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A conversation with Resources for the Future’s David Wear on the fires in the Carolinas and how the political environment could affect the future of forecasting.
The Wikipedia article for “wildfire” has 22 photographs, including those of incidents in Arizona, Utah, Washington, and California. But there is not a single picture of a fire in the American Southeast, despite researchers warning that the lower righthand quadrant of the country will face a “perfect storm” of fire conditions over the next 50 years.
In what is perhaps a grim premonition of what is to come, several major fires are burning across the Southeast now — including the nearly 600-acre Melrose Fire in Polk County, North Carolina, a little over 80 miles to the west of Charlotte, and the more than 2,000-acre Carolina Forest fire in Horry County, South Carolina. The region is also battling hundreds of smaller brush fires, the smoke from which David Wear — the land use, forestry, and agriculture program director at Resources for the Future — could see out his Raleigh-area window.
Wear is also the co-author of a study by RFF and the U.S. Forest Service that came out in late 2024 and singled out the Southeast as facing a “particularly worrisome” rise in wildfire risk over the next half-century. I spoke with him this week to learn more about why the Carolinas are burning and what the future of fire looks like for the region. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
When discussing fires in the American West, we often talk about how historic suppression efforts are responsible for the megafires we see today. What was the historic fire regime like in the Southeast? What’s going on to make it a hot spot for wildfires?
First, there are the similarities. Both Western and Southeastern forests, especially pine forests, are fire-adapted systems; they need regular fires to maintain health. Anything that takes those forests out of balance is a problem, and fire suppression is an issue in the East and the West, and especially in the Southeast. But forests in the Southeast are the most heavily managed forests in the country — perhaps in the world. In many cases, they’re regularly burned; the South does more prescribed burning than the rest of the country combined. It’s a very, very common practice in this part of the world.
So we shouldn’t be surprised that there is fire in Southeastern forests. There have been big, episodic fires in the South, though they’re not as common. There was the fire in 2016 in East Tennessee, from the Smokies into Gatlinburg, with a number of fatalities and lots of structures damaged or destroyed. There have been big fire years in east and west Texas. And there have been big fire seasons in Florida, though it’s been a while.
How is population growth in the Southeast adding to the strain?
We’re accustomed to talking about the wildland-urban interface in the West, but it’s also a big issue in the Southeast. Some of our urban growth centers in the Southeast include the Raleigh-Durham area, where I live, and Atlanta, Nashville, and Florida. These are generally flat landscapes, as well as very heavily forested landscapes. As the population grows out of the city centers, they go into pine and mixed-pine hardwood forests that are fire-adapted ecosystems. Then you have interspersed communities with forest vegetation, and that’s a big issue.
I also read in your report that much of that land is privately owned, which makes management tricky.
Private ownership is about 89% of forests in the South. [Editor’s note: By comparison, only about a third of forests in the West are privately owned.] Even where you have public ownership, a lot of that is by the Department of Defense and concentrated in a couple of different areas in the Ozarks and southern Appalachians. Much of the landscape in the coastal plain and Piedmont — which is most of the South — is predominantly private ownership.
There’s a distinction to be made between commercial owners, like timber investment management companies or real estate investment trusts, who actively manage landscapes. With timber harvesting, there are a lot of risk mitigation activities and a lot of prescribed burning. But then you have over a million non-industrial private landowners with small holdings. If you’re trying to coordinate any kind of wildfire mitigation scheme using fuel treatments and the like, it requires some work.
Horry County, South Carolina, and Polk County, North Carolina, were not part of your paper’s list of counties vulnerable to wildfire. I’m curious if you think what we’re seeing now says something about the limits of the study and the data you had available, or if you have another takeaway about what’s going on.
Importantly, our study looked at long-term averages. Throughout the South, there is a fire regime, and in any given year, it is possible to have wildfires of consequence. I would point out that we were especially concerned this year because Hurricane Helene laid down an awful lot of trees and created a fuel load.
We’re also entering one of the two fire seasons in the South. Wildfire is most predominant in the spring and in the fall; it’s at those times when temperatures begin to rise but humidity remains low, and there are extended dry periods that allow the fuels to dry out. You have warm temperatures and wind in the spring, setting the stage for wildfire. Typically, that window will begin to close at the end of April because it’s pretty darn humid in the South at that point, and it’s much less likely that fuels will get dry enough to carry a fire.
The same thing happens in the fall: Temperatures may remain high, and if we don’t have a lot of precipitation and humidity — usually in October and into November — then you have the conditions right for fire. But as the climate shifts, we see the length of those seasons growing to the point where the fall is approaching the spring. Wildfires in January and February indicate that these two seasons are growing toward one another and providing a much longer season. Our paper showed that, when you account for climate change across all of those global climate models and representative concentration pathways, the windows for more wildfire activity and more intense wildfire activity are expanding.
Your paper cited wildfire risks across the Sun Belt. Today, the National Weather Service is warning of “potentially historic” fire conditions in central Texas. Can local emergency managers use your modeling to prepare for such situations?
Things like the year-to-year fire projections and the day-to-day forecasts best serve local emergency managers. Wildfire in the South is determined by the drying of fuels and temperature and humidity conditions, which vary daily. If we look over the last week, Saturday was beautiful in the Carolinas. It was sunny, in the 70s, dry, and a little windy. That was the day [hundreds of] fires started across the Southeast. And the next day, there were very few new fires. Mid-week projections of wildfire potential in the Southeast show that it’s really low, with the exception of Texas. It changes day to day, driven by fine-grain weather forecasts, and that gives emergency managers some insight into where they might want to pre-position crews or do pre-suppression activities.
What we’re doing with the modeling is asking, What is this going to look like in 50 years? The takeaway is that wildfire activity is going to remain strong and perhaps grow in the West, but the big structural change is really strong growth and active fire in the Southeast, where you have wildfire and wildlands proximal to millions of people and more vulnerable communities. It’s a fire regime that’s going to affect more people.
I also wanted to ask about the USDA Forest Service’s contributions to your paper. Do you think research like this could still happen today, given the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate anything climate-related from the federal agenda?
I came to Resources for the Future six years ago after a long career with the Forest Service, so it’s hard for me to remain a dispassionate scientist here. I think we need to see how the dust settles. It’s hard to imagine a future where the agency and federal government do not have a high level of concern regarding fire — and I don’t think you can do any kind of effective planning, or thinking about the future, or targeting of activities without understanding how climate is likely to impact these disturbance regimes.
I don’t have the crystal ball that many people are seeking right now. We’ll have to wait to see. But our research demonstrates the vital role of understanding climate dynamics, and it shows how critical weather forecasts are for people with boots on the ground who are trying to stay ahead of disaster.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that about a third of land in the West is privately owned, not publicly owned.
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Today’s conversation is with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications, a D.C.-based communications firm that focuses on defending zero- and low-carbon energy and federal investments in climate action. Moyer, a veteran communications adviser who previously worked on Capitol Hill, has some hot takes as of late about how he believes industry and political leaders have in his view failed to properly rebut attacks on solar and wind energy, in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act. On Tuesday he sent an email blast out to his listserv – which I am on – that boldly declared: “The Wind Industry’s Strategy is Failing.”
Of course after getting that email, it shouldn’t surprise readers of The Fight to hear I had to understand what he meant by that, and share it with all of you. So here goes. The following conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.
What are you referencing when you say, ‘the wind industry’s strategy is failing’?
Anyone in the climate space, in the clean energy space, the worst thing you can do is go silent and pretend that this is just going to go away. Even if it’s the president and the administration delivering the attacks, I think there’s an important strategy that’s been lacking in the wind and other sectors that I don’t think has been effective. There was a recent E&E News story that noted a couple of wind developers when asked for comment just say, “No comment.” This to me misses a really big opportunity to not get in a fight with people but talk about the benefits of wind.
Not taking advantage of milestones like ground breaking or construction starting is a missed opportunity to drive public opinion. If you lose support in public opinion, you’re going to lose support from public officials, because they largely follow public opinion.
And there’s no way that’s going to change if you don’t take the opportunities to talk about the benefits that wind can provide, in terms of good-paying local jobs or supplying more electrons to the grid. By almost any measure the strategy employed so far has not really worked.
Okay, but what is the wind industry strategy that isn’t working? What are they doing to rebut attacks on the technology, on property values, on the environment?
We’re not hearing them. We’re not hearing those arguments.
You can’t let criticisms go unanswered.It would better serve the industry and these companies to push back against criticisms. It’s not like you can’t anticipate what they are. And what do you have to lose? You’re in the worst position of any energy sector in this political moment. It would be nice to see some fight and sharp campaign skills and strategic effort in terms of communication. And there’s no strategic value from what I can tell in [being silent].
I understand not wanting to pick a fight with folks who hold your fate in their hands, but there’s a way to thread a needle that isn’t antagonizing anybody but also making sure the facts have been heard. And that’s been missing.
You’d specifically said the industry should stop ‘being paralyzed in fear and start going on offense.’ What does that look like to you?
Taking every opportunity to get your message out there. The lowest hanging fruit is when a reporter comes and asks you, What do you think about this criticism? You should definitely reply. It’s lifting up third-party voices that are benefiting from a specific project, talking about the economic impacts more broadly, talking about the benefits to the grid.
There’s a whole number of tools in the toolbox to put to use but the toolboxes remain shut thus far. Targeted paid media, elevating the different voices and communities that are going to resonate with different legislators, and certainly the facts are helpful. Also having materials prepared, like validators and frequently asked questions and answers.
You’re trying to win. You’re trying to get your project to be successful and deliver jobs and tax revenue. And I think it would be wise for companies to look at the playbooks of electoral campaigns, because there’s lots of tools that campaigns use.
How do renewable energy developers get around the problem of partisanship? How do you get outta that through a campaign approach?
These projects are decided locally. It’s deciding who the decision-makers are and not just letting opponents who are getting talking points through right-wing media show up and reiterate these talking points. Oftentimes, there’s no one on the pro side even showing up at all, and it makes it really easy for city councils to oppose projects. They’re losing by forfeit. We can’t keep doing that.
And more on this week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.
2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project will learn its fate under the Trump administration by this fall, after a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department must come to a decision on how it’ll handle a court challenge against its permits by September.
3. Bedford County, Pennsylvania – Arena Renewables is trying to thread a needle through development in one of the riskiest Pennsylvania counties for development, with an agriculture-fueled opposition risk score of 89.
4. Knox County, Ohio – The Ohio Power Siting Board has given the green light to Open Road Renewables’ much-watched Frasier Solar project.
5. Clay County, Missouri – We’ll find out next week if rural Missouri can still take it easy on a large solar project.
6. Clark County, Nevada – President Trump’s Bureau of Land Management has pushed back the permitting process for EDF Renewables’ Bonanza solar project by at least two months and possibly longer .
7. Klickitat County, Washington – Washington State has now formally overridden local opposition to Cypress Creek’s Carriger solar project after teeing up the decision in May.
It’s governor versus secretary of state, with the fate of the local clean energy industry hanging in the balance.
I’m seeing signs that the fight over a hydrogen project in Wyoming is fracturing the state’s Republican political leadership over wind energy, threatening to trigger a war over the future of the sector in a historically friendly state for development.
At issue is the Pronghorn Clean Energy hydrogen project, proposed in the small town of Glenrock in rural Converse County, which would receive power from one wind farm nearby and another in neighboring Niobrara County. If completed, Pronghorn is expected to produce “green” hydrogen that would be transported to airports for commercial use in jet fuel. It is backed by a consortium of U.S. and international companies including Acconia and Nordex.
One can guess why investors thought this rural Wyoming expanse would be an easier place to build: it’s an energy community situated in the middle of the Powder River Basin and the state’s Republican governor Mark Gordon has supported wind projects in the state publicly, not just with rhetoric but votes in favor of them on the State Board of Land Commissioners.
Wind is also often proposed on private land in Wyoming, which is supposed to make things easier. You may remember the Lucky Star and Twin Rivers wind farms, a pair of projects whose progress I’ve watched like a hawk because they’re tied to the future of wind permitting at the national level. As we first reported, the Trump administration is proceeding with potentially approving the transmission line for Lucky Star, a project that would be sited entirely on private land, and Twin Rivers received its final environmental review in the last days of the Biden administration, making it difficult for anti-wind advocates to curtail.
Unlike those projects, Pronghorn has created a fork in the road for wind in Wyoming. It’s because the people in its host community don’t seem to want it, the wind projects were on state land, and there’s politics at play.
Despite being considered an energy community, Converse and Niobrara are both areas with especially high opposition risk, according to Heatmap Pro, largely due to its low support for renewable energy, its demographics, and concerns about impacts to the local ranching economy. After Gordon and other members of the state land use board approved two wind facilities for the hydrogen project, a rancher living nearby sued the board with public support from the mayor of Glenrock and the area’s legislators in the statehouse. A member of the Converse County zoning board even published a “manifesto” against the project, detailing local concerns that are myriad and rooted in fears of overburden, ranging from water use and property value woes to a general resentment toward an overall rise in wind turbines across the county and state.
What’s probably most concerning to wind supporters is that this local fight is bubbling up into a statewide political fracture between Gordon and his secretary of state Chuck Gray, who is believed to be a future candidate for governor. Grey was the lone dissenting vote against the two wind projects for Pronghorn, saying he did not support the projects because they would be assisted by federal tax credits Trump is trying to gut. Gray then took to mocking the governor on social media for his stance on wind while posting photos of broken wind turbines. Gordon wound up responding to his secretary of state accusing him of being the “only member of the state land board to vote against individual property rights and Wyoming schools.”
“That is his prerogative to be sure, but it demonstrates his disregard for the duties of his office and a determination to impose his personal preferences on others, no matter the cost,” Gordon stated.
I’ve been reaching out to Pronghorn and its founder Paul Martin to try and chat about what’s happening in Wyoming. I haven’t heard back, and if I do I’ll gladly follow this story up, but there’s a sign here of an issue in Wyoming whether Pronghorn gets built or not – areas of Wyoming may be on the verge of a breaking point on wind energy.
I heard about the Pronghorn project in conversations this week with folks who work on wind permitting issues in Wyoming and learned that the Gordon-Gray feud is emblematic of how the wind industry’s growth in the state is making local officials more wary of greenlighting projects. Whether Gordon’s position on private property wins out over Gray taking up the mantle of the anti-wind conservative critic may be the touchstone for the future of local planning decisions, too.
At least, that’s the sense I got talking to Sue Jones, a commissioner in Carbon County, directly southwest of Converse County. Jones admits she personally doesn’t care for wind farms and that it’s “no secret with the county, or the developers.” But so far, she hasn’t voted that way as a commissioner.
“If they meet all our rules and regs, then I’ve voted to give them a permit,” she told me. “You can’t just say no to anything. It’s a good thing that we value private property rights.”
Jones said the problem in Carbon County and other areas of Wyoming is “saturation level.” Areas of the state where only a handful of landowners hold thousands of acres? That’s probably fine for wind projects because there’s a low likelihood of a neighbor or two having a genuine grievance. But as wind has grown into population-denser areas of the state the dissent is becoming more frequent.
My gut feeling is that, as we’ve seen in many other instances, this resentment will bubble up and manifest as sweeping reform – unless the wind industry is able to properly address these growing concerns head on.