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.

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? The panel featured Bruce Riordan, Director of the Berkeley Climate Change Network; Steve Pyne, an urban farmer and emeritus professor at Arizona State University, and author of The Pyrocene. How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next; Dave Jones, Director of the Climate Risk Initiative at UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center on Law, Energy and Environment (CLEE); and Luiz Oliveira, Senior Associate Economist in the Economic Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The panel was moderated by Bruce Riordan, Director of the Berkeley Climate Change Network.