
America in flames - Futurebot
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21664146-future-countrys-north-west-hot-and-smoky-america-flames
======
textingplan
As a Coloradan, this is something that we have been especially hard hit by.
More and more people are living in/around our national forests in the
mountains. Naturally, they don't want to deal with fires, nor the remnants
left behind (charred landscape for a decade or more.)

But as this article alludes to, it _has_ to burn. It does naturally. We have
to let go - we are wasting valuable resources to fight these fires. People
have _died_ fighting these fires. And for what? So your house doesn't burn
down?

I'm sorry, but a fire is typically a slow-moving natural disaster. It rarely
strikes without a fair warning. I've been saying for years now that if you
live in a potential burn area, know where your irreplaceables are, carry fire
insurance, evacuate and LET IT BURN.

We can't keep fighting nature and winning.

~~~
foldor
Just to play devil's advocate. What about the amount of greenhouse gases
released by the fires? We're clearly not succeeding in reducing our greenhouse
gases, so why not reduce it where we can?

~~~
evgen
You mean the greenhouse gasses that were originally sequestered by the forest
into a cellulose matrix and which were inevitably going to be re-released when
the tree died and the wood rotted? Yeah, I don't think the process works the
way you think it does.

~~~
msandford
Most of the time when wood rots, it still sequesters CO2. If it didn't, you
wouldn't be able to create soil through the accumulation of biomass. All the
dirt would be mineral only, and no black soil would exist anywhere. The
blackness of black soil is due primarily to carbon. Which isn't floating
around in the air.

~~~
CamperBob2
Seems like the difference in timescale between soil creation and wood
decomposition would argue against sequestration occurring "most of the time."
Soil biomass might represent only 1% or so of decomposition products. But I
haven't seen any actual figures...

~~~
msandford
Trees are big and take up a lot of room, but there's way way way more dirt
than trees. Good soil is actually upwards of 5% organic matter which is non-
trivial. 5% of all the good dirt left in the world is a very big number and
probably dominates the weight of trees on the planet.

------
gdubs
This has been a problem in Malibu, California for some time now. The issue
there is that controlled burns are necessary, but there is chronic NIMBYism
due to the fact that the controlled burns result in a charred, ugly landscape.
[1]

If I recall correctly, California was actually on fire when the first settlers
sailed up along the coast. The native population used to burn the coast
annually.

It's a tremendous cost (both financial, and the lives of firefighters lost) to
support housing development in an area that's not really suited for it.

1: [http://www.amazon.com/Ecology-Fear-Angeles-Imagination-
Disas...](http://www.amazon.com/Ecology-Fear-Angeles-Imagination-
Disaster/dp/0375706070/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8)

~~~
kuschku
> It's a tremendous cost to support housing development in an area that's not
> really suited for it.

Be it deserts, be it wildfires, be it floods – this is a huge issue, and just
continuing to fight against nature is not easy.

Well, unless you are the dutch, but they can only keep their cities safe of
floods because they keep floodplains for the rivers.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
And they are deeply committed to their flood defence infrastructure. They even
have a democratically elected regional government dealing only with this. [1]

They are also moving houses out of the flood plain to make it work. The
culture in the U.S. Would make that really hard I think. Lots to read about it
here. [http://www.dutchwatersector.com](http://www.dutchwatersector.com)

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_board#Netherlands](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_board#Netherlands)

------
astazangasta
An acquaintance working on her forestry PhD told this story more like: some
species are adapted to produce forest fires. Pines lay down beds of dry needle
and produce compounds that promote flammability. This is their strategy for
getting ahead. She also described an interspecies war to claim territory:
pines trying to make more fire to burn out their competition, oaks promoting
damp and moisture to drown out theirs.

In the future when we all live in the sky, a burning mountain will be a great
spectacle that we travel to see. "It's fire season, I'm going north to catch
the show this week."

~~~
A_COMPUTER
I was shown a pine cone once that snapped open when burned, enabling its seeds
to pop out. It was explained to me that fire was a necessary part of the
tree's lifecycle, and that this is why logging isn't a suitable substitute for
fires.

~~~
zevyoura
A similar (or maybe the same) species is mentioned in the article: "The jack
pine depends on fire to melt the hard resin that encases its seeds."

------
SandersAK
The biggest problem has been reducing the ladder fuel (underbrush etc). The
fuels dept is notoriously understaffed and underfunded for national forest
service. On top of his, it's difficult to convince locals to deal with lots of
controlled burns in winter and spring.

Logging practices have gotten better, especially with dispersed thinning, but
my gut is hat climate change is the real culprit.

Also, lodge pole pine is becoming more dominant in the PNW, and we're losing
more fire resistant (and dependent) trees like ponderosa. Lodge pole grows
like a weed and burns like hay.

Couple this with an antiquated federal service entirely dependent on chain of
command that fights every year to preserve operations and their career posts
and you get one of the most wasteful inefficient services in U.S. Govt.

Source: I was a forest firefighter and left after being fed up w the
bureaucracy. So take my cynicism w a grain of salt.

~~~
hackuser
> my gut is hat climate change is the real culprit.

Whether or not this particular incident is caused by it, climate change is and
will create massive costs for society, from forest fires, to coastal cities
flooding, to water and food shortages, to all the associated mitigations and
social consequences (wars, starvation, migrations, etc.). Who should pay for
all of it? These are massive externalities dumped on the public by the fossil
fuel industry and, to be fair, by the very many users of fossil fuel,
including me. However, I didn't conduct a propaganda campaign that has turned
a problem into this catastrophe.

Regarding this particular situation: I'm not sure a particular fire can be
directly linked to climate change. Climate change will make some places
wetter, some drier, some warmer, some cooler. The _average_ temperature
globally is increasing, but that's an average over a huge area (also, does
someone happen to know about humidity and rainfall?).

~~~
SandersAK
Def agree that it's more complicated but PNWhas record dryness and heat last
five years. An the level tho you're right and it warrants more inspection than
my cursory gut check.

------
ptrklly
We can't perfectly suppress fire on a natural landscape. And the act of trying
increases the risk that when a fire does start it will become huge and
uncontrollable because small trees and forest undergrowth—which would have
burned in a small fire if we’d not suppressed them--act as kindling that
speeds the ignition of mature trees.

More frequent removals of biomass through controlled burns and selective
timber harvest can reduce the risk that a hugely catastrophic wildfire occurs.
Hotter and bigger fires consume disproportionately more carbon than a series
of "normal" fires, particularly in the soil. So more regular and controlled
burns improve the landscape's ability to act as a greenhouse gas sink.

I worked with a forester in Oregon on this issue (at the time my work was
focused on greenhouse gas accounting). It all gets a lot more complicated and
messy, but there's good progress going on right now to try to move toward a
more sensible fire management regime rather than the pure suppression. It's
also better for animal habitat and human safety.

[http://www.oregon.gov/ODF/BOARD/docs/2011_March/BOFATTCH_201...](http://www.oregon.gov/ODF/BOARD/docs/2011_March/BOFATTCH_20110309_J_02.pdf)

------
sudo_bang_bang
As people have stated here, the forests need to burn. Ponderosa Pine, which
covers a lot of the Western U.S., burns at a cycle between 5-25 years. [1]

However, we could and already do, control the natural process this through
prescribed burns. The issue is the federal government is appropriating less
funds to the Department of the Interior and Forest Service. In fact 2016 will
represent, "a decrease of $246 million below the fiscal year 2015." [2]
Climate change could potentially shorten these life cycles. We definitely need
to spend more to ensure safety and survival of homes and the forest.

[1][http://www.nps.gov/fire/wildland-fire/learning-
center/fire-i...](http://www.nps.gov/fire/wildland-fire/learning-center/fire-
in-depth/different-ecosystems/ponderosa-pine.cfm) [2]
[http://appropriations.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Doc...](http://appropriations.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=394247)

------
arca_vorago
I grew up where two very large fires happened in AZ, the Rodeo-Chediski fire
and the Wallow, and I have spent quite a bit of time in those forests, as has
my grandfather who was a logger in the area in the 70's. My takeaway is that
the forest service spent too much time listening to freshly degreed
environmentalists and not enough time listening to locals who know the forest,
and have created unintended consequences of huge fires through their
insistence against thinning of forests, especially after the pine beetle
infestation got crazy. All the old loggers, including my grandfather, were
saying we needed to be thinning the forest out, because they were interrupting
the normal natural cycle of forest burn through lighting, etc, and by doing
preburns too small. I admit I didn't believe he was right, until the fire
happened and we all realized that it was mismanagement by the BLM and Forest
Service that caused the unnecessary level of devastation.

It makes me wonder if the same thing is happening in other forest areas in the
west.

On a side note, I am wondering how much of the lack of moisture is due to
unintended consequences of cloud seeding in other areas. Every year I can
remember there has been less and less snowfall, which is critical for forests
health in the summer, even during the 90's El-Nino.

~~~
maxcasey
Well you're not wrong actually. The Forest Service took over fire management
for most of the country in the early 1900's (1910 I think?) and did what fire
fighters do best - put fires out. Today we understand that just putting the
fire out isn't always the best long term course of action though...

I will say that we are seeing hotter and drier fire seasons than before. While
this isn't entirely a result of the lack of moisture, it definitely doesn't
help.

------
skrebbel
Offtopic, but I thought it was funny:

I got a "YOU HAVE REACHED YOUR ARTICLE LIMIT" banner after the first
paragraph, but the banner looked so much like all the other _crap_ on the site
that I had looked over it. I spent 2 entire minutes figuring out where the
hell the rest of the article was.

I think paywalls are a pretty good idea so no comment there, but if you want
people to sign up, at least make sure the place is otherwise void of mess so
people can find the "buy" button.

~~~
bainsfather
In firefox, you can 'open link in new private window' \- as long as you only
have one article open at a time, you can read as many articles as you want.

btw - The Economist has had poor business execution for at least the last 2
decades - a nice irony given how they like to lecture others on how to run
things.

~~~
hackuser
> The Economist has had poor business execution for at least the last 2
> decades

IIRC, they are one of the most successful magazines in the world, with rapidly
growing readership and revenue.

~~~
bainsfather
Their publication/journalism is rather good.

My experience (and others' I know) of buying subscriptions has been a pain -
mail sent to totally incorrect address, also time between signing up and
delivery being many weeks.

Their on-line subscription used to allow many tens of people to use 1 account,
simultaneously (I cannot be sure whether this was a clever way to increase
readership&advertising revenue, or whether their systems didn't detect
multiple simultaneous logins from different countries on 1 account).

It is possible to have a fine product, but poor execution on the
business/commercial side. e.g. many UK football clubs have historically had a
fine product (rights to view football matches etc) but have failed to make the
most of it in a business sense. Some have been commercially successful,
despite squandering income opportunities.

------
Zmetta
Too many environmentally minded people are under the impression that
environmental preservation means holding an ecological system in stasis to
prevent change. I think this is a decent article showing a few of the reasons
that those ideas need a little rethinking on what it means to help the
environment.

~~~
ghouse
Disagree: Environmentalists (at least here in California) understand that fire
has a role in forest management. Parties opposed to that course of action are
the homeowners in the forests and portions of the timber industry who would
prefer to log the unnaturally dense forests (caused by fire suppression).

~~~
sp332
From the other side of the country, I'm glad to know there are some sane
environmentalists in CA. We only hear about the stupid ones over here.

~~~
XorNot
It's worth considering that this angle is frequently and aggressively pushed
by parties which want to discredit all environmentalists for various reasons.

~~~
sp332
Or all Californians :)

~~~
sageikosa
One decent underwater rock-slide in Hawaii will end the need to debate
conservation in California. Likewise in the Azores for New Jersey. Nature
doesn't judge nor plan, it just happens.

------
programnature
Fukuyama's recent book Political Order and Political Decay goes into some
detail on the forest service, from its origins as a model of a modern
effective government agency in the Progressive era to one captured by special
interests and turned ineffective by conflicting mandates from congress.

------
petewailes
How about just stop building houses near places where they're going to light
on fire? And stop building them on floodplains while we're at it. Or anywhere
else that, you know, is a bloody stupid place to put a house. It's not like
there's no room to put them in a more sensible place. If you know it's not
just possible but likely that the house will be seriously damaged or destroyed
within ten years or so, it's probably best not to build it.

Madness.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Good point. Areas around major faultlines should be off limits too.

~~~
kbenson
There are good reasons to build in _some_ of the areas that are prone to
disasters. Much of the west coast is fault lines, but there are extremely
lucrative ports there as well.

I think the real problem is that the people are bad at planning for things
that happen on the timescale of many types of disasters, so we need to combat
this deficiency. E.g. Requiring insurance for disaster areas over a certain
level, pseudo-pooling by level to increase cost for worse areas, etc.

The big problem is the existing populace, which may be priced out of their
homes. You could probably ameliorate those problems by only enforcing the new
requirements on sale/inheritance of existing homes or new buildings.
Eventually the market will adjust.

------
tdaltonc
This is easy to say from Britain, since they cut all the trees down more than
100 years ago.

~~~
saryant
They have correspondents in the US.

------
innertracks
What and where people choose to build in a given environment is a curiosity.
I've looked at property east of the Cascades over the years. Probably never
happen as I definitely feel the pull of the ocean more.

If I ever built over there I figured I would build a house like this guy's
house. [http://inhabitat.com/this-concrete-dome-home-survived-a-
wall...](http://inhabitat.com/this-concrete-dome-home-survived-a-wall-of-
flames-without-a-scorch-mark/)

------
lisa_henderson
This article has an innocence that seems almost willfully blind. They write:

"But assiduous firefighting is also to blame."

They don't spend much time talking about the most obvious force that drives
the "assiduous firefighting". The expansion of the suburbs have pushed human
habitation out into what used to be the middle of a forest. Also, the
increased popularity of what is sometimes referred to as "country living" but
which is really a form of low density suburban living, has added to the trend.

The point is, areas that used to be free of humans now have a bunch of $1.2
million dollar homes. And thus you have an affluent demographic that is
pushing hard for "assiduous firefighting". And that trend will continue so
long as the suburbs continue to expand, which will likely be a long time.

The article has a tone that suggests policy makers are simply making an
mistake by engaging in "assiduous firefighting". Overlooking the political
forces that drive this make it difficult to understand why it is difficult to
stop.

~~~
seiji
Tangentially related: it's almost a "capitalism vs. nature" problem.

We see it in SF/SV even today. Hundreds (thousands?) of companies are hiring
employees and moving them _into_ a resource starved state because it's good
for their growing startups.

We need some rule like: if your company hires someone and moves them to
California for employment, your company should pay to relocate 2 to 5 families
(voluntarily) outside of California.

~~~
jessaustin
Every other state in the union would applaud California for such foresight.

------
DarkTree
What are everyone's thoughts on natural disasters being overall beneficial for
the environment?

Just because forest fires occur naturally, and would spread naturally without
human intervention, does that necessarily mean they are beneficial for the
earth?

If humans didn't try to put out forest fires, and perhaps by chance many
lightning strikes caused fires all across the northern west coast within a
small timeframe, would this still be a net positive for the ecosytem?

I don't know enough about the equilibrium.

~~~
ambicapter
Well, fires have been happening for a long time, so long that some species
have adapted to it (pine cones only opening up and releasing seeds when
exposed to high heat being one of them), so I can only assume that the
ecosystem has learned to deal with it.

------
unreal37
An interesting thought that you don't hear expressed in the mainstream media -
letting small fires burn a little longer prevents big fires.

~~~
ihsw
I was under the impression that it was part of a regular fire safety program
in all public schools (mentioned once at the very least) -- they're known as
controlled burns[1].

Prescribed burning[2] has been present in forest fire management for centuries
across the world, a practice which was largely discontinued in the US (and
recently re-introduced).

NIMBY folks don't care for it because of the risk of outbreak (of which is
minimal as those doing it are knowledgeable and it is done in a _generally_
controlled environment) and the fact that it is unsightly and that minor smoke
inhalation is unpleasant.

It's not a matter of _letting small fires burn_ but rather _continuing the
time-honored tradition of proper forestry management_. As mentioned, the US
Forest Service discontinued this practice after enacting a policy of
_suppressing all fires_.

I'm not even going to get into the issue of civilization encroaching upon
nature and the risk surrounding it. Wildfires that consume large percentages
of a given state (well above 20% in some cases) are far less forgiving than
coyotes and brown bears.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_burn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_burn)

[2]
[http://bcwildfire.ca/prevention/PrescribedFire/](http://bcwildfire.ca/prevention/PrescribedFire/)

------
fitchjo
Reminds me of the joke that if a forest firefighter woke up in the middle of
the night and saw his house was on fire, he would go light his neighbor's
house on fire to fight it.

------
ejcx
Anyone else notice the date on this article is wrong ? I first expected this
to be something about 9/11\. I read the date to see when it was published, and
it is from tomorrow!

~~~
notwhereyouare
it is apparently for the print edition, so it may be for tomorrows print?

~~~
ihsw
That is correct.

[http://www.economist.com/printedition/covers/2015-09-10/ap-e...](http://www.economist.com/printedition/covers/2015-09-10/ap-
e-eu-la-me-na-uk)

Contrary to the URL, this 'America in Flames' article is for next week's issue
(Sept 12-18).

