Comment by akira2501 9 days ago
So is death. Interestingly we've responded by trying to minimize it where rational. Part of preventing fire is preventing death. Fires also shut down roads which can be a major problem where alternative routes don't exist.
A wholesale "do not prescribed burn" is not sensible. Determining which areas are high and low value and then concentrating what resources you have on the highest value areas is.
At the risk of being an idiot, is the problem firefighting? Is the problem that we're continuing a losing battle? That, even when we had proper forest management, the costs were still shifting towards firefighting? Warming making everything drier on average?
In the end though the only one we're truly hurting is ourselves and our desired life style when it burns out of control.
Firefighting makes the next fire worse. You need to have a theory that doesn't involve more expensive fire fighting every time someone builds a new house. This is general means defending towns and letting the mountainside burn.
This is an insurance problem more than anything else.
If insurers were allowed to and incentivized to price accurately, homes in dangerous areas (flood plains, fire hazards) would be too expensive to buy, and people... wouldn't.
Especially given that if you can't get insurance, you can't get a mortgage, which drastically limits your buyers.
No my point is stop overfunding firefighting. Over fund forest management.