The wildfire in Australia was very, very bad. More than a fifth of the forests in the country were burned. The fires started after a very long period of drought that was caused by the climate crisis. The bad news is that with the crisis ongoing, there will be more incidents like this in the future.

On the one hand, it’s good that we know so that preventive measures can be taken to lessen the impact of the fires when they do come again. On the other, the only real balm for this is continued efforts against the climate crisis.

Although wildfires are a very natural occurrence in dry areas, they have been increasing in their duration and season length around the world. Australia is one of the largest on record but this is a problem for many regions and in the coming years we will likely see more reports like this.