Media Bias: Wildfires Caused by Arson, Not Climate Change

Several high-profile American wildfires over the past decade were initially framed in media coverage around drought and climate change before investigators determined the fires were deliberately set. A review of seven cases shows a recurring pattern: early coverage emphasizes heat, drought, or “climate crisis” language, followed later by an arson arrest that shifts the cause to a specific individual.

In some cases, reports on social media initially framed the suspect as a conservative, but it later turned out the suspect was a liberal or climate activist. However, the conservative community is still waiting for an apology.

The most recent example is the Old Trails Fire in Spokane County, Washington, which ignited August 1, 2026. Early coverage, including CNN’s live updates, used “climate crisis” language, and the Associated Press described the fires as erupting “across a parched landscape” amid severe drought and low snowpack.

Climate activists and social media accounts ran with the climate crisis narrative. However, on August 3, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office arrested Aaron F. Farinacci, 37, on suspicion of first-degree arson.

Farinacci had a history of violence. He was originally charged with first-degree murder in the 2010 killing of his father in Maricopa County, Arizona. That charge was dismissed following a grand jury indictment, and he pleaded guilty in 2012 to manslaughter and aggravated assault.

He was found in possession of waterproof matches and a butane lighter near the fire’s ignition point and had previously been questioned about “arson-related behavior” in the area, though never charged.

The Palisades Fire, which began on January 7, 2025, in Los Angeles, was likewise discussed in climate terms, with CNN reporting a climate expert’s prediction that it would become one of the costliest wildfires in U.S. history. While the fire may ultimately prove to be the costliest in history, that prediction had nothing to do with climate.

It would have made more sense to interview an insurance expert or someone qualified to evaluate and predict the economic damage caused by disasters, rather than someone promoting a climate agenda that has not been proved to be true.

On October 7, 2025, federal authorities arrested Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29. According to the DOJ press release, two passengers whom Rinderknecht drove as an Uber driver on the night of December 31, 2024, told investigators he appeared agitated and angry. They also said he parked near the Skull Rock Trailhead and walked up the trail before the fire ignited.

The complaint states Rinderknecht generated an image using ChatGPT in July 2024 depicting a burning forest and a crowd fleeing it, according to statements by acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli. Rinderknecht’s Facebook history, documented in screenshots published by Fox News, included anti-Trump posts and shared climate-change articles, including a ProPublica piece on climate-driven migration.

He was indicted on October 15, 2025, on three counts, according to the DOJ case page. Court filings submitted before trial state that Rinderknecht told investigators someone might commit arson in the Palisades out of resentment toward the wealthy, comparing the act to Luigi Mangione’s case. Prosecutors also allege that his internet search history in the weeks before the fire included the phrases “lets kill all the billionaires” and “free Luigi Mangione.”

No mainstream outlet that linked the Palisades Fire to climate change in its early coverage has issued a correction or apology for that framing after Rinderknecht was charged with arson.

Canada’s Quebec wildfires of 2023 followed a similar arc. Widespread media coverage attributed the fires to climate change, and a 2023 report by the Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition tracked disinformation campaigns disputing that link.

Brian Paré, who had posted conspiracy theories claiming the Canadian government was intentionally starting fires to build support for climate policy, pleaded guilty in January 2024 to 13 counts of arson and one count of arson with disregard for human life. He admitted to starting 14 fires himself.

According to prosecutor Marie-Philippe Charron, Paré told investigators that his main motivation was testing whether the forest was dry enough to burn. Police began monitoring his social media after he was spotted near multiple fire locations. They later placed a tracking device on his vehicle, which linked him to two additional fires.

The 2018 Holy Fire in Orange County, California, burned 23,000 acres and destroyed 18 structures. Forrest Gordon Clark, the property owner accused of setting the fire, was acquitted of the arson charges in 2023. However, he was convicted of making criminal threats against a neighbor.

According to a 2018 court filing, a prosecutor said Clark “appears to believe in the Sovereign Citizen ideology.” The Southern Poverty Law Center reported that Clark had been a member of a sovereign citizen group and that his Facebook page contained posts referencing the New World Order, the Illuminati, and Agenda 21.

The 2018 Cranston Fire in Riverside County, California, burned more than 13,000 acres. Brandon McGlover was originally charged with 15 felony counts related to nine fires allegedly set on July 25, 2018.

According to a Riverside County District Attorney’s Office press release, prosecutors amended the charges after testimony at the preliminary hearing showed the evidence did not support proving specific intent to burn structures. McGlover pleaded guilty in February 2019 to two counts of burning a structure or forest land. Seven other counts were dismissed under the plea agreement.

In September 2020, a viral social media post using McGlover’s mugshot carried the caption, “Meet Mr. Climate Change.” The post was part of a broader pushback against media framing of the 2020 California fire season as climate-driven. NBC News reported that nearly half of the acreage burned in California that year resulted from fires that were intentionally set.

Between 1996 and 2001, self-proclaimed members of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Animal Liberation Front (ALF) carried out 20 acts of arson across five western states, according to a 2006 Oregon indictment.

Among them was Canadian citizen Rebecca Jeanette Rubin, whom the DOJ identified as a member of an ELF/ALF cell known as “The Family.” She was indicted for her role in an October 2001 arson attack on a Bureau of Land Management wild-horse facility in Litchfield, California, which caused more than $207,000 in damage. She was also charged in an eight-count arson indictment stemming from the 1998 destruction of lodges and other buildings at the Vail, Colorado, ski resort.

Court documents described the devices used in the Litchfield attack as incendiary bombs made from five-gallon buckets filled with gasoline and heavy petroleum distillate, fitted with delayed dual-timer igniters.

Rubin evaded capture for roughly a decade before surrendering to the FBI in November 2012. She pleaded guilty in 2013 to conspiracy and arson. In January 2014, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken sentenced her to five years in prison and ordered her to pay $13.9 million in restitution.

At sentencing, reported by Maclean’s, Rubin said impatience, anger, and self-righteousness had driven her actions alongside her environmental beliefs, and prosecutors described her ideology as “hard-core” activism.

In January 2002, FBI Domestic Terrorism Section Chief James Jarboe told Congress, in testimony archived by the FBI, that the ALF and ELF had committed more than 600 criminal acts in the United States since 1996, causing more than $43 million in damage.

In 2005, FBI Deputy Assistant Director John Lewis told a Senate committee that ALF/ELF activity was “way out in front” of any other category of domestic terrorism in the number of violent crimes and incidents recorded.

That designation came decades after a wave of left-wing bombings in the 1970s. According to FBI historical accounts, more than 2,500 domestic bombings occurred in 1971 and 1972 alone, carried out by groups including the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Liberation Army, and FALN.

That wave itself followed an earlier campaign by Italian anarchist followers of Luigi Galleani, who carried out bombings and assassination attempts against government and business targets in the United States from 1914 to 1932. According to the FBI’s historical account, the Galleanists were responsible for the September 1920 Wall Street bombing, which killed 38 people. The attack was also one of the earliest major acts of bombing terrorism in U.S. history.

President Trump designated Antifa a domestic terrorist organization in a September 2025 executive order. In December 2025, a senior FBI National Security Branch official told Congress that Antifa was the bureau’s “primary concern” and “the most immediate violent threat” it faced.

While Antifa is a more recent development, many of the left-wing terrorist organizations that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s continue to exist today in various forms. The original Black Panther Party dissolved by the early 1980s, but self-described successor organizations remain active. One of them is the Black Riders Liberation Party, a Los Angeles-based group founded in 1996. On its website, the group describes itself as “the new generation of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.”

LAist reported that the Black Riders Liberation Party played a leading organizing role in the 2012 May Day demonstrations in Los Angeles. After the protests, LAPD officers and parole officers raided the group’s headquarters, an action the group characterized as retaliation.

Separately, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a Marxist-Leninist organization whose website has published articles on the Black Panther Party’s legacy, was named by Senate Judiciary Subcommittee Chairman Josh Hawley in a June 2025 letter requesting records related to its alleged support for the 2025 Los Angeles immigration-enforcement protests.

Today’s takeaway is that climate change causes arson, and that leftists are dangerous, but the media obscures their culpability. Left-wing terrorism linked to socialism and communism dates back to the 1920s and continues to this day.

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