In 2026 so far, 1,494,338 acres of land have been scorched by wildfire.

While this number may seem high, the conversation around environment issues like wildfires seems to follow a familiar pattern: brief outrage, widespread concern, posting on social media and finally, a gradual return to normal.

Senior Elsa Lagerblad, a member of the Palo Alto Youth Climate Advisory Board, said part of this desensitization is caused by a culture of justification where individuals and corporations downplay their own environmental impact. She also said over time, repeated exposure to climate disasters has led to desensitization, causing urgent warnings to feel routine.

“We’ve grown up in a generation where we’ve always lived with the reality of climate change,” Lagerblad said. “When it becomes normalized, we think it’s such a big issue, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Environmental Medicine Club co-president and junior Sidharth Iyer said it is easy for students to ignore environmental issues.

“I think it’s definitely very easy to see it on TikTok or in news headlines and you just scroll right past it,” Iyer said. “It (can start to feel like) some far away problem.”

In recent years, politics has played an enormous role in attitudes and policies surrounding global warming and climate justice. President Donald Trump — who has withdrawn from international climate agreements — attempted to overrule science and abandon an entire category of federal climate protections on Feb. 12, according to the State of California Department of Justice.

Director of the Berkeley Climate Change Network Bruce Riordan said Trump’s rhetoric has influenced public attitudes towards climate change.

“His energy secretary and others who are in positions of leadership in the country claim that climate change is a hoax, which is absolutely untrue,” Riordan said.

According to a Feb. 12 New York Times article, Trump announced he would be erasing governmental recognition of the scientific findings that greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to Americans’ health and welfare. In addition, the Trump administration ended the federal government’s legal authority to control pollution on Feb. 12.

And while climate change is a global issue, it also has very drastic effects felt locally.

According to a New York Times article in March, the Trump Administration reopened a controversial oil pipeline off the coast of Santa Barbara, previously shut down after one of the worst oil spills in state history in 2015. While the administration argued the move was necessary following the recent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, California officials say it could lead to future environmental damage.

Despite these setbacks at the federal level, many organizations are still focused on helping the environment.

In recent years, natural disasters have also led to massive consequences over shorter periods of time.

Global warming is the increase in earth’s average surface temperature caused by human activities. According to NASA in 2025 the average global temperature was 1.19° higher than the 1951-1980 average temperature.

Global warming affects everyone because it fuels extreme weather, floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels.

AP Environmental Science teacher Nicole Loomis said rising ocean temperatures cause more severe storms due to warmer temperatures which supply energy to these storms.

“It is condensing five days worth of rain into one event, which is a lot more rain at once,” Loomis said. “That can lead to problems, like we’re seeing Oahu, where there’s a ton of flooding and damages.”

Politics are blinding climate change assistance

But President Trump has consistently expressed skepticism toward climate change. In 2025, he called climate change a “con job” at the United Nations General Assembly, despite substantial scientific evidence to the contrary.

In January 2025, Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement, a global effort to reduce greenhouse gases. This was his second withdrawal from the agreement, the first of which happened in 2017.

According to an NPR article, Trump said the agreement was disproportionately hurting economic growth in the U.S.

“I’m immediately withdrawing from the unfair, one-sided Paris climate accord rip-off,” Trump said at the time. “The United States will not sabotage our own industries while China pollutes with impunity.”

However, in June 2025, Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allotted $889 million for investments in critical water infrastructure projects across the West.

This funding supports projects such as improving reservoirs and dams, upgrading irrigation systems, repairing siphons, expanding water storage and modernizing pipelines that deliver water to cities and farms.

According to a U.S. Department of the Interior press release, one of the bill’s goals was to increase water availability in California.

“Signed into law by President Trump on July 4, 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill represents a historic investment in America’s infrastructure and natural resources,” the release said. “The legislation provides $1 billion to the Bureau of Reclamation through 2034 to restore and expand existing water conveyance systems and increase surface water storage capacity across the West.”

Regardless of policy decisions, the government’s attitudes toward climate change can have a big impact on climate action. Joana Falla, a beneficial electrification associate at Acterra: Action for a Healthy Planet, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Palo Alto that focuses on solutions for a healthier planet, said the way policies are implemented can influence whether people trust scientific information and feel empowered to take action.

“The job of the federal administration is to listen to what local actions are working, see what different programs are effective, what doesn’t work, and how we can continue and improve,” Falla said.

Falla said having a variety of voices is a major factor in effective change.

“We need to make sure that everyone is included in the solution so that problems can be solved equitably and efficiently,” Falla said.

Climate change, however, does not affect all populations equally. According to a September 2, 2021 report from the United States Environmental Protection Agency, it disproportionately harms low-income communities and communities of color due to redlining.

Iyer said political messaging plays a serious role in shaping how seriously people take climate change.

“I think (politicians) definitely have a lot of influence on whether or not (individuals) think it’s important,” Iyer said. “There’s certain policy makers who don’t believe in climate change, which I think is pretty crazy.”

Scale of climate change causes individuals to feel desensitized, discouraged

Rather than becoming more important, the escalation of climate change has made many individuals tune it out. Riordan said immediate crises also tend to overshadow slower, ongoing ones like climate change.

“The more we have, a big war getting bigger in the Middle East, that’s another day that you can’t work on climate change,” Riordan said.

He also said as climate change grows as an issue, it will be much harder to ignore or put behind other problems.
“I don’t think (ignoring it) will last,” Riordan said. “Climate change is only going to get worse.
With more than 8 billion people, individual actions add up. However, Riordan said while the impact of individuals’ actions are important, relying on individuals is not fair or effective. The true power lies in local and national governments.
“I think the biggest thing that we can do, as individuals, is to push our elected representatives to do more,” Riordan said.
However, Loomis said individuals need to take action on their own.

“Really, the only recourse you have is to do your personal best when you don’t have control over what other people are doing,” Loomis said. “It’s important to do what aligns with your values, even if it won’t have a huge impact.”

Similarly, junior and leader of the Palo Alto Youth Climate Advisory Board, Aiden Miao said one person can make a large impact.

“You can also do activities that help encourage more people to fight climate change and kind of scale up,” Miao said.

One often discouraging aspect of climate action is that the results are not immediate, but Riordan said change takes time because of the scale of the issue.

“If we ask everybody in the Bay Area to buy an electric car, which is going to be far less polluting of the global atmosphere or to do other things that would cut down on greenhouse gas emissions,” Riordan said, “you still won’t see an immediate result in that. The storms will continue. The heat will continue. The wildfires will continue. The sea will continue to rise, because there’s a big lag in the system due mostly to the ocean absorbing much of the heating of the planet.“

And Loomis said individual impact can be achieved even through small habits.

“There’s a lot of small habit changes you can make,” Loomis said. “You can choose to buy clothes that are made of natural fibers instead of synthetic fibers, and that can help with the microplastics problem. Buy local instead of things far away. You can go to the farmers market and buy what’s local and seasonal right here.”

Still, Miao said personal decisions aren’t enough to solve the entire crisis.

“Beyond just personal impacts or personal actions, there are also larger ways to fight climate change, by working on policy, technology or science in ways that can help even more people or even entire industries reduce greenhouse gases,” Miao said.

New climate initiatives and bay area companies

In the last decade, renewable energy sources have become more common. The transition from relying on fossil fuels to technologies and solutions like fusion, wind and solar power is no longer theoretical. It is happening.

Amir Gur, founder of Value Economics, a company that helps other companies be more sustainable, said he joined the climate space because it was a field where he saw the most potential for having a real impact.
“It is a framework and a movement, which is trying to max optimize basically every corner of the economy, throw away all the things that are inefficient,” Gur said. “We’re going to make it happen.”
His company views sustainability as encompassing a wide range of sectors, including health, social fairness and climate, but he said some industries need a lot of improvement, especially from an environmental lens.
Gur also said the linear economy usually follows the trend of mining materials, making the product, using it, and finally throwing it it in the trash
“The whole linear economy of physical goods is completely black, completely 100% negative,” Gur said.
A major part of the shift toward clean energy is being driven not just by policy, but by new companies, many based in the Bay Area, working to transform how energy is produced and how carbon is managed.

A growing number of startups are tackling climate change from two directions: removing carbon already in the atmosphere and reinventing how energy is produced. Companies like Charm Industrial and Heirloom Carbon are developing technologies to capture and store carbon dioxide, aiming to reduce the long-term impact of existing emissions.

Meanwhile, firms such as Commonwealth Fusion Systems are working to transform energy generation altogether. The company is building what it hopes will be one of the first commercially viable fusion power plants, a technology that mimics the sun’s energy production and could provide abundant, carbon-free power.

Other companies, including Pacific Fusion and Sunrun, are also advancing renewable energy—either by exploring new fusion approaches or expanding access to existing solutions like residential solar.

Gur said climate-focused companies like these will keep growing.
“They’re trying to automate, make it super easy to see the full picture and keep the environment in mind,” Gur said. “That’s really cool.”
And ultimately, Iyer also said knowledge is one of the most essential first steps in addressing climate issues.

“The first easiest thing is just being educated; understanding what is happening and why it is happening,” Iyer said. “And the second thing is being involved.”

Despite the growth of companies and individual initiative, Gur said progress is urgent.

“The good part is that awareness is on the rise,” Gur said. “The bad part is that it’s moving way too slow, and how much we need to move is massive.”