West Coast Wildfires Reveal Massive Governance Failures

The U.S. West Coast is on fire. As per the National Interagency Fire Center, ninety-seven large fires have burned 4.6 million acres. This is about the size of Slovenia. 

How a society handles disasters says a lot about its resilience, character, and governance capacities. Disasters can foster paranoia or encourage solidarity. They can bring the country together or tear it apart.

In the 2020 wildfire season, there are numerous stories of the bravery of firefighters and local law enforcement agencies. For instance, California National Guard pilots are flying their helicopters in dangerous conditions for firefighting and rescue operations.

There is also a proliferation of conspiracy theories. In Oregon, the FBI and local Sheriffs’ departments have issued statements debunking the claim that Antifa supporters started these fires and urging citizens not to overload the 911 system with false reports. Facebook is removing false claims about these fires. As political polarization deepens with the approaching November 2020 elections, it’s anybody’s guess how these conspiracy theories will evolve.

Why are there fires on such a massive scale? The causes are both structural (climate change and bad policies) and agentic (irresponsible individual behaviors). The former create conditions that increase fire risks and degrade response capacity, while the latter pulls the veritable trigger. As per the National Park Services, humans cause about 85 percent of wildfires. These include “campfires left unattended, the burning of debris, equipment use and malfunctions, negligently discarded cigarettes, and intentional acts of arson.” The recent wildfires have many causes, from lightning to pyrotechnics for a gender-reveal party.

How are local, state, and federal governments responding to structural and policy issues? Politicians advise not to “waste” crises by leveraging the new political space they create to enact new policies. However, the U.S. political class seems to have wasted several crises (including COVID-19) by focusing on short-term policies instead of long-term changes. And when they can enact changes, political polarization might lead to their reversal. Recall the Dodd-Frank financial services regulations, which were put in place in the wake of the 2007-2009 financial crisis and then subsequently repealed in 2018.

What is the social and policy cost of wildfires?

Wildfires cause widespread visible damage to humans and ecosystems: deaths, health problems, burnt homes, human dislocation, and ecological damage. But there are less visible effects as well. Individuals lose jobs; the education of children is disrupted. The revenue base of local communities, already struggling with the COVID-19 recession, severely shrinks while the demands on their resources skyrocket. With the loss of tree cover, rivers accelerate soil erosion. The siltation buildup damages water treatment facilities. As homes and plastics burn, toxins such as benzene pollute water streams. 

Wildfires could also undermine the legitimacy of climate policies. California has adopted aggressive renewable energy standards. Consequently, solar energy represents about 20% of its electricity use. But this also makes the energy system vulnerable to wildfires, as smoke and haze cause solar-based electricity generation to plummet. The California Independent System Operator reports that solar generation is now almost one-third below pre-fire levels. At the same time, heat waves spike electricity demand as people hunker down in their houses, often with windows closed. Thus, state regulators are revisiting the issue of phasing out gas-fired electric plants.

The blame game

At the (virtual) 2020 Democratic National Convention, California Governor Gavin Newsom said: “If you are in denial about climate change, come to California.” Governor Kate Brown of Oregon describes the wildfires as “the bellwether for climate change on the west coast.” Governor Jay Inslee of Washington terms the ongoing fires as “climate fires.” He notes that “This is not an act of God ... This has happened because we have changed the climate of the State of Washington in dramatic ways.”

All true. There is a scientific consensus that climate change is increasing the severity and frequency of heatwaves and droughts. Rising temperatures make forests vulnerable to pest attacks that have killed millions of trees, thereby increasing the wildfire fuel load. The 2007-2017 drought caused the death of 163 million trees in California alone. In 2020, Yosemite National Park, which has a high concentration of dead trees, saw massive and fast-moving fires. 

But Republicans interpret this fuel load issue differently by blaming environmental groups for poor forest management practices that do not allow the removal of this fuel. President Trump believes that “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor.”

Others point to problems at the local and state levels. Zoning laws allow communities to build deep inside forests, which makes them vulnerable to fires. Even when governments revise building codes to fire-harden built structures, they do not enforce them adequately.

Finally, there is the home insurance problem. Logic would say that insurance premiums should reflect wildfire risk. But California is not allowing insurance companies to do so or to drop policies in areas that have experienced wildfires. In trying to solve the homeownership problem, insurance regulators created a moral hazard. Market and state failures go hand-in-hand.

Moving Forward

One expects that forest owners are accountable for forest safety. Who owns America’s forests? The federal government owns 47% of the forests in the Western United States and 57% of those in California. The Department of the Interior runs the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management, while the Department of Agriculture runs the Forest Service. This means that the federal government must improve forest practices, such as reducing the fuel load, which can prevent forest fires.

Until recently, more than 50% of the U.S. Forest Service’s budget was devoted to fire suppression, leaving little money for fire prevention. The 2018 Consolidated Appropriations Act sought to address this problem by allowing Congress to appropriate federal disaster funding to Interior and Agriculture for wildfire management. This is a welcome but short-term fix because a massive infusion of resources into fire prevention is required.

But funding alone will not work if policies risk getting litigated or subjected to Congressional inquiries, often at the behest of environmental groups. It is true that active forest management could harm species protection, and some timber companies could misuse active forest management policies. The wounds of the timber wars over the spotted owl have yet to heal. But with distrust between environmental groups and timber companies, and multiple veto points in the policy system, changes are slow. Given the scale of the wildfires, perhaps all the actors need to rethink their tactics and priorities. There is some progress here. In August 2020, California’s governor announced a plan with the U.S. Forest Service to jointly thin a million acres of forests annually by 2025. This could provide a template for more aggressive thinning policies in the rest of the U.S.

Wildfires accounted for about a fourth of global CO2 emissions. The 2018 wildfire in California, which burned about 2 million acres, contributed 15% of the state’s carbon emissions, a figure comparable to its electricity carbon footprint. Forest management can contribute both to climate mitigation and climate adaptation: removing dead trees or thinning forests increases carbon emissions, but also reduces potential emissions if the forests were to burn. One way to incentivize forest management could be to start counting wildfire-induced emissions in state-level emissions. Thus, states aiming for zero-emission targets will need to factor in their wildfire policies.  

Will the 2020 wildfires bring about policy change? The 1910 Big Blowup Fire played an important role in shaping the newly created US Forest Service. During that fire, Ed Pulaski, a forest ranger in Idaho, and his firefighting crew faced imminent fire danger. Pulaski’s quick actions saved the lives of 38 firefighters. He emerged as a national icon, and his leadership shaped the national narrative on wildfires. Unfortunately, the 2020 wildfires are encouraging conflict and conspiracy theories. The country urgently needs a Pulaski to construct a national narrative on how to do better in the future.

Even if Biden wins the Presidency, the Democrats take control of the Senate, and West Coast states achieve their zero-emission grid targets, the wildfire challenge will remain. A new approach to fire mitigation and firefighting is required. Of course, if Trump is reelected, all bets are off about the future game plan.