Geoff: It is good to be with
you.
We begin tonight with new
Mexico, where thousands of
firefighters are battling a
colossal wildfire, now the
largest in state history.
Part of the blaze was caused by
spot fires from a prescribed, or
intentional, burn.
But it's also fueled by
abnormally warm, windy and dry
weather.
The fire has destroyed hundreds
of buildings and forced
thousands of evacuations.
A historic drought -- the worst
in over a millennium -- coupled
with climate change has led to
longer and more destructive
wildfires across the west.
This is all happening as rising
housing prices are pushing
people further into fire-prone
areas at the edges of wildlands.
For more on this, I spoke with
Michael Mann.
He is a professor of atmospheric
science at Penn state university
and author of "The new climate
war: The fight to take back our
planet."
We started by talking about what
accounts for the scale of the
New Mexico wildfire.
Michael: This is a tragedy that
we're seeing play out.
You know, it doesn't really
matter much what starts these
fires, whether it's a prescribed
burn, whether it's a lightning
strike, what determines the
scale, how fast they spread, how
wide they spread, how hot they
burn, how much damage they do
ultimately is a function of how
much fuel there is, how much
sort of dry wood and other
material that's available to
catch on fire.
And that is a function of how
dry the climate is.
So, you know, we are seeing
record levels of drought over a
large part of the western U.S.
Year after year.
Right now, a substantial part of
the western U.S. Is in either
extreme or exceptional drought.
So you take that extreme
drought, you combine it with
that heat, the warming that
we're seeing, and you get these
unprecedented wildfires that
we've seen play out in
California, Colorado, Arizona,
New Mexico, Oregon, Washington,
parts of Canada in recent years.
It's not rocket science.
You combine the heat and the
drought.
You get these sorts of
devastating wildfires.
Geoff: What should be done about
it, given the exceptional
drought across parts of the
western U.S.?
Michael: Well, you know,
ultimately, the only way to
prevent all of this from getting
worse, from it getting drier and
hotter and seeing even more
widespread, even more
destructive and more deadly
wildfires is to solve the
problem, you know, at its core,
which is our ongoing burning of
fossil fuels and the increased
carbon pollution in the
atmosphere that is warming up
the climate.
There are things that we can do
to try to increase our
resilience, move away from
especially, you know, wildfire
prone regions, taking adaptive
measures to try to cope with the
increased risk that we're now
seeing.
But ultimately, we are stuck
with that.
We are stuck with these levels
of elevated risk that we're
going to have to deal with.
And if we don't stop warming up
the planet through carbon
pollution, it will get worse and
worse.
Geoff: I'm struck by the
connection between housing
policy and climate policy.
Given that housing is so
unaffordable across so many
parts of the country to include
the west.
You have people moving further
and further out into these
wildfire Zones, how should we
rethink housing policy in ways
that are sort of climate
responsible?
Michael: As many as a thousand
homes are likely to be lost in
this wildfire.
We need to ultimately move away
from those increasingly risk
prone areas and we need policies
that incentivize that.
Ultimately, folks who live in
these sorts of regions are going
to find it more and more
difficult to get insurance, to
get home insurance.
And as I've said before,
uninsurability is sort of the
first step along that path to
uninhabitability.
And that's what we're coping
with now.
Geoff: Yeah.
Given the vast amount of writing
and research you've done on this
topic, how do you guard against
climate defeatism, this sense
that this problem is so vast,
it's so complicated, it
oftentimes seems like there's
not a whole lot that we can do
about it, how do you advise
people against that?
Michael: Here is something that
we can do.
We can get off fossil fuels.
And the science here, in a
sense, is encouraging.
The science over the last decade
or so is shown us that if we
stop putting carbon pollution
into the atmosphere, if we stop,
you know, with these ongoing
carbon emissions, then the
warming stabilizes fairly
quickly.
So there is an immediate and
direct impact of our efforts to
decarbonize.
We can prevent warming from
crossing certain catastrophic
thresholds like one and a half
degrees celsius, three degrees
fahrenheit warming, where we
will start to see some of the
worst impacts of climate change.
There's still time to do that.
But, you know, there is agency.
We can still do it, but there is
urgency.
We have to reduce global carbon
emissions by 50% within the next
decade if we are to keep warming
below that catastrophic level.
And that's going to require
policy.
That's going to require
politicians who are willing to
support climate friendly
policies.
And that means us voting for
those politicians who will act
on our behalf rather than acting
as rubber stamps for polluters.
Geoff: Agency and urgency.
Michael Mann, thanks again for
your time and for your insights.
We appreciate it.