We’re losing Idaho an acre at a time every summer. It’s no secret what’s driving it | Opinion

Last year, it was easy to forget what summer in the West has become.

There were clear skies. The air smelled clean. No burning eyes. From the top of a peak in the Lost River Range, you could see the ends of the Earth. Few people were worried they would have to evacuate, or even lose, their homes.

But this year we’re back to normal.

Smoke filled the Treasure Valley, and much of the rest of the state, for most of the summer. Towns in the Sawtooths have lived on the knife’s edge of evacuation for weeks. Many residents near Stanely were evacuated for a time and could be again. The Plex Fire last week led to the sudden evacuation of several Boise subdivisions.

So many people terrified. So much beauty gone. It’s what’s happened almost every summer of my life.

When I was a kid, I was evacuated from a big forest fire. Hundreds of people in my town lost their homes. For months after that, the mountains that had always watched over us looked like the surface of the moon. Nothing ever felt the same there again.

Now I live a couple of hours from Yellowstone, and when I drive through the aftermath of the 800,000-acre 1988 fire, I feel like I lost something — though I never saw the forests before the blaze.

In 2060, that’s how someone driving to Stanley through the scars of the Wapiti Fire will feel. These landscapes are ancient; fire is so fast.

Wildfire is a natural part of the western landscape. Lots of trees and other plants can’t reproduce without it. Many decades of fire management that didn’t take this adequately into account led to a buildup of fuel that has exacerbated the problem. More and more people are recreating in the backcountry, too many of whom are too lazy to properly extinguish their fires, or drive with dragging chains, or play with incendiary devices. Invasive species like cheatgrass can transform burned areas into places even more fire-prone.

That is to say, a lot of this accelerating fire trend isn’t due to climate change.

But a lot of it is — most of it, actually.

A 2021 study found, using multiple methods, that the majority of increase in fire weather in the West — between two-thirds and 90% — is attributable to climate change.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service confirmed Friday that 2024 was the world’s hottest summer on record, surpassing the record set last year. None of that is too surprising, since just about every year it seems we hear that it was the hottest year ever.

All of the top 10 years for global temperature have occurred since 2000, according to NOAA. And so have all of the top 10 years for recorded acreage burned in the U.S., according to the EPA.

When the Legislature convenes in January, it will probably be as if none of this ever happened. There will likely be no hearings — lawmakers have had only one formal hearing on climate change, five years ago, with no serious policy follow-up.

Lawmakers will do nothing as long as their constituents do nothing. If they hear from enough constituents, they will be forced to care.

There are things the state could be doing to slow this tide, from reviewing the effectiveness of fire management and mitigation practices Idaho pursues under Good Neighbor Authority to encouraging clean energy development — like the Carbon Free Power Project, a commercial nuclear development which seemingly collapsed a year ago amid financial concerns — to better enforcement of laws designed to stop people from engaging in behaviors that risk sparking wildfires.

This is a crisis — a long, slow one that is going to get worse as we lose Idaho an acre at a time — and we need to start treating it that way. Because how much worse is up to us.

Bryan Clark is an opinion writer for the Idaho Statesman.