Staff Articles

January 11, 2022
By John Fielder and Chad Hanson
Denver Post Op-Ed

With President Biden and Congressman Joe Neguse surveying the devastating toll of the recent Marshall fire, this is a profoundly important time to reflect on our current wildfire policies and responses, and to ensure that we get it right to best protect communities. Driven by extreme dry and windy conditions, the Marshall fire burned approximately 6,000 acres in Boulder County and destroyed over 1,000 homes. The remains of one person have been found and another is presumed to have died in the fire.

October 29, 2021
By Chad Hanson
CounterPunch

The United States Forest Service isn’t what you may think. The primary land management activity in which the Forest Service engages is selling public timber to private logging corporations, while keeping the revenue for its budget. It is quite literally in the commercial logging business, like a giant logging corporation that is subsidized by taxpayers.

August 24, 2021
By Chad Hanson
Grist/Fix

Earlier this month, the Dixie Fire leveled most of the town of Greenville, California. I know the town well — I conducted fieldwork for my doctoral dissertation there. Thankfully, everyone survived. But the downtown is gone, along with 75 percent of the homes.

It didn’t need to happen.

Winter 2021
By Chad Hanson
Earth Island Journal Online

Wildfires have spanned over seven million acres this year, mostly in California and Oregon. Dozens of lives have been lost, with numerous towns devastated. People are desperate for solutions. Unfortunately, amidst the unfolding human tragedy, some pro-logging politicians are attempting to exploit hardship, loss, and confusion. Instead of focusing on approaches proven to save homes and lives from wildfires, such as home-hardening and “defensible space” pruning within 100 feet of homes, they are promoting logging bills in Congress. This would only make matters worse.

October 4, 2020
By Mike Garrity
Missoulian Op-Ed

Dr. Chad Hanson and his colleagues conducted an ambitious scientific study on wildfire behavior and trends — one of the largest ever to analyze the factors that drive such fires. The study involved three decades of data and tens of millions of acres of forest fires across the American West.

September 29, 2020
By Chad Hanson
Los Angeles Times Op-Ed

My community of Big Bear City, in the mountains east of Los Angeles, had a tense week recently. For a few nerve-racking days, the El Dorado fire, which has burned more than 20,000 acres in and around the San Bernardino National Forest, threatened to move our way.

February 18, 2020
By Chad Hanson
Sierra Magazine

Donald Trump would like the American public to believe that he now thinks climate change is real. That should come as no surprise: Republican leaders have recently changed their messaging given recent polls showing that an increasing number of millennial Republicans want their party to take real action to address the climate crisis. Just after the New Year, Trump told reporters that he now believes climate change is “not a hoax,” and that it is a “very serious” issue, going so far as to call himself an “environmentalist.”

October 14, 2019
By Chad Hanson and James Hansen
Los Angeles Times Op-Ed

During hot, dry and windy conditions last November, the Camp fire devastated the towns of Paradise and Concow in the northern Sierra Nevada, ultimately claiming at least 85 lives and destroying thousands of homes. The tragedy was a wake-up call regarding the increasing risks to vulnerable communities stemming from the human-caused climate crisis.

November 17, 2018
By Chad Hanson
CNN Op-Ed

With the shocking loss of thousands of homes and dozens of lives in the Camp and Woolsey fires in Northern and Southern California, people are looking for answers as they try to understand how a tragedy such as this can be prevented in the future.