A holistic approach to climate change

These fires are somewhat common, as living in California, I hear news about new fires nearly every year, it seems. Although the primary response is to deal with the symptoms through firefighters and such, one additional appealing idea is the idea of dealing with the cause. Climate change and global warming, although not directly responsible for fires, generally cause more wildfires, and make such wildfires more intense.

Oregon, being a very agricultural state, contributes to climate change through agriculture deforestation, as well as emissions from farm animals and pesticides. Agriculture as a whole causes 30% of greenhouse gas emissions, indicating that measures should be taken to counterbalance this. If we worked better on the sustainability aspect, and worked on dealing with the issue of climate change, we could lessen the severity and frequency of these fires, through dealing with the root cause.

Henry Huang

Los Altos Hills