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Plus cheese and eggs, if you want to go all the way.
It was burrito night — I had some tortillas, salsa, guacamole and red onion in my refrigerator, but all our meat was still frozen, and I didn’t have any beans handy. So I did what any climate reporter with an interest in food systems would do and grabbed a pack of meatless “carne asada” I’d picked up out of curiosity and threw it into the mix. The end result was more “huh” than “wow,” but it held its own — with a little help from some hot sauce.
Growing, raising, processing and transporting food is responsible for roughly a quarter of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, nearly 60% of which comes from meat production, according to one estimation. If you're concerned about your personal carbon impact, eating less meat is probably on your to-do list. But what if you still like a carne asada burrito? Thankfully, there are plenty of companies working on satisfying your cravings, no animals involved.
There are lots of other food system concerns that won’t make it into this guide — things like agricultural livelihoods, water use, and animal well-being. But if you’re curious about how fake meats work, what they taste like, and their emissions impact, here’s what you’ll want to know.
Ben Kelley, owner and proprietor of Kelley Farms Kitchen, a vegan restaurant in Harpers Ferry, WV. Ben and his wife Sondra started Kelley Farms after going vegan themselves more than a decade ago. The cafe offers a mix of housemade and commercially available meat alternatives.
Ismael Montanez, the program manager at University of California Berkeley’s Alt Meat Lab, where he’s focused on food and sustainability broadly. He is co-founder and former CTO of plant-based lamb company Black Sheep Foods and eats both meat and plant-based replacements.
Andrea Cecchin, senior agriculture and carbon researcher at HowGood, a sustainability ratings company. Cecchin told me he and his family limit the amount of meat they eat but are focused on a wider plant based diet.
It’s a multi-trillion dollar question, frankly. While the worldwide food system is far more complex than individual consumer choices, shifts in demand for food products, especially among higher-income individuals, have created changes, such tripling the price of quinoa during a boom in its popularity in mid-2010s. The U.S. and China’s growing middle classes also drove a spike in pork demand, only to have that growth slow and reverse in the past few years over health concerns.
The plant-based meat alternatives currently available at your grocery store may be highly processed, but they’re different from the cultivated or “lab-grown” meat coming from a new batch of food companies that seek to “grow” meat from scratch on the cellular level. In theory, this would create direct replacements for things like steaks or fish without actually requiring us to raise actual animals. Almost all of these products are still in the research and development stage, however, and none are currently commercially available in the U.S.
Let’s not mince words: There is no such thing as carbon-neutral beef. How to reduce cattle’s climate impact is an area of active research, encompassing supplements and dietary changes, breeding programs to create animals that process food more efficiently, and even methane-sucking gas masks. There are also ranchers committed to using specific grazing techniques that encourage extra retention of soil carbon, thereby offsetting emissions from cows, but “the science is not there yet” on the scale of sequestration needed for fully carbon-neutral meat, Cecchin says. “Climate-friendly” or “low-carbon” meat labels have been criticized for a lack of data transparency and only represent a 10% reduction in beef emissions overall.
The process of making plant-based mock meats is basically the reverse of their animal version, Montanez explained. While meat is made by processing animals into specific cuts or parts, plant-based replacements use protein-packed flours and other ingredients to build the “meat” back up.
Almost all fake red meat products will have a smaller greenhouse gas impact than their animal versions, Cecchin explained. Compared to a beef burger, the alternatives “really bring down the carbon footprint — the amount of water we need to use, and the amount of land that we use” per unit of food. But for other products, the savings are less clear. Chicken, for instance, has a much lower footprint, meaning replacements have to compete against a “very efficient industry and a very efficient meat.”
Processing details are rarely public, making it difficult to declare other meat replacements automatic emissions winners. “It’s really company by company, and could even be year by year as processing efficiencies change,” Cecchin said, adding that he hopes more companies will show clear evidence of their total emissions, including being specific about what they are comparing against.
Fake animal products are also not the same nutritionally as actual animal products, in ways that can be positive or negative depending on your specific dietary needs. An allergy to soy or wheat gluten would immediately knock out a good portion of these options, and my carne asada came with a warning to anyone “sensitive” to fungi.
There are generally more carbs, less fat, and more fiber in substitutes compared to meat, but protein levels can vary widely, and sodium levels can be high (e.g. Impossible burgers have just as much fat and more salt than a 80% lean beef burger of the same size, though zero cholesterol). As with any processed or prepared food, a look at the nutritional label is well worth it.
The experts all enjoyed the big-name beef replacements — Cecchin even said he has chosen Impossible and Beyond patties over regular burgers while eating out. If you have a little more time, though, Kelley said to skip the fast food fake burgers and make them yourself. Making good tasting meat replacements isn’t all that different from cooking meat itself: spices, technique and how it integrates into a meal makes all the difference. This is the case whether he’s using Impossible beef on the restaurant griddle or hand-making a black bean and chickpea patty. “Just like a raw piece of chicken,” he said, “it's about how you cook it.”
Everyone I spoke to said most breaded chicken replacements match their animal versions pretty well — Montanez even called them “most consistently tasty” than their actual meat equivalents, which for him was enough to justify the slight additional cost. He said he thinks Impossible’s chicken nuggets are the “most convincing” — although he also cautioned that he doesn’t eat a lot of breaded meat products in the first place.
Morningstar Farms’ Chik Patty has been a go-to at-home lunch in my house for nearly three decades, primarily because of that consistency and ease of preparation. (The “buffalo” flavor is by far the best, in my opinion.) Kelley uses Gardein’s Chick’n on one of their most popular sandwiches at the restaurant — they’re a big fan of the company and product.
Don’t expect a lot of options for raw chicken alternatives, however. Montanez suspects the economics of competing with relatively cheap meat isn’t attractive to companies, especially when prepared breaded versions, both animal and plant-based, are already popular.
“Emulating the flavor of American chicken is relatively easy and shouldn't be seen as a significant achievement,” Montanez said. “What’s truly interesting is creating a versatile analog that can withstand the same cooking conditions as real chicken.”
Kelley’s favorite meat replacement is Beyond’s bratwurst sausage, made with pea protein and avocado oil. He uses it in a variety of meals at his cafe, as well as to grill up at home, sometimes adding it to pasta.
Steak and other meats that include marbled fats have been a particularly tricky nut to crack for fake meat producers because the traditional extrusion process makes it difficult to capture fat alongside protein. Montanez told me Juicy Marbles has developed a process capable of doing both, which it’s used to create filet and loin products.
Montanez’s favorite fake bacon is only available in a vegan deli in Berkeley, California, but generally both he and Kelley haven’t found full bacon strips that really match the experience of eating bacon. “There's no way to hold it after you cook it without it drying out,” Kelley said. Instead, he likes using soy [bacon] crumbles in various dishes, including in his potato salad.
The pepperoni and other fermented charcuterie from Prime Roots is “quite impressive, even from a meat eater’s perspective,” Montanez told me. The company starts its process with koji, a strain of fungus that has been part of Japanese cuisine for hundreds of years, including in the product of soy sauces and sake.
The deli slices Kelley uses in sandwiches like reubens or Italian hoagies are made with seitan or a mix of seitan and soy, from a variety of companies. But the Tofurky brand (not just turkey) is one of their favorites. “We are always testing new recipes of our own and using reliable and ethical companies that we grew up loving,” he said.
Kelley has yet to be convinced by most seafood replacements, he told me. “All the seafood is kind of just the same as the chicken replacements,” he said. Instead, he uses unripe jackfruit – a common meat replacement with a stringy texture – hearts of palm, and spices to replicate crab cakes. Having an exact match isn’t always a priority for Kelley, who’d rather highlight an ingredient that serves as a replacement rather than calling it by its faux name. His lobster roll replacement is made with hearts of palm, but it’s not “vegan lobster” on his menu, it’s a “hearts of palm” roll.
Texture is a “very difficult thing in seafood,” Montanez said. “I haven't seen anything myself where it is 100% convincing,” but he points out companies like Impact Food that are making plant-based sushi without extrusion or fermentation, currently available in some New York and California restaurants.
Montanez also called out vegan cheese as a category that struggles to match its original, citing texture, not flavor, as the sticking point, especially when it needs to work in a multitude of different recipes. “You might see a vegan cheese that’s okay applied in pieces,” he said, “but it's only as good if you put it in pizza oven temperatures.” An exception to the rule for him is Climax Foods’ blue cheese, which almost pulled off a Judgment of Paris-like upset in a food competition this year before being removed from the running.
Montanez identified Quorn as a brand that’s not trying to replicate meat exactly, but tastes good on its own. The British company has a wide range of no-meat products that feel like they could have a home in a Tesco, from a vegan Yorkshire ham to mini sausage rolls to “picnic eggs.”
Approaches to fake meat taste fall on a spectrum. On one end are companies that try to replicate as closely as possible the taste, texture, and smell of some specific meat product — say, a chicken nugget. (Your personal mileage may vary when it comes to replicas of more complicated meat cuts such as steaks or pork chops.) On the other end are brands that offer a functional, hopefully flavorful replacement for meat in a meal but otherwise aren’t trying to fool anyone.
The former approach involves more materials science and chemistry, Montanez told me. For example, Impossible makes a soy version of a key molecule in meat known as heme and combines it with a carefully calibrated proportion of sugars, fats, and water to induce the Maillard reaction, the process that makes meat brown and form a crust. It’s possible to create a similar meaty flavor profile without heme (Impossible has a patent on their version), but they have their own complications.
“It’s those sugars reacting with the proteins and creating these molecules that ultimately result in a meaty aroma or flavor,” Montanez said.
Kelley Farm’s menu is a good example of the wider ingredient possibilities of meat replacements beyond this approach. In addition to Impossible patties, Beyond brats, and Gardein’s Chick’n, the restaurant also serves deli meat replacements made with seitan (basically textured wheat gluten); folded eggs made from mung beans; BBQ pulled pork made from jackfruit, which mimics that stringy texture naturally (I’ve had both Kelley Farms’ barbeque sandwich and commercial jackfruit BBQ versions and would happily eat either again); and a burger patty that’s their own mix of chickpeas and black beans.
It’s also worth noting that there is a more literal approach to eating a plant-based diet that’s already the standard in many other countries — that is, rather than replacing meat products with fake meat products, just eat more plants. If you feel like you’re missing out on protein, beans, lentils, tofu, and certain grains like quinoa, farro or teff, have high amounts.
Highly engineered meat substitutes are often more expensive than the animal products they are replacing, so if you’re struggling with hunger, have specific dietary requirements, anxiety around food, or an eating disorder, concerns about emissions shouldn’t even enter the picture.
For that matter, just reorienting your approach to eating meat saves a lot of carbon on its own. Kelley told me he reaches for meat replacements when he’s craving something specific, while Cecchin prefers meat alternatives when he’s eating out.
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On exemptions, lots of new EVs, and Cyclone Alfred
Current conditions: A smattering of rainfall did little to contain a massive wildfire raging in Japan • Indonesia is using cloud seeding to try to stop torrential rains that have displaced thousands • At least 22 tornadoes have been confirmed this week across southern states.
The Trump administration said yesterday that automakers will be exempt from the new 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada – but just for a month. The announcement followed a meeting between administration officials and the heads of Stellantis, GM, and Ford – oh, to be a fly on the wall. As Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer explained, the tariffs are expected to spike new car prices by $4,000 to $10,000, and could hit internal combustion cars even worse than EVs, and prompt layoffs at Ford and GM. “At the request of the companies associated with [the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement], the president is giving them an exemption for one month so they are not at an economic disadvantage,” Trump said in a statement. Stellantis thanked Trump for the reprieve and said the company “share[s] the president’s objective to build more American cars and create lasting American jobs.” Around 40% of Stellantis cars currently sold in the U.S. are imported from Canada and Mexico.
The Supreme Court has rejected President Trump’s request to withhold roughly $2 billion in congressionally-approved payments to the U.S. Agency for International Development for foreign aid work that has already been completed. On his first day back in office, Trump ordered a 90-day pause on all foreign aid so programs could be reviewed to ensure they align with his agenda. The administration then eliminated funding for the majority of USAID’s contracts, including at least 130 that related to climate and/or clean energy. This week’s SCOTUS decision was “a welcome but confusing development for humanitarian and development organizations around the world,” The New York Timesreported, “as they waited to see if thousands of canceled contracts would be restarted.”
Speaking of cars, there has been a lot of EV news in the last few days:
Rivian announced plans to expand internationally. CFO Claire McDonough also said the company is working “around the clock” to roll out the new R2, R3, and R3X models, with production for the R2 set to start early next year. She said international expansion plans would kick off after the R2 production ramps up.
Volkswagen unveiled the ID. EVERY1. The concept-car version of its ultra-affordable EV “will be the first to roll out with software and architecture from Rivian,” TechCrunchreported. Production is slated for 2027, and the car will start at around 20,000 euros (or $21,500). No word on a U.S. release, though.
The ID. EVERY1Volkswagen
Volvo showed off the ES90. What is it? Good question. “Some might say it is a sedan,” the company said in its press release. “Others will see a fastback, or even hints of an SUV. We’ll let you be the final judge – all we know is that the new, fully electric Volvo ES90 carves out a new space for itself by eliminating the compromises between those three segments, which puts it in a class of its own.” InsideEVscalled it the company’s “most advanced EV to date,” because it can charge for 186 miles of range in 10 minutes on a fast charger.
Cadillac introduced a very long electric SUV. The electric Escalade IQL will go into production this year. With an overall length of 228.5 inches, it will be the longest SUV, uh, ever. It’ll start at $132,695.
On a related note, Tesla sales continue to plummet worldwide. They were down 76% last month in Germany, with sharp declines across other European countries, too. In Australia, sales were down 72%.
Global sea ice levels were at an all-time low last month, according to researchers at the Copernicus Climate Change Service. Arctic sea ice cover was 8% below average in February, the lowest since records began in 1979, and “the third consecutive month in which the sea ice extent has set a record for the corresponding month.” Antarctic sea ice cover was 26% below average. “One of the consequences of a warmer world is melting sea ice, and the record or near-record low sea ice cover at both poles has pushed global sea ice cover to an all-time minimum,” said Samantha Burgess at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. Melting sea ice contributes to sea level rise and ocean acidification, harms polar ecosystems, and creates a global-warming feedback loop by reducing albedo, which is the Earth’s ability to reflect sunlight back to space.
C3S
Forecasters are growing increasingly concerned about Cyclone Alfred, which is swirling off the coast of eastern Australia and is expected to arrive Friday or Saturday as a category 2 storm, or perhaps even a category 3. Alfred will be the first cyclone in 50 years to make landfall in this part of Australia. The storm has slowed as it approaches land, which means it will spend more time over very warm waters, soaking up even more moisture to dump on land. “The northeastern Coral Sea, where Cyclone Alfred formed, experienced the fourth-hottest temperatures on record for February and the hottest on record for January,” a group of climate change researchers wrote at The Conversation. Residents in and around Brisbane have been told to prepare to evacuate.
American drivers spent more time on the road last year than ever before, logging a record 3.28 trillion miles.
On boasts and brags, clean power installations, and dirty air
Current conditions: Strong winds helped spark dozens of fires across parched Texas • India’s Himalayan state of Uttarakhand experienced a 600% rise in precipitation over 24 hours, which triggered a deadly avalanche • The world’s biggest iceberg, which has been drifting across the Southern Ocean for 5 years, has run aground.
President Trump addressed Congress last night in a wide-ranging speech boasting about the actions taken during his first five weeks in office. There were some familiar themes: He claimed to have “ended all of [former President] Biden’s environmental restrictions” (false) and the “insane electric vehicle mandate” (also false — no such thing has ever existed), and bragged about withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement (true). He also doubled down on his plan to boost U.S. fossil fuel production while spouting false statements about the Biden administration’s energy policies, and suggested that Japan and South Korea want to team up with the U.S. to build a “gigantic” natural gas pipeline in Alaska.
On the same day as the speech, new tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China came into effect, triggering retaliatory duties and causing stock markets to plunge. Experts are busy trying to figure out what it all means for American businesses and consumers. As Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer explained, the tariffs are likely to make electricity prices go up, raise construction costs, make gas more expensive at the pump, and make new cars costlier. Fossil fuel firms aren’t thrilled. The American Gas Association said the 10% tariff on Canadian natural gas “indicates potential impacts totaling at least $1.1 billion in additional costs to American consumers per year.” Chet Thompson, CEO of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, said that “imposing tariffs on energy, refined products, and petrochemical imports will not make us more energy secure or lower costs for consumers.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has implied Trump might lift these tariffs as soon as today, but TBD.
The Trump administration has ended a program that monitored the air quality at more than 80 U.S. embassies and consulates around the world, citing “budget constraints.” The program started in 2008 with the U.S. embassy in Beijing and expanded from there. The data collected, which was posted on the AirNow website, has been used in academic studies and credited with helping reduce pollution levels in the host countries, leading to better health outcomes. This move “puts the health of foreign service officers at risk” and could hinder research and policy, Dan Westervelt, a research professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, toldThe New York Times.
Clean power installations soared in the fourth quarter of 2024, sending total operational capacity above and beyond the 300 gigawatt mark, according to a new report from the American Clean Power Association. “It took more than 20 years for the U.S. to install the first 100 GW of clean power, five years to install the next 100 GW, and three years to install the most recent 100 GW,” the report says. Here are some takeaways:
ACPA
China plans to ramp up its efforts to rein in emissions, expanding its emissions trading system beyond power plants to to include industries such as steel, aluminum, and cement, Premier Li Qiang said in a report this week. “Li also confirmed China intends to continue to play a key role in diplomacy on emissions reduction, as the U.S. retreats from international cooperation,” Bloombergreported. The country plans to roll out major climate projects such as offshore wind farms, “new energy bases” across its deserts, with a goal of reaching peak emissions before 2030. China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and while it has been rapidly expanding renewable power generation, it also struggles to wean itself off coal.
The Supreme Court yesterday watered down the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate water pollution, siding with the city of San Francisco in an unusual lawsuit pitting the liberal hub against the environmental authority. In a 5-4 decision, the justices said the agency had overstepped its authority under the Clean Water Act when it issued permitting for a San Francisco wastewater treatment plant that empties into the Pacific. The permit included provisions that would have made San Francisco authorities responsible for ensuring the water quality in the Pacific met EPA standards. Justice Samuel Alito essentially wrote that the permitting rules were too vague. “When a permit contains such requirements, a permittee that punctiliously follows every specific requirement in its permit may nevertheless face crushing penalties if the quality of the water in its receiving waters falls below the applicable standards,” Alito wrote. The ruling will make it harder for the EPA to limit water pollution. Next up on the SCOTUS docket: nuclear waste!
Bernard Looney, the former CEO of oil giant BP, is the new boss of an AI startup that tells businesses how to cut their emissions.
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.