We must adapt to wildfires

Prof. Crystal Kolden persuasively argues that the western U.S. must adapt to wildfires rather than trying to prevent them. Her opening paragraphs, in fact, are a direct rebuke to our domestic Dear Leader's uninformed drivelling: "there is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor.”

Rather than indulging our knee-jerk impulse to ban human habitation in fire-prone areas, which Kolden accurately notes penalizes those who have been priced out of other areas in California, Kolden suggests, "we should take a cue from the Dutch":

Much of the Netherlands sits below sea level and is therefore prone to flooding, but the Dutch can’t exactly move en masse next door to Germany. So they have learned over the centuries that the solution is to stop fighting the sea, and build their cities and towns to maximize saving lives through smarter planning and infrastructure. We could do the same with wildfire.

Kolden notes that a few communities already have undertaken such measures as mandating fire breaks around homes and requiring fire-resistant building materials. Best practices will vary according to local conditions and resources.

We also shouldn't blindly follow the vision Trump clearly embraces, though he didn't come right out and say it, the vision of rapacious logging and clear-cutting. I would bet he has the cartoonish idea that if you only rid yourself of trees, you rid yourself of wildfires, too. That idea is idiotic (which is why I suspect Trump holds it: he has never met an idiotic idea he didn't love). Logging may be a component of future wildfire mitigation but that's far from certain. As with so many other things, it would be best for our domestic Dear Leader to keep his trap shut and let people who study and understand such problems come up with ideas and recommendations.

Another bit of adaptation that Kolden didn't mention, but that millions of Californians are all too painfully aware is needed, is to the threat of smoke and soot. Because of unusually gentle winds, the Camp Fire in northern California has bathed the populous Bay Area and much of the nearby San Joaquin Valley in unhealthful levels of smoke. There is no escape from the bad air for millions; even the "N95" masks designed to filter out dangerous particulate matter carry their own risks, according to the Sacramento County Department of Health Services, whether the masks are used correctly or not. Granting that the stagnant air is unusual for this area, now that the possibility for this confluence of bad conditions has been made manifest, we need to think about how to respond to it.