The unspoken truth about wildfires

By Matt Ridley. Excerpts:

"wildfires are getting less frequent worldwide, not more, as the globe warms. The acreage burned has decreased steadily since 2000, according to NASA’s satellites, and is thought to have almost halved in a century. The great fires of 1871 in Wisconsin and Michigan burned more than a million hectares long before anybody drove a car"

"this year is an unusually quiet year for wildfire: so quiet it is breaking records for lack of fires by this date, even in Europe. If you don’t believe me, check the figures produced by the Global Wildfire Information System: as of last week, the world had seen 106 million hectares burn this year, the lowest at this date since these records began in 2012. In Europe, just 3.6 million hectares have burned—less than half the average for this date."

"It has been known for many decades that in fire-prone habitats, the longer you go without a fire, the worse the fires will be. So preventing the build-up of tinder by controlled burns is the most important factor."

Here in Britain the government has consistently and relentlessly demanded less ‘cool’ burning—low-intensity, controlled fires—in winter on heather moorland, Britain’s most fire-prone habitat. Such fires have been used by farmers and gamekeepers for generations to create a mosaic of short and long heather. This encourages fresh young heather shoots for sheep and grouse to feed on and makes open areas for rare birds such as golden plover and curlew to nest in. If done in winter it can burn off the rank heather plants while leaving the moss underneath barely touched, as demonstrated by a famous video in which a gamekeeper places a Mars bar in the moss, lights a fierce fire over it, then picks up the unscorched, unmelted chocolate bar, unwraps it and eats it.

Natural England argues that regular cool burning harms the habitat; researchers at York University and elsewhere argue the opposite: that it encourages the growth of sphagnum moss and other species by letting light in. But both sides agree that regular cool burns can dramatically reduce the risk of much more damaging wildfires, which burn down through the moss layer and into the peat. Cutting heather instead is less effective but better than nothing. Yet Natural England has banned heather burning on deep peat altogether and is pushing hard to limit it further everywhere—or at least tie it up in complicated licensing rules. As a result, the fuel load on heather moorland has been increasing; in places the heather is now waist-deep. The National Fire Chiefs Council warned last year that such restrictions on heather management would increase ‘the danger to firefighters and the public’."

"The authorities know their policies increase the fire risks. Here is what the Cairngorm National Park says in its Integrated Wildfire Management Plan about plans to increase shrubs and other vegetation by reducing deer and stopping burning: ‘These habitats will take many years to develop and during the intervening period fuel loads will increase, as will the corresponding need for fire risk mitigation.’ So they knew the risk was increasing. But little was done. John Kirk, a board member of the Cairngorms National Park Authority, told the Strathspey Herald: ‘Everyone is furious… the entire Abernethy forest has no firebreaks.’"

2026 is the quietest year for wild fires in Europe by some distance

From Matt Ridley.

 

 

 

 

More on Government Ownership of Land, Wildfires, and the Advantages of Private Stewardship

By Lawrence J. McQuillan. He is a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute.

"I recently published two commentaries on why private stewardship of land decreases wildfire risks compared to federal and state governments owning and managing the land: “Private Ownership of Forests and Land Reduces Wildfires” (published in 78 newspapers across the country, August 20, 2025), and “Rescue ‘Stranded’ Federal Lands by Selling It” (published in The American Spectator, September 8, 2025).

Since publishing those commentaries, I ran across two more scholarly journal articles that support my thesis that private stewardship of land tends to reduce wildfire risks compared to government ownership.

In 2024, Liang Diao and Huiqian Song published a paper in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management titled “Does Improved Tenure Security Reduce Fires? Evidence from the Greece Land Registry.” The researchers found that strengthening private property rights for agricultural land in fire-prone Greece from 2014 to 2019 resulted in “large declines” in wildfires (17 percent), burned areas (39 percent), and associated air pollution (18 percent). Those reductions are significant.

The researchers found that “the observed reduction in fires is likely attributable to private landowners rather than public services, as it predominantly occurs in areas remote from local fire stations. This suggests that landowners are intensifying their efforts in both fire prevention and suppression. . . . [F]ires in Greece can be decreased through incentivizing land owners to reduce fuel loads and fire-prone landscapes.”

Diao and Song concluded, “Our findings indicate that strengthening property rights can lead to more sustainable farming practices and promote long-term land investment, thereby reducing fire hazards.” Part of that investment involved “stocking more fire-suppression equipment.” The study demonstrated that the benefits of more secure private property rights over land, particularly fewer wildfires, are not confined to the United States.

In 2018, Carlin Frances Starrs, Van Butsic, Connor Stephens, and William Stewart, all professors at the University of California, Berkeley, published a paper in Environmental Research Letters titled “The Impact of Land Ownership, Firefighting, and Reserve Status on Fire Probability in California.” The researchers examined average fire probability in California from 1950 to 2015 (involving more than 13,000 unique fires) and found that “federal ownership and [federal] firefighting was associated with increased fire probability,” and “the difference in fire probability on federal versus non-federal lands is increasing over time.” Those findings are worrisome.

Perhaps most importantly, federal ownership of land was found to have “much greater influence” on fire probability than climate factors such as temperature, precipitation, and topsoil moisture, a strong argument in favor of less federal control of land, especially in fire-prone California. Federal land ownership and federal firefighting decisions play critical roles in increasing wildfire probability in California.

Those two studies, and others, support the conclusion that private stewards are better incentivized than government bureaucrats to undertake the difficult work of fire-risk mitigation through active land management.

Private stewardship of land properly aligns incentives with effective, innovative, and cost-efficient fire prevention that saves lives, preserves property and restores forest health. Wildfires can’t be eliminated, but their incidence and severity can be minimized.

Below is a list of scholarly research supporting the thesis that private stewardship of land reduces wildfire risks and/or government ownership of land increases wildfire risks. I will update the list as I discover more papers:

Ana M. G. Barros, Michelle A. Day, Thomas A. Spies, and Alan A. Ager, “Effects of Ownership Patterns on Cross-Boundary Wildfires,” Scientific Reports v11, September 2021.

Carlin Frances Starrs, Van Butsic, Connor Stephens, and William Stewart, “The Impact of Land Ownership, Firefighting, and Reserve Status on Fire Probability in California,” Environmental Research Letters v13, February 2018.

Liang Diao and Huiqian Song, “Does Improved Tenure Security Reduce Fires? Evidence from the Greece Land Registry,” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management v127, September 2024.

Vibhu Vikramaditya, Free Market Environmentalism: A Market and Private Property-Based Approach to Environmental Conservation, MIT World Peace University (WPU) School of Economics, Pune, India, dissertation, 2022."

How Overregulation Burned Out Competition in the Fire Retardant Industry

Companies chose to exit the market rather than deal with the excessive regulations baked into the industry.

By Tosin Akintola of Reason. 

"Government regulations stifle competition across multiple sectors of the economy, protecting incumbents and making it hard for new companies to emerge. While this is well-documented in areas such as health care and baby formula, it is also present in a niche yet vital industry: fire retardant. 

"Fire retardant, the reddish liquid dropped from planes to slow spreading flames, has become an indispensable tool for saving lives and property from more frequent and intense wildfires," The New York Times reported on Wednesday. "But the entire supply of the product in the United States is controlled by a single company." That company is Perimeter Solutions.

Perimeter is the exclusive long-term fire retardant (LTFR) provider to the U.S. Forest Service—a position it has held since 2005—and is currently under a contract that grants it sole supply rights. For years, the federal government has sought to diversify its supply of LTFR. A 2022 memo from the Agriculture Department described this sole-source relationship as a "massive risk," and a 2023 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report also flagged agencies' reliance on a single approved manufacturer.

Since 2018, the Forest Service has taken steps to encourage potential competitors in the industry, to no avail. Competing in the fire retardant industry is difficult due to high start-up costs and complex regulations. 

To receive approval from regulators, companies must test their products to demonstrate compliance with various complex environmental laws. The applicant bears all costs for tests and retests. Regulators can require additional testing if products "trigger concern," potentially delaying or complicating the development of these products.

Products also undergo field evaluations that include firefighting operations under varying conditions for several months. Potential competitors, such as Fortress Fire Retardant Systems, faced over a year of lab and field testing to gain entry onto the Forest Service's Qualified Products List (QPL), which would enable them to sell their products not only to the U.S. government but also to other fire management organizations worldwide. 

After Fortress finally received federal approval in 2022, Perimeter ratcheted up pressure against its new rival. The company launched a website, which claimed magnesium chloride, the key ingredient in Fortress's retardant, should "only be used to clear ice off highways and not dropped from airplanes to protect you or your home from wildfire." 

Perimeter's then-chief executive Edward Goldberg also wrote a magazine feature, and the company formed the United Aerial Firefighting Association (UAFA) to lobby federal officials against Fortress by raising concerns about alleged safety issues with its product. Interestingly, a 2025 LAist.com investigation revealed Perimeter's fire retardant contains harmful heavy metals like "lead, arsenic, cadmium and chromium," which Perimeter failed to disclose in public safety documents.

Perimeter's efforts paid off, and in 2024, the Forest Service revoked Fortress' permit. However, in January, Fortress was awarded a $13 million deal by the Forest Service to supply testing materials. Perimeter then filed a protest against Fortress' deal, claiming that the agency failed to consider it as an alternative and that the sole-source contract awarded to Fortress created an unfair competitive advantage.

Though Fortress survived the initial public relations campaign against it, Compass Minerals, the company that owns Fortress, shuttered the fire-retardant arm of its company to "improve the profitability," as it could no longer afford the fight.

Its work consolidating the market has resulted in a significant boost to Perimeter's bottom line; the company's stock price increased by 6.83 percent in the first quarter of 2025. In January, as California's firefighting agency sought to protect Los Angeles from the wildfires ravaging the city, the LTFR used costs "20 to 30 percent more than it did four years ago, substantially outpacing inflation," according to The New York Times. 

The Times also found that the U.S. government spent double the amount on fire retardant between 2021 and 2024, resulting in over $250 million paid to Perimeter in the latter year. Already in 2025, the company has signed federal contracts with the Forest Service totalling $166 million. 

It's easy to frame Perimeter's success as a monopoly acting in an unfavorable way to crush competition in the market. 

Still, excessive licensing regulations and poor management of federal lands—which have made wildfires more damaging and expensive, boosting Perimeter's bottom line—have arguably played a larger role in entrenching Perimeter's place in the industry than sharp or unethical conduct."

Why Maui Still Hasn’t Recovered: A crushing regulatory burden and anti-growth policies have stymied efforts to rebuild homes and businesses lost in the 2023 wildfires

By Alex Hu. He is a Marshall Scholar at King’s College London. Excerpts:

"A year and a half since fires devastated the historic town of Lahaina on the island of Maui, Hawaii, only six houses have been rebuilt—six out of more than 2,000."

"Builders on Maui face a vast web of zoning restrictions, water-use regulations, and historical- and environmental-preservation requirements, and separate applications and schedules for electrical, plumbing, grading, and driveway work."

"the county took 206 days on average to issue a single building permit. Ordinarily, you need several to build a house from scratch."

"Even after the county took the extraordinary step of opening a dedicated Recovery Permitting Center in April—hiring private contractors to process permits—approvals still took over 50 days.'

"It was not until October 2024 that Hawaii governor Josh Green issued an emergency exemption sparing multifamily homes from “Special Management Area” reviews—coastal environmental reviews that would have added a whole additional year of permitting for 533 houses."

"Only last month did Maui Mayor Richard Bissen work with Governor Green to extend SMA exemptions to 103 affected commercial properties."

"Maui residents have long been furious at their leaders for allowing housing prices to quadruple over the past 20 years. The issue is not complex: a hostile regulatory environment has kept homebuilding from keeping pace with population growth. The only homes that do get built are typically large vacation properties for global elites, as those are the only projects that can turn a profit."

"The county has not only resisted updating its zoning code for 65 years but also added more layers of regulation and review."

Rebuilding Los Angeles Is California’s Economic Moment of Truth

Wildfires that destroyed two neighborhoods made the state’s housing shortage even worse. Now, opposition is growing to creating more

By Konrad Putzier of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"California’s housing shortage is at the root of its economic problems. Residents are leaving for other states at a rapid clip. Economic expansion lags behind states like Texas and Florida. California’s unemployment rate, recently 5.5%, is the second highest in the country and has risen much faster than the national rate. Inflation, driven in large part by housing costs, is eating into renters’ living standards.

“California is absolutely strangling itself with this housing shortage,” said Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democratic state senator who is a proponent of development.

 

California’s housing construction is well below levels seen in the 1980s and 2000s, when the state’s population was smaller. The typical home in California costs more than twice as much as the national average, according to Zillow data. The extreme costs contribute to California’s homelessness crisis as housing prices grow faster than wages. 

State and local red tape can drag housing construction projects out for years, if they get approved at all. Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers have in recent years worked to loosen some restrictions that slow housing construction. 

Businesses struggle to hire when workers can’t afford to live nearby. Soaring housing costs have made it hard for Los Angeles to find municipal workers, said Nithya Raman, a city council member.

Shortages push housing development to the fringes, where homes sit uneasily next to forests and brushland. That makes them vulnerable to fires"

After Public-Safety Missteps in Palisades Fire, Residents Want Answers: A couple’s frustrated attempts to evacuate their Pacific Palisades neighborhood highlight fire-preparedness gaps in Los Angeles

By Jim Carlton, Marc Vartabedian and Brian Whitton of The WSJ. Excerpt:

"The morning of Jan. 7, the city’s fire department chose not to preliminarily position many of its firefighting resources, even in the face of dire warnings of a “life-threatening and destructive windstorm,” according to an internal resource-planning record reviewed by the Journal. While the fire department predeployed some teams, it didn’t station units in the Palisades, where another fire had broken out days earlier after New Year’s Eve fireworks, an internal incident report said.

Fire officials also declined to issue a “limited recall,” which would have kept roughly 1,000 firefighters on duty for an extra shift and could have enabled the department to staff all of its roughly 42 series-200 engines, which are key assets in fighting fires, according to the plans. The department staffed only a handful of those trucks that morning."

Why California’s Plan to Harden Homes against Wildfires Is Broken

By Kristian Fors of The Independent Institute.

"The horrific wildfires that devastated the Los Angeles area—and necessitated a $1 billion bailout of the FAIR Plan, California’s insurer of last resort—have many people asking why so few homeowners harden their homes against wildfires.

Home hardening is how homeowners reduce their wildfire risk by retrofitting their homes with fire-resistant materials and removing excess vegetation. A report by Guidewire analyzed data from over 90,000 California homes and found that home hardening consistently reduced wildfire risk, in terms of likelihood and damage severity.

The wildland-urban interface is where human development and nature collide, leading to greater wildfire risk. From 1985 to 2013, around 80% of the buildings destroyed by wildfires in California were located in this interface. The areas ravaged by the Los Angeles County wildfires—Altadena, Malibu and Pacific Palisades—are all part of this zone. Yet despite the risks involved with living in these areas, it appears that few homes there were fire-resistant. Meanwhile, fire-resistant architecture and defensible open space appear to have saved some of the homes that were not destroyed.

Why aren’t more homeowners taking steps to reduce their wildfire risk? The answer involves California’s broken property insurance market.

In 2022, California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara mandated that insurers provide discounts to policyholders who implement specific wildfire mitigation efforts on their properties, including fire-resistant vents and Class-A fire-rated roofs. Discounts vary by insurer and are itemized in companies’ rate filings. State Farm policyholders, for example, who adopt all 12 mitigation steps and get certified by a nonprofit can receive premium discounts of about 10%.

According to a recent Politico report, however, experts conclude that the discounts are “too small to encourage wildfire mitigation.” The State Farm discount for fire-resistant windows for example, which can cost more than $700 per window, amounts to 0.1% or a $14 discount on a $13,800 annual insurance premium. Few policyholders will be moved by such small discounts to adopt expensive upgrades.

So why don’t insurers just offer larger discounts to improve outcomes? California’s broken insurance market disincentivizes insurers from doing so—because insurance rates are not actuarially sound.

To understand why that is, you need to understand the concept of “regulatory rate suppression”—which is the difference between market rates that allow insurers to cover expected costs and rates that are approved by regulators.

Research from the International Center for Law & Economics found that California is the worst in the nation for both home and auto insurance rate suppression. Even though California is an expensive and disaster-prone state, the average cost of homeowners insurance, $1,250 per year, is well below the national average of $1,915. While this sounds like a boon to consumers, in practice, insurance companies operating in California are overexposed to risk. They respond by charging homeowners who undertake fire-risk mitigation efforts more than they should to make up the difference. So-called “premium revenue” from armored homes is precious to insurers in California.

The discrepancy between what risky homes should pay compared to what they do pay is the result of Proposition 103 and the state’s regulatory system, which requires insurance companies to receive approval from the California insurance commissioner before changing rates on property and casualty insurance policies. Under this system, companies are limited by price controls and by the variables they are allowed to factor into insurance rates, such as previous prohibitions on using catastrophe models and pricing reinsurance costs into rates. The system is notoriously inefficient, taking months on average to reach a decision for rate filings and even longer if applications are moved to a rate hearing.

Even the FAIR Plan, California’s “insurer of last resort,” which had its reserves decimated by the Los Angeles area fires, has fallen victim to the state’s regulatory hurdles. According to Victoria Roach, president of the FAIR Plan, in 2021 the plan had a “rate need” of 70% but instead applied for a 48.8% rate increase; only a 15.7% increase was approved.

The insurance rates permitted in California do not reflect the level of risk that insurance companies are exposed to. If the system were permitted to function properly, without price controls, insurance companies would be able to consider the true value of mitigation efforts and offer steeper discounts to those who implement them. Moreover, under actuarially sound rates, homeowners in high-risk fire zones would bear the full financial brunt of the risk they are exposing insurers to, providing them with stronger incentives to make their homes more resistant to wildfires and to receive larger discounts.

The best way to encourage homeowners to harden their homes against wildfires is to create robust incentives to do so. Under the current system, discounts will continue to be minimal, and homeowners will lack sufficient incentives for crucial risk mitigation practices—perhaps until it is too late."

How Botched Alerts Turned This L.A. Neighborhood Into a Fiery Death Trap

When wildfires reached Altadena, evacuation alerts came hours too late for some people who lived on the west side of the community

By Marc Vartabedian, Katherine Sayre and Jennifer Calfas of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"The county sent evacuation alerts to some areas too late and failed to use all of the public warning channels at its disposal, lapses that had grave consequences, seen in the cluster of deaths west of Lake Avenue."

"A Wall Street Journal review of mobile-phone emergency alerts, social-media posts, dispatch archives and fire-department documents found that a response system that was supposed to protect lives and property when danger approached failed."

"An emergency-alert system that can broadcast evacuation alerts and warnings to local radio and TV stations was never activated by the county for the fire, according to executives at those stations.

The county’s ReadyLACounty X account, used by the County Office of Emergency Management “for disaster response, recovery and preparedness,” didn’t post about the Eaton fire as it spread that night."

"Some of Los Angeles County’s firefighting equipment was stuck on the sidelines, even though the National Weather Service had issued a dangerous red-flag warning—its highest level. 

While the department did preposition units, including 15 engines and a handful of water carrying trucks, some crucial firefighting equipment was awaiting maintenance"

"roughly 28% of the department’s front-line large pumper engines were out of service"

"Half of the county fire department’s 10 helicopters, which can drop water, were out of service on the morning of Jan. 7"

Why Do We Encourage Americans to Move to Disaster Zones?

See We Have to Stop Underwriting People Who Move to Climate Danger Zones by Parinitha R. Sastry and Ishita Sen. Dr. Sastry is an assistant professor of finance at Columbia Business School. Dr. Sen is an assistant professor of finance at Harvard Business School. From the NY Times.

Excerpts:

"there are few signs that policymakers and regulators are grappling with the decisions that brought so many people into high- risk areas to begin with. Their refusal to do so sets the stage for an even bigger, potentially deadlier and more expensive disaster down the line.

Financial markets, if left to their own devices, would naturally force Americans to confront the ugly realities of our changing climate and deter them from flocking to places where human habitation is increasingly untenable. Unfortunately, this basic system of supply and demand has been stymied by regional and federal policies — policies supported by both Democratic and Republican lawmakers in both blue and red states who buckle under the short-term political pressure to keep home insurance premiums artificially low."

"In theory, insurance prices quantify the risks of living in a certain place. Of course it should be more expensive to insure a home in an area buffeted by disaster. But in practice, states vary widely in their willingness to allow insurance premiums to increase, with some making it far harder than others for insurers to raise prices. California is one of the most resistant, and until recently refused to let insurers raise premiums or reflect climate-catastrophe risks in their pricing.

Insurers doing business in such heavily regulated states, finding themselves unable to raise premiums when needed, wind up shifting some of the costs to homeowners who happen to live in states that are more accommodating to premium increases. That is, in part, how middle-class communities, such as Enid, Okla., can end up subsidizing the owners of million-dollar houses in Malibu. And under our current regulatory regime, that dynamic is only expected to strengthen as climate losses continue to cut into insurance companies’ bottom line."

"Home insurance is just one way our financial system encourages Americans to move to flood-prone sections of Florida or parched, air-conditioning-dependent Arizona. The government mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which guarantee about 70 percent of mortgages on single-family homes, charge the same fees regardless of climate risk. Nobody intends to move into harm’s way. Many people settle in places like Texas because housing is generally more affordable. But that affordability is a mirage: Their mortgage and insurance risks are being subsidized by everyone else. This system, and the continual building in risky areas, portends ever-rising disaster losses."

"Regulators can and should monitor insurers so they don’t use their market power to charge excessive rates. But we are at the other extreme in many high-risk areas: At some point, regulators will have to allow prices to go up so insurers remain solvent and private insurance stays available, even in places hard hit by climate change. The longer they delay, the larger and more disruptive the price increases will be."

"For state and federal policymakers, the question they must face is not whether we should move to insurance pricing that reflects risks, but how.

The federal flood insurance program can point to an approach. From 2021 to 2023, the program phased in risk-based pricing. Policies for new customers were adjusted first. Existing customers in high-risk areas have a much longer adjustment period. This gives households information and time to adjust to the new pricing regime."

How L.A. Bureaucracy Made It Harder to Clear Flammable Brush

A mishmash of government agencies failed to keep public lands safe from deadly wildfires, residents say Brush was cleared last weekend in Los Angeles’s Mandeville Canyon as the Palisades fire threatened homes.

By Jim Carlton, Mark Maremont and Dan Frosch of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Impatient with government bureaucracy, including a $150 fee for permission to remove brush from state parkland, some of [Barry] Josephson’s neighbors cleared it on their own.

They might have saved some of their homes. Of 81 houses in the vicinity, Josephson said 54 are still standing amid the wreckage of this month’s Palisades fire, including his. It is particularly remarkable because investigators believe the blaze could have started a few hundred feet away, around a popular hiking destination known as Skull Rock."

"better maintenance of the wild lands could have slowed the fires’ growth, providing critical time to first responders and evacuees. And the lack of preventive work despite pleas from residents and warnings from people inside the government demonstrate how little officials did ahead of a foreseeable disaster.

The delays were caused by a slow-moving tangle of government agencies that own or regulate Los Angeles’s undeveloped land and are tasked with mitigating wildfire risks"

"In the Palisades, the city and county of Los Angeles, the state parks department, the California Coastal Commission, and the National Park Service all have a say in what happens on land surrounding residential areas.

They don’t always work well together. In several instances, the Los Angeles Fire Department has issued citations to the state parks department for not clearing vegetation from its property"

"Los Angeles has some of the toughest vegetation-management rules in the country, requiring property owners in high-fire-hazard zones to clear brush within 200 feet of any structures and 10 feet of roads or combustible fences. City officials frequently cite owners for failure to clear brush and send crews to clear the land of those who fail to comply, with the owners responsible for the cost.

But Palisades residents have long complained local and state governments don’t follow the same rules on their nearby land. 

“They neglect it,” said Bart Young, president of a Palisades neighborhood group that became so fed up with official inaction that it raised $140,000 to fund its own brush cleanup.

"The group hired private contractors to pull out dead trees, rake pine needles and clear vegetation on nearby state park land.

Young said he lost his home in the fire, but about 250 of the 300 houses in his immediate neighborhood survived. “It was a good investment on our part,” he said of the brush clearance."

"a representative from the California State Parks agency said that, for environmental conservation reasons, the state doesn’t typically remove brush."

"The permit application requires property owners to schedule a visit by a state parks representative, takes up to eight weeks to be processed and costs $150."

"After the 2018 Woolsey Fire killed three people and destroyed some 1,600 structures, Los Angeles County commissioned a report with ideas to reduce future wildfire risk.

The report was issued in 2020. More than four years later, many of its recommendations still haven’t been implemented."

California Squeezes Private Money Out of Wildfire Rebuilding Efforts

Needless regulation on fire insurance, "speculators," and duplexes means fewer dollars are going to rebuild Los Angeles.

Christian Britschgi of Reason. 

"California Democrats are incensed at Congressional Republicans' musings that they might condition federal aid to Los Angeles fire victims on the state making policy changes relating to forest management and water infrastructure.

Yet many of California's own policies, both those on the books pre-disaster and those adopted after the fire, are already at work limiting the amount of private money that could be flowing to rebuilding efforts—leaving homeowners more dependent on those potentially politicized federal funds.

This is most obviously the case with the state's decades-old, voter-approved insurance regulations.

As Reason covered last week, these have prevented insurers from accurately pricing the risk of wildfires into the premiums they charge homeowners. More recent regulations also require insurers to issue and renew policies in wildfire-affected areas.

The result is that the state's largest insurers have scaled back their business in the state, including by canceling thousands of policies in communities that have since been devastated by this year's fires.

That means at least some homeowners will be left trying to find the funds to rebuild their destroyed homes without any hope of an insurance check coming their way. Others on the state-managed, privately funded FAIR plans—which caps coverage at $3 million—may well receive payouts that don't cover the full cost of rebuilding their homes.

To make matters worse, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has also issued an emergency order that bars developers and land buyers from making unsolicited "below-market" bids on fire-affected properties.

The intent of the order, according to Newsom, is to prevent speculators from exploiting homeowners who've lost everything in the fires. Its ultimate effect is to make life harder for cash-strapped homeowners who would want to sell their fire-damaged property and use the proceeds to start over.

Meanwhile, developers with the capital to actually rebuild those properties are being forced out of the market.

Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, to their credit, have issued executive orders waiving regulations that in normal circumstances add time and expense to the process of obtaining needed building permits.

The governor has suspended the processes and permitting requirements found in the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the Coastal Act for fire-affected property owners trying to rebuild.

The intent and direction of that order are good. Builders have praised the governor's order as a sign of Newsom's commitment to rebuilding devastated communities, although the practical effects are likely limited. (Those laws' requirements would generally not be triggered by homeowners trying to rebuild from a fire.)

The mayor's order expediting the issuance of city building permits should have a more significant effect. But her order also comes with the biting restriction that expedited rebuilding projects can't involve adding additional units to a property or changing its use.

One could imagine that a property owner might want to take advantage of numerous state laws legalizing duplexes, lot splits, and accessory dwelling units, to add a new home or income-generating rental unit on their property to offset the costs of rebuilding.

But under Bass' order, only people building back roughly the exact same structure that was destroyed by fire can get fast-tracked permits. Someone wishing to rebuild their home and create one for someone else in the process will have to get in the back of the line.

Republicans' suggestion that they might condition federal aid to California on policy changes is eyebrow-raising in part because many of their suggested policy changes are federal policies to begin with.

Congress, not Gavin Newsom or Karen Bass, has the power to pare back federal restrictions on controlled burns on federal lands that could reduce future wildfire risk.

California policymakers are nevertheless doing themselves no favors by attaching so many of their own strings to the private money that could be going towards rebuilding Los Angeles' fire-stricken neighborhoods."

California’s Climate Time for Choosing

Sacramento tilts at reducing temperatures while its cities burn from failure to adapt to a variable climate

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"The evidence doesn’t support the climate explanation since (among other reasons) California has had a dry climate and Santa Ana winds, even with hurricane-force gusts on occasion, for centuries. If the Democrats who run the state believe their own advertising, why not spend money in useful ways rather than on a green-energy transition to nowhere?"

"Donald Trump in particular is blaming Gov. Gavin Newsom for scrapping his first-term plan to ease fish protections to let more water flow from the north to farmers and cities in Southern California. He’s half right."

"The state never has enough to go around because much of the Sierra Nevada snowpack . . . gets flushed out to the Pacific Ocean rather than stored for dry years."

"Mr. Trump is right that the species protections he cited are largely to blame"

"But increasing water flows from northern California wouldn’t have helped firefighters in L.A. since the problem there was an overwhelmed local water system."

"renovating the water system to bolster its firefighting capacity is costly."

"If fires are going to be more common, then overhauling water systems will be essential. But governments have limited resources and need to set priorities. And California’s politicians—state and local—prefer to spend money on income transfers and green subsidies"

"Democrats have in particular given priority to reducing CO2 emissions over mitigating the effects of a variable climate. The state’s renewable-energy mandates have forced Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to spend heavily on wind, solar and battery power, at the expense of upgrading its aging power lines that have sparked some of the state’s most catastrophic fires."

"the state spends more on “fighting” climate change than preparing for it."

"The Governor’s budget last year included $2.6 billion for “forest and wildfire resilience”—far less than the $14.7 billion provisioned for zero-emission vehicles and its “clean energy” transition. California’s $100 billion bullet train and offshore wind turbines will do nothing to prevent fires or protect communities. Rooftop solar subsidies are no consolation for people who lose their homes."

"nothing California does to subsidize EVs or punish fossil fuels will have any effect on global temperature. Its CO2 emission reductions are dwarfed by increases elsewhere"

End of a Climate Delusion

Amid California’s fires, voters wake up from the dream that green pork is a solution

By Holman W. Jenkins. Excerpts:

"CO2 emitted into the atmosphere is rapidly and, for all practical purposes, uniformly distributed around the planet."

"Emitting industries leave the state. They don’t stop emitting. If California imports Canadian hydro to charge its electric vehicles, consumers elsewhere have to burn more coal and gas. If Californians drive EVs, more gasoline is free to be burned by others, releasing more CO2 that influences climate change in California and everywhere else."

"Green-energy subsidies do not reduce emissions."

"A National Research Council study sponsored by congressional Democrats in 2008 concluded that such handouts were a “poor tool for reducing greenhouse gases” and called for carbon taxes instead."

"A 2019 University of Oregon study had already revealed the empirical truth: Green energy doesn’t replace fossil fuels, it enables more energy consumption overall. That same year the EPA calculated that the potential emissions savings from subsidizing electric vehicles had been offset five times over by the pickup truck and SUV boom Team Obama facilitated to assure the success of its auto bailout.

Last year, the premier journal Science put a nail in the question: 96% of policies supported worldwide as “reducing” emissions failed to do so, consisting mostly of handouts to green-energy interests."

"A decision in 2019 authorized yet more Third World blackouts instead of reasonably shielding utilities from lawsuit risk over fires their power lines might be accused of contributing to. One result, predictably, has been a proliferation of backyard generators, which increase fire risk."

Newsom Has a Permitting Epiphany

The Governor waives environmental rules to assist rebuilding from the wildfires. Why not for everyone?

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday waived the state’s environmental laws in areas affected by the fires to expedite rebuilding. Wonderful, but that raises a question: Why not ease regulations for all projects if the rules are such a barrier to development? 

More than 12,000 structures in the Los Angeles region have been destroyed by the past week’s fires. At California’s glacial pace of permitting, it could take years for new homes and businesses to rise from the ashes. Rebuilding will cost multiples more than original construction owing to more stringent building codes, high permitting fees and inflation.

That explains Mr. Newsom’s executive order on Sunday waiving the state’s Environmental Quality Act and Coastal Act. He directed his administration to identify other burdensome permitting and building code requirements that can be eased. This is an admission that state regulations increase costs and delay projects, if they don’t stop them entirely."

"A 2021 University of Southern California survey of California developers found that it typically took 18 to 45 months—yes, months—for a project to be approved. Half said they had abandoned projects owing to government fees, and 45% said they were required to substantially reduce a project’s density. More than half reported that lawsuits had scuttled projects, and 37% said legal settlements equaled at least half a project’s worth."

"New homes in California must comply with efficiency standards that add tens of thousands of dollars to the price."

"“affordable” housing units can cost $1 million to build"

"The Los Angeles metro area’s population is larger than that of Dallas and Houston combined, but the latter together permitted more than five times as many new homes last year."

"A new large reservoir hasn’t been built in the state for 50 years. The California Coastal Commission in 2022 nixed a proposed desalination plant in Huntington Beach."

"permits and habitat mitigation are required to clear brush, widen fire access roads and create fire breaks on public lands"

The Governance Failures That Fed the Los Angeles Wildfires

‘There’s a public-policy failure,’ says a onetime candidate for governor who nearly lost his home.

By Jason L. Riley. Excerpts:

"There’s no disputing Mother Nature’s primary role in the devastation. The Santa Ana winds responsible for the wildfires begin north and east of Los Angeles in the Great Basin, which includes large sections of Utah and Nevada. As those winds travel south and west, coursing through the canyons and arroyos of Southern California, they drop in elevation and become warmer and dryer.

This is nature, not man-made climate change, at work. It’s been happening since long before Los Angeles was settled. What’s changed isn’t the predictability of the fires but rather the priorities and competence of those responsible for keeping people safe. Has the underbrush that fuels the fires been cleared? Have the forests been thinned? Are the reservoirs full and operational?"

"Santa Ynez [Reservoir] is “meant to hold 117 million gallons of water” but “has been offline and empty since early 2024” and repeatedly in need of repair. Worse, it isn’t clear whether the Los Angeles Fire Department had been notified that the reservoir couldn’t be used." 

"The National Weather Service warned of “extreme fire risk” and “life-threatening” winds before the blazes began."

"Investigators haven’t ruled out arson. A former head of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Patrick Jordan, wrote on social media Sunday that “50% of the fires in Los Angeles are homeless related.” According to federal data, more than one-fifth of all homeless people in the country live in Los Angeles County."

A Tale of Two State Insurance Markets

Florida fixed its market with reforms. California didn’t. See the results

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"The 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act enshrines state regulatory authority over insurance. This system has worked relatively well over 80 years."

"Until recently, California was the only state that prohibited carriers from using catastrophe models to project disaster risk and pricing reinsurance costs into their premiums."

"Insurers are paying out $1.09 in expenses and claims for every $1 they collect in premiums. They’ve curbed their exposure in part by dropping policy holders in high-risk areas and leaving the market." 

"Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara rejected FAIR’s (the state’s insurer of last resort) proposed rate increases while requiring it to cover homes worth up to $3 million." 

"the insurer in 2021 requested a 48.8% rate increase—less than the 70% it needed—but was approved for 15.7%."

"To prevent more insurers from leaving the state, Mr. Lara last month finally let carriers price in their reinsurance costs and use catastrophe models. But he also capped the reinsurance costs that carriers can pass along."

"Unable to raise rates, many insurers have increased deductibles and capped maximum payments."

"the Federal Emergency Management Agency covers losses if homeowners are “under-insured.” This means taxpayers in Houston and Little Rock may pay for rebuilding multi-million-dollar homes in California."

"[Florida] State law had allowed policy holders to assign their claim benefits to contractors working with trial lawyers. Contractors would inflate charges and then sue insurers if they rejected them"

"Insurers lost hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and more than a dozen failed between 2020 and 2022. Others left the market because litigation costs made it difficult to obtain reinsurance."

"Enter Gov. Ron DeSantis, who championed tort reforms in 2022 and 2023 that have stanched the flood of frivolous lawsuits"

"nine insurers have since entered the market."

"Sixty percent of Florida’s top 10 carriers have expanded their business in the state, and 40% have filed for rate decreases. The average monthly request for rate increases is now 1.2%"

California’s Wildfire Climate Excuse

Gov. Newsom tilts at carbon emissions, not fire mitigation

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"The theory is that climate change caused two especially wet winters in California in 2023 and 2024. This led to lush vegetation growth. Perhaps you recall the ebullient stories about the blooming desert and wildflower explosion. But in recent months, the theory goes, climate change has also caused a dry spell that has turned that vegetation into tinder for fires. Ergo, “hydroclimate whiplash.”

So climate change explains wet and dry seasons, which follows the progressive line that climate change is responsible for every natural disaster except for perhaps earthquakes. In today’s climate orthodoxy, bad weather is always man-made."

"California’s climate has long been variable with dry years following wet ones."

"130 or so years. There are wet and dry spells. The last couple of decades have had more dry years, but then so did the 1910s and 1920s when carbon emissions were far less than they are today."

"variable rain and snowfall patterns in California are to be expected. Fires will occur as a result. Rather than blame the climate for wildfires, the obligation of public officials should be to prepare for them"

"His [Gov. Gavin Newsom] proposal skimps on wildfire prevention while boosting spending on Medicaid, green energy and payoffs to the teachers’ unions." 

"his budget for the coming fiscal year cuts the CAL FIRE’s “resource management” program by half from 2023 to $466.5 million. He plans instead to pay for $325 million in spending on wildfire and forest resilience with a $10 billion “climate bond” that voters approved in November. This is intended to free up general fund revenue for other spending."

"None of this spending will mitigate future fires, droughts or floods or have any impact on global temperatures."

"Mr. Newsom’s budget increases general fund spending on Health and Human Services (mainly Medicaid) by $9.7 billion and failing K-12 schools by $4 billion compared to last year. His budget last year included $2.6 billion for “forest and wildfire resilience”—far less than the $14.7 billion provisioned for zero-emission vehicles and “clean energy.”"

"Democrats in California perennially underinvest in water storage and land management. Then when catastrophic fires, water shortages or floods happen, Democrats blame climate change"

How the Left Turned California Into a Paradise Lost

Gavin Newsom promised to ‘Trump-proof’ the Golden State. If only he’d fireproofed it instead

By Allysia Finley. 

"The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in 2019 sought to widen a fire-access road and replace old wooden utility poles in the Topanga Canyon abutting the Palisades with steel ones to make power lines fire- and wind-resistant. In the process, crews removed an estimated 182 Braunton’s milkvetch plants, an endangered species."

"The utility halted the project as state officials investigated the plant destruction. More than a year later, the California Coastal Commission issued a cease-and-desist order, fined the utility $2 million, and required “mitigation” for the project’s impact on the species. This involved replacing “nonnative” vegetation with plants native to the state."

"Since the milkvetch requires wildfires to propagate, the only way to boost its numbers is to let the land burn"

"Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley complains the city cut her budget by $17 million last spring, which she says reduced overtime compensation and interfered with wildfire preparation."

"the fire budget didn’t shrink since city leaders last autumn approved a new union contract that boosted pay and benefits by $76 million—about $20,000 per firefighter. Even before this raise, firefighters on average earned about $200,000, plus $90,000 in benefits. Many can retire at 55 with pensions equaling 90% of their final salaries."

"Los Angeles spent $350 million this year on firefighter pensions and benefits. Much of that would have been better spent on fire prevention, which made up only 5% of the department’s budget. Ms. Crowley calls “diversity, inclusion, and equity” a top priority, and the Fire Department boasted nine DEI positions."

"Smelt protections restrict the amount of water that flows from the state’s north to the south. This has led to billions of gallons of water being flushed out to the Pacific Ocean each year"

"Mr. Newsom opposed Mr. Trump’s first-term efforts to ease the fish protections."

"State regulators until recently even suppressed insurance rates for high-priced homes by barring insurers from fully pricing in wildfire risk and reinsurance costs." 

"Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara on Thursday prohibited insurers from dropping homeowners in areas affected by the fires. People who lose their homes deserve sympathy. But if insurers aren’t allowed to limit their liabilities or adjust premiums based on risk, they will instead raise rates on everyone."

Woke DEI + Green Nihilism = Dresden in California

California’s DEI “humanism” and Green New Deal environmentalism ensured the cruelest imaginable treatment of thousands of people and unrivaled destruction of the natural ecosystem

By Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution. Excerpts:

"cut over $17.6 million from the LA fire service budget—itself just 65% of the city’s homelessness expenditures."

"there is a 117-million-gallon water reservoir atop Pacific Palisades"

"it was empty and “under repair” for months because of a mere damaged cover. Consider that: a dry autumn, the onset of the usual Santa Ana winds, a recent plague of hilltop wildfires, and Quiñones (Janisse Quiñones, “the new Chief Executive Officer and Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP)) shuts down the linchpin of a prior generation’s plan to save the Palisades."

"fire chief Kristen Crowley? She now blames the mayor for dry hydrants."

"How about her deputy Kristine Lawson, who claimed people in need want to see fire officers arrive who look like they do? And if they don’t?

She is also on record with this: “Am I able to carry your husband out of a fire? He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out.”"

"But what could Newsom do or say? His entire tenure is synonymous with too many catastrophic forest fires and too little water.

He did nothing after the catastrophic Aspen and Paradise fires to revive the timber industry to glean and clean the forests. He never allowed much new grazing on fuel-rich hills or sent crews in to cut back the chaparral.

He never reconsidered his policies of diverting precious snowmelt from the Sacramento River tributaries to flow into the sea to help the delta smelt rather than to ensure that farmers could irrigate their crops or that Los Angeles County reservoirs were fully banked.

Despite an approved 2014 $7.5 billion bond to build three huge dams and reservoirs, Newsom ensured that we built none: not the easily constructed Sites reservoir, not Temperance Flat, and not Los Banos Grandes, all tertiary foothill reservoirs that could have given California by now nearly five million additional acre-feet of storage.

Or is it worse than that?

Governor Dam-Buster still brags about how he greenlit blowing up four dams on the Klamath River—the largest dam removal in American history. The dams provided 80,000 homes with clean hydroelectric power, farmers with irrigation water, and the public with recreation and flood control.

Instead of following the voters’ bond to build reservoirs and dams, Newsom preferred to dynamite them. The ensuing muddy deluge wiped out the surrounding riparian ecosystem."

"California’s failure to effectively prevent and put out fires—along with hyper-regulation and failure to combat an epidemic of insurance fraud—has destroyed the state’s insurance industry. Given the prior inability of homeowners to buy credible fire insurance at any cost, there are thousands of now-homeless who had no insurance at all.

How about the region’s large homeless population that camps out on the streets and in the tinderbox chaparral above the suburbs? Did the city investigate arson or detain, arrest, charge, and jail those rounded up with incendiary devices or seen lighting fires? Of course not. They vetoed any notion long ago of an anti-camping ordinance."

"There is not enough water for hydrants, not enough to deliver to Los Angeles, and when it arrives, there is too much incompetence to know how to use it.

There were no real warnings to residents that they had mere minutes to flee for their lives. Or was it worse still? As the fires wore on, continuous false alarms of new fires sparked unnecessary and dangerous mass evacuations citywide, destroying what, if any, trust was left in the fire department."