in some areas.
While there has been an increase in land burned in the Americas, particularly Canada, other parts of the world, like Africa and Europe, have seen lower burning. Globally, the burned area is slightly below the average between 2012 and 2022, a period that already had low rates of burned area. The thick smoke from the Canadian fires, while significant, is only part of the larger picture. Overall, fewer acres burning each year have led to lower levels of smoke, potentially preventing almost 100,000 infant deaths annually.
Similarly, the media’s coverage of Australia’s wildfires in 2019-20 created a selective narrative. While there was extensive burning in two states, the rest of the country experienced relatively smaller fires. Since the early 2000s, the area of Australia burned each year has actually decreased. The 2019-20 fires burned 4% of Australian land, and this year’s burned area is expected to be even less.
It is misleading to claim that climate policy is the only solution to reducing wildfires, as climate scientist Michael Mann recently did. Prescribed burning, improved zoning, and enhanced land management are faster, more effective, and cheaper solutions. According to Environmental Protection Agency modeling, even with a significant reduction in emissions, it would take several decades to see a small impact on the area burned in the US. The main issue with American fires is poor land management, as a century of fire suppression has led to an accumulation of fuel.
When evaluating headlines about fires, it is essential to consider other climate scare tactics that have proven to be exaggerated. For example, concerns about polar bear populations have been debunked, as they are estimated to be more numerous than ever before. Similarly, despite predictions of increased hurricanes due to climate change, satellite data shows a slight downward trend in the number of hurricanes globally since 1980.
Addressing global warming is undoubtedly a challenging task, with associated costs equivalent to one or two recessions over the next century. The most sensible approach would be to find a balance between climate change and carbon-cutting policies that prioritizes the most effective measures. However, surveys consistently show that most voters are unwilling to support expensive climate policies, despite the overheated headlines about climate Armageddon. It is crucial to promote sensible discussion and debate rather than using scare tactics to push for unfounded policies.
Bjorn Lomborg, President of the Copenhagen Consensus and a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, highlights these nuanced perspectives in his book “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.”
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