How Trump 2.0 will Affect the Wildfire Crisis
Donald Trump’s climate denialism could exacerbate the already-devastating impact of wildfires. Composite: Getty Images, AP
As the US grapples with smoky skies, Trump is solidifying an anti-science agenda — here are the challenges ahead
by Ilias Ganetsos/Diopter Sight
In the days that followed Donald Trump’s election win, flames roared through southern California neighborhoods. On the other side of the country, wildfire smoke clouded the skies in New York and New Jersey.
They were haunting reminders of a stark reality: while Trump prepares to take office for a second term, the complicated, and escalating, wildfire crisis will be waiting.
As the climate crisis unfolds, communities across the country are spending seasons under smoke-filled skies. Federal firefighters are overworked and underpaid, the cost of fire suppression has climbed, and millions of people are at risk of losing their insurance. Landscapes and homes alike have been reduced to ash as the world continues to warm.
The president-elect has offered few plans to address the emergency. Instead, he’s promised to deliver a wave of deregulation, cripple climate-supporting agencies, and clear departments of logistical experts relied upon during disasters.
His allies, including the authors of Project 2025, a conservative playbook for a second Trump administration, have recommended privatizing parts of the federal government that now serve the public good.
File photo by Andrew Harnik
Already, major emitters such as the US are lagging badly in commitments to cut emissions enough to avoid a 1.5C (2.7F) rise in global temperature above the pre-industrial era. With just over 1C in average warming so far, the world already has record heatwaves, a rash of wildfires, turbocharged hurricanes, plunging wildlife losses, a crumbling and increasingly green Antarctica, the looming collapse of the oceans and a faltering ability of forests, plants and soil to absorb carbon. Global carbon emissions are continuing to increase. Last year they reached a staggering 40.6bn tonnes, a record that is expected to be broken by the end of 2024. Atmospheric carbon levels are now more than 50% higher than they were in pre-industrial days. Hence that 1.5C rise. Unfortunately the world’s response to this disturbing worsening of atmospheric affairs has been painfully slow. As the world’s second-largest carbon emitter, the US’s position on climate change has great influence over global temperatures
The Challenges are ahead of us :
Setting the stakes
Looking back at his first term, Trump had a poor record managing large wildfire emergencies — and he had many opportunities. After presiding over the response to destructive blazes that left a devastating toll, including the Camp fire that claimed the lives of 85 people in and around the town of Paradise, in 2020 he told a crowd in Pennsylvania that high-risk fire states such as California, and their residents, were to blame.
“I said you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up,” he said. That year, a record 10.2m acres were charred across the US.
Trump didn’t understand the magnitude of the risks US forests faced.
He’s been unwilling to embrace the strategies that the scientists and landscape managers recommend to help keep catastrophic fire in check, including a delicate and tailored approach to removing vegetation in overgrown forests, protecting old-growth stands, and following those treatments with prescribed burning.
Then-President Donald Trump and then-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom view damage from wildfires in Paradise (Butte County) on Nov. 17, 2018.SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
Meanwhile, federal firefighters are waiting to see whether Trump and a Republican-led Congress will secure long-overdue pay raises.