Opinion: Wildfires can’t wait on climate-change policy

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Photo by Vincent McDermott/PostmediaEvery summer Canadians watch the same terrifying scenes unfold. Flames race through forests. Families are evacuated with only what they can carry. Firefighters battle blazes that seem almost impossible to control. Smoke from Canadian fires turns skies orange and disrupts life in the U.S., hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away. Governments declare emergencies, as British Columbia has this year, with tens of thousands of residents fleeing fast-moving flames.THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLYSubscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman, and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLESSubscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLESCreate an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountThe frightening images naturally raise two questions: Why is this happening? And what can the responsible authorities do about it? But what’s to be done doesn’t necessarily depend on why it is happening.Get the latest headlines, breaking news and columns.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of Top Stories will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again“Climate change” is the answer to “why?” offered by governments and much of the media. It may indeed be a factor but wildfires do not begin with a slow increase in average global temperature. They begin with ignition by lightning, arson, unextinguished campfires or other events. Whether a fire then becomes disastrous depends on many things: wind, lack of rain, fuel stocks, terrain and how quickly it’s attacked after it starts.Governments can reduce wildfire damage in two ways: prevention and rapid response.Prevention includes using managed burns to reduce hazardous fuel accumulation. A managed fire burns predictably, based on its immediate enclosure and fuel supply. Wildfires, in contrast, can spread at high speed across thousands of acres, their wind-blown embers jumping rivers or roads, and change directions unexpectedly as wind and terrain shift. Communities in forested areas need to be planned and built with such risk factors in mind.Early detection of fires and rapid response to them can prevent large-scale emergencies. To provide effective detection and response, governments need sufficient numbers of trained firefighters, aircraft and equipment, good coordination among agencies, and the ability to act quickly before fires grow out of control.The destruction of Lytton, B.C., illustrates the challenge. The town was damaged by fires in 1931, 1938 and 1949 before the 2021 wildfire destroyed much of it. If a town built in a hot, dry, wind-swept canyon has had serious fire damage several times in a century, treating its latest fire as a brand-new, unpreventable “climate emergency” is the ultimate political cop-out. Repeated decisions to rebuild without aggressive fuel mitigation, fire breaks and modern, fire- resistant construction amounts to political negligence.If climate change really is increasing wildfire risk, that makes prevention and preparedness more important, not less. Canadians deserve more than dramatic images on television and misleading, simplified explanations. They deserve governments that do everything reasonably possible to prevent fires that do start from becoming disasters.This advertisement has not loaded yet.This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.Climate change does not prevent a government from clearing deadwood, conducting controlled burns or building wide, engineered firebreaks around vulnerable, fire-prone towns. By attributing every disaster solely to a global situation, public officials enjoy accountability avoidance.Forestry audits and emergency preparedness reviews usually reach the same conclusion: risk mitigation is much cheaper than disaster recovery. Spending millions of dollars to clear hazardous fuel loads, maintain buffer zones and build local response capacity can savebillions in destroyed infrastructure, emergency evacuations and long-term economic disruption.If local governments operated like rational financial actors, preventative forest management would be fully funded every year. Yet, time and again, warnings from forestry experts, local firefighters and emergency management post-mortems are shelved to avoid such funding. Why? Because deferring these expenditures makes political sense.If a government allocates tens of millions of dollars to clear brush, build firebreaks and perform aggressive controlled burns around rural municipalities, taxpayers notice the expense immediately. What they don’t notice is the fire that fails to ignite or the blaze that stops at the edge of town five years from now. The prevention spending is immediately visible and politically unrewarding. The future benefit is, for the moment, invisible.Starving wildfire prevention allows politicians to divert funds into shiny, highly visible, electorally popular pet projects. If a wildfire eventually sweeps through a town on their watch, climate change provides the ultimate political escape.If disaster’s primary driver is a global condition, then no provincial minister or municipal council can be held responsible for repeating historical mistakes. Clearing brush and logging dead trees are unsexy administrative chores. Declaring a “climate emergency” or setting a net-zero emissions target for 2050 allows politicians to project moral leadership without spending a dime on forestry management today. And, after a local operational failure turns inemerto a national wildfire catastrophe, federal and provincial emergency relief funds take over. The initial operational savings by local decision-makers are paid for 10 times over by general taxpayers in disaster relief.If we accept the excuse that climate change is the primary cause of our wildfire crises, we grant our leaders an exemption from the most basic responsibility of government: maintaining the physical landscape to protect human life and property.Andrew Roman is a retired litigation lawyer.We apologize, but this video has failed to load.Notice for the Postmedia NetworkThis website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.