The New York Times | L.A. Fires Show Limits of America’s Efforts to Cope With Climate Change

"This week’s fires around Los Angeles present a puzzle: Why is California, the state best equipped to deal with wildfires, seemingly unable to prevent blazes from consuming entire chunks of the country’s second-largest city?

California’s building code for wildfires is among the most protective in the nation. Its local fire departments are backed up by CalFire, the state fire agency, which has a $4 billion budget and some of the best trained firefighters in the world. The state’s huge tax base generates effectively unlimited resources for wildfire protection. And California has mandatory statewide requirements that homeowners in risky areas create “defensible space” around their property — rules that other Western states would like to apply but can’t because it would anger conservative voters.

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'Climate change, and climate events, are causing us to butt up against that limit,' said Joshua Saks, the adaptation program director for Georgetown Climate Center at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington. 'The risk will always grow, and at some point outpace what you’ve done.'"

Read the full story by Christopher Flavelle in The New York Times.