The effect of such climate silence is to imply that the wildfires are random—a stroke of bad luck, perhaps, in an already woefully unlucky year. But we know better than this. We know that we humans are causing disasters like this. And we know that we can solve the climate crisis, should we muster the political will to do so. 

Only after the work of covering the disaster is done will news outlets perhaps take a moment to examine why all this is happening—why these disasters are occurring, again and again, all over the world, with increased frequency and ferocity.