We can do bad all by ourselves
The fires in Southern California highlight the real potential of climate "maladaptation"
I wasn’t planning to write about the fires, with so much analysis and commentary out there already for the better part of two weeks. But a chat with a friend this week spurred me to share some thoughts. It’s easy to be overly negative and there have been so many stories of personal and community resilience, of generosity and love. And yet, the facts remain so grim.
I spent part of my childhood in LA, first living in Burbank near the foothills of the Hollywood sign, later in the San Gabriel Valley in the shadow of Mount Wilson. Typhoons were the main extreme weather events where my family were from and Southern California was an eye opener of the power of mother nature. There were stories of fires in Malibu, the concrete trough that is the LA River flooding, and of course the Northridge earthquake. But overall, I never felt truly unsafe despite these hazards around. Santa Ana winds were a known thing, something that made fires more likely as pilots struggle to take off and land. Maybe it was my naïveté, maybe it was the ‘90s - a different era and a different climate.
So it came as no surprise that there were fires this time. What shocked me was the speed, scale and time of year. It grew massively in hours. There wasn’t one fire but up to five at one point. SGV being hit is just madness - my old house would have been no more than a mile and a half from the evac zone and definitely within the zone of unease. It’s just been horrific to watch from afar to see places I have been to or nearby as a kid go up in flames. I think many people in that of LA are absolutely stunned that fires would reach so low, becoming an urban conflagration. And this happened in January during what is usually rainy season.
Where my shock started to turn into anger is also where this story comes back to security. And how the impacts of climate change, piling up over time, are giving us less margin for error without major changes to how we build, operate and behave. Every time we touch the barbed wire fence, it’s going to hurt that bit more. We’re nearing FAFO territory now.
I personally don’t believe that these fires were necessarily “caused” by climate change - but it contributes to one half of the equation by making the underlying environmental conditions more conducive to big fires and expanding the length of fire season.
The other half is people activities which can make us more or less vulnerable - everything from where people are allowed to build homes and how vegetation is managed to emergency services funding and the dynamics of the insurance market.
Crime and fraud: The looting of property and people setting homes on fire deliberately to rob them is absolutely disgusting. Price gouging of short-term rentals and charity scams have been rampant given its scale and limitations on proactive enforcement. We don’t talk nearly enough how disasters attract criminal activity and corruption. And if we’re going to be living in a world with more extreme weather and environmental crises, then it follows that there are going to be more opportunities for exploitation. But is spending more on policing the right answer? For corporates, this means added complexity when conducting scenario planning and the safety of your people and physical assets.
Burnout of emergency services - almost every available resource in California and western states were brought in. Canada, Mexico and Australia provided personnel and aircraft. In 2018 there was concern that longer wildfire seasons would jeopardise the longstanding US-Australia resource sharing agreements if there are not enough people, planes and equipment to call on. Seven years on, it would seem that the global pool of fire response is even more strained. A future where there are multiple wildfires globally or in short succession is not hypothetical and would push resourcing to the brink, even with advances to fire detection and suppression technologies. Would there be enough healthy, rested personnel to fight several major wildfires in the Australian bush in the heart of bushfire season if the rains don’t come and we have another round of California fires?
Trust and private providers of public goods and services: private firefighters are nothing new, but is something that the public isn’t generally aware of until these fires. Because these fires largely impacted upper middle class and wealthy areas, I wonder - and am concerned that - one outcome is rapid growth of private services providing traditional public goods. For who do they serve?
But what is concerning would be a proliferation of these providers in communities where public services hold a monopoly is unlikely to be a good thing from a societal perspective - creating a two-tiered system of emergency response and eroding further trust in government to deliver essential services. If you’re the chief security officer of a major corporation in such a community, what you recommend to your senior leaders - lobby the city or county to better invest in police, fire and EMS, or hire some yourself? Or both?
Kneecapping trust in institutions - criticism of the fire service, water infrastructure, mayor and governor - emerged on social media really fast, at a time when there was the greatest need for institutions to step in to respond and help those impacted. There is a back and forth on the truth behind changes to funding to the fire service prior to the fires. The role of county and state authorities at managing vegetation (“fuel management”) - which are chronically underfunded and under-resourced. Calls for California Governor Gavin Newsom to resign popped up within hours and are gaining real traction, even if their degree of culpability is likely complex and nuanced. But the blame game is well underway even as the fires burn.
I wouldn’t be surprised if genuine anger was amplified by disinformation campaigns. This is one of the most dangerous implications of climate change on security risks - the gradual breakdown of trust in key institutions that are the glue of a community. One fire season won’t destroy trust, but successful years of disasters, partially driven by increasing unpredictability and impact, can do. As environmental journalist Peter Schwarzenstein highlights in a recent Columbia Energy Exchange podcast, we’ve seen this type of social breakdown lead to conflicts time and again, from the Middle East to South Asia and Southern Europe.
Insurance: as a geopolitics guy I’m no insurance expert but what appears dangerous here is one clear consequence is more providers exiting the market or dramatically raising rates. Moira Birss at the Climate and Community Research Institute highlights that the headline losses - underwriting loss - ignores the other revenue sources insurance firms have e.g. investment income generated from premiums and subrogation payments (aka suing someone to recover losses incurred to one of their insured). The always insightful Louie Woodall over at Climate Proof has more on this, with a great panel of insurance experts.
After each of these fires, the premiums go up or coverage just go away. California has some of the highest average home insurance rates in the country - the usual stuff related to your house on top of fire, flooding, earthquakes - and from family experience, you’re almost hoping nothing happens because of the insecurity (Susan Crawford has a detailed history and analysis of what it means to go to the government as an insurer of last resort). More people end up spending more of their income on insurance, with lower income people being especially hurt. More people will end up renting (great for landlords) or become homeless, unable to afford the full cost of ownership. The financial burden on local governments rise as the tax base is dinged, and if overall trust in those bodies erodes because of real and perceived mismanagement around disasters and crisis response…well you see the downward spiral and it ain’t pretty.
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What a way to start the year. If we find ourselves responding to these kinds of events by doing things that worsen inequalities, leave people more vulnerable and even less trusting of leaders, and enriching criminals, then our ability to keep ourselves safe and adapt is well and truly broken and in, need some strong medicine.
It’s going to be a long year. Buckle up.