As fossil fuel pollution heats the planet, one of the casualties is the traditional celebration of the founding of the United States. The record droughts, floods, and storms fueled by global warming are causing widespread bans on fireworks and the cancellation of numerous municipal firework displays, even a celebration for our soldiers in Oklahoma:

There will be no fireworks this year exploding over Fort Sill in Lawton. The U.S. Army base’s Independence Day celebration and concert will go on as planned Saturday, but its fireworks have been canceled. A fire that started on a base firing range last week burned across 5,500 acres before it was contained. Thirteen homes were destroyed and 1,500 people had to be evacuated.

Firework shows from Texas to Massachusetts have been canceled because of the deadly climate conditions:

In Oklahoma, 36 counties suffering from extreme to exceptional drought have issued burn bans, which include a prohibition on fireworks except for public displays.

In Kansas, fireworks have been banned in Dodge City and surrounding rural areas due to the extreme drought.

In Louisiana, fireworks have been banned in Shreveport and neighboring Bossier because of extreme heat and drought.

In Texas, 170 counties have fireworks bans, including all of metropolitan Houston. Nearly all of Texas has burn bans as well. Because of the extreme drought, Fourth of July fireworks displays have been canceled in Texas towns large and small: San Antonio, Austin, Amarillo, Lubbock, Plainview, Magnolia, Tomball, DeSoto, Woodlands, Roman Forest, and Patton Village.

In Arizona, authorities have banned fireworks from Flagstaff in the north to Tucson, Douglas and Sierra Vista in the south.

In New Mexico, Gov. Susana Martinez (R-NM) has said that there is “absolutely no reason to buy, sell or use personal fireworks.” She has declared a “state of emergency in New Mexico regarding the use of fireworks.” Albertson’s, WalMart, and Smith’s stores have stopped selling fireworks in the state. Taos, with wildfires raging nearby, has canceled its fireworks display.

In Joplin, Missouri, where a devastating tornado hit on May 22, officials have banned fireworks because of the amount of combustible debris in the tornado’s path.

In Massachusetts, the historical recreation site Old Sturbridge Village has canceled its fireworks display because its fireworks launch site was flooded and alternative launch sites were damaged by tornadoes.

Austerity budgets are also killing Fourth of July celebrations, with fireworks displays canceled at Jones Beach in New York, in Chicago, Illinois, and in Shawnee, Oklahoma.

As the largest wildfire in Arizona history still burns, the Las Conchas wildfire is becoming the largest wildfire in New Mexico history.

“Recent experience down here suggests that what we’re looking at in the last few decades is at least as severe and maybe more so than anything we’ve seen since the last Ice Age,” Grant Meyer, a geologist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque tells the Christian Science Monitor. In addition to a buildup of fuels from forestry practices, “part of it as well – and the data are very good on this – it’s climatic warming” as human industrial activity and land-use changes have pumped increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. “A long-term average decline in annual snow pack, which provides the bulk of the region’s water, along with rising average temperatures have lengthened the fire season and dried out the fuel.”

“As firefighters we’re seeing extreme fire behavior and the kind of growth we haven’t seen in our careers,” Jerome McDonald of the Southwest Area Incident Management Team said. “We have seen fire behavior we’ve never seen down here, and it’s really aggressive,” says Los Alamos fire chief Donald Tucker.

Firefighters continue to battle a wildfire that threatens the nuclear-weapons facilities at Los Alamos National Laboratory in north-central New Mexico. “Both the town of Los Alamos, home to about 12,000 residents, and the laboratory, with a work force of about 12,000, were evacuated on Monday,” MSNBC reports. The uncontrolled Las Conchas Fire, now burning 70,000 acres, is part of a global-warming-fueled series of conflagrations throughout the Southwest. The record wildfire season is a product of the region’s record drought, in which precipitation is more than 75 percent below normal:

All of New Mexico is in drought conditions, southern New Mexico in exceptional drought. U.S. Drought Monitor.

180-day precipitation in New Mexico is greater than 75 percent below normal. National Weather Service.

Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas are aflame:

– The 538,000-acre Wallow Fire in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico, started May 29, now 70 percent contained.

– The 223,000-acre Horseshoe Two Fire in the Chiricahua mountains in southeastern Arizona, started May 8, now 100 percent contained.

– The 30,000-acre Monument Fire near Sierra Vista in southeastern Arizona, started June 12, now 64 percent contained.

– The 15,000-acre Donaldson Fire (named after Sam Donaldson’s ranch), in Alamo Canyon in New Mexico, started June 28.

– Texas firefighters are tackling five fires that have burned 32,981 acres. Since fire season started on Nov. 15, 2010, Texas Forest Service and area fire departments have responded to 12,985 fires that have burned 3,268,011 acres, a greater area than the state of Connecticut.

In Senate testimony, U.S. Forest Service chief Tom Tidwell explained that scientists have found that climate change is making the region hotter and drier, leading to larger and more intense fires. This season of fire in the Southwest is one of the many terrible consequences of the billions of tons of greenhouse pollution industrial activity has added to the atmosphere. Only a full mobilization of our nation’s resources will give ourselves a chance to preserve the American dream in the coming years.