There are two competing narratives about the causes of the tremendous destruction of buildings and lives that the recent Southern California fires have wreaked. One group of people blames the destruction on climate change. Another group blames it on bad government policy that has nothing to do with climate.
Which side is more correct? The second side. Even if we take as given the idea that climate change has caused fires to be more destructive, governments at all three levels—federal, state, and local—have implemented policies that caused the Southern California fires to be much more destructive than they would have been. Moreover, there is little evidence that climate change was a major cause of the fires.
This is from David R. Henderson, “California Burning: Causes and the Way Forward,” Defining Ideas, January 30, 2025.
And:
Let’s say you that you believe that climate change, a.k.a. global warming, has made fires more extreme. If you think that, doesn’t it follow that you should prepare for such fires? It’s not as if we’re totally helpless. So, let’s consider the various claims about human causes. When I was earning my PhD in economics at UCLA, many professors’ favorite way of posing a question on an exam was to make a statement and ask us to say whether it was true, false, or uncertain. That’s how I’ll evaluate the main claims.
I look at the role of Mayor Karen Bass’s absence, the water system, the fire department (alleged) cuts, fire department personnel, trimming back brush, and the role of climate change.
Another excerpt:
I conclude, therefore, that the claim about the empty Santa Ynez Reservoir being a major cause is uncertain.
But here is what’s true. Governments tend to neglect long-term improvements in infrastructure. Why? Incentives. Government managers of government assets have little incentive to preserve and improve them. If they do it well, they capture none of the value they create. If they do it badly, they lose almost nothing. At worst, they get fired, and that’s not even a given. Think of how often we hear about government bureaucracies failing spectacularly, with the bureaucrats in charge holding on to their jobs while taking no pay cuts. Even worse, sometimes legislatures react to bureaucratic failures by giving the bureaucracies more power and bigger budgets. Private owners, by contrast, have a strong incentive to preserve and improve assets.
Then I look at how government regulation will hamper recovery.
Read the whole thing.
