Are we creators of our own demise? Why you should not ignore the devastating wildfires in
Source: NEOS KOSMOS
On Sunday, 26 January 2025, the new president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, issued an executive order permitting the federal government to override California’s water management practices if found inadequate.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social (a social media platform owned by Trump himself, created after he was banned from Twitter and Facebook in 2021):
“Governor Gavin Newscum [sic.] refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow, melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way. He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California. Now the ultimate price is being paid. I will demand that this incompetent governor 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, and no firefighting planes. A true disaster!”, a misleading statement presenting the disaster as a problem of mismanagement.
The opinion of the new president of the US is not something new. It follows the views expressed for years by many societal elites and the news media for apocalyptic phenomena, despite the studies that have demonstrated that due to environmental destruction, extreme weather phenomena, such as massive wildfires, will be increasingly a part of our daily lives.
In many instances, societal elites cynically try to perpetuate the idea that these destructive phenomena are natural including by characterising such events as the result of political mismanagement without focusing on the ecological disaster that might be connected to the wildfire. However, political mismanagement and its polarised rhetoric are generally used as a tool when these powerful elites and their connections are not the ones that govern the country.
The wildfires as events of political mismanagement
In studying the phenomenon of wildfire in the media, I note parallels between what’s happening in the US and in Greece.
It is worth taking a look into one of the deadliest wildfires of the 21st century, taking place in the village of Mati, a region close to Athens.
That wildfire resulted in casualties of more than a hundred people, with properties and homes burnt to the ground as the fire rapidly spread in an area with no routes for the people to escape.
The media treated it almost exclusively as a political event rather than an environmental problem.
“In studying the phenomenon of wildfire in the media, I note parallels between what’s happening in the US and in Greece”
The opposition and media cynically capitalised on the event, exploiting it for electoral gain by attributing blame to the government of the day, led by Syriza, without highlighting the systematic environmental undermining that the governments had been doing in Greece for decades.
The study of Greek discourses reveals that the Mati wildfire is believed to be exclusively an outcome of the mismanagement of the then-government and personnel that was led by the radical left party of Syriza, which lost the 2019 national election to New Democracy and the new Prime Minister of the country, Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
The new government promised that this destruction would never happen again, as the chronic issues related to firefighting will be tackled, including through the destruction of illegal buildings.
However, Mitsotakis failed to mention that his party approved such illegal buildings in the first place for decades, systematically undermining the environment by allowing the illegal building of houses and infrastructure even in forests.
Mati was a region in which many routes were blocked due to illegal infrastructure, contributing to citizens’ trapping.
The wildfires and the politics of blame
Under Mitsotakis’ administration, nothing changed.
On the contrary, in 2023, Greece experienced the biggest wildfire ever recorded in the EU region, fuelling doubts amongst the citizens that the state’s inability to protect the land and the forests was strongly linked to the government’s close connections with influential businesses that wanted to exploit the burned land for infrastructure and green energy projects.
The other alarming finding that we discovered through a study conducted on the 2023 Evros wildfire was that Mitsotakis’ government initiated a politics of blame by portraying illegal migrants crossing the borders between Turkey and Greece as culprits (arsonists).
In some extreme cases, the events of the Evros wildfire were presented in the media even as a possible act of war.
Of course, these misleading representations are connected to the strengthening of nationalism and xenophobic attitudes because of the refugee crisis.
During all these crises, there was a severe lack of thorough and research-based discussion in public discourse. Also, the overly simplistic and polarised views promoted by politicians during these challenging times fail to provide a holistic response about dealing with the extreme weather conditions and phenomena that scientific research tells us will happen more frequently and in greater severity in the future.
The world must prioritise environmental protection
Compared to Greece, the US has had the advantage of better collaboration between the government and the scientific community to help address the wildfires and implement evidence-based approaches, along with greater firefighting resources, especially in California.
However, the new Trump administration does not seem willing to follow the advice given by the scientific community, calling for increased resources for firefighting and stopping the interference of different stakeholders in implementing legislation that can effectively protect the environment.
As extreme wildfires and other natural catastrophes become the new normal, the global community must significantly increase its spending and prioritise resources to protect the environment.
The US has historically been the greatest polluter since 1850, considering the total CO₂ emissions from deforestation, fossil, cement, and land use.
Nevertheless, instead of taking responsibility for its actions and understanding that protecting the environment is a must for the survival of humanity, it entered a new era favouring the profits of the ultra-rich instead— “We will drill, baby, drill,” as its new President said.
The US, by supporting climate denial and further environmental erosion, is condemning the planet to a future of extreme climate change, including heatwaves, lack of drinkable water, and dry seasons, along with acute natural disasters, such as typhoons, tornados, and wildfires.
The world must prepare for a future in which the majority will be fighting for a cup of clean water, while a few individuals will be bathing in pools filled with drinkable water, unless immediate action is taken by the greatest polluters on earth to stop prioritising profits over the lives of billions.
*Dr Minos-Athanasios Karyotakis is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies (LEWI) of Hong Kong Baptist University.
This article was originally published on the Australian Institute of International Affairs and is republished under a Creative Commons License.
The original article: belongs to NEOS KOSMOS .
