WildfiresThe West is on fire – and the US taxpayer is subsidizing it
The western United States is burning. This year’s damaging experience is just the latest in a recent series of devastating wildfire seasons, a trend that will only likely increase over the coming years. There are two main reasons behind the growing conflagrations. The first is the legacy of fire suppression polices that snuff out fires as they appear, but leads to the build-up of fuel that is the raw material for larger, more devastating fires. The second is climate change, which is making the West hotter and drier. The higher temperatures wick away moisture from the trees, making them more combustible. The combination of more combustible material and a hotter, drier climate leads to more fires. A number of economic practices and social issues, however, are exacerbating our forest fire problems – chief among them is the enlargement of what is known as the wildland-urban interface (WUI). More people are building homes in the interface close to the wildlands and forests. The full costs of having more people moving into areas subject to greater risk of fire are not borne by these local actors. The federal government picks up between one-half and two-thirds of the cost of protecting people and property in the WUI by providing financial and technical assistance to states and volunteer firefighters. In effect, the federal government, the U.S. taxpayer, picks up the tab. We are on an unsustainable path as the WUI continues to grow and expand, fuel buildup continues and the climate warms. The risk of fire is increasing. But the WUI continues to expand. The U.S. taxpayer should not be subsidizing and underwriting such risky behavior.
The western United States is burning.
This year’s damaging experience is just the latest in a recent series of devastating wildfire seasons, a trend that will only likely increase over the coming years.
Over the last few decades, and especially since 2000, the wildfire season is getting longer, with more fires, bigger fires and more damaging fires. Even before the end of this year’s season, 600,000 acres have burned in California, and almost a million acres each in Oregon and Washington. More than five million acres were destroyed in the boreal forests of Alaska. We are on track to have the most devastating fire season ever.
More than eight million acres have burned in six of the years since 2000. There are two main reasons behind the growing conflagrations. The first is the legacy of fire suppression polices that snuff out fires as they appear, but leads to the build-up of fuel that is the raw material for larger, more devastating fires.
The second is climate change, which is making the West hotter and drier. The higher temperatures wick away moisture from the trees, making them more combustible. The combination of more combustible material and a hotter, drier climate leads to more fires.
But in contrast to this obvious rise of risk and vulnerability, there are also other forces at work, often ignored in the popular national media. Fires make for great images. The intense media coverage focuses on images of destruction, tales of heroism and narratives of community resiliency. The fires are depicted as malevolent forces emerging from the forest to attack the innocent.
As an academic who studies the environmental stresses on society, I’ve dug into the costs and responses to forest fires. What I’ve found is that discussions on this topic often lack any sense of the social and political context of these fires — and how our policies are worsening the damage and increasing the cost.
