By Paul Vousden, Client Director at 350 PPM
The Los Angeles wildfires underscore the intensifying impacts of climate change, highlighting how global warming exacerbates extreme weather events and their cascading effects.
Key takeaways include:
California continues to experience longer and more intense wildfire seasons. Rising global temperatures have increased the frequency of heat waves, leading to drier soils, vegetation, and extended droughts. This “aridification” creates ideal conditions for wildfires to ignite and spread rapidly, making once-seasonal fire events a year-round crisis.
The wildfires themselves contribute to climate change, creating a feedback loop. The vast amounts of carbon dioxide released during fires accelerate global warming, which in turn fosters conditions for more fires. The 2025 wildfires alone emitted millions of tons of CO₂ undermining efforts to meet emissions reduction targets.
As more people move to wildfire-prone areas, human activities such as the installation of power lines and starting of campfires, for example, often act as ignition sources. Combined with climate change-driven weather patterns, these fires have a greater human and economic toll, straining emergency response systems and displacing thousands or people away from their fire damage and destroyed homes.
Despite advancements in firefighting technology, adapting to the scale of climate-induced wildfires remains difficult. Mitigation strategies, such as controlled burns, forest management, and urban planning reforms, are often outpaced by the escalating severity of fires fuelled by climate change.
The 2025 Californian wildfires vividly demonstrate that climate change is no longer a distant threat but a current reality, demanding urgent global action on emissions reduction and resilient-building strategies.
At 350 PPM, we specialist in identifying and supporting the rapid commercialisation of climate technologies that have the potential to make real and positive impact climate change.
One such business is EnviraBoard – a ground-breaking new building board that has outstanding fire-resistant properties. This carbon negative product is manufactured from recycled paper sludge waste that would otherwise end up either in landfill or incineration.
As a result of the devasting Californian wildfires, we are actively taking steps to help EnviraBoard support the massive effort required to rebuild the cities affected. Not only is EnviraBoard actively looking for local partners to accelerate high-capacity production where its product is needed, but also researching methods and technologies to further improve the fire-resistant properties of the building boards. We will be reporting on progress here soon.