Giant sequoia mortality is complicated and, as with all facets of science, attribution is difficult. But climate change is one suspect—it appears to be affecting giant sequoia survival in other parts of their range. Perhaps this mortality is due to drought and heat, the direct effects of climate change in this region. Maybe it’s some kinds of beetles, some species of which are proliferating at exponential rates in warmer temperatures, unmolested by the cold snaps we used to get around here that once kept their numbers in check. Maybe it’s something else altogether. It’s almost certainly a combination of factors. I don’t know exactly what’s going on; I only know that some groups of sequoias are visibly dying now, and they weren’t just a few years ago.
...Just look at our behavior. Last May, the United Nations released a report on the massive extinction currently underway due to human activity. I wasn’t all that surprised, but some part of me thought that maybe the tragic report would spur some kind of conservation action. Instead, within months of the report’s release, humans were intentionally burning the Amazon. Here in the United States, the Trump administration proposed rollbacks to the Endangered Species Act, nixed greenhouse gas emissions limits, greenlit oil drilling projects in sensitive Arctic habitat, loosened restrictions on the fossil fuel industry, and much, much more. We are never going to wake up...
