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Midwesterners lived through the Dust Bowl. Why would climate change be any different?
When Canadian wildfire smoke descended on my hometown in Indiana this summer, I was distraught. I live in London now, but much of my family remains in the Midwest, and as an orange haze blanketed the landscape and the air quality plummeted, I worried about their health. “Smoke everywhere!” my dad texted, alongside a photo of the fields near my childhood home, shrouded in smog. “Guess I better stay inside when I get home.”
The effects of climate change will vary from region to region, but everyone’s life will be affected in some way, eventually. Even though I know this to be true, I had selfishly and naively hoped that the Midwest would be insulated from the worst of it. I fretted about my friends on the East Coast and my mom in California. But for my relatives in the middle of the country, I was never that worried.
And it seems I’m not alone. A recent Heatmap News poll found that, compared to people in the South, Northeast, and West, Midwesterners were consistently blasé about climate change. The poll tried presenting this question in different ways: Do you worry about what climate change means for you personally? Do you worry that extreme weather events will happen in your area more frequently? Do you worry about what climate change means for your kids? Over and over, Midwesterners registered the lowest level of alarm.
On the topics of wildfires, drought, flooding, and extreme heat, the Midwest has the highest share of respondents who say they are not concerned. Fifty-two percent of Midwesterners say climate change poses little or no risk to their region — no other region comes anywhere near that level of confidence in their own safety. In fact, all other parts of the country think the Midwest is at greater risk from a planet on fire than Midwesterners themselves do.
It would be easy to dismiss this phenomenon as politically fueled, but that would be too simple. It’s true that Pew surveys show the majority of voters in the Midwest lean conservative, and there’s no doubt Republicans are historically less likely to believe that climate change is a serious problem. But in Heatmap’s polling, at least, respondents in the Midwest largely identified as moderates and independents. Plus, the poll doesn’t show that Midwesterners doubt climate change is real. They just don’t think it affects them all that much.
And in some respects, they’re right. By virtue of its location, separated by hundreds or thousands of miles from the flood-prone coasts and the fire-prone regions to the south and west, the Midwest has so far been spared some of the scariest, most extreme weather events of recent years. No hurricanes decimating neighborhoods. No major wildfires scorching the landscape.
“We up to now haven’t suffered the loss and damage a lot of coastal or mountain areas have,” said Dr. Gabriel Filippelli, professor of Earth sciences at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and executive director of the Indiana University Environmental Resilience Institute. But climate change is happening here. It’s just happening more slowly.
Take flooding, for instance. While warming oceans and sea level rise are imminent threats to America’s coasts, climate change is gradually making extreme precipitation more likely in the Midwest. “Our 100-year floods are no longer 100-year floods,” said Filippelli. “Now they happen every 10 to 15 years.” Last year heavy rain brought devastating deluges to states including Illinois and Missouri; 2019 was the Midwest’s wettest calendar year since 1895, causing at least $6.2 billion in damage.
Dangerous heat and “flash droughts,” extremely dry periods that come on quickly and with little warning, are also creeping risks. Research from the nonprofit First Street Foundation shows the Midwest is part of a growing “extreme heat belt” that will, over the next 30 years, experience more days when the heat index – what the temperature feels like to the human body, factoring in humidity – hits 125 degrees Fahrenheit. Heat like that can kill not only humans, but also farm animals and crops. The Natural Resources Defense Council says extreme heat and drought could wilt crops across “America’s Breadbasket,” “potentially causing ripples to food supplies across the world.”
Why aren’t Midwestern farmers sounding the alarm, then? Because many “believe that this is a cycle that we’re going to get through,” said Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party and 2023 recipient of the Climate Breakthrough Award for her work in blocking the Keystone XL oil pipeline. “They’ve been through difficult times, whether it’s the Dust Bowl or the Depression or World Wars, and those generational lines are still threaded through families,” Kleeb said. “There’s a huge value in hard work in rural communities, and in the idea that as a community, we’re going to get through it together. I think that’s how they view climate change.”
In other words, Midwestern farming families are used to doing the Very American Thing of pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and getting on with it. The federal government’s Crop Insurance program makes it easier to keep on believing in the power of pure gumption — the government pays if crops fail due to “ natural causes,” which means that rarely do farmers feel the full effect of climate change on their pocketbooks.
There are plenty of other effects of climate change the federal government won’t help with — a rise in tick- and mosquito-borne illnesses, for one. The federal government’s most recent National Climate Assessment projects that the Ohio Valley could see more than 200 cases of West Nile virus every year by 2050. Lyme disease is already endemic to the region.
There’s also the secondary risk of an influx of climate migrants seeking safety, which will affect not just rural and industrial communities but also population centers like Minneapolis and Kansas City. “It’s anecdotal at best,” said Filippelli, “but we have evidence there are people leaving the coasts because of fire danger as well as the water issues.” These people may come not just from the U.S., but also around the world.
And then there’s that wildfire smoke. The National Climate Assessment predicts that drifting haze will become a regular nuisance in the Midwest. Hoosiers were annoyed by the smoke this year, Filippelli said, but “they didn’t always link it to climate change.” That comes across in the polling: Sixty-three percent of Midwestern respondents said — in November of this year, a few months after their summer of smoke — that their areas have not been affected by climate change.
To Kleeb, bridging this disconnect is the project. Messaging matters, and climate advocates and policymakers would do well to know their audience. Extolling veganism or focusing on the environmental hazards of methane produced by cow burps probably isn’t going to land well with farmers and ranchers.
“Rural folks get very defensive because you’re essentially blaming their grandpa, their father, their husband or wife who is currently farming and, from their perspective, providing food not only for America, but for the world — and you’re saying they’re bad,” Kleeb said. “When people say they don’t believe in climate change, it’s because they feel they’re being blamed for something they’re not responsible for.”
Instead, Kleeb wants to see more emphasis put on how rural Midwesterners can be part of the solutions, from introducing regenerative farming to providing the land needed to build out renewable energy infrastructure. “If anything, they know the land,” Kleeb says. “They know every hill, every blade of grass. They know where it floods when they get heavy rains. So really acknowledging that local knowledge in asking them to be partners at the table is absolutely critical.”
One thing many don’t appreciate about the Midwest is how much sky there is — any weather that’s on its way you can see from miles out. The smoke hovered over my hometown for a few days. During that time, I hardly slept. I kept checking the weather obsessively, hoping for some sign of relief. I even sent my dad links to articles about how to build your own air purifier. Finally, on the third day, he texted me an update: A strong weather front was approaching Indiana from the west, expected to sweep away the wildfire smoke as it passed over the state.
“Rain!” the text read. “Beautiful rain!”
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Plus 3 more outstanding questions about this ongoing emergency.
As Los Angeles continued to battle multiple big blazes ripping through some of the most beloved (and expensive) areas of the city on Thursday, a question lingered in the background: What caused the fires in the first place?
Though fires are less common in California during this time of the year, they aren’t unheard of. In early December 2017, power lines sparked the Thomas Fire near Ventura, California, which burned through to mid-January. At the time it was the largest fire in the state since at least the 1930s. Now it’s the ninth-largest. Although that fire was in a more rural area, it ignited for many of the same reasons we’re seeing fires this week.
Read on for everything we know so far about how the fires started.
Five major fires started during the Santa Ana wind event this week:
Officials have not made any statements about the cause of any of the fires yet.
On Thursday morning, Edward Nordskog, a retired fire investigator from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, told me it was unlikely they had even begun looking into the root of the biggest and most destructive of the fires in the Pacific Palisades. “They don't start an investigation until it's safe to go into the area where the fire started, and it just hasn't been safe until probably today,” he said.
It can take years to determine the cause of a fire. Investigators did not pinpoint the cause of the Thomas Fire until March 2019, more than two years after it started.
But Nordskog doesn’t think it will take very long this time. It’s easier to narrow down the possibilities for an urban fire because there are typically both witnesses and surveillance footage, he told me. He said the most common causes of wildfires in Los Angeles are power lines and those started by unhoused people. They can also be caused by sparks from vehicles or equipment.
At about 27,000 acres burned, these fires are unlikely to make the charts for the largest in California history. But because they are burning in urban, densely populated, and expensive areas, they could be some of the most devastating. With an estimated 2,000 structures damaged so far, the Eaton and Palisades fires are likely to make the list for most destructive wildfire events in the state.
And they will certainly be at the top for costliest. The Palisades Fire has already been declared a likely contender for the most expensive wildfire in U.S. history. It has destroyed more than 1,000 structures in some of the most expensive zip codes in the country. Between that and the Eaton Fire, Accuweather estimates the damages could reach $57 billion.
While we don’t know the root causes of the ignitions, several factors came together to create perfect fire conditions in Southern California this week.
First, there’s the Santa Ana winds, an annual phenomenon in Southern California, when very dry, high-pressure air gets trapped in the Great Basin and begins escaping westward through mountain passes to lower-pressure areas along the coast. Most of the time, the wind in Los Angeles blows eastward from the ocean, but during a Santa Ana event, it changes direction, picking up speed as it rushes toward the sea.
Jon Keeley, a research scientist with the US Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles told me that Santa Ana winds typically blow at maybe 30 to 40 miles per hour, while the winds this week hit upwards of 60 to 70 miles per hour. “More severe than is normal, but not unique,” he said. “We had similar severe winds in 2017 with the Thomas Fire.”
Second, Southern California is currently in the midst of extreme drought. Winter is typically a rainier season, but Los Angeles has seen less than half an inch of rain since July. That means that all the shrubland vegetation in the area is bone-dry. Again, Keeley said, this was not usual, but not unique. Some years are drier than others.
These fires were also not a question of fuel management, Keeley told me. “The fuels are not really the issue in these big fires. It's the extreme winds,” he said. “You can do prescription burning in chaparral and have essentially no impact on Santa Ana wind-driven fires.” As far as he can tell, based on information from CalFire, the Eaton Fire started on an urban street.
While it’s likely that climate change played a role in amplifying the drought, it’s hard to say how big a factor it was. Patrick Brown, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, published a long post on X outlining the factors contributing to the fires, including a chart of historic rainfall during the winter in Los Angeles that shows oscillations between very wet and very dry years over the past eight decades. But climate change is expected to make dry years drier in Los Angeles. “The LA area is about 3°C warmer than it would be in preindustrial conditions, which (all else being equal) works to dry fuels and makes fires more intense,” Brown wrote.
And more of this week’s top renewable energy fights across the country.
1. Otsego County, Michigan – The Mitten State is proving just how hard it can be to build a solar project in wooded areas. Especially once Fox News gets involved.
2. Atlantic County, New Jersey – Opponents of offshore wind in Atlantic City are trying to undo an ordinance allowing construction of transmission cables that would connect the Atlantic Shores offshore wind project to the grid.
3. Benton County, Washington – Sorry Scout Clean Energy, but the Yakima Nation is coming for Horse Heaven.
Here’s what else we’re watching right now…
In Connecticut, officials have withdrawn from Vineyard Wind 2 — leading to the project being indefinitely shelved.
In Indiana, Invenergy just got a rejection from Marshall County for special use of agricultural lands.
In Kansas, residents in Dickinson County are filing legal action against county commissioners who approved Enel’s Hope Ridge wind project.
In Kentucky, a solar project was actually approved for once – this time for the East Kentucky Power Cooperative.
In North Carolina, Davidson County is getting a solar moratorium.
In Pennsylvania, the town of Unity rejected a solar project. Elsewhere in the state, the developer of the Newton 1 solar project is appealing their denial.
In South Carolina, a state appeals court has upheld the rejection of a 2,300 acre solar project proposed by Coastal Pine Solar.
In Washington State, Yakima County looks like it’ll keep its solar moratorium in place.
And more of this week’s top policy news around renewables.
1. Trump’s Big Promise – Our nation’s incoming president is now saying he’ll ban all wind projects on Day 1, an expansion of his previous promise to stop only offshore wind.
2. The Big Nuclear Lawsuit – Texas and Utah are suing to kill the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s authority to license small modular reactors.
3. Biden’s parting words – The Biden administration has finished its long-awaited guidance for the IRA’s tech-neutral electricity credit (which barely changed) and hydrogen production credit.