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Comment by 9HZZRfNlpR | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if because of all these forest fires in California the people living there have a huge co2 footprint? Since it's electric lines causing the fire, it can be seen as human made for sure.

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Forest fires don't have much of a carbon footprint because all the carbon (e.g. vegetation) is already part of the carbon cycle.

Your carbon footprint is determined by how much carbon you're adding (e.g. burning gas that was previously sequestered deep underground) to the carbon cycle.

I suppose if a bunch of plastic got burned in the forest fire, that would technically be adding a carbon footprint, but it's likely negligible.

Forest fire still releases massive amount at once. Takes 50 yrs to grow back and even then who guarantees its the right amount you have released because of human activity caused fires.

The connection you are trying to make is somewhat unclear. Yes, forest dwellers probably have a higher carbon footprint, but probably not much more than a wealthy city dweller. People living in the forests actually reduce the near term impact of forest fires because people don't like their stuff burning up, so they have fires put out which reduces carbon in the short term, but in the long term creates conditions for devastating megafires.

I was more thinking about some of the fires that got international attention and as I understood it was because lines often short out causing fires. I don't live in America so I wasn't trying to make a connection between homeless people if that's what you thought, if anything I blamed the modern city person because they use and consume the electricity so it counts as their co2 impact.

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