The fires in France and Spain have had devastating impacts. More than 220,000 people fled the flames west of Bordeaux. Outside Madrid, fires scorched an area twice the size of the capital and drove nearly 90,000 people from their homes. The people who lost homes and livelihoods deserve sympathy and far better fire policy.
What they do not need is the climate sermon that now follows every plume of smoke. Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called the fires a "painful expression" of climate change.
The U.K. and Spanish governments rushed out a joint statement declaring that "climate change was now a national security emergency" threatening our way of life. The verdict was in even while houses burned: only ending fossil fuels can put out the flames.
Here is what makes this so exasperating: the planet is doing the opposite of burning. Satellite data shows that as of August 19, the world's burned area in 2026 is 41 per cent below the 2012-25 average for this point in the year on track to becoming the quietest global fire season in a century. On current trends, 2026 could end up burning less than 1.5 per cent of global land area. This would be vastly below the satellite record low in 2022 of 2.2 per cent and likely lower than any year since 1900.
Climate change
Climate change is a global issue, so it should be assessed using global data. Pointing to horrific fires in one corner of one continent while ignoring a planet that burns phenomenally less is the very definition of cherry picking: keep the observations that fit the story, throw away the rest.
Imagine the reverse. If global burned area were running 41 per cent above average, would anyone accept "but the Baltics are quiet this year" as a rebuttal? Of course not. Yet, that is precisely the logic now deployed in the other direction.
The climate lobby has seized on one data quirk: In the European fire surveillance, the satellite data for "Europe" includes the whole of Russia, including Siberia and all, so a quiet Russian year can flatten the continental numbers.
But strip Russia out entirely and by August 19, Europe without Russia has burned 27 per cent less than its 2012-25 average this year; nine of the past 14 years saw more fire by August 19.
France's season is record-bad and Spain's is severe. But two countries having a dreadful summer do not make a continental inferno, let alone a planetary one. Europe as a whole is having a below-average fire year.
Same pattern
The same pattern holds everywhere you look. Just weeks ago the panic was Canada, whose smoke over New York generated the usual apocalyptic headlines. Yet, Canada is having a below-average fire year, as has the United States.
Both North America and South America as a whole are at all-time satellite lows. Africa, the most burned continent, is at an all-time low, 43 per cent below normal.
Oceania (mostly Australia) is 16 per cent below its usual burned area at this time and Asia has burned near record lows this year. Every continent is below normal, far below normal or setting records for how little is burning.
How is it possible that in a world burning less on every continent, we believe that the entire planet is in unprecedented flames? Because the coverage tells us so.
Infernos make the front page; record-quiet fire years make no news at all. Report only the fires and never the absence of fires and the public will duly conclude the planet is ablaze<\_>even as the data shows the opposite.
Nor is 2026 a fluke. In the early 1900s, nearly four per cent of the planet's land burned annually, roughly double today's rate. A century of better agriculture, land management and firefighting has steadily beaten fire back, because people hate fire and have become very good at preventing it. The world's long-term fire trend is ever downward.
None of this means France and Spain don't have a real problem. They do: a record June heatwave dried out vegetation and decades of accumulated fuel created a monster. The fixes are prosaic and proven: prescribed burns, fuel clearing, fire-resistant building codes and more firefighting capacity.
What will not help is the standard prescription of net-zero. Even if the entire rich world hit net-zero by 2050, at fantastical costs, the temperature difference by century's end would be too small to measurably change fire risk.
Telling frightened people their houses burned because of fossil fuels and that salvation lies in decades of expensive emissions cuts is not compassion. It is propaganda for extremely costly policies, while providing an alibi for failed fire policies.
The writer is President, Copenhagen Consensus/Visiting Fellow, Stanford University's Hoover Institution/author of "False Alarm" and "Best Things First".
