Mother of All Risks

Last week Gordon Forgey’s editorial commented on recent California fires that, as of Sunday, have left at least 76 dead and nearly 1,300 unaccounted for. Three years ago, Time Magazine published an article titled “Climate Change is the ‘Mother of all risks’ to National Security.”

No definitive one-to-one link between climate change and any particular fire can be drawn. However, strong evidence does link climate change to changing weather patterns. Those patterns, in turn, drive drought conditions ideal for the recent extreme conflagrations in California.

On the east coast, the problem is too m...