The Social and Economic Impacts of Wildfires

<p>Wildfires have grown dramatically over the last five years, both as a result of a century of fire suppression as well as contemporary climate change, which makes fires hotter and more destructive.</p> <p>In this panel, recorded on April 4, 2022, a group of experts discussed contemporary social and economic impacts of wildfires in California during another record-breaking fire season. How have fires changed during the last five years, and with what impacts on the economy? How might policy-makers and economists respond to the changing fire season?<br /> <br /> The panel featured <strong>Bruce Riordan</strong>, Director of the Berkeley Climate Change Network; Steve Pyne, an urban farmer and emeritus professor at Arizona State University, and author of <em>The Pyrocene. How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next</em>; <strong>Dave Jones</strong>, Director of the Climate Risk Initiative at UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center on Law, Energy and Environment (CLEE); and <strong>Luiz Oliveira</strong>, Senior Associate Economist in the Economic Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The panel was moderated by <strong>Bruce Riordan</strong>, Director of the Berkeley Climate Change Network.</p>