A few years ago, when I was part of a crew fighting a series of large wildfires in California’s wilderness, my bosses told me, “This isn’t normal.” Climate change was making the wildfires bigger, faster and harder to stop. It seemed like only a matter of time before the conditions grew dangerous enough to threaten some of California’s biggest cities, including Los Angeles.
Parts of Los Angeles have been burning for over a week, and with at least 12,000 structures damaged or destroyed, the Palisades and Eaton fires are among the most destructive in U.S. history. The science is clear: To prevent catastrophic fires like these, we must stop burning fossil fuels and use controlled burns to reduce the available kindling. But President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration may hinder our ability to do either.
By re-electing Mr. Trump, Americans have significantly increased the odds that such disasters will happen more frequently, and with more intensity, in the future. Mr. Trump plans to expand fossil fuel extraction, waive environmental protections, block renewable energy development and withdraw again from the Paris climate accord. So far, key designees for his cabinet have denied or misrepresented basic climate science, and those who have been named to wield the power to regulate the fossil fuel industry seem most likely to prop it up.
To add insult to injury, Mr. Trump and his allies have used the Los Angeles wildfires as an opportunity to continue sowing division. Mr. Trump made false claims about the state’s water allocation. Elon Musk, who is co-leading the Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory panel, blamed the city’s diversity initiatives for the fires.
Mr. Musk, who once positioned himself as a leader in the fight against climate change, has recently downplayed climate risks. In August, in a forum on X, the social media platform he owns, Mr. Musk speculated that humans could more than double the carbon in the atmosphere before experiencing its effects, which he suggested would be limited to headaches and nausea.
With carbon levels in the atmosphere hovering around 425 parts per million — already the highest in human history — the United States is in fact burning, overheating and flooding like never before. The months leading up to the Los Angeles wildfires were among the hottest and driest on record in California, during the hottest year on record for the planet. Heat without precipitation turns vegetation into kindling and primes it to burn violently.
We can mitigate the risk of catastrophic wildfires with prescribed burns. By reducing brush and other tinder, these small, intentional fires are among the most effective tools for averting large fires in wilderness areas and help to prevent them from spreading into urban areas, too.
In 2018, after visiting the ruins of Paradise, Calif., where 85 people were killed by the Camp fire, Mr. Trump appeared to support reducing the risk of dangerous fires. He said “you’ve got to take care of the floors,” referring to the forest, and threatened to withhold disaster aid from California for not doing enough of it.
The problem is that nearly half of California’s land, including swaths now burning around Los Angeles, is federally managed, while only roughly three percent is under state jurisdiction. This means that wildfire mitigation in California is predominantly the responsibility of the federal government. And it’s why the Republican trifecta in Washington does not bode well for preventing catastrophic wildfires.
Forest management on federal lands requires public investment because, while wildfires are extraordinarily costly, the business of fuel reduction typically doesn’t yield much profit. To prepare land for a controlled burn, foresters typically first remove commercially worthless vegetation from the understory — low-lying vegetation beneath the forest canopy — in a process called “thinning.” This takes government funding, both for projects and for people.
Years of cuts to the Forest Service’s budget and low pay for workers have led to a staffing crisis on our public lands: The most experienced people often leave for better-paying jobs with state agencies or private contractors. One district ranger in the Mendocino National Forest told me he needs hundreds of full-time workers to manage his 500,000 acres. He only has 20.
Instead of addressing staffing shortages on the lands the federal government manages, Republicans have proposed making them worse. Project 2025, a right-wing governing blueprint prepared for the incoming administration, calls for deep across-the-board cuts to the federal work force, which would plausibly include a rollback of pay and benefits.
If cutbacks reach the Forest Service, they would all but guarantee fewer prescribed burns, less capacity to fight fires at their onset and increased vulnerability to the extremes of climate change. Project 2025 compounds this risk by calling for wildfire mitigation strategies that do “not depend heavily on burning,” such as increased logging. which would further harm already climate-stressed ecosystems.
The grim reality is that California’s ability to manage its forests may be severely limited without a commitment from the federal government. Though state and local agencies will continue to manage lands and fight fires, communities will also have to take matters into their own hands, and they should create prescribed burn associations to reduce the risk around them. Homeowners should build with fire-resistant materials, while also making evacuation plans and keeping go-kits at the ready.
In the coming years, we must remember that these fires aren’t inevitable. They are the violent consequences of our politics. Megafires are a choice.
