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Andrew Revkin in the New York Times explores The Yosemite Inferno in the Context of Forest Policy, Ecology and Climate Change.
Conclusion:
For western [wild]fire (it’s hard to see how the wild part of that word applies any more, given how many human factors are involved), the suspects are a century of accumulated “fire debt” from fire suppression efforts, development and road construction, natural fluctuations in drought and heat on many time scales, spreading invasive tinder-like grasses and the building influence of greenhouse-driven global warming (see Andrew Freedman’s detailed exploration of the latter point).
Essentially, fire-suppression policies are literally providing the kindling, and climate change is helping to provide the spark.
