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'What Climate Breakdown Looks Like': 50,000+ Flee Wildfires as Chile Declares 'State of Catastrophe'
"The first priority, as you know, in these emergencies is always to fight and extinguish the fire. But we cannot forget, at any time, that there are human tragedies here," said the country's president.
Jan 19, 2026
On the heels of another historically hot year for Earth, disasters tied to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency have yet again turned deadly, with wildfires in Chile's Ñuble and Biobío regions killing at least 18 people—a figure that Chilean President Gabriel Boric said he expects to rise.
The South American leader on Sunday declared a "state of catastrophe" in the two regions, where ongoing wildfires have also forced more than 50,000 people to evacuate. The Associated Press reported that during a Sunday press conference in Concepción, Boric estimated that "certainly more than a thousand" homes had already been impacted in just Biobío.
"The first priority, as you know, in these emergencies is always to fight and extinguish the fire. But we cannot forget, at any time, that there are human tragedies here, families who are suffering," the president said. "These are difficult times."
According to the BBC, "The bulk of the evacuations were carried out in the cities of Penco and Lirquen, just north of Concepción, which have a combined population of 60,000."
Some Penco residents told the AP that they were surprised by the fire overnight.
"Many people didn't evacuate. They stayed in their houses because they thought the fire would stop at the edge of the forest," 55-year-old John Guzmán told the outlet. "It was completely out of control. No one expected it."
Chile's National Forest Corporation (CONAF) said that as of late Monday morning, crews were fighting 26 fires across the regions.
As Reuters detailed:
Authorities say adverse conditions like strong winds and high temperatures helped wildfires spread and complicated firefighters' abilities to control the fires. Much of Chile was under extreme heat alerts, with temperatures expected to reach up to 38ºC (100ºF) from Santiago to Biobío on Sunday and Monday.
Both Chile and Argentina have experienced extreme temperatures and heatwaves since the beginning of the year, with devastating wildfires breaking out in Argentina's Patagonia earlier this month.
Scientists have warned and research continues to show that, as one Australian expert who led a relevant 2024 study put it to the Guardian, "the fingerprints of climate change are all over" the world's rise in extreme wildfires.
"We've long seen model projections of how fire weather is increasing with climate change," Calum Cunningham of Australia's University of Tasmania said when that study was released. "But now we're at the point where the wildfires themselves, the manifestation of climate change, are occurring in front of our eyes. This is the effect of what we're doing to the atmosphere, so action is urgent."
Sharing the Guardian's report on the current fires in Chile, British climate scientist Bill McGuire declared: "This is what climate breakdown looks like. But this is just the beginning..."
The most recent United Nations Climate Change Conference, where world leaders aim to coordinate a global response to the planetary crisis, was held in another South American nation that has faced devastating wildfires—and those intentionally set by various industries—in recent years: Brazil. COP30 concluded in November with a deal that doesn't even include the words "fossil fuels."
"This is an empty deal," Nikki Reisch of the Center for International Environmental Law said at the time. "COP30 provides a stark reminder that the answers to the climate crisis do not lie inside the climate talks—they lie with the people and movements leading the way toward a just, equitable, fossil-free future. The science is settled and the law is clear: We must keep fossil fuels in the ground and make polluters pay."
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Apologist for Pinochet Dictatorship Will Be Next President of Chile
José Antonio Kast has described the dictator who ended democracy for nearly two decades and presided over the persecution of tens of thousands of dissidents as someone who brought "order" to Chile.
Dec 15, 2025
José Antonio Kast, a far-right former lawmaker, won over 58% of the vote in Chile's runoff elections on Sunday over Jeannette Jara, the labor minister under outgoing left-wing President Gabriel Boric, to become the nation's next president.
The win came despite Kast's open admiration for General Augusto Pinochet, who ended civilian rule in Chile after taking power through a coup d'etat in 1973, overthrowing its democratically elected socialist leader in a US Central Intelligence Agency-backed plot and implementing a radical program of economic austerity.
Until he was ousted by a democratic referendum in 1990, Pinochet governed Chile as a military dictatorship rife with human rights abuses, resulting in his indictment by a Spanish court in 1996 for crimes against humanity. His regime assassinated or "disappeared" nearly 3,200 people, while tens of thousands were tortured and more forced into exile.
Human rights groups have accused Kast and his family—the patriarch of which was a member of the Nazi Party who fled to Chile in 1950—of collaboration with the Pinochet regime's detention of opponents. The president-elect's brother was a minister for Pinochet during the dictatorship.
Kast will be the first president of Chile since its return to democracy to have campaigned for and voted “Yes” in the 1988 plebiscite for the dictator to stay in power for another eight years despite his reign of terror.
But rather than distance himself from Pinochet's legacy, Kast has described himself as his spiritual successor.
In 2017, during his first of three presidential campaigns, Kast told a local newspaper that “if he were alive,” Pinochet “would vote for me.” Kast later described Pinochet as someone who brought “order” to Chile, comments that the Buenos Aires Times wrote in 2021, “railed many who are still scarred by this dark period in the country’s history.”
But Kast's nostalgia for that period of repression was not enough to hobble him this time around. At a time when the right is making gains across Latin America, Kast's policy agenda sits at the nexus point between the free market fundamentalism of Argentina's Javier Milei and the police state ambitions of El Salvador's Nayib Bukele.
He has pledged an economic program in the same vein as Pinochet's and, later, Milei's "shock therapy," proposing an unprecedented cut of $21 billion in public spending over his term, paired with a reduction in taxes on the wealthy.
Kast has pledged that these cuts would only affect "waste" and "political" spending, but not impact social programs that benefit Chileans. But economic analysts, including Javiera Toro, Chile's social development minister, have argued that a cut of that size would inevitably cut into the social safety net, including its popular state pension program and others related to health, housing, and education.
Kast successfully martialed fear of high crime (even though it actually fell under Boric's tenure) into outrage toward the nation's undocumented migrants—mainly from Venezuela—whom he has pledged to deport en masse. As in the US, where President Donald Trump is also spearheading a mass deportation operation, immigrants in Chile commit crimes at lower rates than those born in the country.
Last year, Kast visited the sprawling prison complex where Bukele has used emergency powers to detain tens of thousands of people as part of his sweeping war on gangs, often in punishing conditions where they've faced torture. Amnesty International described it as a "state policy of massive and arbitrary deprivation of liberty." Kast said he'd like to implement a similar policy in Chile.
Kast immediately raised fears for the future of Chile's democracy in his victory speech, vowing to form an "emergency government" when he takes power in 2026. However, he will not command a majority in Chile's legislature, which may make the delivery of his agenda more challenging.
Jenny Pribble, professor of political science and global studies at the University of Richmond, told Al Jazeera: “It remains to be seen if Kast could or would pursue such an approach, but if Chile follows the Salvadoran model, it would constitute significant democratic backsliding.”
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What a Study of Oligarchs' Second Acts Heralds for Trump 2.0
They’re usually worse off during their subsequent terms in office. So are the rest of us.
Nov 13, 2024
On November 5, Donald Trump was elected as the 47th U.S. president. Trump is an oligarch—an economic or political actor who secures and reproduces power and wealth, then transforms one into the other. And now he is in the small minority of oligarchs across history who have had second acts—having lost power or wealth, they find a way back. What can we learn from those experiences that might inform our understanding of Trump’s second term?
To answer that question, we looked at the track records of three other business oligarchs like Trump who have served as heads of state or government since World War II. Business oligarchs begin their journey by accumulating wealth, then move to power.
In our book The Oligarch’s Grip: Fusing Wealth and Power, we wrote about Chilean president Sebastian Piñera. He served two non-consecutive terms in office (2010-14 and 2018-22). His second act was decidedly worse than his first. During his first term in office, per capita income in constant dollars grew by 14%, while life expectancy expanded by 0.9 years. Sure, there were controversies, such as the appointment of Pinochet-era figures as cabinet ministers and protests over the end of the school voucher system. But, in general, Chileans felt better off.
While we are hesitant to make any grand predictions for the Trump second term based on these cases, it does seem questionable that it will be any better than the first.
By contrast, Piñera’s second term was disastrous. Per capita income rose by only 2% and life expectancy contracted by 0.8 years. The Covid-19 pandemic played a role in these outcomes, but it wasn’t the only driver. Piñera’s poor handling of a second, larger set of student protests has also led to his relatively low ranking among modern Chilean heads of state. He died in a helicopter accident in 2024.
Trump has been compared to Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s three-time prime minister (1994-95, 2001-06, and 2008-11). We will focus on his second and third terms, which are longer. Per capita income expanded by 3.5% in that second term, and life expectancy grew by a remarkable 1.4 years. Ambitious goals aimed at constitutional and tax reform were thwarted, but, still, Italians felt better off, even if they narrowly backed a center-left coalition that removed Berlusconi from office.
His third term was dominated by the 2007-08 global financial crisis, the Great Recession of 2008-09, and the 2009-10 eurozone crisis. Italy’s economy was one of the most highly indebted in Europe, and higher interest rates led to a 6.8% GDP decline during 2008-09. Per capita income declined by 3.6% during this term, while life expectancy increased by 0.6 years. Having been ranked by Forbes as the 12th most powerful person in the world in 2009, Berlusconi resigned in 2011 as a deeply unpopular and polarizing figure.
A similar pattern of a poor second act emerges with Rafic Hariri, Lebanon’s prime minister for two terms (1992-98 and 2000-04). Per capita income grew by a substantial 44% during his first term, while life expectancy expanded in the post-civil war period by 2.2 years. But when Hariri returned to office for a second term, results were much less compelling: income up by 16% and life expectancy by 0.6 years. Political tensions led to his assassination in 2005. His son Saad served two terms as well and also left office under a cloud. A third oligarch prime minister, Naguib Mikati, is in his third term and, given the recent Israeli invasion, is unlikely to have a successful ending.
Does history offer any relief from this picture of disappointing second acts? Not really. For example, Marcus Licinius Crassus—one of the Roman Republic’s richest and most powerful men, served as consul twice (70 and 55 BCE), both times with often rival and sometimes ally Pompey. The first consulship led to the Triumvirate Alliance of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. The second consulship led to Crassus being named governor of the endlessly wealthy province of Syria, where he was defeated by the Parthians and died in 53 BCE.
These examples suggest some preliminary findings and cautions. First, oligarchs’ second acts generally end badly. Sometimes, external circumstances drive this result. Other times, it seems that oligarchs don’t show much evidence of learning from their first terms.
Second, many oligarchs never serve in decision-making roles as heads of state or government like Piñera, Berlusconi, or Hariri. Some have agenda-setting power through political contributions or media ownership. Others have ideological power, shaping the way we think and act. Based on our dataset at the Center for the Study of Oligarchs, we are unaware of any oligarchs who had and lost those types of power who were able to regain it. We also don’t know of any significant cases of oligarchs losing their wealth and then recovering it.
While we are hesitant to make any grand predictions for the Trump second term based on these cases, it does seem questionable that it will be any better than the first. During that first term, per capita in the U.S. rose by 2.9% and life expectancy fell by a jaw-dropping 1.7 years. That record helped earn Trump a ranking as the worst president in U.S history, according to the American Political Science Association survey.
It is difficult to imagine how Trump will be able to successfully fight the dismal history of oligarchs’ second acts.
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