The wildfires raging through Southern California neighborhoods from the Pacific Palisades to Pasadena are horrifying and tragic. I feel profound sadness for my friends who have lost homes and businesses. My own connection to the Palisades neighborhood began twelve years ago almost to the day, when in my first act as a Los Angeles public official, I joined the Department of Water and Power to inaugurate a solar installation at the Palisades Pit Stop car wash subsidized by the city. That car wash now appears to be within the active fire zone.
Although these wildfires have intensely local effects, they are attributable, at least to a small degree, to global climate change caused by the greenhouse gas emissions of major economies around the world.
The California wildfires offer a concrete example for how to apply an approach I call “climate realism” to understanding the threat of climate change to U.S. interests and adopting a pragmatic stance in response. Here are five ways to contextualize the unfolding tragedy through the lens of climate realism.
Perilous levels of climate change this century are inevitable. Climate realism starts by acknowledging the hard reality that the world is virtually certain to miss climate targets such as limiting global warming above preindustrial levels to 2⁰C (3.6⁰F) by century-end or achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions close to midcentury. The United States should prepare for the most likely outcome, which currently includes average warming in excess of 3⁰C (5.4⁰F) by century-end. U.S. wildfire intensity will continue to rise as a result of climate change—alongside other impacts from droughts to heat waves to intense hurricanes.
Already today, Los Angeles is roughly 3⁰C warmer than preindustrial levels—double the global average warming—increasing the risk of hot and dry conditions conducive to wildfires. By midcentury, climate change could make California wildfires more than 7 percent more intense, and by the year 2100, that figure could multiply dramatically. Although some studies forecast Santa Ana winds reducing in intensity during some parts of the year, the net effect of climate change on Southern California wildfires owing to winter wind speeds and hotter and drier conditions is still unclear.
Adaptation to climate change is the best immediate policy option. The most tractable and obvious way to reduce California wildfire risk in the future is not to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which are a tiny and dwindling component of future global emissions this century. There are pragmatic actions that the federal, state, and local governments can take to reduce wildfire carnage to human life and property. Here are three examples:
- More stringent building codes and regulations. As climate change exacerbates the intensity of natural disasters from wildfires to storms, more stringent infrastructure regulations in at-risk locations can limit the economic fallout and damage. The proliferation of man-made structures in Southern California’s traditional wildland areas has moved the urban interface into riskier areas. Structures should either be built to much higher standards or not built at all in locations that are at a higher risk to climate disasters.
- Less distorted insurance incentives. Well-intentioned insurance regulators seek to limit cost increases of property insurance but end up distorting the incentives for economic development in risky areas. The result is a tragic cycle of disasters, costly government and taxpayer bailouts, and rebuilt infrastructure in the same risky areas. National, state, and local regulators should transition to insurance regulations that expose property owners to the full actuarial cost—including reinsurance costs—of living in coastal areas at risk of flooding and hurricanes or areas with proven wildfire risk. The near-term repercussions of doing so (e.g., expensive and limited insurance causing the depopulation of risky areas) pale in comparison to the long-term security and fiscal benefits of encouraging economic development in areas less prone to climate-exacerbated disasters.
- Fuel reduction. California should more decisively reduce the build-up of dangerous brush through mechanical brush removal and prescribed burns. There are tortuous environmental review processes, such as the National Environmental Policy Act, that prevent or slow this. Congress and the California state government should swiftly reform these processes and invest much more heavily in fuel reduction to further limit the costs of future wildfires.
Continue reading at the source (Council of Foreign Relations)
Leave a Reply