The catastrophic fires ravaging Los Angeles have become the most destructive in the state’s history, decimating native ecosystems, killing at least 29 people, destroying more than 12,000 structures and displacing over 150,000 people.
As someone born and raised in southern California, I could have never imagined Santa Ana winds of this magnitude in January. We are witnessing climate chaos fueled by centuries of colonial extractivism (a practice “with the goal of wealth and resource accumulation,” according to Stanford).
A hemisphere away, the Amazon rainforest continues to reel from its worst fire season in the past two decades – amplified by the region’s worst drought on historical record. While distant from one another these two wildfire crises share much in common and their solutions are intrinsically connected.
Last year, flames engulfed 30 million hectares in Brazil alone — an area nearly the size of California. The apocalyptic plumes of toxic smoke that enveloped Los Angeles conjure up familiar scenes from São Paulo, Brazil, where wildfire smoke caused air quality levels to reach the worst in the world.
These crises are harbingers of more to come if we don’t act now. The Amazon and Southern California are experiencing devastating drought and rising temperatures, both linked to climate change driven by our use of fossil fuels.
The Amazon biome enables all life on Earth. It is a key example of a ”planetary common” playing an essential role in maintaining climate stability by driving weather patterns, influencing rainfall and, importantly, absorbing a massive amount of carbon dioxide.
But scientists tell us that the Amazon has reached a tipping point of no return: with degradation and deforestation from agribusiness, extractive industries like oil and mining, logging and dams have pushed this critical ecosystem to its brink.
Deforestation in the Amazon will continue to have devastating implications far beyond the rainforest and the over 500 Indigenous nations that steward it. Scientific studies corroborate what Indigenous peoples have long understood: our fates are intertwined.
As deforestation increases in the Amazon, it will decrease precipitation in California and create drier conditions in Southern California.
California, sadly, is playing a disproportionate role in the Amazon’s demise.
The Golden State is a major consumer of crude oil from the Amazon, the vast majority of which comes from Ecuador. Of the Amazon crude arriving in the state, 50% of it goes to the Marathon, Valero and Chevron refineries in the Los Angeles area.
All of Ecuador’s crude production comes from its Amazonian region at a devastating cost to the Amazon and Indigenous peoples, some of whom are living in voluntary isolation. An average of three oil spills per week and flares from more than 400 wells burn non-stop in one of the most biodiverse areas on the planet. Numerous studies document elevated cancer and health impacts in the region.
These devastating impacts inspired Ecuadorians to overwhelmingly vote in 2023 to permanently keep 726 million barrels of crude oil beneath Yasuní National Park in the ground. But the current government is looking to expand extraction deeper into the forest (undoubtedly future sources of crude for California). The oil industry is a major driver of deforestation, opening up intact forests and felling trees critical for climate change mitigation in the pursuit of new reserves that the world can’t afford to burn.
According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, “projected CO2 emissions from existing fossil fuel infrastructure without additional abatement would exceed the remaining 1.5 °C carbon budget.” And the latest report from the International Energy Agency says that to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, no new oil and gas fields are needed.
To address the root cause of these interconnected crises, we must unite our calls to keep oil in the ground, from California to the Amazon. As the incoming administration guts federal climate policies, Gov. Gavin Newsom must commit to getting the Golden State off of Amazon crude.
